HITS Highlights | Book Reviews | Video Recommendations    

—Melly Anderson, Collection Development

 

Christoph Waltz won both the Golden Globe® and Academy Award® for his supporting portrayal of Dr. King Schultz, a German bounty hunter who teams up with the slave, Django, to hunt down the South’s most wanted criminals. A romantic at heart, Schultz agrees to help Django find his true love, Broomhilda, and the two find themselves matching wits and fire power with an evil plantation owner in Django Unchained DVD and Blu-ray/DVD Combo.
 
Pat and Tiffany are damaged individuals. Pat is bi-polar and determined to get his life -- and wife -- back. Tiffany has become the town slut in an attempt to deal with the loss of her husband. Tiffany knows the minute she meets Pat, it’s true love. Not so with Pat. Silver Linings Playbook DVD and Blu-ray/DVD Combo is the awkward and sweet love story that earned Jennifer Lawrence the Academy Award® for Best Actress.

Cult classics don’t get much better than Alex Cox’s Repo Man DVD and Blu-ray. Punk rocker Otto is in for the adventure of a lifetime when he enters the world of repo men and finds himself on a mission to repossess a Chevy Malibu with something alien and atomic in the trunk.

Christopher Plummer reprises his Tony Award-winning performance in Barrymore DVD and Blu-ray. At the height of his remarkable career, John Barrymore was the most celebrated entertainer of his generation. And now, with his career in tatters, he makes one final attempt to reclaim his former glory on the stage in this powerful, heartbreaking, humorous, and compassionate portrait of a tortured soul and living legend.

Maria, Henry, and their three sons begin their winter vacation in Thailand, looking forward to a few days in tropical paradise. But on the morning of December 26th, as the family relaxes around the pool after their Christmas festivities the night before, a terrifying roar rises up from the center of the earth. As Maria freezes in fear, a huge wall of black water races across the hotel grounds toward her in The Impossible DVD and Blu-ray.
  
Parked DVD and Blu-ray is a triumphant story of friendship, hope, and perseverance. Fred Daly returns to Ireland with nowhere to live but his car. Then dope-smoking 21-year-old Cathal parks beside him and brightens up his lonely world. Encouraged by Cathal, Fred meets an attractive music teacher, Jules. Growing closer, these three outsiders are set on a course that will change their lives forever.

Steve Butler is sent along with his partner, Sue Thomason, to close a key rural town in his company's expansion plans. What seems like an easy job for the duo becomes complicated by the objection of a respected schoolteacher with support from a grassroots campaign led by another man, as well as the interest of a local woman. Promised Land DVD and Blu-ray/DVD Combo explores America at the crossroads where big business and the strength of small-town community converge.

Jane spends her time getting high with her dysfunctional roommates, Melissa and Mikey, while taking care of her Chihuahua, Starlet. Sadie, an elderly widow, passes her days alone tending to her flower garden. Starlet DVD and Blu-ray explores the unlikely friendship between 21-year-old Jane and 85-year-old Sadie, two women whose worlds collide in California's San Fernando Valley.

In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers were arrested and charged for brutally attacking and raping a white female jogger in Central Park. News media swarmed the case, calling it "the crime of the century." But the truth about what really happened didn't become clear until after the five had spent years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. With The Central Park Five DVD and Blu-ray, this story of injustice finally gets the telling it deserves.

Legendary radio personality Bob Fass revolutionized the FM airwaves in the 1960s and '70s with his free-form program Radio Unnameable DVD, a cultural hub for music, politics, and audience engagement. Drawing from Fass's extraordinary personal archive of audio recordings -- including interviews with Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman, and performances by Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, and Carly Simon -- Radio Unnameable celebrates the profoundly influential career of one of radio's unsung heroes.

Narrated by Alfred Molina, A Whisper to a Roar DVD tells the heroic stories of courageous democracy activists in five countries around the world: Egypt, Malaysia, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. From student leaders to prime ministers and heads of state, these activists share their compelling personal stories of struggle, past and present, with their countries’ oppressive regimes.

Hemingway & Gellhorn DVD and Blu-ray recounts one of the great romances of the last century, the passionate love affair and tumultuous marriage of literary master Ernest Hemingway and the beautiful, trailblazing war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, as it follows the adventurous writers through the Spanish Civil War and beyond.

Mr. Selfridge DVD and Blu-ray brings to life the story of American entrepreneur Harry Gordon Selfridge, the colorful and visionary founder of Selfridge's, London's lavish department store. Pioneering and reckless, with an almost manic energy, Harry Selfridge created a theater of retail for early 1900s Londoners that could showcase any topic or trend that was new, exciting, entertaining, or sometimes just eccentric.

Spies of Warsaw  DVD and Blu-ray is the adaptation of Alan Furst's celebrated spy novel set in Poland, Paris, and Berlin in the years leading up to the Second World War. At the French embassy in Warsaw, the new military attaché Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier is drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal, and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of the city.