Fifty Shades of Grey – The Movie

/ Linda / Leave a comment

The casting decisions have been made and production will begin soon for the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Charlie Hunnam

Charlie Hunnam

Thirty-three year old Charlie Hunnam has been cast as Christian Grey.  He recently starred in the movie “Pacific Rim” and appeared in the FX series “Sons of Anarchy”.

Dakota Johnson

Dakota Johnson

Twenty-three year old Dakota Johnson has been cast as Anastasia Steele.  She is the daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson.  She recently appeared in the short-lived Fox sit-com “Ben and Kate” and had roles in “The Social Network” and “The Five-Year Engagement”.

Focus Features will release the film on August 1, 2014. Sam Taylor-Johnson is directing the project.  It will be interesting to see if they can keep it ‘R’ rated or will they have to go to NC17?

Alexis Bledel

Alexis Bledel

Matt Bomer

Matt Bomer

UPDATE:  It seems not everyone is happy with the above choices.   Angry fans of the book are petitioning to have Alexis Bledel and Matt Bomer cast as the leads.  The petition has 20,000 signatures so far.

For the Kings, writing is all in the family

/ Louise / Leave a comment

The New York Times recently published an article about Stephen King and his rather literary family. King, of course, is the best-selling author of over 50 novels and dozens of short stories. His wife Tabitha is also an author with 8 published novels to her name.  Perhaps it was inevitable, with writers for parents, that 2 out of the 3 King children would also pursue a career in fiction.

Eldest son Joseph Hillstrom King, writing under the pen name Joe Hill, published an anthology of his short stories in 2005, and his first novel Heart-Shaped Box in 2007. His second novel Horns is being make into a feature film starring Daniel Radcliffe. Younger son Owen King (whose wife, Kelly Braffet, is also a writer) joined the family business this year with his debut novel Double Feature. No one can doubt that talent runs in the King family!

Next time you’re in the library, check out some of the books by the prolific Kings:

Stephen King:

http://ibistro.libraryconnection.info/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/57/5?user_id=CHESHIREPUB&password=PUBLIC&searchdata1=9781476727653

Dr. Sleep (coming Sept. 24)

Under the Dome (2009)

Joyland (2013)

Tabitha King:

The Book of Reuben (1995)

Survivor (1998)

Candles Burning (2006)

Joe Hill:

Heart-Shaped Box (2007)

NOS4A2 (2013)

Horns (2010)

Owen King:

Double Feature (2013)

On Our Shelves: New DVDs

/ Jenn / Leave a comment

I love it when a new DVD order comes in. For those who love watching movies, it’s like Christmas multiple times in a year. There were several in this batch which I was interested in and had been anticipating their release.

1. Hitchcock, starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren. Hopkins may not look an awful lot like the late Alfred Hitchcock, but boy, does he have his mannerisms down. My husband was interested in watching this movie, which seemed to fly under the radar. Hitchcock follows the pre-production and filming of Hitchcock’s greatest film: Psycho. Scarlett Johannsen shines in her role and Mirren is as always spot on. 

2. Identity Thief, starring Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy. First, let me start by saying that I love Melissa McCarthy. I thought she was charming on Gilmore Girls and hilarious on Mike and Molly. Who can forget her epic movie moment of going to the bathroom in the sink in Bridesmaids? Identity Thief started out with an excellent premise: McCarthy steals people’s identities, and you truly hate her for a lot of the movie. There are a lot of laughs, especially when Bateman and McCarthy are verbally dueling, but like Bridesmaids, it loses the funny 2/3 way through and becomes serious. I want to watch a comedy and laugh the whole way through, not learn a lesson.

3. Boy, starring Taika Waititi and James Rolleston. A Sundance Film Festival selection, Boy takes place in Australia in 1984. “Boy” idolizes both Michael Jackson and his father, who is a distant memory to him. “Boy” envisions him as a deep sea diver, war hero, and even Michael Jackson himself. His father returns home after spending seven years in jail and “Boy” has to confront the role model he imagined and the real man.

4. The Borgias, Seasons 2 and 3, starring Jeremy Irons and Holliday Grainger. All good things must come to an end, and the third season of the Borgias is the final season. But fear not! The original crime family (Mario Puzo based The Godfather on the Borgia family) has plenty in store for you in these seasons. We’ve seen the devious path Lucretiza is going down and the inner politicking Pope Alexander, AKA Rodrigo Borgia has been up to.

5. The Devil’s Backbone. This Spanish foreign-film, directed by Guillermo del Torro, deals with a personal subject for the director. Set during the final week of the Spanish Civil War, a ten year old boy is sent to a haunted orphanage after his freedom-fighting father is killed. This is a gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama done only in the style del Torro can do.

See you in the stacks,

Jenn

Linda Reads: You’re The One By Robin Kaye

/ Linda / Leave a comment

This is book two in Robin Kaye’s Bad Boys of Red Hook series.  They do not have to be read in order.  Book one is Back To You and is available at the Cheshire Library.  The series concentrates on three men who bounced around the foster care system until a New York cop took them under his wing.

You’re The One centers around Logan Blaise, the manager of a successful Napa Valley winery.  He’s engaged to the winery’s owner’s daughter and living the high life.  When his foster father becomes ill, Logan heads back to New York to temporarily oversee his father’s restaurant, the Crow’s Nest.  No sooner does he arrive, the chef has a family emergency and has to quit.

Skye Maxwell comes from a famous restaurant family in San Francisco.  She has four brothers who were gifted with their own restaurants on their 30th birthday.  Being an exceptional chef, all Skye has ever wanted was a kitchen/restaurant of her own and she expects to receive her own restaurant on her 30th birthday.   Instead, she is promoted to Business Manager of all the family restaurants.   Devastated,  she very quietly and secretly disappears.  She heads to New York City, hoping  to find a job as a chef on her own merits, not on her family’s reputation.   She ends up in Brooklyn and stumbles upon the chef wanted sign in the Crow’s Nest’s window.

Right away there is an attraction between Logan and Skye – a love/hate attraction.  Both characters have to overcome formidable obstacles in their pursuit of love, happiness, independence, and acceptance.  Both have families interfering with their journey, both have self-doubts to overcome, but neither one can deny the incredible chemistry that exists between them.

Ms. Kaye writes a heartwarming, believable story set in the wonderful backdrop of Brooklyn and San Francisco.  It is warm, funny and very entertaining.  Secondary characters add another interesting layer to a very well-written story.

Short Story Book List for Young Adults

/ Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

Summer is coming to a close, and we are running out of extra reading time. If you are looking for something that you can read in short bursts or get through rather quickly, but is still touching or highly entertaining you might want to check out one (or more) of these titles. Just remember, just because these books are in our young adult section, it does not mean that readers without a ‘teen’ in their age cannot get just as much out of these titles as the age group the publishers market them towards.

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Zombies Vs. Unicorns

Zombies VS. Unicorns  is a selection of short stories compiled by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier that deals with a question as old as time itself: What is better, strong, more awesome; the zombie or the unicorn? Stories in this anthology offer strong arguments for both sides of the debate. Contributing authors include Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Margo Lanagan. Are you Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd is another anthology with Holly Black on the editing team. This anthology covers all things geeky, from Klingons and Jedi Knights to fan fiction, theater geeks, and cosplayers. No matter what kind of geek you are, or want to be, Geektastic can help you get your geek on! Contributing authors are M.T. Anderson, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, John Green, Tracy Lynn, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, David Levithan, Kelly Link, Barry Lyga, Wendy Mass, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfield, Lisa Yee, and Sara Zarr.

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Athletic Shorts

Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories by Chris Crutcher are stories about athletes, including some you might recognize from Crutcher’s longer works. Despite the title, while the stories are all about athletes they are not necessarily about sports. They are tales of love and death, bigotry and heroism, of real people doing their best even when that best is not all that good. This collection is suitable for younger readers as well.

M Is for Magic by Neil Gaiman and Teddy Kristiansen is a collection of eleven stories that involve strange and fantastical events. Humpty Dumpty’s sister hires a private detective to investigate her brother’s death, a teenage boy who has trouble talking to girls finds himself at a rather unusual party, and a boy you might recognize from The Graveyard Book makes a discovery, and confronts the much more troubling world of the living. This collection is also suitable for younger readers.

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Cloaked in Red

Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances by John Green, Lauren Myracle, and Maureen Johnson offers readers three intertwining short stories. In the tales several high school couples experience the trials and tribulations along with the joys of romance during a Christmas Eve snowstorm in a small town.

Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde offers eight different twists on the familiar tale of Little Red Riding Hood. The author uses the stories, and a highly entertaining introduction, to question the original tales and to exploring issues including why most characters seem dim-witted.

On the Day I Died: Stories from the Grave by Candace Fleming offers readers ten ghost stories set in White Cemetery, an actual graveyard outside Chicago. Each story takes place during a different time period from the 1860’s to the present, and ends with the narrator’s death. Some teens die heroically, others ironically, but all due to supernatural causes.