There is no excuse for being bored in 2023...With so much going on at the Weston Public Library, there is undoubtedly something to tempt you to get out and join in. This week, we'll focus on some amazing and engaging events for adults coming in the next month or so. Tune in next week for the kids' edition. |
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New York is the star of the show in this Film Club seriesJoin our resident film buff, Doc Crane, for weekly screenings of some of the best new and classic films at the Weston AIC. For a full preview of this month's upcoming films, check out Weston Media Center's newest show, "The Film Club" on Verizon channel 45 or Comcast Chanel 9 or on-demand online. |
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MoonstruckTHURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 1:30-4:00 PM1987, 102 minutes
With broad, vibrant brushstrokes, Norman Jewison directed this film starring Cher as an Italian-American widow faced with a second chance at love. Set in Brooklyn Heights amidst a tradition-bound family, Cher’s character is engaged to Danny Aiello but finds a soul-mate in his brother, Nicholas Cage and needless to say, complications arise on the road to Amore.
BE ADVISED–– This film is rated PG, with smoking, drinking, infidelity, mild profanity and lots of red sauce.
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The Thomas Crown AffairTHURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 1:30-4:00 PM1999, 113 minutes
As cinematic confections go, the two Thomas Crown Affairs are notable in that they are windows into the times that made them. The first film, released in 1968 and set in Boston with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, is an exercise in mid-sixties cool. But in the story of a bored tycoon who stages a robbery for kicks, only to find himself falling for the investigator, there was a distinct sense ennui from that period.
In the 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, there is no languor whatsoever, as the film embraces Giuliani’s New York in all its hubristic glory, with the city coming across as flush, fun, benign, and safe––an illusion that would be swept away two years later. But the film is undeniably buoyant, with Brosnan’s unflappable, unknowable billionaire meeting his match in Rene Russo’s insurance investigator. If Faye Dunaway played the role in 1968 as the embodiment of glam, Russo is a force of nature, determined to bring down Thomas Crown- all the while enjoying the chase until their affections catch up with them. The third star of the film is Dennis Leary, his acerbic persona in top form as a jaundiced but ethical police detective who provides a reality check as Brosnan and Russo’s cat-and-mouse romance grows ever more intense.
BE ADVISED–– This film is rated R, with smoking, drinking, profanity, sexuality, nudity, art theft, corporate leveraging, musical appropriation, getting tasered, and snagging a seat at Cipriani’s without a reservation.
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The AutomatTHURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1:30—4:00 PM2021, 79 minutes
Before there was McDonald’s, before there was Howard Johnson’s, there was Horn & Hardart’s Automat, once the largest restaurant chain in America. The Automats were essentially cafeterias with food portions behind coin-operated glass doors, which may not sound all that appetizing from today’s perspective, but from the 1920s to the ‘50s New Yorkers saw them as the height of modernity, and by most accounts the food was good. This documentary is full of fond memories about the rise and fall of a Gotham institution, with reminiscences from Mel Brooks, Colin Powell, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Carl Reiner, Elliott Gould, and Howard Schultz.
BE ADVISED–– This film is rated TV-PG, with drinking, mostly profanity, sexual overtones, urban decline, 5-cent coffee, well-remembered pie, and Mel Brooks singing.
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Engage with "Chasing me to my Grave"First, join the Nonfiction Book Discussion Group for an in person discussion of "Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South" by Erin I. Kelly on Thursday, January 12 at 2 PM at the library. Copies are available at the Circulation desk, or borrow as an ebook and audiobook on Overdrive/Libby. It is also always available as an audiobook on Hoopla. Please register online or by calling the library so we can make sure to have enough comfy chairs ready.
Even if you don't make it to our little book group, don't miss a conversation with Lillian Rembert and Pulitzer Prize winner Erin I. Kelly on January 18 at 7 PM at the Town Hall Auditorium.
Lillian Rembert and Erin I. Kelly, in conversation with one another, will discuss Winfred Rembert’s memoir, Chasing Me To My Grave: An Artists’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South, as told to Erin I. Kelly (Bloomsbury, 2021). In 2022 Chasing Me To My Grave was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in the category of biography. This special event will feature Lillian and Erin’s reflections about the book and Winfred’s life. They will also present slides of his remarkable paintings on leather.
Winfred Rembert (1945-2021) grew up in Cuthbert, Georgia, where he picked cotton as a child. As a teen-ager, he got involved in the civil-rights movement and was arrested in the aftermath of a demonstration. He later broke out of jail, survived a near-lynching, and spent seven years in prison, where he was forced to labor on chain gangs. Following his release, in 1974, he married Patsy, and they eventually set¬tled in New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of fifty-one, with Patsy’s en¬couragement, he began carving and painting memories from his youth onto leather, using leather-tooling skills he had learned in prison. His paintings on carved and tooled leather have been exhibited at museums and galleries across the country and compared to the work of Jacob Lawrence, Romare Beardon, and Horace Pippin. Rembert was honored by the Equal Justice Initiative in 2015 and awarded an United States Artists Barr Fellowship in 2016.
Lillian Rembert is Winfred Rembert’s daughter. She lives in New Haven, CT.
Erin I. Kelly is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University and co-author of Chasing Me to My Grave. She is also the author of The Limits of Blame: Rethinking Punishment and Responsibility (Harvard University Press, 2018). She writes and speaks about ethics and social justice, especially in connection with criminal law.
Please register online or by calling the library at 781-786-6150. |
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Community Info and Events
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 FREE covid test kits are available at the WPL Circulation Desk. Just ask!
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