Multiple locations
Saturday, November 30, free
www.indiebound.org
“Now is the time to be a superhero for independent bookstores,” bestselling author Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) wrote in an open letter to “gorgeous book nerds” on September 1. “I want all of us (you and you and especially you) to spend an amazing day hand-selling books at your local independent bookstore on Small Business Saturday (that’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving, November 30 this year, so you know it’s a huge weekend for everyone who, you know, wants to make a living).” And he set out a plan as well: “We book nerds will become booksellers. We will make recommendations. We will practice nepotism and urge readers to buy multiple copies of our friends’ books. Maybe you’ll sign and sell books of your own in the process. I think the collective results could be mind-boggling (maybe even world-changing).” Hundreds of bookstores around the country are participating in the one-day event; here in New York City, more than two dozen authors are scheduled to appear at fifteen locations, including LaShonda Katrice Barnett at 192 Books, Amy Brill, Jon Scieszka, and Matt de la Pena at the Community Bookstore, Paul Zelinsky, Michael Buckley, Ayana Mathis, Jeffrey Rotter, and Justin Torres at Greenlight, Jodi Kantor, Emily Jenkins, and Stefan Merrill Block at powerHouse, and Amy Shearn, Jennifer K. Armstrong, Sarah McCarry, Susannah Cahalan, Emma Straub, Tim O’Mara, Jami Attenberg, and Myke Cole at WORD. As Alexie concludes, “So join the Indie First Movement and help your favorite independent bookstore. Help all indie bookstores. Reach out to them and join the movement. Indies First!”
Two classic short works by Albert Lamorisse were recently lovingly restored by Janus Films and will be shown together in 35mm prints this weekend at BAM. In The Red Balloon, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, a young boy (Pascal Lamorisse, the director’s son) makes friends with an extraordinary red balloon, which follows him through the streets of Belleville in Paris, waits for him while he is in school, and obeys his every command. But the neighborhood kids are afraid of this stranger and go on a mission to burst the young boy’s bubble. Lamorisse gives life and emotion to the balloon (more than twenty-five thousand were used in the making of the film) in a masterful use of simple special effects well before CGI and other modern technology. The Red Balloon is being screened with another of Lamorisse’s classics, the lesser-known White Mane, in which a magnificent white stallion “who felt trapped in the world of men,” the “proud and fearsome” leader of a herd of wild horses, struggles to maintain his freedom from cowboys in Camargue in the south of France, helped by a young fisherman named Folco (Alain Emery). As in The Red Balloon, Lamorisse imbues the title character with, dare we say it, a unique humanity, as both the balloon and the horse fight for their individuality with only a single young boy at their side. The tender tale includes a new English translation spoken by Peter Strauss. Both films feature the splendid music of Maurice Leroux and the fine photography of Edmond Séchan. The two films are screening November 30 at 11:00 am as part of the twice-monthly BAMcinématek series “BAMkids Movie Matinees,” which continues December 7 with Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and December 21 with Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story.
Unable to resist revisiting the characters who first fell in love in 1995’s Before Sunrise and again in 2004’s Before Sunset, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their roles as Jesse and Celine, respectively, in Richard Linklater’s absolutely wonderful Before Midnight. The couple first met on a train to Vienna in 1994, talking at length about their hopes and desires and planning on getting together in six months’ time, but they don’t reconnect for another nine years, when Celine comes to one of Jesse’s book signings in Paris. In real time, they walk around the City of Light, catching up on what has happened in their lives as Jesse prepares to take a plane back home to his wife and son. And now another nine years have passed, and Jesse and Celine are living together, the parents of twins (Charlotte and Jennifer Prior). As the film opens, the divorced Jesse is putting his teenage son, Hank (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), on a plane after having spent the summer together in Greece. What follows is a marvelous fourteen-minute scene of Jesse driving down a mountain road as he and Celine essentially let the audience know what has occurred over the last nine years: They have twin girls (sleeping in the back), Celine has been offered an important environmental job, and Jesse is considering moving to Chicago to be closer to Hank. They return to a country estate owned by Patrick (award-winning cinematographer Walter Lassally, making his acting debut at the age of eighty-six), who is hosting an outdoor lunch with a group of friends (including French actress Ariane Labed, coproducer and filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, and Xenia Kalogeropoulou, who came out of retirement to appear in her first picture since 1985). They all talk of life and love, with Celine being particularly charming. But when Jesse and Celine go off to a hotel room for what is supposed to be a romantic rendezvous, some things are said and truths revealed that complicate things.
