The local music community and fans worldwide mourn the loss of Athens-based singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt, who passed away this Christmas. 
Recent additions to the CD music collection include:
Midwinter Graces/ Tori Amos
I Look to You/ Whitney Houston
5ive Days to Midnight -- Timothy Hutton and Randy Quaid star in this SciFi channel miniseries about a physics professor who discovers he has only five days to prevent his own murder.
Okay, maybe you've heard that Bob Dylan has released a Christmas album. Maybe you've already listened to it. But long before he was harking the herald angels and walking in a winter wonderland, Dylan crafted some of the most powerful and memorable songs in the history of rock music. That isn't to say that his latest release isn't memorable in its own right (or that it won't be in the library's Seasonal CD collection one day)...but a better bet might be a trip down a different lane, and through the wonderland that Dylan wrote himself. Click here to see Dylan CDs in our catalog.
Director Darren Aronofsky's dramatic film stars Mickey Roarke in a gritty and often unsettling portrait of a wrestler at the end of his career. Roarke and costar Marisa Tomei both received Oscar nominations for their work, and Roarke won both the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor and Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. 
Take a little peeksie at the library's flashy CD music section, divided by musical style. When completed, it will feature browser friendly and clearly labeled flip bins for the entire collection and rotating selections from the library's music-related book and DVD collections. Did I say flip bins? I sure did. 
The audiobook, DVD and VHS collections also get fancy digs, in a forest of spacious shelves and displays. And, thanks to our wireless Internet connection, you can now search the catalog on your laptop from any of the library's hip new seating areas. Think of it as your own private park, where a festival of entertainments and information awaits. Only here, it's always sunny.
Fear nothing, and you shall succeed. This is the philosophy embraced by 50 Cent, who offers life lessons and business advice in this book, co-authored by Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power). Highlighted by stories from 50's early life on the streets and during his rise through the hip-hop industry, The 50th Law is part autobiography and part self-help guide on what is needed to survive and thrive in business and in life.
Based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, the story of 3:10 to Yuma centers around a rancher (played by Christian Bale) who agrees to escort a murderous robber (Russell Crowe) to meet the prison train, in exchange for the money to save his ranch. Along the way, he must wrestle with a crumbling relationship with his son and against increasingly difficult odds. This is actually the second adaptation of the story; the first version appeared in 1957, starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. (Leonard's original story appeared in a 1953 edition of Pulp magazine.)
For the last seven years, the Selmanaires have been steadily expanding their fan base with a musical style that has been compared to Wire, the Kinks, Talking Heads and Devo. Formed in Atlanta, the band derived their name from the street on which their practice space was located (Selman Street, in Reynoldstown). More recently, band members have been involved in side projects (such as Noot d'Noot) and experimenting with an Asian-inspired psychedelic sound. Check out their first album, and original sound, here.
Shot on location in Rome with a cast of nonactors, Vittorio de Sica's Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief) is hailed as a masterpiece of the Italian neo-realist film movement. It tells the story of Antonio Ricci, who needs his stolen bike to find work, and who together with his son, must confront his place in the morally complex world of post-war Italy. The 1948 film was honored with awards worldwide and is considered by many in the film community to be among the best films ever made.
Meshugga Beach Party's been performing in California's Bay Area since 2003, combining surf music with favorite Jewish melodies like "Hava Nagila" and "Dreidel Dreidel," with a raucous rockin' sound that will make you boyker and freylekhs like a meshuggener. Don't be the boring beach bunny, Gidget...reserve this CD today!
Campy movies are often the best movies, which is why they keep popping up in late night movie fests and nostalgia channels. And who doesn't like Vincent Price? In 1959, The Bat, starring Price and Agnes Moorehead was released. The story, involving a series of murders, a bat researcher, and a hunt for hidden treasure that involves the whole town, may not be the scariest movie you've ever seen...but add a big bowl of popcorn and a roomful of wisecracking friends, and you've got a recipe for a fun night. Heck, add a couple more movies (we suggest The Raven, also starring Vincent Price) and have a campy movie fest of your own.
The movie Slumdog Millionaire won eight Academy Awards at the Oscars, including "Best Original Score" and "Best Original Song" for the A. R. Rahman-composed work. Surprisingly, according to published reports, the soundtrack took less than three months to plan and pull together. Standouts on the soundtrack include Rahman's award-winning "Jai Ho!" and M.I.A.'s "Paper Airplanes" (in which fans of the Clash might recognize a sampled riff from Combat Rock's "Straight to Hell," a song that has been rerecorded by Lily Allen, Moby, and as a duet by Elvis Costello and Jakob Dylan).
They were silent and nearly undetectable, especially at night. Their trips were one way, without a motor. Once they reached their destinations, they had to fight their way back out. The glider infantry of WWII suffered some of the heaviest casualties of the war. Learn a little about their history in this documentary, narrated by Hal Holbrook and featuring archival footage and interviews, including WWII glider riders Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite.
McKinley Morganfield was born April 4, 1913 in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. By his late teens, he was performing at parties, playing blues in a style heavily influenced by bluesmen like Son House. Using a nickname given him by his grandmother, he adopted the stage name Muddy Waters and bounced between Chicago and Mississippi for a few years, recording a few songs that gained interest but no real notoriety. In the latter half of the 1940s, Waters signed with Aristocrat Records (later Chess Records), changed from acoustic to electric guitar, and finally found widespread success with 1948's "Rollin' Stone." By the late 1950's, he was touring Europe, influencing a slew of English bands, including Cream, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones (who took their name from Waters' signature song). He continued to perform and record for the next twenty-five years, until declining health in 1982 forced him to retire; he would pass away at his home in Illinois the following year. The Chess Box Muddy Waters covers the breadth of Waters' phenominal career from 1947 to 1972 on three discs, and includes previously unreleased titles in the mix. Muddy Waters once said, "I wanted to definitely be a musician or a good preacher or a heck of a baseball player. I couldn't play ball too good - I hurt my finger, and I stopped that. I couldn't preach, and well, all I had left was getting into the music thing. " Lucky for us, he did.
It's raining, it's pouring. Why not settle in for a Robert Downey, Jr. movie fest? The actor, who turns 44 on April 4th, suffered through a whirlwind romance with addiction for a few years, but seems to have hit his stride again at the box office in films like Tropic Thunder and Iron Man. Look for more Downey in the soon-to-be-released The Soloist, as an L.A. journalist who befriends a homeless classical musician, and as the title role in Sherlock Holmes, which just wrapped up filming in Europe.
In The Pickup Artist, his first leading role, Downey plays opposite Molly Ringwald as a quick-talking player who realizes he's met the woman of his dreams. Unfortunately, she and her father(Dennis Hopper) have money troubles with the mob. What will Downey do? Hilarity ensues.
What was then known as "hillbilly music" originated in the 1940's, a blend of Scots-Irish folk traditions and the more modern sounds of jazz and ragtime. But it would be Kentuckian Bill Munroe and his Blue Grass Boys, featuring the groundbreaking three-fingered banjo-picking style of a 21-year-old named Earl Scruggs, who would both popularize this new form of country music and give it a name: bluegrass. On this CD, which won the 2009 Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, Scruggs joins Ricky Scaggs and Kentucky Thunder in an homage to Bill Munroe and the birth of a new American musical style.
In 2007, thirty years after its completion, filmmaker Charles Burnett's masterpiece, Killer of Sheep, was finally released for public distribution. Shot in B&W for less than $10,000, Burnett's bleak portrayal of one African-American man's working class life in the Watts district of Los Angeles drew comparisons to Italian directors such as Fellini and Rossellini and was named by Time magazine as one of the ten best films of 2007. Its appearance at the 2007 Atlanta Film Festival (as part of a Charles Burnett retrospective) drew enormous crowds and praise; since then, the film has been named one of the 100 essential films of all time by the National Society of Film Critics and was among the first fifty films to be inducted into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
That Metallica is being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 4 is no surprise. What is suprising is recent word that they will be joined by Jason Newsted, the former bassist whose departure in 2001 was anything but civil. Newsted joined Metallica after the 1986 death of Cliff Burton, killed in a horrific bus accident during the European leg of the band's Damage, Inc. tour. Which brings us to Master of Puppets, the last studio album to feature Burton and the band's first album to be certified gold. Will Newsted and his former bandmates play nice long enough to get through the ceremonies in Cleveland? Will he even show up? Who knows. But in the meantime, you can take a trip back to a kinder, gentler time with the album that helped make the boys a household name.
Athens singer-songwriter Liz Durrett has garnered comparisons to Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall, another Georgia native) and Athens' Vic Chesnutt (who happens to be Durrett's uncle). For the last couple of years, she's been touring internationally, both as a solo performer and as a member of Chesnutt's band. Look for Durrett's new album, Outside Our Gates, in the library's CD LOCAL section and find out why NPR recently named her one of the top ten great unknowns in music today.
