The Texas Book Festival is coming back to Austin again on November 16 and 17, bringing plenty of opportunities to browse books and hear from authors. But one free, annual event expands the opportunities for community engagement beyond the main festival — the Lit Crawl, now turning the page for its 13th year on Saturday.
This year things are different: attendees won't move from venue to venue (i.e. no more crawling), but the spirit is the same with nine different events and organizations coming together for programming under one roof. That central venue is Speakeasy (412 Congress Ave. D), a three-level nightclub about half a mile down the road from the main festival.
Since the venue is so large, there will still be a change of scenery for book-lovers who aren't ready to sit still. (They exist.)
On the ground floor there are readings from comedy and satire books, and then readings by noir writers. Simultaneously, on different sides of the ballroom, there's collaborative storytelling, advice from books, a trivia game show, and a Literary Death Match for selecting a favorite live reading.
Finally, on the rooftop, there are poetry readings, a showcase of Black women writers, and a celebration of banned books — or even books organizers expect to banned in the future.
Programming is organized by:
Haunt Happy Books
Literary Death Match
Austin Indie Book Festival
American Short Fiction
Texas Poetry Crush
Torch Literary Arts
Librotraficantes
Worded Funny
Noir at the Bar
All the events take place from 7-10 pm, so it's possible to hop between them, but difficult to make all of them. Thankfully, it won't cut into festival time: the events closer to the capitol are scheduled from 10 am to 4:15 pm. Guests must be at least 21 years old to attend the crawl, but the main festival is open to everyone. Both are free and accessible to the public.
John Turturro in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York.
John Turturro is one of those people who embodies the term “character actor” the best. With over 120 credits in his nearly 50-year career, Turturro has rarely been the star of any of his projects. Instead, filmmakers have mostly used his unique face, New York accent, and inimitable acting style to help support the lead actors, a role for which Turturro seems well-suited.
Now 69, Turturro is taking the reins in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, playing Harry, a long-in-the-tooth thief who still has skills but not as many opportunities. The plucking of wallets isn’t as lucrative in the mostly-cashless modern society, and Harry has little use for smartphones since he doesn’t know how to use them. However, a rare opportunity presents itself when he happens upon Dylan (Will Price), a young man who seems to be as oblivious as he is rich.
After a clever robbery of Dylan’s vintage car, though, Harry discovers he might be in over his head, especially when he finds a card-shaped USB drive. It's the contents of the drive that soon puts Harry and anyone around him in danger, including his wife, Rosie (Karina Arroyave), who’s suffering from unresponsive wakefulness syndrome; Ben (Steve Buscemi), who helps Harry sell stolen items; and even his estranged daughter Kelly (Tatiana Maslany).
Written and directed by Noah Segan, the film is a low-key thriller made to emulate the tempo of Harry’s life. While one of the plot points puts a degree of urgency into his actions, for the most part Harry is someone for whom slow and steady always wins the race. He is someone who has developed relationships over decades, including with NYPD Detective Warren (Giancarlo Esposito), and it’s those bonds that help him make it through each day.
Even though Harry is a criminal, the film treats him as an overall good guy, especially through the way he takes care of Rosie and the generosity he displays with his (stolen) money. Almost no one has a bad thing to say about him, and so Segan comes up with a couple of ways to give him more depth. His one scene with Kelly does the trick, providing a glimpse into a lesser man who clearly existed at one time.
One of the pleasures of the film for longtime movie fans are the reunions Turturro has with Buscemi (his co-star in The Big Lebowski) and Esposito (his co-star in Do the Right Thing). All three could be all-stars on a team of character actors, with each having made big impressions in all sorts of roles over the past 40 years. Seeing them back together again as very different characters from when they last collaborated underscores the level of talent each of them has.
Turturro ably carries the load in the lead role, but given his acting style and the type of role he’s called to play, his performance is far from showy. The same goes for Buscemi and Esposito, who are there to give great support to the classic supporting actor. When someone does go over-the-top, as Price does in most of his scenes, it stands out in a bad way. Maslany scores a lot of points in her brief appearance.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is a quiet film with big rewards despite its small ambitions. The beauty of the story lies in its small details, both character-related and not. Turturro rarely disappoints when he’s not the lead actor, and he demonstrates that he’s equally capable of making a movie great when he’s out front.
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The Only Living Pickpocket in New York opens in theaters on October 30.
