Young American poet Adam Gordon is a fraud and a bastard. And the fact he’s spending a year in Madrid, as the recipient of a prestigious fellowship, is thanks to total pretence. Officially, he’s in the Spanish capital to write a “long and research-driven poem… about the literary response to the Civil War.” But Adam intends doing no such thing (thank god). Instead he smokes pot, takes prescription drugs, forms wafer-thin relationships and frets constantly about the validity of his experiences. If that narrative risks coming off as trite, then Leaving the Atocha Station, by American poet Ben Lerner (who spent a year in Madrid as a Fulbright scholar), is far from it. The book, which is thin … [Read more...] about A new take on the American abroad
About James Blick
Rosales paints a masterpiece of family grief
Fresh from its premier in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at this year’s rain-soaked Cannes, Sueño y silencio was originally going to be a very different film. Or rather, a very traditional one. Catalan filmmaker Jaime Rosales planned to shoot in colour, with professional actors and a conventional script. But as he prepared the film, all that fell away, leaving us with grungy, grainy black and white, non-actors, no script and a series of fragmentary scenes that sketch out, with aching and rare authenticity, a family in terrible crisis. Oriol, an architect, and his wife Yolanda, a Spanish teacher, live in Paris with their two daughters. Their lives are comfortable and unremarkable. In … [Read more...] about Rosales paints a masterpiece of family grief
What will I be when I grow up…in Spain?
I left New Zealand just over a year ago. Probably permanently. And as I suspect is the case for many expats, moving overseas became an opportunity for personal reinvention. Flying out of Auckland, I wasn’t coming to Spain to reinvent myself. I was moving here with my Spanish wife, Yoly. But the temptation to start afresh is compelling. And moving so far from home is the ultimate chance to break with the past. So, two months after arriving in Madrid I became the new me. I gave up directing TV commercials, a job I didn’t enjoy in New Zealand or Spain, and I became a full-time writer. A bad cliché (and an even worse financial decision), I know. But within a few months of my rebirth, the … [Read more...] about What will I be when I grow up…in Spain?
Latest ‘[REC]’ instalment offers schlock over terror
REC3 Genesis, the latest movie in Spain’s celebrated zombie franchise, invites viewers to the swank marriage of cooing lovebirds Koldo and Clara. And the nuptial backdrop is a canny move. Director Paco Plaza has rightly realised that weddings - stuffed with religious symbolism, overrun with staggering inebriates and blinded by gaudy dance-floor lights - are a little like a horror movie anyway. Once the guests start eating each other, what’s the difference? The first two films in the series, shot à la The Blair Witch Project with first-person perspective and handheld cameras, played out in a cursed, zombie-infested Barcelona apartment block. The second instalment took up where the … [Read more...] about Latest ‘[REC]’ instalment offers schlock over terror
Red Lights: The sceptics are heroes in paranormal movie thriller
In the opening minutes of Red Lights, the new paranormal thriller by Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés, Dr Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) arrive at a house on a hill to investigate a reported ghost. Big, old and surrounded by skeletal trees - the place certainly looks haunted. But the thing is, it isn’t. The suspected poltergeist is just an unhappy little girl, slamming her wardrobe door to scare the bejesus out of mum and dad. Case closed. By day, Matheson and Buckley teach paranormal scepticism to psychology students and by night and on the weekends, they’re a hoax-fighting duo, exposing alleged hauntings and fraudulent psychics. But they meet their … [Read more...] about Red Lights: The sceptics are heroes in paranormal movie thriller
Ferran Adrià’s lavish tale sates our curiosity, but not our appetite
The food world was startled when Spanish uber-chef Ferran Adrià announced that El Bulli, his temple to haut cuisine and five-times best restaurant in the world, would be serving its last mind-bending supper in July 2011. Although dispensing with the diners might seem an odd move for a chef, it makes sense after watching German director Gereon Wetzel’s documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress. Shot from 2008 to 2009, the film is a year in the life of Adrià and his chefs. And it portrays a chef-cum-artist for whom the logical next step is his proposed culinary think tank (due to open in 2014), rather than a restaurant that serves dinner. The film opens as the whitewashed El Bulli, sunk … [Read more...] about Ferran Adrià’s lavish tale sates our curiosity, but not our appetite
Spain’s buried past
A true city of the dead, five million bodies lie buried in Madrid’s Our Lady of the Almudena Cemetery. And bar the towering cypresses, it’s a monochrome landscape of powerful granite tombs and austere crucifixes. Winding through the graves, half lost, I finally glimpsed a flash of colour. Red, yellow and purple - the flag of the Spanish Republic. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Second Spanish Republic. A short lived affair, running from 1931 to 1939, the Republic was ring-fenced by dictators. And for many left-wing Spaniards it represents an oasis of progressive secular government - women’s rights, civil marriage and divorce, clear Church and state separation - before … [Read more...] about Spain’s buried past
Madrid’s new river
Unlike the great rivers of Europe - the Rhine, the Danube or the Seine, so often evoked in art and so historically significant as trade routes or the frontiers of empire, Madrid’s Manzanares is more likely to induce a shrug. Or, as is tradition amongst Madrilenians, a one-liner. In parts completely dry during summer, in other parts a series of large puddles, it’s often not much more than a riverbed with a stream running through it. Or, as one Spanish writer suggested, a trail of saliva. Descending from the Sierra de Guadarrama to the north of the city before - 87 kilometres later - giving up the ghost and dumping into the River Jarama to the south, it skirts Madrid’s western edge as … [Read more...] about Madrid’s new river