One of the City of Vancouver’s annual summer events is Friday Night Movies in the Park. On the first 4 Fridays in August, the city will host a different family movie, each in a different park. This year’s movies are: Coco, Moana 2, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Barbie. Refreshments are usually available for purchase, and the movies start around dark. It’s a fun way to spend an evening outside in the summertime.
If you can’t make it to the parks or theatre, you can always check out DVDs from the library and have a movie night at home. Personally, I love musicals - you just can’t beat the uplift you get from a great song-and-dance number. The library has many old favorites available to rent, like The Sound of Music and West Side Story (old and new versions), as well as some older titles and lesser-known musicals that you may not have seen:
- From Rodgers & Hammerstein: Cinderella, Carousel, South Pacific, and The King & I
- Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim
- Silver Screen Icons series: Broadway Musicals and Astaire & Rogers, Vol. 1 & 2 - each of these collections contains 4 musicals
- Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas starring Elvis
- Pitch Perfect 1-3 and High School Musical 1-3
- And of course, Disney movies!
Musicals not your thing? Pick a genre, and have a film festival - monster movies, or Hallmark romances both hold many options. Get the kids to dress up and have a Sixties night, or an Eighties night. We also have lots of TV series to binge watch.
- Monster movies: The Blob, Godzilla, Nosferatu: Symphony of Horror, Alien
- Movies from the 1960s: Psycho, 2001: A Space Odyssey, My Fair Lady, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
- Movies from the 1980s: Valley Girl, The Breakfast Club, The NeverEnding Story, Back to the Future
- BBC TV shows to binge: Doctor Who, The Office, All Creatures Great and Small
- Cartoons you watched as a kid: Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Scooby-Doo!, Hey Arnold, SpongeBob SquarePants
If you’re a true movie geek, ask your audience questions after the film.
- Which was your favorite Breakfast Club character and why?
- Was The Blob alive and how do you know?
- If you had a Tardis from Doctor Who, where and when would you travel?
- Which song from which musical best describes you?
New at the Library
Fiction
- The First Gentleman by Bill Clinton and James Patterson
- Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- So Happy Together by Olivia Worley
Nonfiction
- The Big Hop: The First Nonstop Flight across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Future by David Rooney
- Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes by Sunita Sah
- John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie
DVDs
