Belle and Sebastian played ACL Live on Friday night.
Photo by Daniel Cavazos
Last Friday, Scottish legends Belle and Sebastian threw an epic dance party at ACL Live. The highly anticipated show was a fitting tribute to the band's two-decade identity.
Reaching into their back catalogue, as well as the most recent release, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, Belle and Sebastian plucked tunes from nearly every album. Frontman Stuart Murdoch was his usual chipper and bouncy self, going solo for the first time that evening on the single from Girls, "The Party Line."
Following the Austin show, the band played Dallas and Memphis before embarking on a fall full of European tour dates.
Director Richard Linklater is premiering a new film, Nouvelle Vague, to Austin audiences on October 27.
Famous Austin film director Richard Linklater is premiering a new film, Nouvelle Vague, to Austin audiences on October 27 through his own Austin Film Society (AFS). Linklater will attend, along with actors Guillaume Marbeck and Zoey Deutch.
Nouvelle Vague is "Linklater's love letter to the revolutionary magic of the French New Wave," according to a press release. It "reimagines" the 1960 Jean-Luc Godard film Breathless, his breakout film that earned him global acclaim and a legacy as one of the leaders of international cinema. The film depicted a Parisian criminal obsessed with romanticized American gangsters, who is on the run with his romantic interest, journalist Patricia Franchini.
Linkletter's answer to Breathless also takes place in Paris in 1959, but it's not a remake. Instead, this film looks at Breathless from a more meta angle, dealing with the making of the original masterpiece. This fits right in with Linklater's reputation in Austin as a film legend who treasures the medium and its history.
"I said, 'We're making a film from 1959, but it's not a Godard film. It's not made by him, it's made by somebody else ... about this moment,'" explained Linklater at a press conference after the film's world premiere at Cannes 2025, as quoted in a press release. "You can't imitate Godard — you'd fail — but we could feel the style of the time. There's not a shot in the movie that wouldn't be in a film from back then. It was a crazy idea, but film people are crazy."
The Austin premiere will actually screen the film twice, simultaneously. One screening will take place in one theater on 35-millimeter print. The other will take place in another theater in a digital format. The 35-millimeter screening will be followed by an in-person Q&A with the director and stars, which will be livestreamed into the additional digital screening. Attendees at the digital screening will still get to see the people behind the film in person, since they'll be there at the beginning to introduce the film.
After the AFS screenings, Nouvelle Vague will hit select US theaters on October 31 and Netflix in the US on November 14.
Tickets will be available to AFS Members ($50) on Wednesday, October 8, at noon. Then sales will open to the general public ($60) Friday, October 10, at noon, with assigned seating. Events attended by Linklater and cast tend to sell very fast, so readers who know they want to go might want to set a reminder to get tickets as they become available.
Fans of French cinema can find plenty of it at AFS this fall. The nonprofit has curated a program called Eternal Youth: New Wave & French Cinemas of Tomorrow. First is the series "French New Wave, Curated by Richard Linklater," which will wrap up with screenings of Breathless on October 29 and 31. Then the annual New French Cinema Week will be held November 20-23.
A similar premiere will happen for another 2025 Linklater release, Blue Moon, on October 24. Blue Moon stars Ethan Hawke and Margaret Qualley; Linklater and producer Mike Blizzard will attend the premiere for an introduction and Q&A. Tickets ($28/38) will be available to members October 7 and the public October 9.
