Midwest Tape in Your Magazines

Recently, Midwest Tape featured ads in Video Librarian and Library Journal. These ads differ from our usual slicks in that both include personal testimony from our customers and both focus very specifically on particular Midwest Tape offerings.

If you click either image below, you can view the full page ad. We’d love it if you’d take a moment to check them out and give us your feedback. What do you look for an advertisement? What do you think makes ads most effective? What’s your favorite ad (any industry) or the most memorable ad you’ve seen? Share your critiques here as comments.

 

Hot This Week: October 3

Jacqueline Kennedy stays at the top; Tony Bennett knocks Lady Antebellum to the number two spot; and Bridesmaids tackles Thor as the top rental of the fall.

DVD

1. Bridesmaids
2. Thor
3. X-Men: First Class
4. Hanna
5. Setup
6. Everything Must Go
7. Paul
8. Something Borrowed
9. Rio
10. Limitless

CD

1. Tony Bennett, Duets II
2. Lady Antebellum, Own the Night
3. Adele, 21
4. Demi Lovato, Unbroken
5. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter IV
6. Needtobreathe, The Reckoning
7. Mindless Behavior, #1
8. Gavin DeGraw, Sweeter
9. Jay Z and Kanye West, Watch the Throne
10. Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty

Fiction Books

1. Heat Rises, Richard Castle
2. Lethal, Sandra Brown
3. The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
4. Reamde, Neal Stephenson
5. Son of Stone, Stuart Woods
6. New York to Dallas, J.D. Robb
7. Kill Me If You Can, James Patterson and Marshall Karp
8. A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin
9. The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
10. The Race, Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

Nonfiction Books

1. Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
2. Confidence Men, Ron Suskind
3. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
4. Quest, Daniel Yergin
5. In My Time, Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney
6. That Used to be Us, Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
7. Destiny of the Republic, Candice Millard
8. A Stolen Life, Jaycee Dugard
9. Here Comes Trouble, Michael Moore
10. Rogue, Joe McGinniss

Fall Film Preview: Part Two

Temperatures and leaves may be falling, but the race for awards season is just heating up. Last week, I detailed what entertaining blockbusters and awards season contenders you should be sure to check out. In part two of my fall preview, I turn my focus to funnies, families, and the offbeat.

Chucklesome Comedies

50/50—based on the true story of Seth Rogen and his friend Will Reiser—is a touching yet hilarious buddy comedy that takes place during Reiser’s extensive cancer treatment. In the flick, Rogen essentially plays himself, but Reiser, who wrote the screenplay, is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

In What’s Your Number?, Anna Faris is a down-on-her-luck thirty-something who revisits all her past relationships in the hopes of finding true love—and not increasing her number of partners—with the help of Captain America, I mean, her neighbor, played by Chris Evans.

What’s funnier than competitive bird watching? Why, a movie about it starring Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin, of course! The Big Year, a comedy based on a nonfiction book about the 1998 Big Year bird watching competition, hits theaters October 14^th.

Lastly, heist-comedy Tower Heist has quite the all-star cast and, even though it’s been in the works for over five years, the film is still as timely as ever. A group of employees at a Trump-esque apartment complex decide to steal $20 million from one of the residents when that Bernie Madoff-ish resident loses all their pension funds in a Ponzi scheme.

Off the Beaten Path

Martha Marcy May Marlene was the all the rage at this past Sundance Film Festival. This is writer-director Sean Durkin’s first feature, and many have labeled it “this year’s Winter’s Bone.” While Martha Marcy May Marlene does star John Hawkes, the female lead is not Jennifer Lawrence. Instead, Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister to Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, plays the title character who struggles to adapt to a normal life after she escapes a cult.

Are you ready for a mix of melodrama and horror? Then be sure to check out Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In. In director Pedro Almodóvar’s first film since Broken Embraces, “Banderas plays a plastic surgeon haunted by the deaths of his wife and daughter and obsessed with creating an indestructible synthetic skin.”¹ Elena Anaya plays his test subject, a woman he’s holding captive in his home.

Did Shakespeare really pen his famed plays? This is the question director Roland Emmerich addresses in Anonymous, which presents Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford (played by Rhys Ifans), as the true Bard. Initial reaction to this flick has been mixed with many questioning the directorial choice: “Roland Emmerich (2012, The Day After Tomorrow) and period drama go together like oil and water.”² However, as Metacritic explains, “if you like a good conspiracy theory and British costume dramas, this one might be right for you.”

Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner Like Crazy is an atypical love story. It isn’t about the first kiss or first intimate moment. It’s about an L.A. guy and a London lady who fall madly in love during college and then must navigate a long-distance relationship when her visa expires and she’s sent back to Britain. While some worry the premise may produce something hokey and contrived, others are predicting it to be “a genuine and moving love story for a new generation.”² If the trailer is any indication, the stars of this film will certainly validate the initial praise.

Controversial director Lars Von Trier returns in November with Melancholia, a film about two sisters (Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg) who find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with the Earth. Dunst apparently hits it out of the park, which may be this film’s saving grace after Trier’s Cannes hullabaloo.

Family-Focused Features

It’s been 18 years since Free Willy, so we were definitely due for a heartwarming boy befriends/saves marine mammal feel-good family flick. And while Dolphin Tale doesn’t have a quintessential Michael Jackson jam as its theme song, it does outdo Free Willy in two ways: 1.) It’s based on a true story and 2.) It stars Winter, the actual dolphin the story is based on. It has faced some stiff-competition at the box office, squaring off against Lion King 3D, but the film has been well received by audiences and critics alike.

While some see Puss in Boots as merely an opportunity to further milk the Shrek franchise, others see it as this fall’s most anticipated film. It has a family-friendly PG rating, the Shrek style of humor and offbeat fairy tale appeal, and Antonio Banderas teaming up with Desperado costar Salma Hayek for an on-screen feline romance. Plus, it’s Puss. He pretty much made Shreks 2-4. Just watch the trailer:

The Muppets are returning. Yes, you read correctly. The Muppets are back, and in this re-launch, Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller of Forgetting Sarah Marshall fame have penned a hilarious script replete with “all of the song and dance numbers, celebrity cameos, and offbeat Muppet humor fans have come to expect from Kermit and the rest of the gang.”³ In this adventure, Segel and Amy Adams team up with their Muppet friends to save the Muppet Theater from being demolished by an oil tycoon.

Martin Scorsese is literally bringing the bestselling book The Invention of Hugo Cabret to life—it’s in 3D! Staring Hit Girl from Kick-Ass (Chloë Moretz) as well as Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Jude Law, Hugo is about a 12-year-old orphan who lives in the walls of a Paris train station in 1931 and, when he inherits an automaton from his late father, commences a wonderfully fantastical adventure. This film is quite the change of pace for Scorsese, “master of gritty urban dramas,” but he is a master nonetheless and books-to-film are all the rage, so why not? It may just surprise us all this holiday season.⁴

That wraps up part two of News & Views’ fall film preview. Now it’s your turn. What films are you, your library, and your patrons looking forward to most?

¹ “Fall Movie Preview: The 30 Most-Anticipated Films,” Metacritic

² Screen Rant’s 20 Most Anticipated Movies of 2011

³ IFC.com's 2011 Fall Movie Preview Guide: November

⁴ “25 Fall Movies We Can't Wait to See,” Entertainment Weekly

Lion King Still Reigns Supreme

Seventeen years after its original release, The Lion King hit theaters for a limited release and this time in 3D. The first weekend it topped the box office at $29.3 million. And in its second weekend, no Moneyball or heart-warming Dolphin Tale or Taylor Lautner ab-extravaganza (Abduction) could dethrone the King, who pulled in another $22.1 million. According to Entertainment Weekly, “the 1994 Disney classic dropped only 27 percent [over its first weekend]—an incredibly impressive hold considering this is the re-release of a 17-year-old film…The 3-D version has now grossed $61.7 million, bringing The Lion King‘s cumulative tally to $390.2 million.”

With such box office success, Disney is now planning “to extend what was originally intended to be just a two-week release, although details are still being ironed out” (EW). To bolster the excitement surrounding the 3D film re-release, Disney has also released The Lion King home video from the vault. The diamond editions release shortly after the theatrical run with the Blu-ray hitting shelves October 4^th and the DVD on November 15^th.

Like the 3D film, both the Blu-ray and the DVD are only available for a limited time. Be sure to strengthen your DVD collection with this quintessential classic. Click the image below to shop The Lion King now.

Hot This Week: September 26

All lists see numerous changes this week as several chart toppers tumble. No artist has manned the CD chart quite like Adele. Will Lady Antebellum be the new contender? How long will the Jacqueline Kennedy interviews hold the number one spot? And will Thor be the top rental of the fall?

DVD

1. Thor
2. X-Men: First Class
3. Hanna
4. Everything Must Go
5. Something Borrowed
6. Paul
7. Rio
8. Madea's Big Happy Family
9. Priest
10. Limitless

CD

1. Lady Antebellum, Own the Night
2. Adele, 21
3. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter IV
4. Brantley Gilbert, Halfway to Heaven
5. Staind, Staind
6. The Beatles, 1
7. George Strait, Here for a Good Time
8. Dream Theater, A Dramatic Turn of Events
9. Jay Z and Kanye West, Watch the Throne
10. The Devil Wears Prada, Dead Throne 

Fiction Books

1. New York to Dallas, J.D. Robb
2. The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
3. Kill Me If You Can, James Patterson and Marshall Karp
4. Abuse of Power, Michael Savage
5. Killing the Blues, Michael Brandman
6. The Race, Clive Cussler and Justin Scott
7. A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin
8. How Firm a Foundation, David Weber
9. The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
10. Goddess of Vengeance, Jackie Collins

Nonfiction Books

1. Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
2. That Used to be Us, Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
3. In My Time, Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney
4. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
5. A Stolen Life, Jaycee Dugard
6. Pearl Jam Twenty, Pearl Jam
7. In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson
8. Here Comes Trouble, Michael Moore
9. The Black Banners, Ali H. Soufan with Daniel Freedman
10. Arguably, Christopher Hitchens