November 2012 Thursday Noon Videos

In November the Art, Music and Recreation Center is hosting and programming the Main Library's Thursday Noon Videos in the Koret Auditorium.  This month's theme is “a very dysfunctional Thanksgiving.”

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Pieces of April, 2003, 80 minutes.
Katie Holmes plays the title character in this story of a family reuniting at April’s grotty Manhattan apartment for what may be the mother’s (Patricia Clarkson) final Thanksgiving. We follow April as she tries to put the meal together, only to find out that her oven is broken. Meanwhile the rest of her family is slowly making their way to New York, with the trip punctuated by many stops, including one for a funeral for road kill. With the help of various neighbors, April manages to assemble dinner, while learning to appreciate the importance of family and bonding with her fellow apartment dwellers in the process.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Home for the Holidays, 1995, 103 minutes.
Forty-year old single Chicagoan Claudia Larson, played by Holly Hunter, heads home for Thanksgiving having just been let go from her job at an art museum. In addition, her daughter (Clare Danes) confides on the way to taking Claudia to the airport that she’ll probably experience sex for the first time during the holiday weekend. The family Claudia will be joining includes her overbearing parents, (Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning) a crazy aunt, (Geraldine Chaplin) a humorless sister, (Cynthia Stevenson), and her mischievous brother (Robert Downey, Jr.), bringing his new boyfriend, (Dylan McDermott) home. How could this Thanksgiving not be a great time?

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Hannah and Her Sisters, 1986, 107 minutes.
A Woody Allen Manhattan mosaic, Hannah and Her Sisters concerns the lives, loves, and infidelities among a tightly-knit artistic clan. Hannah (Mia Farrow) regularly meets with her sisters Holly (Dianne Wiest) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) to discuss the week's events. It's what they don't always tell each other that forms the film's various subplots. Hannah is married to accountant and financial planner Elliot (Michael Caine), who carries a torch for Lee, who in turn lives with pompous Soho artist Frederick (Max Von Sydow). Meanwhile, Holly, a neurotic actress and eternal loser in love, dates TV producer Mickey (Allen), who used to be married to Hannah. Yes, it’s complicated - but also very enjoyable - to see how these stories resolve.

There will be no video program on Thursday, November 22 when the Library is closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Each screening begins at noon at the Koret Auditorium, Main Library, Lower Level. All programs at the Library are free and open to the public. This program is supported by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.