The Studio

Criticker is a new movie recommendation website along the lines of the previously reviewed Clerk Dogs.  You submit a review between 0-100 of ten movies and Criticker will match you with other members that have ranked movies similarly.  Then it is possible to look at other movies they loved  and learn about some new movies. Criticker calls this TCI (Taste Compatibility Index).  For example, after inputting my 10 movies I looked at a user with similar tastes.  One of his/her top movies was The Life and Death of Peter Sellers which seems like a movie I might really enjoy.

Criticker also has lots of social options such as forums and movie lists.

Try it and let me  know what you think.

The legendary and innovative jazz guitarist Les Paul died August 13, 2009 at the age of 94.  He played alongside sophisticated jazz musicians such as Art Tatum, Stuff Smith, and Louis Armstrong.  He later collaborated with his wife, Mary Ford, producing such hits as How High the Moon and Tennessee Waltz, where he experimented with multi-tracking recorded voices.  The Gibson Les Paul guitar has been worshipped by many more recent legendary rock and roll guitarists such as Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, and Joe Satriani.

Listen to:

All-time greatest hits

American made, world played 

Watch:

Les Paul : chasing sound!

Read:

The early years of the Les Paul legacy, 1915-1963

Les Paul : an American original

or do you need another listen without the crowd?

Try the Library!

Here is a sample of what you can find:

Depeche Mode

Tool

Killers

Jane’s Addiction

Kings of Leon

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Lou Reed

Ben Harper & Relentless7

Thievery Corporation

Rise Against

Andrew Bird

TV on the Radio

Vampire Weekend

The Decemberists

Neko Case

Animal Collective

Of  Montreal

Arctic Monkeys

Fleet Foxes

Band of Horses

Kaiser Chiefs

Coheed and Cambria

Ben Folds

Bon Iver

Silversun Pickups

Lykke Li

Peter Bjorn and John

Gomez

Glasvegas

The Airborne Toxic Event

Bat for Lashes

Passion Pit

Ra Ra Riot

White Lies

Raveonettes

Asher Roth

See the official  Lollapalooza website for the complete lineup.

A number of us at the Library were all proper children of the 80’s. As a result, it’s impossible for us to estimate the impact filmmaker John Hughes had on our collective coming of age. Titles like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off captured a certain part of teen life that had rarely been portrayed with such empathy. No matter how implausible his films might have been in retrospect, it’s the essence of the lives he tried to show that cements his place in the zeitgeist.

Most of his best-known films were all set in the fictional Shermer, Illinois, a suburb somewhere north of Chicago. As a result, many of the locations can be found in the immediate area. Check out this collection of locations from many of his most well-known scenes. (Bear in mind that it’s an older page, and seems to suffer from a few expired images.)

There’s even a scene from Sixteen Candles that was shot in the parking lot between the Library and the Village Hall:

The scene occurs at about the 41:40 mark, right after the infamous scene with Anthony Michael Hall in the bathroom. The car pulls out of the parking lot, ostensibly en route to Jake Ryan’s party. The library is in the shadows in the top right, and you can see the condominium complex in the center of the frame. After the car pulls out, the camera pans over and you can see Village Hall.

Even though it’s just a few seconds of film, it’s enough to make a strong connection between the Library and Mr. Hughes.

What is your favorite John Hughes memory? Please share in the comments.

Alice Sebold’s haunting novel The Lovely Bones continues to be in high demand seven years after its original publication date. The story of Susie Salmon, who watches over her family in the years following her own brutal murder, serves as a powerful mediation on the nature of life and the impact we have on those around us even after we’re gone.

Because of all its accolades and time spent on the bestseller charts, it was really a matter of time before Hollywood decided to attempt an adaptation. In this case, the responsible filmmaker is none other than Lord of the Rings auteur Peter Jackson. And he’s just released a trailer.

The film looks to be a return to Jackson’s more nuanced (albeit genre-influenced) side, originally seen in Kate Winslet’s debut film Heavenly Creatures. The portrayal of Susie’s personal afterlife also seems to owe a debt to What Dreams May Come. (Though we should hope that’s the only thing borrowed from that mediocrity.) It stars Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) as Susie, and also stars Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, and Stanley Tucci.

The film opens this December. What do you think of the trailer? If you’ve read the book, how do you think it will compare?