Tag Archives: DVDs

What We’re Watching: Born on the Fourth of July

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Title: Born on the Fourth of July

Directed by Oliver Stone

Genre: War, Biopic, Available via DVD at Durham Tech Library

This movie was reviewed by Kyle Minton, Reference Librarian.

Why did you choose to watch this film?

I watched this the day before the 4th of July, primarily because of the holiday and I had not seen it before. It is notable for being part of Oliver Stone’s trilogy regarding the Vietnam War, which includes Platoon (1986) and Heaven and Earth (1993). The movie won Stone (who served in Vietnam as an Infantryman) his second Academy Award for Best Director and is based on a memoir written by Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic, who is portrayed by Tom Cruise in the film. The film follows a dramatized depiction of Kovic’s journey through military recruitment, active deployment and the war injury that paralyzes him below his chest. The film’s climax follows Kovic’s depression regarding his injury and adjustment to civilian life as the war rages on, until Kovic finds new vigor in participating in anti-war demonstrations with other Vietnam War veterans.

In addition to the DVD, Durham Tech Library has an eBook of the memoir available for users.

Continue Reading →

New DVDs and Books

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New DVDs

We have some great new DVDs in our collection! These and others can be checked out for one week at a time.

The Fault in Our Stars
United States of Secrets

 

New Books

These items can be checked out for three weeks at a time.

 

New DVDs!

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We have some great new DVDs in our collection! These and others can be checked out for one week at a time.

Gasland Part 2
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
Divergent
Breaking Through
FrackNation
Finding Vivian Maier
Cesar Chavez
Anita: Speaking Truth to Power
The Monuments Men
The Harvest = La Cosecha
Freedom Summer

Click on an image for more details, and ask a librarian if you’d like to take one of these titles home or if you want help finding other great videos.

New DVDs Available in the Library Now

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New Documentaries:

Blackfish

The filmmaker began researching the lives of orcas in captivity after the death of Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau.  Her film offers a powerful and provocative look at a remarkable breed of animals that humans still don’t fully understand, and how the financial interests of water parks and resorts may run counter to the best interests of the animals they put on display.

Cover shows a killer whale and the title, "Blackfish"

Dark Girls

Dark Girls is a fascinating and controversial film that goes underneath the surface to explore the prejudices dark-skinned women face throughout the world.

 

A woman's face is created by using pictures from four women with dark complexions.

Hungry for Change

This documentary exposes shocking secrets the diet, weight loss and food industries don’t want you to know about deceptive strategies designed to keep you coming back for more. Find out what’s keeping you from having the body and health you deserve and how to escape the diet trap forever.

A smiling woman holds a paper grocery bag filled with fresh food. The title says, "Hungry for Change."

Also: Muscle Shoals, Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life, Head Games, Marley, Undefeated, The Wall: A World Divided, Too Important to Fail, and more!

New Feature Films:

Fruitvale Station

This drama centered on the tragic shooting of Oscar Grant, a vibrant 22-year-old Bay Area father who was senselessly gunned down by BART officers on New Year’s Day in 2009, and whose murder sent shockwaves through the nation after being captured on camera by his fellow passengers.

An African American man wearing dark clothes and a hat stands sideways. The title says, "Fruitvale Station."

 

12 Years a Slave

Based on the true story of Solomon Northup. It is 1841, and Northup, an accomplished, free citizen of New York, is kidnapped and sold into slavery.

An African American male running. The title says, "12 Years a Slave."

Gravity

A heart-pounding thriller that will draw viewers into the infinite and merciless realm of deep space.

A female hovers in a spacecraft. The title says, "Gravity."

Also: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Philomena, Blue Jasmine, American Hustle, Nebraska, Inside Llewyn Davis, Wolf of Wall Street, and more!

Check the online catalog or our upstairs display to discover new titles.

 

Read the book and watch the movie

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Books often translate well to film.  Here are some of the titles that the library has as both book and DVD.

Red collage with the picture of a film reel and the phrases "From Books to Film," "Read the book," and "Watch the movie."

Visit our display on the lower level for these titles.

  • Anna Karenina
  • Diary of Anne Frank
  • Eclipse
  • Emma
  • For Colored Girls
  • Freakonomics
  • Freedom Writers
  • The Hours
  • A Lesson Before Dying
  • Life of Pi
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Moneyball
  • The Namesake
  • No Country for Old Men
  • A Raisin in the Sun
  • The Road
  • Sense & Sensibility
  • Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
  • Water for Elephants

Recently adapted books-to-film coming soon: Cloud Atlas and Great Gatsby

New DVD guides make finding movies easy

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We now have two great online guides for finding movies in the library’s collection.  One guide is for browsing titles by movie genre such as Action, History, Sports, etc… and the other is an alphabetical listing of films in our collection.

We hope you’ll discover lots of films that you want to watch. Thanks to our library staff member, Lauren Havens, for all of her hard work creating these new resources.

You can also access these guides under the LibGuides link on the library website.

Screenshot of a LibGuide, with tabs indicating DVD genres.

New movies available at the library now

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Summer is a great time for movie watching!  You may borrow two movies at a time for a week.

A woman in a red period dress is shown in front of a winter background.DVD cover shows half of Bradley Cooper's face on the left and half of Jennifer Lawrence's face on the right. The title, "Silver Linings Playbook" is in the middle between their faces.

New Feature Films:

Anna Karenina

Argo

Django UnchainedShows soldiers outside a compound attempting to get in.A young girl's face and windswept hair are on the bottom of the cover. Four of the main characters, two males and two females, appear on the top.

Les Miserables

Life of Pi

Lincoln

The Master

Perks of Being a WallflowerProfile view of Lincoln against a white background.

A tiger face hovers over a scene with a tiger in a boat and a boy standing on a bit of shore beside it.

Silver Linings Playbook

Zero Dark Thirty

Documentaries:

The Abolitionists

Brushes with Life: Art, artists, and mental illness

Bully

Cuban Missile Crisis: Three men go to war

Dropout NationA man with a guitar on his back walks down the middle of an urban street.Shows the back of a white male embracing a black female.

Forensics on Trial

From the Other Side

How to Survive a Plague

Hot Coffee: Is justice being served?

The Loving story

Makers: Women who make America

Headshots of a diverse group of women.Overlooks urban area in Myanmar.

Poor Kids: An intimate portrait of America’s economic crisis

Searching for Sugar Man

They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the curtain

Weight of the Nation

Search the online catalog for call numbers and more information about the films.

At the top, a coffee cup is upside down, and $100 dollar bills are falling out.Landscape photo of a fence with a side posted nearby, and below that, a photo of a young person sitting inside.

Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys

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Photograph of the main campus library display window showing materials from the Muslim Journeys

Library Display Window

The Durham Tech Library was recently awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant called Bridging Cultures Bookshelf:  Muslim Journeys.

The grant provides our library with more than 25 books and videos about Muslim culture, history, literature, and faith.  Visit the  Durham Tech events calendar for details about programs, films, and book discussions related to Muslim culture and faith that will occur throughout the year.

Please see the muslimjourneysposter for more information about campus events.

Use the online catalog to locate these materials in the library.

Three Muslim art medallions. Books

  • Minaret by Leila Aboulela
  • A Quiet Revolution by Leila Ahmed
  • The Conference of the Birds by Farid al-Din Attar, translated by Dick Davis and Afkham Darbandi
  • The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance by Jim Al-Khalili
  • Prince Among Slaves by Terry Alford
  • Islamic Arts by Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair
  • Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan A. C. Brown
  • The Columbia Sourcebook of Muslims in the United States, edited by Edward E. Curtis IV
  • In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh
  • When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the “Riches of the East” by Stewart Gordon
  • Leo Africanus by Amin Maalouf, translated by Peter Sluglett
  • The Arabian Nights (anonymous), edited by Muhsin Mahdi, translated by Husain Haddawy
  • In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
  • The Story of the Qur’an: Its History and Place in Muslim Life by Ingrid Mattson
  • The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal
  • Dreams of Trespass by Fatima Mernissi
  • Rumi: Poet and Mystic, edited and translated by Reynold A. Nicholson
  • Snow by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Maureen Freely
  • Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel
  • The Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam by F. E. Peters
  • The Art of Hajj by Venetia Porter
  • House of Stone by Anthony Shadid
  • Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
  • Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie
  • The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam by G. Willow Wilson

Films

  • Prince Among Slaves
  • Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World
  • Koran by Heart

The Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys is a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities, conducted in cooperation with the American Library Association. Support was provided by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. Additional support for the arts and media components was provided by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.

New DVDs available in the library

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We have added several new documentary films to our library collection.  Learn something new!  Borrow one today!

Use the online catalog to search our film collection by title or keyword.  If you are looking for movies on a particular topic you can search for that topic along with the words “and video” to limit to video titles.

American TeacherDVD cover for American Teacher shows a collage of photographs of teachers and the text "American Teacher: One of the toughest jobs in the world is getting tougher."

See the stories of four teachers in different areas of the country, revealing the frustrating realities of today’s teachers, the difficulty of attracting talented new educators, and why so many of our best teachers leave the profession altogether. Can we re-value teaching and turn it into a prestigious, financially attractive, and desirable profession?

BlDVD cover shows an African American looking down, a large Afro obscuring his eyes. Text says, "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975"ack Power Mixtape

Footage shot by a group of Swedish journalists documenting the Black Power Movement in the United States is edited together by a contemporary Swedish filmmaker.

 

Half the Sky   

Take an unforgettable journey to meet some of the most courageous individuals of our time, who are doing extraordinary work to empower women and girls everywhere. These are stories of heartbreaking challenge, dramatic transformation and enduring hope.

How to Die in Oregon

In 1994, Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Since then, more than 500 Oregonians have taken their mortality into their own hands. Filmmaker Peter Richardson gently enters the lives of the terminally ill as they consider whether–and when–to end their lives by lethal overdose. Richardson examines both sides of the complex, emotionally charged issue. What emerges is a life-affirming, staggeringly powerful portrait of what it means to die with dignity.

The Interrupters 

Tells the moving and surprising story of three “violence interrupters” in Chicago who with bravado, humility and even humor try to protect their communities from the violence they once employed.

Invisible War

An investigative documentary about the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the US military.

The Last Mountain

The fight for the last great mountain in America’s Appalachian heartland pits the mining giant that wants to explode it to extract the coal within, against the community fighting to preserve the mountain and build a wind farm on its ridges instead. Robert Kennedy Jr. joins the fight to preserve the mountain.

DVD cover of Louder Than a Bomb shows four individuals standing in front of microphonesLouder Than a Bomb

Follows the fortunes of four Chicago-area high school poetry teams as they prepare for and compete in the world’s largest youth slam.

 

 

DVD cover of Project Nim shows a young chimpanzee wearing a red shirt and holding onto the finger of a person out of sight.Project Nim

The story of Nim, the chimpanzee who became the focus of a landmark 1970s experiment to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. But as Nim’s natural instincts take over and the humans trusted with his well-being fail to protect him, Project Nim uncovers the unflinching and extraordinary journey of one animal thrust into human society.

Titanic: The Complete Story

This is the most complete chronicle of the Titanic ever created and is filled with survivor interviews, rare newsreel footage, and photos. It’s an incomparable voyage into one of history’s most unforgettable tragedies.