NYC You Are Here Talks to Liniers at the Lyon BD Festival -France

The Lyon BD Festival has just finished up it's 8 Edition in Lyon, France. NYC You Are Here got to talk a little with Argentine Cartoonist Ricardo Siri Liniers about his new book for children, "The Big Wet Balloon." He is Known for his comic strip published in the La Nación Newspaper. Liniers has many a book out in Spanish. This year he will publish not only his new collection of comics in English (Macanudo) but has jumped into making children's books with Toon Books of New York City. This September Toon Books and Liniers will celebrate the publishing of "The Big Wet Balloon" at the Brooklyn Book Festival. This Wet book is a funny and sweet portrait of the cartoonist daughters and the way they love Saturday's, even rainy ones. Liniers said that comic strips like "Charlie Brown" and "Calvin & Hobbes" are one of the reasons he started to draw. Also he took inspiration from cartoonist like Art Spiegelman and Matt Groening. So much so that he took out a pen and paper to draw a cartoon of himself as a cross on Art's "Maus" and Matt's "Life in Hell" cartoons. Check out "The Big Wet Balloon" this September from Toon Books and look for Liniers other comic collections in print in Spanish and soon in English.

Toon Books "The Big Wet Balloon"
English:
http://www.toon-books.com/about-the-book-lin_en.html
Spanish:
http://www.toon-books.com/about-the-book_lin_spanish.html

Brooklyn Book Festival
http://www.brooklynbookfestival.org/BBF/Home

Poetry, Muaic and Art Tonight at the 61 Local!

Tonight come down to a Poetry Reading and Embroidery Circle. It all starts at 6pm and will wind down around 9pm. Bring your words and smiles to the 61 Local, 61 Bergen Street near Smith Street (F/G trains to Bergen) This event is in conjunction with the Artist Iviva Olenick's work with the @EmbroideryPoems project. The evening will begin with a quick embroidery lesson, after which poets will read, with musical breaks by Cristina Martin and friends. As poets read, embroiderers will stitch select phrases, creating new "found" embroidered poems. Everyone can come and join the embroidery circle because the supplies will be provided, or be an audience member without embroidering. The 61 Local has a great selection of locally crafted beers, food, and non-alcoholic beverages. The Performing poets/musicians include: Jeanette Anderson, Mahogany Browne, Robert Colpitts, Liz Daly, Megan DiBello, Jessica Elsaesser, Kevin Kinsella, Iviva Olenick, Monte Olenick, Montana Ray, Purvi Shah, Kris Wettstein, and original music by Cristina Martin. This event was funded from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs as administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council.  With music, beer, poetry and craft art this is the best way to spend this Thursday evening!

www.IvivaOlenick.com
www.IvivaOlenick.com EmbroideryPoems.tumblr.com

Last Days to see Scarecrow at the Film Forum!

The 70's had the best Road Movies. Think back to the end of the 60's and Easy Rider. Then on to films like Two-Lane BlackTop and Vanishing Point in 71'. These and many more showed the gritty American landscape of that decade with trips across country. If one would like to be taken back to this time head Downtown to the Film Forum to see Gene Hackman and Al Pacino in the 1973 Road Movie - Scarecrow. The 70's might have been the last decade of the Hobo Traveller. This was a way to get around hitchhiking on the back roads and if need be hopping trains. This film Directed by Jerry Schatzberg, who just two years before had made The Panic in Needle Park with Pacino, is about two down and outs that meet on the road and head East. Max (Hackman) is a ex-con that likes to fight with a dream of opening a Car Wash in Pittsburgh. Lionel (Pacino) is a sailor who has some strange ideas about playing the clown. Lionel believes that the scarecrow doesn't scare birds, but instead amuses them - birds find scarecrows funny. In this way he shows Max that fighting can be avoided by making people laugh. This is not always the case as the two jump from one ride to another stopping at dive bars and little towns that seem to be living on their last leg. This is a film that shows just how crazy traveling can be and is one of the films that made the 70's the decade of the Road Movie. In New York the Film Forum brings lots of old films to the screen. So go down and check out the Director that gave the young Al Pacino his big break in the second film they made together - Scarecrow.

NYC You Are Here Back-Log - Panic in Needle Park

Book Then Movie - The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald is now a box office hit Directed by Baz Luhrmann. A all star cast has come forward to be apart of this historic film based off one on the best novels ever written. First is Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, then Tobey Maguire, and one of the best young actress out there, Carey Mulligan, make this production of a classic pice of literature into a big box office smash. Luhrmann was the Director that brought the world Romeo + Juliet in 1996,  also staring DiCaprio. This movie will be in the theater for a long time. So one will have time to flip through the book and then get to the Cinema. This is not only a must read for every New Yorker, but all Americans and book lovers. It not only shows us the American Jazz Age, it shows us just how good a pice of writing can be.

Here is a Book Review from the back log on NYC You Are Here of F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby --

This great work of Twentieth Century American Fiction was not so well known in Fitzgerald's life time. The first printing that came out in 1925 was over 20,000 copies and sold out. The second printing (3,000) sat on the shelves of a warehouse for 15 years. Only after the news of his death did the last of the second printing finely sell. His novel is not just a social history, but is a pleasure to read. The Jazz Age, that great party before the depression. This is what is represented with the bigger then life characters in the Great Gatsby. The twenties was a time of bootleggers, flappers, and self made men. Fitzgerald knew how full and just how empty these characters lives could be. "The Jazz Age, it was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire." Gatsby is the man of the Jazz Age. He Has "some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life...an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness." This is a story about life, love and money from the 20's. It is also a story about New York, Long Island and how even back then young people flocked here to be where the actions is. The narrator Nick Carraway comes from the Midwest to find himself before being married. His story is told by reconstructing events in Gatsby's life from his own prospective. This Tall Tale is not just Gatsby's, or Nicks, but it becomes yours as you form your own prospective. "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life." Nick lives next door to Gatsby on Long Island. On the Island rich people have big parties, nice cars, and huge estates. In contrast some of the story goes on inside Manhattan, in small apartments, city streets and train stations. Nick's NYC is a big bustling place full of surprises. The whole book has a dark feeling that is heightened when in the city and lifted, if only slightly, within the excess of Long Island. But this is a vale, a fake cover for people that want to run from not through life's twist and turns. A must read for any New Yorker.

Street Book - The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Found - at the CAN MOCAMP in Kas, Turkey
Picked Up Because - This was a book in English!

This novel written in the mid 80's is told through a interesting point of view. From the start the athor let's the reader know that it is just a story and the people in it just characters. The "story" of these fake people is told around very real historical events that happened in Prague starting with the Russian occupation the spring of 1968. A film of this book was made in 1988 with Daniel Day-Lewis cast as the books womanizer who lives for his work as a surgeon, but falls for a young woman with unstable dreams that he makes his wife. This does not stop the sex he craves with many other woman to fill his intellectual thirst. One of this mans lovers is a strange Artist that has a reason of her own for her over sexed lifestyle. The Arthur has a tendency to take small timeouts from his lovers lives to explain the human mind and how we may see the acts of fate by using philosophy and other rants. Is the world "Light" to some and "Heavy" for others? Is the feeling of lightness a reaction to being free? Or just a symptom of the mind that wants to fit feeling with fact? In this book these are not questions that can have a answer, just ways to help the fake lives of these people seem more real. Some parts of this Novel one will read twice just to let it all soak in and that is what makes this a great book.

Tai Thai Thailand Home Cooking

Downtown at the border of the East Village and the LES is a little spot that has great Thai home cooking. The lunch special here is worth the walk, just remember to stop at the ATM because they only take cash. The small dinning area helps make this spot feel like home, if home was full of movie posters of Thai Action Films. This family run restaurant has great Curry! The food is so good it reminds one of the tasty Thai food on the West Coast in California. Their curries pop with lots of veggies and the pad thai is full of flavor. Call in orders for lunch and they will have everthing ready for pick up fast! So next time your tummy is craving for some Thai, head down to E. Houston for some Tai Thai Thailand Home Cooking. (78 E 1st St, New York, NY 10009)

Citizen Kane this Weekend at Midnight in the L.E.S.

In 1941 Orson Welles made his first feature film now considered by most as the greatest film ever made. The year this came out it was nominated for nine Academy Awards but failed to recoup its costs at the box office. The screenplay did win the Oscar for Herman Mankiewicz and Welles. Welles and RKO started a war because of "Kane" that would have a big effect on Welles and his Directing career. Forced to quickly finish films that the studio then added "happy endings" to without Welles consent lead to box office failure and little Directing jobs for Welles. His radio and acting careers did continue. Citizen Kane is a story of Charles Foster Kane a newspaper man with a large ego, a character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. This great story is told through flashbacks that start and end with the elusive "Rosebud." When Welles was again given the Directors chair he made some more stand out films including "The Lady from Shanghai" '47 and "Touch of Evil" '58. Did Welles make his best film first? How does the story of the power hungry, motivated, obsessed Charles Foster Kane help tell the story of Orson Welles? Who or what was "Rosebud" to these two men one real and one fiction? Go down to the Sunshine Cinema this weekend at midnight and see if you can unravel the mystery.

Art in the City - Open and Opening!

Spring on its way with New Art Openings. This last Thursday The Christopher Henry Gallery had a reception for Allison Maletz's "Together." The work in this show uses the Myth of The American Nuclear Family to portray a dream like view in wotorcolor taken from photographs. The Artist uses her background as a Documentarian to change what the world still would see as ordinary. This New York Artist takes her past and makes it seem like our future. Showing through March 24th.
Also on Sunday The Sons of Israel have a Opening in Long Island City to show off seven talented Artist of different fields. In this show one will get a chance to see Art from all around the world. The reception is this Sunday on March 3, at 1pm - 5pm. Expect some music for your ears and to keep your eyes full with some Video Art. Featuring the work of Sara Smokler, Michal Novikov, Fred Libove, Maor , Betty-Ann Hogan, Annie Patt and Sal Cervantes.

The Christopher Henry Gallery:
Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 11 – 6, Sunday 12 – 6, Monday and Tuesday by appointment. T: 212.244.6004, E: ch@christopherhenrygallery.com

Sons of Israel Opening:
3321 Crescent Street, Astoria, NY 11106

Django Unchained Picks Up Two Oscars!

Quentin Tarantino did good on his new film "Django Unchained," grossing over $380 Million worldwide and catching two Oscars. One Oscar was given to Quentin for the Best Original Screenplay, and the other Oscar for Best Supporting Actor was given to Christoph Waltz. He did a fine job in the role of a bounty hunter with class. This story about the Dirty South is told in a fantastic way using the frame work from old Spaghetti Westerns. Tarantino once more casts Actors he has many times, (Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson) and the way they work with the camera is spot on. Jamie Fox plays the Hero very well and one can see his change from Slave to Master build through the film. Some of the inspiration for this Western came from a Sergio Corbucci Spaghetti Western from 1966, "Django." As in most Tarantino films there is a story and inspiration behind every little thing and every shot. This is why his writing is so good. One must get out and see "Django Unchained" in the theater. This would lose some charm if not seen on the big screen.

Les Misérables 2012 Film Still on the Big Screen!

This Big Budget Musical can still be seen in Cinemas around the world. As the Oscar's are coming up people will try to see this a contender for Best Picture on the big screen, which is well worth the trip to a theater. With this new Musical there are almost a dozen versions of the 1862 Victor Hugo story to watch, but the stage musical is still the best known. Cameron Mackintosh, the producer of that stage hit is the one that brings the world this over two hour film with 50 songs. He has built not only a full scale set, but also an all star cast. With Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, and Anne Hathaway in the three main roles. Hugh Jackman known for his work on stage and screen takes the audience through the hard life of the runaway convict Jean Valjean. It seemed as if Anne Hathaway used her work on many award shows in the last two years as an audition for this role, but it worked and she really shines. Even Russell Crowe makes a good impression in his role of the inspector that follows his convict through the years. With Tom Hopper looking for his second Best Director Oscar the world wants to watch and see what will happen this year. Will the Best Picture Oscar go to a Musical for the first time in ten years?

Showing in NYC:
City Cinemas Village East Cinema
181-189 Second Avenue, New York, NY, United States - (800) 326-3264 ext. 2708

Must See in NYC - Roosevelt Island Tram

In NYC not everything is free, but there are a lot of things that are almost free. The Roosevelt Island Tram is one of them. This Tram lifts people over the city streets into the sky 250 feet over the East River. The Tramcar has been using the Queensboro Bridge to take passengers across the river 3,100 feet to Roosevelt Island for over 30 years. Take it as the Sun is setting and get a even better ride! The New York Times has said that it is "the most exciting view in New York City!" In 2002 the first Spider-Man Film used the Tram for Spider-Man's battle with the Green Goblin. This is when Mary Jane Watson was thrown off the Queensboro Bridge. This was not the first time Spider-Man had saved the tram. The Comic book had used it many times as a way for evil doers to hurt the people of New York City. So for the swipe of a Metro Card one can go for this 4 minute ride and see the streets from above. Then once on the Island pictures can be taken of Manhattan's famous skyline. From there one can take the ride back over the water or find the Underground and take the F Train to the next exciting place in this the Greatest City in the World.

**Two cabins make the run at fifteen minute intervals from 6:00 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. on weekends) **Bicycles are permitted on the tram.