KC Public Library Blog
Program Notes: Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Funniest movie of all time? That’s a tough call, but Bringing Up Baby has to be a contender. This screwball masterpiece screens on Sunday, January 27 at the Plaza Branch as part of the Movies That Matter film series.
Program Notes: Kansas City (1996)
Kansas City has tons of atmosphere, terrific jazz, and a palpable sense of history. This is only fitting, since the film is director Robert Altman’s cinematic tribute to the city of his boyhood.
Conventional Wisdom
February 22, 1899: Local leaders celebrate as Kansas City gets a building large enough to accommodate large crowds with the opening of Convention Hall, built at a cost of $225,000.
Atlantic by Simon Winchester
Water makes up most of planet Earth. However, does one every really think about the ocean without standing on its shore? Simon Winchester in Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Discoveries, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories examines the broad expanse of the Atlantic Ocean which has fascinated him for years.
Program Notes: Captain Newman, M.D. (1963)
Captain Newman, M.D. is an all but forgotten rueful anti-establishment examination of war and the military. Nine years later, M*A*S*H would explore a similar premise, but with more anger.
Tigers In Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann
Written by the great-great-great granddaughter of literary genius Herman Melville, Tigers In Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann is a mystery drama that follows a prominent East Coast family through three decades of dysfunctional relationships, unearthed secrets, stinging betrayal, and eventually acceptance.
Program Notes: Tom Jones (1963)
Tom Jones, based on Henry Fielding’s picaresque comedy of 18th-century manners, is proof that a miserable, unhappy set can produce a movie that earns millions and wins Academy Awards.
Bowled Over
January 15, 1967: The Kansas City Chiefs battle the Green Bay Packers in front of 63,036 fans at the Los Angeles Coliseum and another 60 million on television, losing the game 35 to 10 (in what will become known as Super Bowl I).
New on DVD: Kill List (2011)
Kill List is one of the most haunting, compelling, and (at moments) repellant movies to come down the pike in some time. One of its great strengths is that it keeps us guessing about just what kind of movie it is.
Apologia pro Vita Sua by John Henry Cardinal Newman
I'll be spending 2013 reading biographical materials. When someone writes the story of his/her life, I wonder – why did this person feel the need to write about his/her life? To begin, I'd like to look at John Henry Cardinal Newman's spiritual autobiography, Apologia pro Vita Sua.
Program Notes: Kansas City Confidential (1952)
Kansas City Confidential is one of those minor B movie masterpieces, crammed with tough guys, a noirish aura of desperation and greed, and featuring a surprisingly complex script.
The "Godmother of Guadalupe"
January 8, 1894: Dorothy Gallagher, who becomes a founder of the Guadalupe Center at 1015 West 23rd Street to aid Mexican immigrants, is born in Kansas City.
Program Notes: Hud (1963)
Viewed today, Martin Ritt’s Hud isn’t the electrifying experience that greeted audiences in 1963. Back when the social and cultural blinders of the Eisenhower years were still in place, it was an incendiary movie.
Author Interview with Ari Marmell
Our Oh My Teen book group interviewed author Ari Marmell about his young adult novel Thief's Covenant, the first in the Widdershins Adventure series and the group pick for November. A brief synopsis of Thief's Covenant: "She is Widdershins, a thief making her way through Davillons underbelly looking to find answers, and justice with a sharp blade, a sharper wit, and the mystical aid of Olgun, a foreign god with no other worshipers but Widdershins herself."
Program Notes: Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990)
For years it was accepted that Evan S. Connell’s novels were unfilmable. But the unshowy approach of the 1990 film Mr. and Mrs. Bridge nicely approximates the experience of reading the book.