"The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov
I hereby recommend a short work of utter and staggering brilliance by one of the most prolific literary geniuses of the last century. Blah blah blahdy blah blah. Really? Well then, let me try this again…
A story that fully and unequivocally evokes an unending mental discourse on the meaning of consciousness, time, being, religiosity and the purported infinite nature of the universe in a mere 4,000 words. Yay! What? Pfffffffffffftttt. Hmmph. Okay, well fine, let me think…
Cool story! Twist ending! Honey Boo Boo, Lindsay Lohan and two of the three Kardashian sisters recommend this story! Get your tie-in toy at McDonald's today while supplies last! Soon to be a movie starring Johnny Depp and the Kardashian sister who didn’t recommend the story in the first place in her big-screen debut!
Seriously, though, read it. You’ll like it. I promise. Ninety-nine and three-quarters percent guaranteed. There are also about eleventy gazillion other Asimov works available at Acorn and through SWAN, so, snap snap, my word-loving friends, time is running out! Or is it?
-Danielle, Tech Services
Dark City: Director’s Cut
I recently read somewhere that Dark City is one of the most underrated science-fiction movies of the 20th century. Now, considering that I hadn’t heard of this movie until recently, I’d have to agree. An amnesiac named Johnny Murdoch sets out to find why he can’t remember who he is and encounters “the Strangers”, a race of beings who are performing experiments on humans. It’s a futuristic tale filmed in the typical noir styling, but what’s probably best about the movie is that there are very little computer-generated special effects. In the documentary on the DVD, the director Alex Proyas describes that filming took place on stage and oversized replicas of objects were used in particular scenes to make the film seem as realistic as possible. It has an all-star cast (before they were considered all-stars) featuring William Hurt, Jennifer Connelly, Rufus Sewell, and Kiefer Sutherland and the director’s cut of the film has twelve extra minutes of bonus footage. Several copies are available through SWAN!
-Judy, Reference
Nashville: The Complete First Season
This show is the ultimate in soapy, indulgent escapism. Connie Britton plays Rayna Jaymes, country music's longtime golden girl who is currently struggling to reinvent her sagging career and manage her strained marriage to a square-jawed cipher while keeping her powerful, manipulative family at bay. In the other corner, pop tart/money-making machine Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere) tries to establish herself as a credible artist while living out a volatile post-adolescence that includes (but is not limited to) kleptomania, a quickie marriage, her mother's addiction, extortion, assorted PR disasters, and a whole lot of sequins. Not surprisingly, Rayna and Juliette immediately dislike each other, but the show has the discipline and class (that's right, discipline and class) to show the conflict as a methodical war of attrition as opposed to a series of catfights. It is also but one of the show's roughly 317,000 subplots.
Though the writing is remarkably fertile, the acting is what elevates the show from clandestine guilty pleasure to something I am willingly sharing here. Britton (formerly of TV's beloved Friday Night Lights and current host of the world's most coveted hair) gamely captures Rayna's coexistent warmth and egotism, but it is Juliette that gives Nashville its crazy, flashy heart. Panettiere takes on Juliette's many facets--charismatic performer, steely CEO, whiny Millennial, wily survivor, architect of her own destruction--with verve and eminently watchable chutzpah.
Full episodes can be viewed here and the first season will be released on DVD in September. Go ahead and hop on the waiting list via SWAN.
-Megan, Reference
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