5 Things to Do This Weekend

The early decades of Disney animation were filled with female faces: Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty and more. But the women who helped create those characters and the movies that featured them have often gone as unrecognized as Cinderella at the prince’s ball.

The historian Mindy Johnson wants to change that. On Sunday at 11 a.m. at Film Forum in Manhattan, she will present Pencils, Pens and Brushes: The Colorful Women of Early Disney Animation, geared toward children 8 and older.

Part of the series Film Forum Jr., the program, which is $11 ($9 for members), will incorporate movie clips and photographs, as well as screenings of “Flowers and Trees” (1932) and “The Old Mill” (1937). Produced while Hazel Sewell led Disney’s ink-and-paint department, those pioneering color cartoons both won Oscars. Young cinephiles will also watch “Once Upon a Wintertime” (1948), for which Mary Blair, another Disney talent, created haunting concept art.

Johnson, who wrote “Pencils, Pens & Brushes: A Great Girls’ Guide to Disney Animation,” will introduce additional figures, like Milicent Patrick, the studio’s first female animator, and Ruthie Tompson, who worked behind the scenes there for four decades and died on Sunday at 111. Johnson will also sign copies of her book, which includes many more unsung heroines.
LAUREL GRAEBER

A guiding principle of curation is care, and some extend that concern beyond the art itself to the people and practices behind the works. With this more expansive notion, in 2019 the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council began its “Take Care Series,” a free public program featuring workshops, talks and artist studio visits at the Arts Center at Governors Island. The last installment for the year will take place on Saturday.

From noon to 5 p.m., you can get a glimpse of works in progress by the center’s most recent cohort of artists in residence. While there, you can also catch Meg Webster’s, Onyedika Chuke’s and Muna Malik’s exhibitions, which will be on view in the galleries through Oct. 31. At 2 p.m., the writer Asiya Wadud will create a poem based on Malik’s participatory piece, “Blessing of the Boats.” Her sculpture contains origami boats that people have been encouraged to create and inscribe with their visions for the future. To attend these events, R.S.V.P. at LMCC.net.
MELISSA SMITH

Comedy

Enthusiasm Uncurbed

J.B. Smoove is a funny man, short in neither stature nor words, though it was a short-form comedy that earned him his first Emmy Award, for his role as Chief Billy Bills in the Quibi/Roku series “Mapleworth Murders.”

Comedy fans have enjoyed Smoove in a variety of film and TV appearances, but perhaps none as much as his continuing portrayal of Leon Black, Larry David’s unlikeliest of friends and housemates in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” (It returns for its 11th season on Oct. 24.) In 2017, Smoove turned Leon’s questionable advice into a book, “The Book of Leon: Philosophy of a Fool,” and earlier this year, he began offering his own observations in a podcast for the Team Coco network called “May I Elaborate? Daily Wisdom From J.B. Smoove.”

You can catch more of Smoove’s thoughts on life this weekend when he headlines Carolines on Broadway, performing at 7 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, with additional shows at 9:45 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Tickets start at $53.
SEAN L. McCARTHY

Film Series

Rivals and Pirates

In two early-1970s masterpieces, “Out 1” and “Céline and Julie Go Boating,” the French New Wave filmmaker Jacques Rivette playfully conjures a sense that conspiracies and magic exist just below the surface of everyday life. The movies also advance a metafictional proposition: that film watching amounts to a secret compact agreed to by the director, the actors and the audience.

This week, BAM is showing two subsequent, less well-known Rivette features — conceived as two parts of a loose series, never completed — in a similar vein. Shot in vibrant colors by William Lubtchansky, “Duelle” (screening Friday through Oct. 21) stars Juliet Berto and Bulle Ogier as mysterious rivals searching for a diamond; Hermine Karagheuz, who died in April, plays a hotel clerk caught in the middle. “Noroît” (showing Friday through Monday) is an appealingly minimalist adventure that flaunts its theatricality. Geraldine Chaplin’s character gains the confidence of a pirate leader (Bernadette Lafont) to get revenge against her.
BEN KENIGSBERG

Robert Glasper grew up idolizing jazz piano lions like Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, but it wasn’t till he met the virtuosic hip-hop producer J Dilla, in the early 2000s, that he had a model for his career.

In the decade since recording “Black Radio,” his breakout 2012 album, Glasper has become a star supporting actor: Though a dazzling soloist, he’s now best known for his collaborations with heavies in R&B and hip-hop, his stewardship of contemporary jazz all-star groups and his film scores.

So it follows that his monthlong residency at the Blue Note in Greenwich Village — an annual tradition that kicked off in 2018 — is also a roll call of the greatest names in neo-soul and Soulquarian hip-hop. Glasper’s featured guest from Thursday to Sunday, with sets at 8 and 10:30 p.m., will be the mesmerizing vocalist and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello. (Tickets start at $45.) The residency continues through Nov. 7 and includes runs with the Dinner Party (an all-star outfit co-led by the multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin) and with the vocalists Bilal and PJ Morton.
GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO