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In Auvers-sur-Oise in France, an old train car has been turned into a bookshop.

Bad Wolf, via Boing Boing.

We love movies and museums, and while making notes for a meeting at the Ayala Museum we fell to thinking of movie scenes set in museums. There must be thousands, from those Night at the Museum movies to the meeting between 007 and Q in Skyfall. (A friend of ours tried to shoot some scenes for a forthcoming movie at the National Museum but his request was rejected.)

1. Summer Hours by Olivier Assayas

We saw this for the first time last month. It’s gorgeous. When a well-known art scholar dies, her three children must decide what to do with her substantial art collection and her house outside Paris. They can’t keep the art because the inheritance taxes would wipe them out, and keeping the house is no longer practical when two of them live on other continents. In many Tagalog movies, dead parents and inheritance issues are the trigger for hysterical confrontation scenes and high-decibel raking-up of the past. In Summer Hours everyone is so civilized and articulate, so…French?

Summer Hours is an engaging treatise on art, time, life and death, globalization, and objects—what they represent, our attachment to them, how they mean different things in different contexts. An absolute must-watch.

2. Lovers on the Bridge by Leos Carax

Wrenchingly romantic and beautifully weird: a street performer (Denis Lavant) and a woman who’s going blind (Juliette Binoche) meet and fall in love on the Pont Neuf. It’s not easy. In one scene he sneaks her into the Louvre after closing time so she can look at the paintings one last time before she loses her eyesight.

3. Band of Outsiders by Jean-Luc Godard

Apart from containing one of our favorite dance numbers, Bande a Part (Quentin Tarantino borrowed the name for his production company and the dance scene for Pulp Fiction) has that scene in which the three friends try to set a record for racing across the Louvre. Thirty-nine years later, Bertolucci paid homage to that scene (and to the New Wave in French cinema) in The Dreamers.

And here’s that dance scene.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat, in which the smug and self-satisfied get what they deserve.

Tobermory, or why it’s probably not a good idea to teach your cat to speak the common tongue.

You know you’re having an eventful year when the sight of the calendar makes you jump. It’s July??

Click to enlarge.

The Ultimate Literary Calendar at Flavorwire.

We’ve received only one story so far (from parlo lover in good form—read the entry in Comments), which is a little surprising given the possibilities opened up by the premise. If you plan on joining this contest, here are a few pointers to get you started.

What are the circumstances in which you might meet someone who looks exactly like you?

1. You have a twin/triplets/octuplets whose existence has been kept secret from you. Why would this be kept secret? At birth you were taken away from your biological parents and given to another couple to raise as their own. Why?
1.1. Economic reasons (A telenovela staple)
1.2. Political reasons (See the origin story of King Arthur)
1.3. Perhaps the multiple births came about through the use of illicit drugs or technology. Black market in children? A society that enforces strict population controls? The right to reproduce is reserved for a privileged class?
1.4. The biological parents could’ve been assassinated. Why? And how did the children survive?

2. You have a clone. And if you have one clone, you can have thousands. What is the purpose of this cloning program?
2.1. Humans can no longer give birth naturally.
2.2. The population of the earth has been reduced dramatically, and speedy repopulation requires cloning.
2.3. The leadership decided that reproduction by traditional means is too unpredictable; to ensure perfect specimens, just clone everyone.
2.4. Everyone has clones which provide spare parts for when they need replacement organs. (Interesting how the same premise can lead to a bad Michael Bay movie and a good Kazuo Ishiguro novel.)
2.4.1. The clones are kept apart from the “real” person. How did they escape?
2.4.2. The clones demand their human rights, rise up in revolt.
2.4.3. How do you know you’re the original and not the clone?
2.4.4. If everyone has copies, who is authentic?

3. You have had some kind of psychological breakdown that caused you to split in half.
3.1. The split is literal. There can be only one of you, so you and your copy must fight over who gets to keep your identity. Read Shatterday by Harlan Ellison, or watch this excellent TV adaptation from the 80s reboot of Twilight Zone.

Directed by Wes Craven, starring Bruce Willis with hair.

3.2. You have a doppelganger who possesses the qualities you lack. See The Double by Dostoevsky.
3.3. You’re imagining this double.
3.4. The double is you, from an alternate universe.
3.5. You are in a coma and the double is your projection of yourself.

4. You are literally divided in two by a technology malfunction. Watch the classic Star Trek episode The Enemy Within, where a transporter glitch causes Captain Kirk to split into good Kirk and bad Kirk (both played by bad acting Kirk haha, love that William Shatner).

Bad Kirk starts boozing and molesting the female crew; good Kirk is rendered an ineffectual leader by his refusal to make decisions that may have adverse effects. Duality is a fact of human nature—the halves need to find a way to coexist harmoniously, or the individual stays at war with herself. Check out the work of Carl Jung the ever-weird and wonderful.

The best science-fiction has always used science and technology as a springboard for discussions of the big questions. (And classic Star Trek really chewed on those big questions because they didn’t have dazzling special effects with which to distract the audience. Story first, effects later.)

We need stories! By the way, those writing workshops we’ve mentioned are finally going to be held. We want to keep the classes small, but places will be reserved for winners of our LitWit Challenges.

* * * * *

Red is the Color of Life, and So is Black, an hommage to The Shining by Geraldine Javier.

The idea for this month’s LitWit Challenge comes from a BBC America series called Orphan Black. It has one of the most arresting opening scenes we can remember.

On a train we are introduced to Sarah, a young woman on the run. She gets off the train, and while waiting for the next one, she notices a woman pacing on the platform. She can’t see the woman’s face, but the woman is clearly in an agitated state. As the train arrives, the woman leaps into its path. Sarah approaches the body and realizes that the woman looks exactly like her. They could be twins.

In 500 words or more, write us a story in which the protagonist meets a total stranger who looks exactly like her/him. How did that happen? Who is that “twin”? What happens next?

Jeremy Irons as the twin gynecologists in David Cronenberg’s supremely creepy Dead Ringers.

Post your entries in Comments. We’re accepting submissions until Friday, 5 July 2013.

The winner gets these:

two fat little books about Art and Architecture.

The monthly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstores.