Canton Public Library is part of the Metro Detroit Everyone's Reading 2010: Presumed Innocent, a legal thriller written by Scott Turow and later made into a movie starring Harrison Ford. On Tuesday, March 23, from 7:00 to 8:30PM in the Community Room, Joyce Simowski (Adult Services Librarian) will share her expertise and love of legal thrillers. She'll talk about a few familiar authors and introduce you to some new authors and their characters as well. The Friends of the Canton Public Library will supply prize baskets to a couple of lucky attendees.
No registration required.

It's Oscar Night - will you be watching to see who wins? To find out more about the Academy Awards, check out one of the hundreds of items in CPL's collection. We've got official and unofficial histories, murder mysteries, red carpet fashion facts, and much more. You can also watch trailers for the nominated films online before the show airs tonight at 8:00PM.
Photo by netzkobold used by Creative Commons license.

The 2010 Spirit Awards will be presented Saturday, March 6 In Los Angeles. You can watch the program live on the Independent Film Channel at 8:00 p.m. Given out annually by Film Independent, this year's nominees include Amreeka, Sin Nombre, (500) Days of Summer for Best Film, and Helen Mirren, Gabourey Sidibe, Samantha Morton, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Colin Firth among the actors nominated in both lead and supporting roles.

MASTERPIECE on PBS and BBC Worldwide Sales and Distribution, Americas have announced a major co-production deal that includes Sherlock, a Sherlock Holmes with a 21st. century spin on it and three Aurelio Zen mysteries based on the series written by Michael Didbin (1947-2007).

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature, The Cove documents the abuse of dolphins by fishermen in Taiji, a sleepy lagoon off the coast of Japan. Animal rights activist and filmmaker Richard O'Barry - a former animal trainer who once captured the dolphins used on the television series Flipper - has four decades later renounced his previous profession. Instead he has captured on film shocking images of how the dolphins' habitat has been poisoned by the fishermen and their marine ecology endangered. The film received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009.

Are you a woman who has a life-changing story about your library? Would you be willing to share it with others? If yes, consider entering the Woman's Day/American Library Association essay contest. Up to four winners will have their essays published in an upcoming Woman's Day issue. Good luck!

Nominated for three Oscars ( Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay), An Education - based on the memoir by Lynn Barber - is set in 1961 London where suburban 16-year old Jenny is eager to start her adult life. Jenny gets the chance to shake things up when she comes under the spell of David - an older, urbane newcomer who introduces her to art auctions, classical concerts, and crowded pubs. The film stars Best Actress nominee Carey Mulligan as Jenny and Peter Sarsgaard as David.

Don't forget that Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief released to theaters last Friday. While we currently have a waiting list for the books, you can catch up with everything Percy Jackson related at the series website.
It seems that anytime there is a movie in the works based on a book those books just fly off the shelf. So now would be the time to get your hands on Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The movie based on that book releases on March 19th — just in time for Spring Break!

The Swedish film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson’s phenomenon of a debut thriller, is set to open in U.S. theaters on March 19. Yes, it’s a subtitled flick.

If you are a fan of Dorothy L. Sayers and/or good British mystery television productions, you've probably watched the Lord Peter Wimsey series based on Ms. Sayer's books featuring English actor Ian Carmichael. The programs were broadcast during the 1970s on the BBC and later on PBS Mystery and are now available on DVD! Mr. Carmichael died this last week at age 89. The Guardian and BBC News both feature obituaries, and Kim Malo shares her memories of Carmichael in the blog Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room.

The 2010 Winter Olympics begin on Friday in Vancouver, Canada. While I can't imagine you'd have time to squeeze in a movie with all those exciting sports events on, there are several family films with an Olympic bent.

Cool Runnings tells the story of the very first Jamaican Bobsled team. A Caribbean country in the Winter Olympics? They'd have to be the ultimate underdog.

D2: The Mighty Ducks continues the story of a peewee hockey team and their Lawyer turned Minor League Hockey Player Coach as they compete in the Junior Goodwill Games. Of course, the Ducks employ their signature "slapstick" to win games and learn life lessons

Nominated for six Oscars (including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay), Up in the Air is an adaptation of Walter Kirn's novel about a human resources administrator (George Clooney) who flies around the country firing people for bosses who don't have the stomach for it. Director Jason Reitman's cast also includes Jason Bateman and fellow nominees for Best Supporting Actress Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick. Some scenes were filmed last year in Detroit Metro Airport!

Looking (literally) for a good DVD mystery series? These are a few of my favorites:

Alfred Hitchcock presents. Season one [videodisc] by Universal

Da Vinci's inquest. Season 1, Vol. 1 [videodisc] by Program Partners ; a Haddock Entertainment Barna-Alper production

Keen Eddie.

Nominations for the 2010 Academy Awards have been announced, and many of the nominated films are already here at the Library. This year there are ten films nominated for Best Picture - the first time in over 60 years that this has been done (in the eight years from 1936 to 1943 there were also 10 best picture nominees).

Maybe you've read about the upcoming version of Alice in Wonderland that is coming to theaters on March 5. Or maybe you watched the SyFy channel's adaptation of this well-known story. There are also some recent literary adaptations of this strange and intriguing tale. All this recent hype is very appropriate, since Lewis Carroll's birthday is tomorrow, on January 27th! Of course, you can always check to see if his classic version of Alice in Wonderland is available here at the library.

Author Erich Segal died last week (January 17) at the age of 72. He was teaching Greek and Roman literature at Yale University, when his collaboration with the Beatles in 1968 on their movie Yellow Submarine and the production of a screenplay he wrote about the doomed romance of a Radcliffe scholarship girl and a Harvard old-money boy entitled Love Story brought Segal fame. Released in 1970, "Love Story" was a huge box-office hit. "Love Story", when released in paperback, had the largest print order in publishing history at the time, with 4,325,000 copies. Reaction to the book was strong and surprisingly controversial.

Check out the latest slew of animated comic book adaptions we've got on the way. Be warned, these videos are a little edgier (and a touch more violent) than your standard Saturday morning cartoon fare, partially because they try to stay truer to their comic book origins. It makes for some good storytelling though. We've got several fan favorites, including Hulk, Justice League, Wonder Woman, Superman / Batman, and Green Lantern.

If you've been keeping up with the current Masterpiece season on PBS, maybe you finished watching Return to Cranford last weekend. I had high expectations after the first Cranford, and while I wasn't disappointed, there were several shocking developments in the course of the new mini-series. Bessie, one of my favorite characters, suffered perhaps more than was deserved. But there were many moments of humor as well, and I enjoyed my second visit to Cranford. Don't forget to check the library's collection for more materials related to Elizabeth Gaskell.
The next feature on Masterpiece will be Emma, which begins this Sunday evening.

Mystery Writers of America announced the Nominees for the 2010 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television published or produced in 2009. Best Novel Nominees are:

• The Missing by Tim Gautreaux (Random House - Alfred A.

A little bit of nostalgia arrived at the library this week. Growing up, Sunday nights were always reserved for a wonderful little series called Road to Avonlea. This series expanded on the Story Girl Books by L. M. Montgomery and was filmed on the author's home soil of Prince Edward Island. Watching the stories of Sarah, Felicity, Gus, Felix, Aunt Hetty and many others was my first introduction to period films. The stories always appealed to everyone in our family (including my dad!). It was always fun to see who the guest star was that week, a notable list that included actors like Christopher Reeve, Christopher Lloyd, Stockard Channing, Faye Dunaway, and a young Ryan Gosling.