Ceremony

Directed by Max Winkler (2010)

Starring: Michael Angarano, Reece Thompson,  Uma Thurman, Lee Pace

Ceremony feels like an adult Rushmore.  It tries so hard to be like a Wes Anderson film or to follow the tradition of Quirky Independent American dramedies, and it makes for a pretty enjoyable movie.   Sam Davis (Angarano), a picture book author, drags his friend Marshall (Thompson) out of the city for a vacation.  What they’re really doing is crashing the wedding of Sam’s pen pal Zoe (Thurman), who he’s in love with.

It seems like Ceremony scratches an itch I needed: moving from the city of New York to a New England mansion, where every wedding guest hangs around to drink and wander around the beach.  Every main character has a serious personality flaw, from Marshall’s acknowledged anxiety disorder to the narcissism of Zoe’s fiance, Whit (Pace).

(And can we talk about Lee Pace in this movie for a second?  After Pushing Daisies I would have thought that he’d be stuck in the Nice Guy type, but that guy is proving he’s got range.  Especially the range of an asshole, which Whit is, but in a quasi-likable kind of way.  He’s just so handsome!  and clueless.  I can’t hate the clueless.)

It’s a surprisingly tight story, despite the languid nature of the wedding guests.  The wedding stretches out over a weekend, filled with parties and drinking and awkward sleeping arrangements.

Actually, what I really like about this movie is the ending.  It’s perfectly emotionally resonant, which might have to do with its choice of music, but I also just like how non-formulaic the characters’ actions are.  What Sam gets from the experience of crashing the wedding and trying to steal the bride is that he’s more similar to Whit than he could have imagined.  The character who shows the most growth is Marshall, even when he spends most of the second half looking for his missing pair of shoes.

The fact is, even later in life than we’d like to admit, Max Fischer and the other ghosts of high school still remain.  Sam and Marshall are in their early twenties, but it doesn’t make them any more mature.  Sam wants to have an adventurous life, but he pursues that goal without consideration for the people he involves and it’s fun to watch him realize that.

ALA Conference Recap

Last Saturday I took a six hour drive to Washington, D.C. in order to attend Book Nerd’s Paradise.  Really, ALA can be summed up best by this video:

This video was made on Friday, and when the majority of my book club lined up for John Green and David Levithan’s signing on Sunday, John Green was considerably less energized.  To be fair, that line was like an hour and a half long and they had full conference schedules.

However, later that day at a pizza lunch David Levithan proved that he was not just a talented writer and editor, but that he can SING.  Motherfucker goddamn!  As well as being totally in the theme with Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

A rather blurred picture of me, with Giraffe and "Tales of the Madman Underground"

There were many awesome authors at ALA and many publishers and companies who all seemed to have a lot of free stuff that they wanted to give to members of a teen bookclub wandering around in matching t-shirts.  Seriously, story of my life.  I came home with eighteen books and I only bought five.  Also received posters, free CDs, book catalogs, notebooks, tote bags, comic previews, and a mango smoothie.

Authors I got signed books from: John Barnes, Holly Black, Libba Bray, John Green, David Levithan, G.M Malliet, and Adam Rapp,

Since I am a library dork, I got stupidly excited over a book-return conveyor belt which checked in the books as you returned them.  I have seen the future, and it is both practical and expensive.  Lovely.  But this system combined about three steps of the book checking-in process into one (return, check in, and sort) and it also gave the patron a screen to check that everyone had been returned correctly as well as a receipt for documented proof.

Monday was a lot like Sunday, except subtract the free lunch and add on a whole lot of tired.  My friend Anna and I ended up slumped against a wall before noon, just waiting around for the great giveaway.  That is when, on the last day of the conference, publishers decide that it is cheaper to give books away rather than ship them back to wherever they came from.  My particular group waited forty minutes in line at the Simon & Schuster booth, but success!  I got the galley for Pete Hautman’s new young adult novel.

Monday night featured the Printz reception, which we arrived to late, thanks to the subway.  We missed Adam Rapp’s acceptance speech for Punkzilla, but saw all the other ones.  Libba Bray was entertaining as all hell, but gave a rather trippy speech as she accepted the Printz award for Going Bovine. I did get to see her challenge Rick Yancey to an existential throwdown, so all’s good.  The reception– cake, booze for the over-21-set– will remain in mind as a fierce argument about Zombified Unicorns and Unicornified Zombies.  Loosely based on a new short story collection Zombies vs. Unicorns.

Have I told y’all lately that Libba Bray is insane?  As in, sincerely crazy.  She gave a wonderfully trippy acceptance speech and I am enjoying Going Bovine. I just wish I had read it before the conference!

Tuesday was Library Advocacy Day!  The day I wish I had brought my camera more than anything. ;_;  But this was the dealio: We went to Capitol Hill and had a rally about how libraries need support.  We’re hurting from the economy, but demand for libraries is going up!  More people need the job-searching services, free internet, and books that they offer.