The Sandlot is one of my all time favorite movies. The movie begins with a young boy named Scotty Smalls who has a difficult time fitting in when he moves to a new neighborhood in the late 1960s. With encouragement from his mother to go out and make some new friends, Smalls follows a group of boys to a rundown baseball diamond which they call “The Sandlot”. At first, Smalls has trouble fitting in with this particular group of boys, but they eventually let him join the team because they need one more player for a complete roster. The story escalates when Smalls gets the boys into the biggest “pickle” any of them have ever seen. As if accidentally hitting a home-run with an autographed Babe Ruth baseball isn’t bad enough, the boys have serious difficulty trying to retrieve the ball from “the beast” on the other side of the fence. With several wacky and creative attempts to retrieve the baseball, this movie will have you laughing from beginning to end.

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Here comes your favorite movie…for those of you who haven’t seen it yet!  You’re all about to get on the bandwagon.  Life Is Beautiful, an Italian flick (with English subtitles) that, incredibly, includes the director/writer (Roberto Benigni) in the main cast of actors as well.  It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and took away three Oscars.

“This is a simple story, but not an easy one to tell”.  A heartwarming and touching fable of a charismatically comical waiter who charms his way into the heart and arms of the woman he absolutely loves.  They have a cute little boy together and create a beautiful life, only to have it frighteningly disturbed by the arrival of World War II.  It will make you laugh, fall in love, and cry, all at the same time.

It is said that the he got the “basis for [this] movie from the stories of his father” who was a prisoner from 1943-1945 in the concentration camp “Bergen-Belsen“.   You can’t pass this gem up!

Rated PG-13 for Holocaust-Related Thematic Elements.  You can find it in our DVD WORLD section!

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For those Anglophiles who need more than Downton Abbey, here is a fictional biography of the Virgin Queen that takes you back to Merrie Olde England. At 662 pages it’s a tad long, but the court pomp and intrigue, loves won and lost, and nations at war and peace, keep the story moving along briskly. Alas, even Will Shakespeare plays a minor role. The tale is familiar but fresh.

The Road is the most emotionally powerful book I have ever read! The surrealism of the bleak landscape will touch you, as will the relationship between father and son on their quest across the barren post-apocalyptic world. Just imagine yourself in their place. Living in a world where no good exists, no light exists, and all you can think about is how to get food and stay warm. Oh, and you have to worry about rouge bands of bad guys trying to survive the dishonest way…stealing food, eating humans…

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After reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I quickly discovered that Stieg Larsson is a brilliant writer. I immediately picked up The Girl Who Played with Fire (book two of the trilogy) to continue reading his work, and I was not disappointed. This book revolves around the continuation of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander’s lives—both audience favorites from the first book.

Mikael is close to publishing an exposé on sex trafficking, when his two friends are murdered. The tragedy not only affects Mikael personally, but also professionally, as he and his crew speculate that the murder could have a connection to preventing the release of the exposé. Mikael’s worries are heightened when he discovers that the police found Lisbeth Salander’s fingerprints on the murder weapon, thus linking her as the primary suspect. Mikael is convinced of his friend Lisbeth’s innocence. Unconvinced by the police allegations, Mikael runs his own investigation into the case to resolve the mystery.