Blog Posts by Subject: Film

Who is Harpo? How does one describe him? What is his role in the Marx Brothers' films? What is his role in the universe? Sometimes he is a hero; sometimes an anti-hero. He is always unique, on par with the greats: Chaplin, Red Skelton, Emmet Kelly. He is spontaneous, in continuous action, even when he freezes or stares (which are actions in themselves). He's a part of a group, but sometimes stands alone. Is he everyman, or the product of a long line of clowns?

I'm Tara D. Kelley, the Audiovisual Specialist for the Mikhail Baryshnikov Archive, and I've been keeping secrets from you.

Over the past few months, I've been surreptitiously selecting media for preservation, viewing streaming video files, and producing records for the New York Public Library's catalog. In February, I began submitting these selections for review, preparing for the day when the wonders of Mr. Baryshnikov's collection would be revealed to you.

Last month, while reading the ever-elegant obituaries in The Economist, I ran across RPJ's. I knew the name through the Merchant/Ivory movies, but she was a writer-writer as well as screen-writer. She wrote over a dozen novels, with a "heroine [who] was almost always herself: trapped in a cross-cultural marriage, tipping between the old world and the new, observing from the outside some bewildering place." As so often happens, the next day I stumbled on a mention of her in the journals of the great Leo Lerman, who knew everyone, and enjoyed the rare gift of description in a paragraph.

The newest film version of The Great Gatsby is opening in theaters on May 10th. This is the fifth time this story has been filmed, I believe. This version boasts a modern soundtrack and promises to deliver on the fashion and visual excesses of the "Jazz Age," if director Baz Luhrmann's signature style is to be expected. Here are some titles that give a more substantial background to the time period in which "Gatsby" is set and to biographical details of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's lives. Also, I've included some links that hint at the hype and flash that the film promises to bring.

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you." (imdb.com)

This summer at Mid-Manhattan Library: revisit the vital, gritty streets of 1970s New York City on Film, discuss great NYC books online with Reader's Den, and relax as librarian Lois Moore reads you short stories from The New Yorker and New York-based authors during Mixed Bag.

All of these events are part of our summer reading program for older teens and adults called NYC Summer. Watch this space for announcements of even more events and book recommendations! You can also quickly access this page at: bit.ly/nycsummer2013.

In the month of May, many great DVD movies are coming to the Library. Reserve titles now using the Library's Catalog.

Carrere & Hastings, architects of the Central Library on 42nd Street (now the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building) designed room 316 as a 19th century picture gallery. On May 22, 1986, the 75th anniversary of the opening of the building, the room was formally dedicated to Edna Barnes Salomon, the wife of Mr. Richard Salomon, Chairman of the Board of the Library from July 1977 to May 1981. In addition to the oil portaits of various Astors, members of the Lenox family, some of the Shelley & Wollstonecraft clan, some landscapes and scenes of New York, there two matching life size portraits of Charles Coburn and Ivah Wills (Mrs. Coburn) as  from As You Like It.

How do we love Christopher Walken? On his 70th birthday, let us count the ways. Star of film, TV, and NYPL's own iBook Point, somehow everyone has a favorite film that stars him, be it The Deer Hunter, True Romance, or Pulp Fiction. The consummate villain, he faced off Batman and James Bond with his signature dead stare that transforms at the drop of a hat into a Rockwellesque boyish grin. By the time his fancy footwork stupefied us in Spike Jonze's Fatboy Slim video, few knew Walken was already a 30-year Broadway veteran, sharing the stage with Liza Minnelli and Raul Julia. What? Read on, share movie quotes, or just look at the pictures!

In the month of April, many great DVD movies are coming to the Library. Reserve titles now using the Library's Catalog.

In the month of March, many great DVD movies are coming to the Library. Reserve titles now using the Library's Catalog.

New York Public Library is once again proud to partner with ReelAbilities, offering opportunities to see recent, high-quality films promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with differing abilities.

According to the Chinese Lunar Calendar, 2013 is the Year of the Snake. In the Chinese zodiac, the snake is equivalent to the Taurus in Western tradition. February 10th, 2013 to January 30th, 2014 will mark the Year of the Snake.

In the month of February, many great DVD movies are coming to the Library. Reserve titles now using the Library's Catalog.

Three Auteurs of World Cinema starts with six screenings of films by the highly-stylized Hong Kong director, Wong Kar-wai. In March, we move to the meditative works of Soviet/Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. And finally, throughout April and May, we'll explore the fantastical world of Italian director Federico Fellini through eight films spanning his entire career.

Maybe you've got the Nordic noir bug from reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium series (we've all seen those ubiquitous neon paperbacks on the subway) or were enthralled earlier by Peter Høeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow or the Detective Wallander series of books. However you encounter them, Scandicrime writers such as Henning Mankell, Larsson, or Jo Nesbø are like a good bag of chips, it's hard not to have another. This is a selective guide to some notable authors and detective series from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and even some Nordic noir from Iceland, and what's better, a guide to pronouncing their names correctly over cocktails.

Angelic stranger, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) grants freedom to hapless Texas slave Django (Jamie Foxx). Schultz, a kindly German dentist-turned-bounty hunter, provides Django with employment, trusting friendship and his first handgun. Django is reborn as a slave-turned-bounty hunter, becoming a vengeful black American superman on a dangerous and deadly mission to free his lovely German-educated wife, Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington), from a Mississippi cotton plantation.

In the month of January, many great DVD movies are coming to the Library. Reserve titles now using the Library's new Catalog.

I just quit smoking for the fifth time. For me, it's all or nothing. I could never be one of those people — dilettantes! — who are able to smoke socially and then go for indefinite periods of time without a cigarette. I suppose this has to do with physiology, personality, and the times in which I grew up.