Written by Kyle Slagley
This week marked an important week for all the Gleeks out
there, as the new album Glee Sings the Beatles hit shelves
on Tuesday. It takes quite a bit of gall to take arguably the most sacred band
in rock n’ roll history and pop-ify their work, but that’s exactly what the
kids at William McKinley High School did. Judging by how well the album is
selling, fans aren’t exactly complaining either.
After listening to the entire album, the Glee renditions I enjoyed most were
“Drive My Car,” “Here Comes the Sun” which features Demi Lovato, and “I Saw Her
Standing There.” Strangely enough, Glee
has covered Beatles songs in the past, and my favourite of their covers, “I Want
to Hold Your Hand” – sung by Chris Colfer, who plays Kurt, and which originally
appears on Volume
4 – was not included on this album.
Glee is far from
the first group to cover the Fab Four, nor will they be the last. Though many
of your patrons will be far too young to remember, or even know of the
performance, you cannot mention Beatles covers without mentioning Joe Cocker’s
rendition of “With a Little Help From My Friends” at Woodstock
in ’69 or Neil Young’s version of “Imagine” at the 9/11 TV tribute concert.
More recently, Mumford and Sons have been known to cover “Hey Jude” during
their concerts, and one of my favourite obscure cover finds (if you can get past
the crowd noise on the recording) on YouTube is Alice Cooper, Steven Tyler, and
Weird Al Yankovic singing “Come
Together” at a New Year’s Eve party in 2012.
When it comes to entire albums of Beatles cover songs, my
absolute favourite would be the Across
the Universe Soundtrack. The film
came out in 2007 and was another instance where the story was structured around
the music. It received mediocre reviews, but the soundtrack is still one of my
favourite soundtracks of all time.
For some, the first cover soundtrack to come to mind will be
the one that went with the first Beatles-oriented film, Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The film,
starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees, was loosely based on the Beatles
album of the same name, but with a 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, I think I can
safely say the film was a total bomb. It is worth mentioning, though, that in
later years, after memories of the film had faded, affection for ‘70s nostalgia
and kitsch brought the soundtrack back into the light.
The fact is that there are too many different covers of the
Fab Four to mention in just one column, and they span all different styles: from
Beatallica
(who plays Beatles tunes in the style of Metallica), Roberta
Flack (who puts her R&B spin on the songs), to even Sesame Street and the
Chipmunks. Check out our collection
of Beatles cover albums Midwest Tape offers, and don’t forget to remind
your younger patrons about the original
band too!
Written by Jon Williams
With
Halloween approaching, patrons will be looking for creepy tales to watch in the
dark. While it’s hard to top a scary movie, more and more viewers are turning
to television for their horror needs. A series of weekly episodes allows
writers to draw out the suspense and inject even more scares than they could in
a two-hour movie. Here are a few great recent and upcoming horror series that
will put a little thrill into your patrons’ October nights.
Two series aired
earlier this year that explore the origins of two classic horror icons. In
their July “All-Time Greatest” issue, Entertainment Weekly named Psycho
and The
Silence of the Lambs as the #1 and #5 best horror movies. The series Bates
Motel looks at the teenage years of Psycho’s
twisted killer, Norman Bates, while Hannibal
follows the career of Hannibal Lecter before the events of The Silence of the Lambs, which begins with Dr. Lecter in prison
for his crimes. Both series wrapped up their first seasons this spring, and
both have been renewed for 2014.
Another
series which just had its season finale on September 16 was Under
the Dome. Based on a book
by Stephen King, the series portrays the events that take place when the
town of Chester’s Mill, Maine, is inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the
world by an impenetrable force field known as “the Dome.” This show will also
be back for a second season next year, with the premiere episode being written
by none other than Mr. King himself.
The same
night that Under the Dome’s first
season ended, Sleepy Hollow
premiered. This series, with a creative team led by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto
Orci (who have written for both the Transformers
and rebooted Star Trek franchises),
sees Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman transported from the Revolutionary
War era to present-day Sleepy Hollow, New York. While the series is airing on
Fox and won’t be available on DVD for a while, interested patrons can always
check out the original
short story by Washington Irving on audiobook, or another adaptation, such
as the 1999
movie directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp.
Premiering
October 9 on FX will be the third season of American
Horror Story. Titled Coven, this
season will deal with a group of witches sharing a bloodline going back to the
Salem Witch Trials. Each season is basically a standalone miniseries, and each
of the first two seasons was very highly regarded. The
first season ( Murder House) was
nominated for a slew of Emmys, with Jessica Lange winning Best Supporting
Actress. The
second season ( Asylum) saw James
Cromwell take home an Emmy this past Sunday for Best Supporting Actor.
The current
heavyweight of horror TV is AMC’s The
Walking Dead, which comes back for its fourth season on October 16. The season
three finale of the zombie show adapted from Robert Kirkman’s comic series
set ratings records while leaving plenty of questions to be answered, ensuring
that the new season will start with a bang. If you have horror-loving patrons
who have somehow missed this show, be sure to recommend it—they’ll thank you
for it.
Written by Kyle Slagley
Next week marks the 31st Annual Banned Books
Week in the U.S., similar to our Freedom to Read Week, which will be observed in February. The
cause is meant to encourage both readers and librarians to re-examine
challenged and banned works, but perhaps more importantly, to promote the
freedom to read in libraries, schools, and bookstores.
Having closely looked over the list of books most frequently
challenged in the past decade I decided to highlight a few that I have read,
and give my reaction to them. If your library chooses to censor these or any other
books, that is your choice and you may take my reactions with as much salt as
you like.
Harry
Potter by J.K. Rowling: This series has been a lightning rod for
controversy ever since it hit shelves for the first time in 1997. It was
attacked primarily for promoting witchcraft among children and young adults.
Despite the conflict, the franchise has made over $15 billion dollars. I own
every book and every movie. Do I walk around wearing t-shirts with the
Gryffindor crest or the word ‘Muggle’ on them? No. But I think these books are
largely harmless because the content is so fantastical that I believe the
concerns about witchcraft to be largely unfounded. What kid wouldn’t want to go
to a school where he or she can learn how to fly on a broomstick, levitate
objects with the flick of a wrist, and live in an awesome castle?
Philip Pullman’s His Dark
Materials trilogy: This series, consisting of The
Golden Compass, The
Subtle Knife, and The
Amber Spyglass, is highly controversial because of its notions concerning
both witchcraft and the oppression of the book’s version of the Catholic
Church. I found the books incredibly well written – not for the religious
controversy, but because of the depth Pullman writes into his characters. The
struggles that protagonists Lyra and Will encounter while attempting to come of
age in this dangerous world is absolutely fascinating. In this, as well as
other series, it’s important to stress to readers that these works are labeled fiction for a reason and are not to be
taken too seriously.
The
Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini: Hosseini’s first book was met with a
large amount of controversy from both American readers as well as
Afghan-Americans. Americans challenged the book because it blatantly exposed
things like homosexuality, pedophilia, drug abuse, and oppression amongst the
various sects within Afghanistan. Afghan-Americans reportedly never denied the
allegations, but rather protested against Hosseini for publicizing things about
their culture that they claimed were better left unsaid. For me, the book was
an absolute fantastic read. Hosseini has a way of telling his stories which is
quite unlike the majority of other modern writers and it really resonates with
me. I felt the same about his novels A
Thousand Splendid Sons and And
the Mountains Echoed.
Are there more books that I could write about that have been
frequently banned and/or challenged? Certainly! There are dozens! For a full
list of books that fall on this list, check out Freedom to Read's list of challenged works (or ALA’s Banned Books webpage, for the U.S. version).
For audiobooks and movie versions of some of the books on that list, visit the
CVS Midwest Tape website and click the Banned Books Week panel on the left side of
the homepage.
Written by Jon Williams
The Gotham
Awards are presented each year to honour the best independent films and their
makers. This year’s event, to be held in Lower Manhattan on December 2, will
pay tribute to acclaimed indie director Richard Linklater.
Linklater, a
native Texan, was working on an oil rig when he decided he wanted to be a
filmmaker. He began by founding the Austin Film Society, with the original aim
of bringing obscure films to the area for viewers, but which has evolved into a
cornerstone of the independent film production movement in the Austin area.
At the same
time, Linklater was working on building his own budding film career. He tasted
his first bit of success with the 1991 film Slacker,
which drew favourable reviews and grossed over $1 million at the box office
despite a limited release (and a production budget of only $23,000). The film
follows an eclectic cast of characters over the course of a single day in
Austin. It opened the door for a number of independent filmmakers in the ‘90s,
most notably Kevin Smith, who cites Slacker
as the inspiration for his first film, Clerks.
It was just
the beginning for Linklater, though, who followed Slacker with the 1993 film Dazed
and Confused, which brought in $8 million at the box office before coming
a cult classic on VHS and DVD. The film details the exploits of a group of high
school students on the last day of school in 1976 and stars such up-and-coming
names as Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, Milla Jovovich, and Parker Posey.
With classic rock featuring heavily throughout, the film’s soundtrack
(and its follow-up)
is nearly as notable as the film itself.
Linklater
continued toiling throughout the 1990s before becoming even more widely known
for a pair of mainstream comedies in the 2000s. In 2003, he directed the Jack
Black feature School
of Rock, about a down-on-his-luck guitarist who cons his way into a
substitute teaching gig at a prep school and teaches his young charges how to
rock. Then in 2005 he helmed the production of Bad
News Bears, a remake of the 1976
classic about an inept little league baseball team.
Throughout
it all, Linklater has continued to write and create his own brand of offbeat
independent film. In 2011 he reteamed with Black and McConaughey for Bernie,
a film about a mortician accused of murder and yet still venerated by the
members of his community. His most recent film is this year’s Before
Midnight, the conclusion to a romantic trilogy starring Ethan Hawke and
Julie Delpy, which began with Before
Sunrise and Before Sunset.
This is just
a sampling of the films made by this talented and varied filmmaker, who has
certainly earned the accolade from the Gotham Awards. Be sure to SmartBrowse
Richard Linklater on our homepage to introduce your patrons to all he has to
offer.
Written by Kyle Slagley
In 2012, Steve Martin tweeted: “I swear, if I don’t win an
Oscar this year, it will be like every other year.” This from the man who has hosted the Oscars three times. Finally,
after a career that has spanned more than 40 years, the native Texan will
receive an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement.
Martin got his start as a writer on The
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967 at age 22. By the time the
mid-70s rolled around he had written for Pat Paulsen, Glen Campbell, Ken Berry,
and Sonny & Cher. Known for his absurdist comedy routines, Martin still
maintains that his success in stand-up was entirely accidental.
Martin’s big film break came in 1979 when he wrote and
starred in The Jerk, which was directed by Carl Reiner. Martin would go on to make
three more films with Reiner. Joining fellow Saturday Night Live alumni Chevy Chase and Martin Short, The Three Amigos premiered in 1986,
but many may not know that the film was originally slated to be called The Three Caballeros and star Dan Aykroyd
and John Belushi instead.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, my favourite
of all Martin’s films, premiered in 1988 and was a smash success, co-starring
Michael Caine. Even today the film still has an 88% approval rating on Rotten
Tomatoes. My second-favourite Martin
film, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,
premiered the year before and co-starred comedy legend John Candy.
Film is not the only area where Martin has distinguished
himself. He first picked up a banjo at age 17 and would later receive two
Grammy Awards for bluegrass recordings. Most recently he has been touring with
the Steep
Canyon Rangers and has appeared with them on shows like The Colbert Report, Conan, and The Late Show with
David Letterman. Martin even narrated a PBS documentary called Give Me the Banjo about the history
of the instrument.
All in all, the 68-year-old star is completely deserving of
the Academy Honorary Award. Between the Emmys, Grammys, Mark Twain Award, and
Kennedy Center Honor, the real question is whether he’ll have to move the
sombrero off the shelf to clear a spot for it.
Written by Jon Williams
News emerged last week from the Toronto International Film
Festival that Sir Ian McKellan, the renowned British actor who has played such
legendary characters from Shakespeare
and Charles
Dickens throughout the course of his storied career, and who is known these
days for his portrayals of Gandalf
and Magneto,
is set to take on yet another larger-than-life role: famed detective Sherlock
Holmes.
For most characters, that would have been the end of the
line, but not so for Holmes. Public outcry over his death (including from the
author’s own mother) led Doyle to bring the intrepid sleuth back for another
adventure in 1902’s The
Hound of the Baskervilles before resurrecting him for good in 1903’s “The
Adventure of the Empty House.” That and twelve other Sherlock stories were
collected in The
Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905). The fourth and final novel, The
Valley of Fear, wasn’t published until 1915; it tells of a Holmes
adventure set before “The Final Problem.” Two more story collections followed: His
Last Bow (1917), and The
Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (1927).
Doyle passed away in 1930, but to the delight of detective
fiction fans everywhere, his greatest creation did not follow him into the
grave. There are any number of tales from other authors detailing the further
adventures of Mr. Holmes. A number of them are collected in The
Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which includes stories by
such names as Stephen King and Neil Gaiman. Dust
and Shadow by Lindsay Faye pits Holmes against Jack the Ripper, while The
House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz was the first non-Doyle Holmes novel
to be authorized by the late author’s estate. There’s also the Young
Sherlock Holmes series for young adults by Andrew Lane, detailing the
youthful exploits that shaped the detective’s experience.
In fact, Sherlock film featuring McKellan will be adapted
from another of these later tales. A
Slight Trick of the Mind, a 2005 novel by American author Mitch Cullin,
features Holmes in his twilight years, struggling to solve a mystery from his
past through the mist of his own failing memory.
As this upcoming film serves to remind us, the Holmes
tradition is not strictly a literary one, but a dramatic one as well. The most visible
current example is the series of films ( the
first in 2009, the
sequel in 2011; a third is currently in the early stages of development)
starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law as Holmes and his faithful companion
Dr. Watson, but it is not the only one. The CBS television series Elementary
updates Holmes’s setting to modern-day New York City, while the BBC series Sherlock
(starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson) does
the same in London.
As the Guinness Book of World Records lists Holmes as the
most portrayed fictional character, there are literally hundreds of other films
and TV shows available. Basil
Rathbone is perhaps the most famous (and certainly the most prolific)
Sherlock, but the famed detective has also been played by such actors as Christopher
Lee, Peter
Cushing, Charlton
Heston, and Christopher
Plummer, just to name a few.
Clearly, Sherlock Holmes has proved to have staying power,
capturing the imagination of readers and viewers for over 125 years. In
addition to the multitude of titles listed here, be sure to SmartBrowse the
character’s name on our homepage to explore even more audiobooks and DVDs you
can offer your Holmes-hungry patrons.
Written by Kyle Slagley
As one of the most groundbreaking female comediennes of the
past 50 years, I thought it entirely fitting when I read that Carol
Burnett is to be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor next month
at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Burnett, now 80 years old, made appearances on a variety of
TV comedy programs throughout the 1950s, but her career got a big jolt when she
landed the role of Princess Winnifred in the Original Broadway Cast of Once Upon a Mattress in 1959. After
that, her career was on the fast track, and by 1967 she had successfully
realized her dream of fronting her own variety show, The Carol Burnett Show, which won 22
Emmy Awards during its 11-year run.
As if honouring a legendary clown like Burnett wasn’t enough,
the ceremony itself is a veritable who’s who of funny people, particularly
today’s top comediennes. Vicki Lawrence and Tim Conway, two of Burnett’s oldest
friends from their days on The Carol
Burnett Show, will be hosting the event.
Julie Andrews, who co-starred with Burnett in the TV special
Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall,
will likely sing a song or two during her portion of the event. Other actors
who will be in attendance include Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, and Maya
Rudolph. Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Burnett’s idol and mentor Lucille Ball, will
also help pay tribute.
Ever the laugher, when told she would receive the award,
Burnett reportedly commented, “I can’t believe I’m getting a humour prize from
the Kennedy Center. It’s almost impossible to be funnier than the people in
Washington.”
The ceremony will take place on October 20, and will be
broadcast on PBS on November 24.
Written by Jon Williams
I recently
had the great pleasure to attend a Gentlemen of the Road Tour stopover event.
British folk rock band Mumford & Sons put together these stopovers to bring
an event to smaller towns that rarely see big-name musical acts come through.
In this case, it was a two-day music and culture festival that took over the
entire downtown area, with more than 30,000 people cramming into the high
school football stadium to check out a wide variety of bands.
The music
kicked off Friday evening with Half Moon Run, a Canadian rock band whose debut
album, Dark
Eyes, came out earlier in 2013. They brought a folky sound of their
own, and their hit “Call Me in the Afternoon.” They were followed by
deep-voiced singer-songwriter Willy Mason,whose most recent album is 2012’s Carry
On. Then came Phosphorescent, aka Matthew Houck, whose atmospheric vibe
began garnering acclaim with his 2007 release Pride,
carrying it through Muchacho,
which came out in March of this year.
Friday
night’s headliner hit the stage around 9:30. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic
Zeros managed an intimate performance despite the size of the venue, with
singer Alex Ebert jumping down into the crowd to share the experience with fans
and hear their stories. The twelve-member collective were joined by Marcus
Mumford for “All Wash Out,” from their second album Here,
and they finished up with the emotional “Home,” from their debut, Up
from Below. Their self-titled
latest album was just released in July.
Saturday was
a full day of music, with the stadium opening to the public at noon and the
first band, the up-and-coming Bear’s Den, taking the stage at 1:45. The second
band, Those Darlins, brought a Nashville-tinged rock sound with them, playing
songs from their two albums, Screws
Get Loose and Blur
the Line. One act that I particularly enjoyed was Justin Townes Earle
(son of outlaw country singer Steve
Earle, and named for singer-songwriter Townes
Van Zandt), who played a mellow brand of bluesy country-rock. His most
recent album, Nothing’s
Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now, was released in March of
2012; he mentioned during his set that he’s working on a new one.
Afterwards,
the Vaccines performed the most straightforward rock music heard during the
weekend, which can be found on their albums
What
Did You Expect from the Vaccines?
and Come
of Age, and whose song “Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)” is included on the soundtrack
for the hit HBO series Girls.
They were followed by Americana favourites Old Crow Medicine Show, who performed
their hit “Wagon Wheel” (from their full-length debut O.C.M.S.)
to the extreme delight of the crowd, which sang along at the top of their
lungs.
And then it
was time for the headliners. Mumford & Sons themselves took to the stage
around 8:30 and played for nearly two hours. They played fourteen songs from
the albums Sigh
No More and Babel
(the 2013 Grammy Winner for Album of the Year) in their main set, with the rain
coming down during “Thistle and Weeds” being a nice touch. After leaving the
stage briefly, they then came back out for a five-song encore which included
covers of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m
on Fire” and the Beatles’ “Come
Together.”
All in all,
it was two incredible days filled with phenomenal music—some from bands I knew,
and some from bands I’m eager to hear more from. If your patrons like Mumford
& Sons (and trust me, they do), be sure to treat them to CDs from this wide
range of artists invited to perform with them at these rare, amazing stopover
events.
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