Watch This: Oldboy

A bi-weekly series featuring a recommendation of a movie available in the Reeves Memorial Library DVD collection

Oldboy (2003)
Directed by Park Chan-wook

With Spike Lee's American remake of Oldboy slated for theatrical release on November 27, it's worth revisiting director Park Chan-wook's acclaimed 2003 original, a violent, twisty masterpiece that has remained a hallmark of South Korea's recent filmmaking renaissance.  Oldboy is the second film in Park's so-called "Vengeance Trilogy" (alongside Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and Lady Vengeance (2005)), a trio of films which share the central theme of revenge.  None of the three films is a straightforward revenge thriller, and Park demonstrates a knack for exposing the complex web of violence and unforeseen consequences that can spring from acts of vengeance.

Oldboy begins with a drunken man named Oh Dae-su being abducted on the street after calling home to apologize for missing his young daughter's birthday.  He is imprisoned without explanation in what appears to be a shabby hotel room.  The room has a television, and he learns from a news broadcast that his wife was murdered, and that he is the prime suspect, his blood and fingerprints having been found at the scene of the crime.  He is gassed periodically, awakening to find his hair cut and his room cleaned.  He keeps a journal listing all of the people he wronged over the years, a surprisingly long chronicle of his misdeeds, and he becomes obsessed with the idea of finding and killing the person who had him imprisoned.  He stays in shape and learns to fight by watching boxing on television, and then shadowboxing and punching the walls of his cell.

Inexplicably, after 15 years, he is set free, finding himself clad in an expensive suit and wristwatch, and in possession of a cell phone and a wallet full of cash.  He goes to a restaurant, where the young female chef tells him he looks familiar.  He says she looks familiar too.  His phone rings, and on the other end of the line is the man who imprisoned him, asking him to think back over his whole lifetime to solve the riddle of his imprisonment.  After passing out, Dae-su wakes up in the apartment of the young chef, whose name is Mi-do.  She has been caring for him, and as she helps him begin to track down those who imprisoned him, they fall quickly in love.  Dae-su locates the prison by finding the restaurant the prison's food came from, then following a delivery boy.  Soon after, the identity of Oh Dae-su's adversary is revealed, and Dae-su must race to find the reason for his imprisonment in order to save Mi-do's life.

I will refrain from revealing any further plot details, as one of the primary pleasures of watching the film is seeing the unexpected twists and turns that the story takes.  Suffice it to say that Lee Woo-jin, the man responsible for Dae-su's imprisonment, has his own plans for vengeance that extend well beyond simple isolation in a cell for 15 years, and that these plans are for more diabolical than anything Dae-su, or most viewers, would have initially anticipated.

Admittedly, Oldboy is not for everyone.  There are scenes of shocking violence (although no scene may be harder to watch than that in which Dae-su devours of a live octopus), and revelations that will make even the most seasoned viewer uneasy.  The film is also pervaded by a humor streak as black as they come.  However, there are numerous instances of dazzling technical virtuosity (the fight scene in the prison hallway was shot in a single take), and many viewers may be surprised at how affecting the film's third act is.  It is unusual for a work as violent and dark as Oldboy to explore such extreme emotional depths, and there are very few films that so effectively convey the repercussions of a life spent consumed by vengeance.

Watch This: Homicide

A bi-weekly series featuring a recommendation of a movie available in the Reeves Memorial Library DVD collection

Homicide (1991)
Written and directed by David Mamet

"What are you, then?"

Very rarely can the central theme of a film be summed up in a single, short line of spoken dialogue.  On its surface, David Mamet's Homicide is a murder mystery, concerned with a police detective's investigation into the killing of an elderly Jewish candy store owner.  At the film's heart, however, lies the detective's exploration of his own identity.

Detective Bobby Gold (portrayed by Mamet regular Joe Mantegna) is a secular Jew.  His Jewish heritage does not appear to be a significant part of how he defines himself, and only seems to be important to him when he becomes the target of anti-Semitic slurs.  Gold is respected by his colleagues, although there are inklings that he must downplay his Jewish heritage in order to fit in.  Still, much of his sense of self seems to come from his inclusion in the community of his fellow police officers.  "I'm a cop" is the way he identifies himself to others.

Gold and his partner, Sullivan (William H. Macy in a standout performance), have become involved in the high-profile case of Robert Randolph, a violent criminal in hiding from the police.  On their way to apprehend one of his associates, they happen upon a fresh crime scene, where an elderly Jewish woman has been shot behind the counter of her corner candy store.  The woman's family is convinced that she was the victim of an anti-Semitic hate crime.  After finding out that Gold is Jewish, they use their influence to get him assigned to her case.  Gold is at first uncooperative, preferring to work on the Randolph case instead, and dismissing their assertions that the woman was killed because she was Jewish.  However, as obscure clues begin to suggest that she was involved in gun running for a Zionist organization, and that she may indeed have been the target of an anti-Semitic group, the case becomes the catalyst for Gold's exploration of his own Jewish identity.

In a pivotal scene, Gold visits a library to ask a Jewish scholar for help in deciphering the meaning of a clue.  While Gold is waiting, he converses with a Jewish man who is reading at a nearby study table.  Gold says he is Jewish, but when the man asks him to read a passage in Hebrew from the Book of Esther, Gold responds with some embarrassment that he can't.  The man replies, "You say you're a Jew, but you can't read Hebrew.  What are you, then?"  Gold has no answer.  Determined to find the woman's killers, and more importantly to prove to himself and others that he is a good Jew, he becomes involved with a secret organization whose motives are not what they appear to be.

As a playwright and filmmaker, David Mamet is best known for creating works in which things are never what they seem, in which deception and duplicity take center stage.  Here, the deception lies not only in the machinations of the plot, but also in Gold's misapprehension that he can embrace his Jewish identity without sacrificing his standing among his fellow police officers.  As the case of the murdered woman and Gold's own journey of self-discovery begin to dominate his professional and personal lives, the Randolph case moves further and further into the periphery, and he risks alienating himself from his peers on the police force.  It seems that Gold must make a choice about who he is: cop or Jew?  The question is, if he alienates himself from both groups, then who is he?

Library Hours Nov. 4-6

Library hours will be adjusted for Monday, November 4th through Wednesday, November 6th for the services for Dr. Boyle.

Monday & Tuesday: 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Wednesday: CLOSED

Please keep the Boyle family in your thoughts and prayers. 

Watch This: The Night of the Hunter

A bi-weekly series featuring a recommendation of a movie available in the Reeves Memorial Library DVD collection

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Directed by Charles Laughton

There are any number of horror films in the library's collection that would make for potent Halloween viewing, from silent classics like Nosferatu (1922) to modern works such as The Exorcist (1973), The Shining (1980), and Saw (2004).  However, it is outside of traditional horror that we find a villain more frightening than most, Robert Mitchum's Reverend Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter (1955).  Masquerading as a preacher in order to marry widows and murder them for their money, Powell is the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing.  Powell himself feels he is doing God's work by disposing of sinful women (any woman who arouses desire in men or who acts upon her own carnal desires is a sinner in his book), and that God rewards him with the money of his victims.

After being arrested for auto theft, Powell shares a prison cell with condemned killer Ben Harper (Peter Graves), who stashed $10,000 in stolen cash somewhere in his house before his arrest, then made his two children swear to keep the location a secret.  After failing to obtain the location of the money from Harper before his execution, Powell proceeds to charm his way into the life of Harper's widow, Willa (Shelley Winters), and her two young children, nine year-old John and four year-old Pearl.  John is suspicious of Powell from the start, and soon realizes that he is after the money.  After Willa overhears Powell trying to force Pearl to reveal the money's location, Powell disposes of her, telling the locals that she ran off.  The children narrowly escape and flee downriver with Powell in pursuit, eventually finding refuge alongside a handful of other orphaned children in the home of the Bible-fearing, strong-willed Mrs. Cooper (Lillian Gish), whose determination to protect her young wards leads to a tense showdown with Powell.

 The Night of the Hunter was the only film directed by the lauded actor Charles Laughton, best known for his portrayals of Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).  Working with cinematographer Stanley Cortez, Laughton crafted a singular film of incredibly striking visual fantasy, a melange of suspense thriller, fairy tale, morality play, expressionistic nightmare, and film noir.  Many scenes provide haunting images that linger in the viewer's mind: Willa's dead body behind the wheel of her car at the bottom of the river, her hair wafting gently with the seaweed; the exaggerated shadow of Powell's silhouette as it is cast on John and Pearl's bedroom wall the night before he first appears in town; Mrs. Cooper leading the children down the sidewalk, looking remarkably like a mother duck with her ducklings trailing close behind.
 
Mitchum oozes pure menace in a chilling performance, revealing dangerous qualities would also serve him well in his performance as vengeful ex-con Max Cady in Cape Fear (1962).  Note the scene where he stands at the top of the cellar stairs, calling down to the hiding John and Pearl ("Chillll ... dren?!"), then clamors after them up the stairs, lunging with his arms outstretched like Frankenstein's monster.  Mitchum makes Powell scarier than any otherworldly ghoul, a real-life monster bent on the slaughter of innocents to get what he wants.

Watch This: Mean Streets

A bi-weekly series featuring a recommendation of a movie available in the Reeves Memorial Library DVD collection

Mean Streets (1973)
Directed by Martin Scorsese

"You don't make up for your sins in church.  You do it in the streets."

These words from the opening voiceover of Mean Streets echo through the rest of the film.  While the plot is generally that of a gangster film, following the struggles of Charlie, a young, small-time mobster in New York City's Little Italy, it is Charlie's preoccupation with sin that lies at the heart of the film.  Charlie is Catholic, and wrestles with feelings of guilt as he tries to reconcile his love life and criminal activities with his notions of purity.  In one memorable scene, Charlie seeks penance by holding his hand in the flame of a votive candle before a church altar.  Later in the film, after dancing onstage with a stripper in a local club, he lights a match and holds his finger above the flame.

Charlie (played by Harvey Keitel) works as a collector for the local mob boss, who admonishes him for hanging around with the volatile hoodlum Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro, in a star-making performance).  Johnny Boy owes money to a local loan shark, but Charlie's fondness for his friend causes him to get sucked into Johnny Boy's self-destructive spiral.  Meanwhile, Charlie has become involved with the epileptic Teresa, but must keep their relationship a secret due to his boss's disapproval of her.

De Niro is a standout, infusing Johnny Boy with an endearing clownishness and a reckless, childlike energy that makes it easy to see why Charlie is so easily drawn to him.  The film's best scene, apparently improvised by De Niro and Keitel, finds Johnny Boy explaining his inability to pay his debts by relating a concocted story about a raided poker game.  The expert give-and-take between the two actors in this scene shows why they have since become frequent collaborators.

While it was not the first feature film Martin Scorsese directed, Mean Streets was the film that launched his career.  It has an unpolished rawness that is lacking in his later work, but this only adds to its power.  Even in this early film, many of the signatures of his directorial style are present, including the distinctively stylized camera movement, the use of slow motion, and the popular music soundtrack.  While Scorsese has since become well-known to viewers as a director of gangster films such as Casino, The Departed, and the incomparable Goodfellas, Mean Streets was his first real cinematic foray into this world.  The film's depiction of the day-to-day struggles of low-level hoodlums was relatively novel at the time of its release, and stands in marked contrast to the more opulent Mafia lifestyle depicted in the previous year's The Godfather.

If you're unfamiliar with Scorsese's earlier films, you might also want to check out his feature film debut, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), which is also available on DVD from Reeves Memorial Library.

"The government shut down my homework."

That may not be an excuse that you'll want to use (or accept) as we move into the latter half of the fall semester, but the government shutdown is affecting information resources that we take for granted.

Most government-run websites have not been completely shut down, but almost none are being updated during the government standoff. While few of us at the undergraduate level need up-to-the-second updates, do be aware that most government-run sites like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control, the Food & Drug Administration, and the National Library of Medicine were last updated on September 30th.


Websites that HAVE been shut down include:

• The U. S. Census Bureau (census.gov)
• The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA.gov)
• Portions of the Library of Congress, though not the legislative information sites (loc.gov)
• ERIC (eric.ed.gov/) --NOTE: The library's ERIC database in EBSCOhost is still searchable. Many hits will still have PDF or HTML full-text that you can download; only links that go out to the full text on the ERIC government website will be affected. Unfortunately, the "full text" checkbox limiter doesn't know how to differentiate between the two, so you will have to look for the PDF/HTML files in the list of results. 

"What can I do?"

• First of all, try the library's databases. While a small fraction of our content is pulled from government websites (most notably in ERIC and MEDLINE), most of our content will be unaffected. 
• Try to find information on websites hosted by reliable nonprofit or private-sector organizations, like the Pew Research Center for social sciences data or the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics or the Mayo Clinic for nutritional and medical information. The library's subject-specific research guides can point you to some of these for your subject area. 
• Most importantly, start your research extra-early. When some of your go-to information sources are unavailable, it may take you a little more time to get your hands on the information that you need. You might need to use interlibrary loan when before you were always able to find the resources you needed online. You may just need time to push beyond your comfort zone of familiar websites to find alternative ones that are still operational.
• And, of course, contact a librarian if you need help or ideas.

Research Projects: You’ve got this!

Many of your professors have begun to assign research projects. Along with the details of the actual assignment you may have heard words like information literacy and the research process. These words are often unfamiliar and can awaken the voice in your head. This voice is loud, laced with a touch of sarcasm and a smattering of doubt. It makes you feel like there is no way that you're ever going to get this. The voice is relentless and it fills your head with exclamatory questions like:

Research Project!?

Information what!?

Due when!?

10 pages!?

Serious!?

Surprise!! It isn’t just you…we all hear that voice but I am here to tell you that you’ve got this? How do I know? Am I psychic or something? I assure you I do not moonlight as a fortuneteller. I know because you already possess the basic information literacy skills you need to succeed. If you are still a little unsure, please…read on.

Everyday problem #1: Sell the heap and buy a Jeep!

You want to buy a Jeep. But first you need to determine the trade in value of your current vehicle?

You would… Google it and choose a site that looks useful from the results list or go directly to the Kelly Blue Book or Edmonds website, enter the information about your current car and presto! 
-I swear I do not own a crystal ball.-

Everyday problem #2: Rid yourself of the rash before your friends call the health department.

You have ignored it long enough and are now desperate to diagnose the weird rash on your arm?

You could take a picture of it and send it to your Mom (gotta love your Mom) but then you think, “Nah, maybe I should just Google it”. You might choose a medical website from the results list or go directly to WebMD. After reviewing WebMD you will need to make a decision on what actions to take, visit your doctor, explain to your roommate that it is not catchy and/or pick up some hydrocortisone crème at the drug store.

-Problem solved…fist pump!-

The scenarios above describe the process followed by information literate people in order to solve everyday problems. The definition of Information Literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to "recognize when information is needed and to have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information."

Knowing where to start, how to find, evaluate and use the information is proof that you are information literate. The truth is in your life, you have used information literacy skills to solve countless everyday problems.

Formal research (like the research projects assigned by your professors) requires you to follow the same process and to use the best tools available. These tools include library catalogs, interlibrary loan services, credible websites, online databases, videos, podcasts, twitter and more.

Some of you may not be familiar with using these tools but never fear Reeve’s librarians are here. Feel free to call, email, stop by, chat with us online or schedule an appointment with us. We will be happy to help you with your research needs. Don’t forget to check out our Meet Reeves-Student Guide and the tutorials on our YouTube channel.  You’ve got this!