November Movie Night

Mount Arlington Library Movie Night
Monday November 15, 2010 at 6:30 PM


DUTCH


Actor Ed O'Neill makes an impressive transition from Al Bundy on TV's raucous "Married ... With Children" to the title role in DUTCH, a John Hughes production directed by Peter Faiman.

A down-to-earth Chicago contractor, Dutch is determined to bring his girlfriend Natalie's (JoBeth Williams) young son Doyle (Ethan Randall) home for Thanksgiving, but when he arrives at the exclusive Georgia prep school Doyle attends, the snobbish, spoiled youth has different ideas. Dutch ends up literally carrying the kicking, screaming brat under his arm to his car. Since Dutch and Doyle have nothing whatever in common beyond Natalie, whom the child professes to dislike, the journey home becomes one long clash of wills.

Unquestionably, the fun inherent in DUTCH is almost entirely derived from the individual moments nicely played by O'Neill and Randall. Though portraying complete opposites, the two actors prove to be equally matched as scene stealers.

Next Jane Austen Book Club Meeting

Jane Austen Book Club


The next meeting will be on Saturday, November 13, 2010 at 10 AM.

The selection will be Mansfield Park.


There is one open seat.

Books for October 25, 2010

The Breakdown Lane by Jacquelyn Mitchard


No one could blame Julieanne Gillis, beleaguered heroine of this no-holds-barred family drama by Mitchard (The Deep End of the Ocean, etc.) for not seeing the signs. At first her lawyer husband, Leo Steiner, seems to be in the throes of a midlife crisis, informing Julieanne that he is planning to take early retirement and go and live on a commune in upstate New York for six months. The next thing she knows, he's vanished, leaving her with three children and only her meager income from her advice column for the Sheboygan, Wis., local newspaper. To make matters worse, she's diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The narration alternates between plucky Julieanne and her 15-year-old son, Gabe, a handsome Holden Caulfieldesque loner with a mild learning disability. When things get desperate, Gabe and his 14-year-old sister, Caroline, scan their dad's old e-mails and learn where he might be. Then, during spring break, lying like troopers, the two juveniles take off by bus to find their father. Surely, they think, he'll come home when he learns that their mother is sick. He comes, but the baggage he brings along means further disaster. Leo's behavior is almost campishly craven, but the novel's soap-operatic bathos is perversely satisfying. Rousing melodrama; fluid, often funny, dialogue; and the convincing portrayal of children involved in the collapse of a marriage add up to another page-turner from Mitchard. 

TALL GRASS by Sandra Dallas


An ugly murder is central to this compelling historical, but the focus is on one appealing family, the Strouds, in the backwater town of Ellis, Colo. Soon after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government rounded up all the Japanese residents of the West Coast and shipped them off to "internment camps" for the duration of the war. One of the camps is Tallgrass, based on an actual Colorado camp, as Dallas (The Chili Queen) explains in her acknowledgments. The major discomforts and petty indignities these (mostly) American citizens had to endure are viewed through the clear eyes of a young girl who lives on a nearby farm, Rennie Stroud. Rennie's obvious love of family slowly extends itself to the Japanese house and field helpers the Strouds receive permission to hire. The final surprise is the who and why of the murder itself. Dallas's terrific characters, unerring ear for regional dialects and ability to evoke the sights and sounds of the 1940s make this a special treat. 

October Movie Night

ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN

Monday, October 18 at 6:30 pm.

Happy Halloween!

Meeting

The next Library Board meeting will be on Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 7 pm.