The Academy Awards are just around the corner (February 24 to be exact). As the date approaches, have you been trying to remember which film won best picture last year? Are you interested in learning about the history of the Academy Awards? When it all started? Which film won the very first Best Picture award? The library has some great books that can answer these questions and more. Here are just a few of the titles on Oscar history that you can find at the San Jose Public Library:

• All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards by Emanuel Levy
• Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards by Mason Wiley and Damien Bona
• 75 years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards by Robert Osborne

Princess Ka’iulani, starring Q'orianka Kilcher, shows glimpses of the adolescence and early adulthood of Victoria Ka’iulani Kalaninuiahilapalapa Kawēkiu i Lunalilo Cleghorn, the last princess of the Kingdom of Hawaii.   Princess Ka’iulani was daughter of Princess Likelike, from the the House of Kalākaua, and Archibald Scott Cleghorn, a Scottish businessman. 

Iron Jawed Angels, starring Hilary Swank as Alice Stokes Paul, Frances O'Connor as Lucy Burns and Anjelica Huston as Carrie Chapman Catt, is about women’s rights activists who worked hard to influence the United States government to grant women the right to vote.  

Mona Lisa Smile, starring Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles, is about a professor (Julia Roberts) who teaches art history at Wellesley College in the 1950’s.   Although the female college students had more rights than their mothers and grandmothers did, they still lived in a world where women were expected to behave a certain way.

San Jose Public Library has many other movies that you may be interested in.   Come on by, and visit!    Any DVD that you check out from one SJPL location may be returned to any other SJPL location.

On Guy Fawkes Night, some teenagers are surprised to find that their London housing project is under attack from aliens.  The invaders, fast-moving creatures with lots of teeth, could have chosen an easier target; the residents decide to stand their ground, using anything that even vaguely works as a weapon.  A British sci-fi film that doesn't take itself too seriously, Attack the Block has a 90 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

For more British films worth watching, click here.

A normally jaded political consultant becomes passionately convinced that his latest client should be the next president.  The White House seems well within reach until a woman appears with information that could destroy everything he's worked for.  The Oscar-nominated Ides of March stars George Clooney and Ryan Gosling; the film has a 67 percent rating at Metacritic.

For more independent films worth watching, click here.

A counterfeiter is transferred from an Austrian jail to a German concentration camp during the Second World War.  He is eventually ordered to produce vast quantities of fake American currency to undermine the Allied economies and threatened with grim consequences if he fails.  The Oscar-winning film The Counterfeiters is based on a true story and has a 78 percent rating at Metacritic.

For many more German DVD recommendations, click here.

France in 1941 is a defeated, demoralized country under German occupation.  The future looks bleak until a small group of men and women begin to organize and fight back.  Based on a true story, Army of Crime stars Virginie Ledoyen and has a 90 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

For many more French DVD recommendations, click here.