Spring 2004 DVS® E-guide Update
from the Media Access Group at WGBH

Letter from the Director

Happy Spring! Along with an end, at last, to snow here in New England (we can only hope), there's a lot to look forward to in the next couple of months.

Prime Suspect returns to PBS this April after a seven-year hiatus. This popular ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre series stars Helen Mirren, returning as Inspector Jane Tennison--older, wiser and resolutely refusing to retire as her upstart male colleagues suggest. More intrigue can be found later in the summer (July) with a new Tony Hillerman tale in the American Mystery! Special: A Thief of Time.

For history buffs, there's a four-part PBS series beginning in June called Rebels & Redcoats: How Britain Lost America. This vivid dramatization of battles, eyewitness accounts, original documents and paintings tells the untold story of the American Revolution from an unusual point of view--that of the British!

And for those who just can't get enough of older, treasured movies, we're adding a few more titles to the Turner Classic Movies library (see below). We'll be describing lots of this summer's Hollywood blockbusters, too. Visit www.mopix.org for information on described films and MoPix theater locations across the country.

While the amount of described television and movies keeps multiplying, we have made the difficult decision to stop producing a print and Braille version of our twice-yearly DVS Guide, due to spiraling printing costs. (We will be sending a note about this to all our print subscribers.) Instead, we will increase the number of DVS E-Guides from two to four per year. Anyone can sign up to receive the DVS E-Guides via e-mail: just log onto our Web site (access.wgbh.org). People without e-mail accounts can still get the latest news on DVS by visiting our Web site, as each E-Guide will be posted there. Or call our automated phone line at 1-800-333-1203 to listen to the latest E-Guide or movie catalog.

We hope you enjoy many new TV shows and films in the upcoming months. We'll continue to keep you informed of our activities with regular updates.

Best Wishes,

Lori Kay
Director of Services
Media Access Group at WGBH

DVS at 2004 ACB Convention

We hope we get to meet many of you at the upcoming American Council of the Blind convention this summer in Birmingham, Alabama (this July). As in years past, we will hold our popular DVS Movie Night, which we hope you'll attend. You'll also have the opportunity to purchase described videos at our convention hall booth. As always, we look forward to meeting you and hearing your movie "reviews."

DVS Home Video® New Releases!

Need a break from graduations and weddings? The following movies will be released with description on DVS Home Video early this summer:

Cold Mountain
In the waning days of the American Civil War, a wounded soldier (Jude Law) embarks on a perilous journey back home to Cold Mountain, North Carolina to reunite with his sweetheart (Nicole Kidman). Also starring Renee Zellweger, who won an Academy Award for her performance.

Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat
Conrad and Sally Walden (Spencer Breslin and Dakota Fanning) are home alone with their pet fish. It's raining outside and there is nothing to do...until the infamous Dr. Seuss character, the Cat in the Hat (Mike Myers), walks in the front door.

Peter Pan
This live-action version of a timeless family classic has Wendy and her brothers joining Peter and the Lost Boys in an exhilarating life, free of grown-up rules, while also facing the inevitable showdown with Captain Hook and his bloodthirsty pirates.

Cheaper by the Dozen
The Bakers, a family with 12 children, move from small-town Illinois to the big city after Tom Baker (Steve Martin) gets his dream job to coach his alma mater's football team. Meanwhile, his wife (Bonnie Hunt) also gets her dream job of getting her book published. While she is off promoting her book, Tom has a hard time keeping the house in order.

Mystic River
Academy Award-nominated Clint Eastwood directs this film about childhood friends Jimmy Marcus (Sean Penn), Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) and Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins), who reunite following the death of Jimmy's oldest daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum). Also starring Laurence Fishburne and Marcia Gay Harden.

NOVA: Why the Towers Fell
This Emmy Award-winning documentary follows a team of forensic engineers during their in-depth investigation of the precise causes of the Twin Towers' collapse on 9/11/2001.

For the complete catalogue of DVS Home Videos visit our Web site access.wgbh.org or call 1.800.333.1203. To order from DVS Home Video, call 317.579.0439.

More PBS Programs on DVD with DVS

Now available on DVD: Amercan Experience's Battle of the Bulge, offering an intimate, compelling chronicle of war that captures both the action on the battle's front lines and the strategy behind the scenes, and ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre's Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens's complex and compelling tale of life on the mean streets of London.

New accessible Mystery! DVDs include Second Sight 1, a psychological thriller about a rugged police detective who lives for the thrill of the chase, while trying to conceal that he is going blind, and Touching Evil 1, a gripping mystery focusing on London's Organized and Serial Crime Unit, an elite, rapid-response crime squad.

Mysteries of a different sort can be explored in many of the Nova DVDs, including Secrets of the Crocodile Caves, a spectacular wildlife film documenting a remote refuge for endangered crocodiles in Madagascar; MARS Dead or Alive, a special television event that recorded NASA scientists in January 2004 supervising the robotic explorers touching down on the surface of Mars; and Dogs and More Dogs, where you can find out the truth about where dogs came from. Coming to accessible DVD in late April are Descent into the Ice, which follows a team of daring "glacionauts" into a labyrinth of ice caves, and Crash of Flight 111, telling the behind-the-scenes story of the quest for the cause of the 1998 plane crash in Nova Scotia. Coming in late May are Life and Death in the War Zone, the intimate story of the struggle for survival in a combat hospital during the war in Iraq; Dying to be Thin, an in-depth look at eating disorders and those who have conquered these diseases; and Cracking the Code of Life, the story of the decoding of the human genome.

These DVDs can be ordered from WGBH Boston Video: on the Web at shop.wgbh.org or call 800.949.8670.
For a complete list of DVDs with description tracks created by the Media Access Group at WGBH visit http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/mag/resources/accessible-dvds.html.

Coming Soon to an Accessible Theater Near You...

Thanks to WGBH's Motion Picture Access (MoPix) effort, which makes films accessible to moviegoers who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or visually impaired, the following releases are among those that will be playing soon at MoPix-equipped theaters across the U.S. and Canada. (Titles and release dates are subject to change.)

April 2

Walking Tall

April 9

The Girl Next Door

April 23

Man on Fire

April 23

13 Going On 30

May 7

Van Helsing

May 14

Troy

May 21

The Clearing

May 21

Shrek 2

May 28

The Day After Tomorrow

June 4

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

June 11

The Chronicles of Riddick

June 18

Terminal

June 25

Two Brothers

June 25

White Chicks

June 30

Spider-Man 2

The number of theaters with MoPix equipment continues to grow. (If you'd like to receive weekly e-mail updates of MoPix-equipped theaters, films and showtimes, please subscribe at: http://ncam.wgbh.org/mailinglist.html.)

New Locations include:

AMC Promenade
Auditorium 13
21801 Oxnard Street
Woodland Hills, CA 91367
818.883.0760

Loews Millenium Georgetown 14
3111 K Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20007
202.944.3737

AMC Union Station
Auditorium 4
50 Massachusetts Ave. NE
Space M16
Washington, D.C. 20002

AMC Mazza Gallerie
Auditorium 3
5300 Wisconsin Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20015

AMC Aventura Mall 24
Auditorium 3
19501 Biscayne Boulevard
Aventura, FL 33180
305.466.9880

AMC Pleasure Island
Auditorium 6
1500 East Buena Vista Drive
Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830
407.827.1310

AMC Colonial 18
Auditorium 16
825 Lawrenceville-Suwanee Road
Lawrenceville, GA 30043
770.237.0744

AMC Discover Mills 18
Auditorium 13
15900 Sugarloaf Parkway
Lawrenceville, GA 30043
678.847.9265

AMC Cantera 30
Auditorium 25
28250 Diehl Road
Warrenville, IL 60555
630.836.8265

AMC Town Center 20
Auditorium 3
11701 Nall Street
Leawood, KS 66211
913.498.8696

AMC City Place 10
Auditorium 1
8661 Colesville Road
Silver Spring, MD 20910

AMC Columbia 14
Auditorium 10
10300 Little Patuxent Parkway
Columbia, MD 21044
401.423.0508

Loews Rio 18 Cinemas
9811 Washingtonian Boulevard
Gaithersburg, MD 20878
301.948.6673

AMC Concord Mills 24
Auditorium 20
8421 Concord Mills Boulevard
Concord, NC 28027
704.979.0197

AMC Nashaminy 24
Auditorium 12
3900 Rockhill Drive
Bensalem, PA 19020
215.396.8050

Malco Theatres, The Paridiso
Auditorium 2
584 South Mendenhall
Memphis, TN 38117

AMC Barton Creek 14
Auditorium 7
2901 Capital of Texas Highway
Austin, TX 78746
512.306.1991

AMC Valley View 16
Valley View Mall
2040 Valley View Center
Dallas, TX 75240

AMC Willowbrook 24
Auditorium 19
17145 Tomball Parkway
Houston, TX 77064
281.970.9604

AMC Studio 30
Auditorium 25
2949 Dunvale
Houston, TX 77064
713.977.4431

AMC Hoffmann Center 22
Auditorium 1
206 Swamp Fox Road
Alexandria, VA 22314

AMC Potomac Mills Circle
Auditorium 13
2700 Potomac Mills Circle
Woodbridge, VA 22192

For a complete list of MoPix-equipped movie theaters in the United States and Canada, visit http://www.mopix.org.

Turner Classic Movies Presents...

Through a partnership with DVS and the U.S. Department of Education, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable channel presents classic movies with description. Recent movies that have been described include:

The Dawn Patrol (1938)
An action-packed drama about First World War British flyers and the risky aerial fighting they undertook. The star-studded cast includes Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and David Niven.

The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
Beginning in Paris in 1862, the film describes the life of French novelist Emile Zola and his pivotal role in the Dreyfus Affair.

Julius Caesar (1953)
This masterpiece of casting includes Marlon Brando as Marc Antony, James Mason as Brutus, John Gielgud as Cassius, Louis Calhern as Julius Caesar, Greer Garson as Calpurnia and Deborah Kerr as Portia. Need we say more?

To obtain the TCM cable channel, contact your local cable provider. Simply activate the S.A.P. feature on your stereo television or VCR to access the descriptions. You can get a complete listing of movies described on the TCM cable channel by calling our DVS Information Line, 1.800.333.1203 or on the Web at access.wgbh.org.

Media Access Group at WGBH
125 Western Avenue
Boston, MA 02134
617-300-3600 (phone)
access@wgbh.org (e-mail)

© Copyright 2004 WGBH Educational Foundation