Bookends 1/2012

January 2012      BOOKENDS by Director Mary Frick

Cheers to a new year and another chance to get it right.  Cheers to you for persevering. Cheers to you for keeping your sense of humor and perspective alive for another year. What gives you a sense of perspective? I probably shouldn’t confess that for me, it isn’t books (well, a few, now and then).  It’s movies. The lights go down; the popcorn is in my lap; the cat and dog are right next.  I am no longer me.  And when it’s over, on some level, I have been touched, changed. What is perspective, anyway?  Come, tell me your answer.

Here are some of our new movies that patrons (and I) liked a lot. But beware, movies I like are a little gritty, and are often about other cultures.

1.        “Spanish Prisoner”.  A new, top-secret formula can make millions for an inventor’s company.  But when the inventor meets a cynical businessman, his suspicions that he will never see his share of the profits begin to grow, setting in motion a chain of events that involve the FBI and murder. Many surprises.

2.      “Luther”.  Luther is a brilliant and tormented police detective who investigates serial murder cases.  This series from Great Britain stars the actor Idris Elba, who does everything from Shakespeare to the Baltimore-based television show, The Wire.

3.      “Buck”.  This movie follows Buck Brannaman from his abusive childhood to his phenomenally successful approach to horses. Buck, subject of the movie Horse Whisperer, eschews the violence of his upbringing and teaches people to communicate with horses through leadership and sensitivity. 

4.      “Sweetgrass”.  Documents modern-day cowboys as they lead their herd of sheep up into Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture.

5.      “Living in Emergency”.  Amid the chaos of war-torn Congo and Bosnia, four volunteers with Doctors Without Borders struggle to confront the severe challenges of the work and test the limits of their own idealism.

6.      “Story of the Weeping Camel”. In the Gobi Desert, a family of nomads face a crisis when one white camel calf is rejected by its mother after a difficult birth.  The family summons a musician to perform a traditional ceremony to try to bring the mother and calf back together.

DID YOU KNOW:  Federal 2011 Tax Forms are now here, in the lobby.  We will have Colorado Forms in one packet, which you can copy or get on line – we can show you how.