Boom! Like a bullet from a gun we´re up and out early to the Auditori. Breakfast is a luxury for one of us, particularly when there are supermarkets on the way that sell crisps and chocolate, so it´s with full stomachs and open minds that we check out Gaspar Noe’s controversial and highly anticipated mind-blower….
ENTER THE VOID – AUDITORI – 10:15HRS
This was a total visual extravaganza and whilst we were already anticipating a well shot and visually impressive film, the reports and feedback we’d seen on the web were that it was an over-long, pretentious film with a highly disjointed story. In our opinion, the stuff we’d seen before couldn’t be more wrong. A full review will eventually be HERE, but essentially it’s the story of a brother and sister who end up running with the wrong crowd and Noe’s film draws you into the story with an incredibly clever use of flashback and first-person camera views. It’s definitely not for everyone as the graphic sexual scenes, overhead camera shots, flashing high colour images and a 2 1/2 -3 hour running time will definitely divide audience. As far as we’re concerned, it totally rocked our world.
…..So, with minds totally blown and the feeling that we were just coming down from an acid trip we sought solace in familiar things – beer and a sobresada and cheese baguette. With just enough time to throw these down us and split a brownie (oo-er!) we got back in the press queue and headed in for the film that we were probably looking forward to the most…..
PANIQUE AU VILLAGE – AUDITORI – 15:15HRS
In the words of Tom Cruise (sort of) you had us at the trailer. You can check the trailer out at our preview page here, it’s essentially a stop-motion animation of a horse, a cowboy and an indian and the scrapes they manage to get into. Although the joke does wear a little bit thin over the course of 75 minutes, it’s still definitely worth a watch, and when else are you going to see a toy donkey laying out a funky drum beat?
……With a couple of hours to kill until our next film, we headed back into town and indulged in some beachside tapas and traditional Spanish wine in a bodega. Unfortunately the tapas and beers meant that time completely got away from us and with seconds to spare we made it to the Retiro to watch Johnnie To´s latest effort VENGEANCE. We´ve got to be upfront and admit that we´ve given his films plenty of opportunity to impress us in the past, and he always seems to flatter to deceive, so with this in mind, we weren´t expecting much.
VENGEANCE – EL RETIRO – 20:30HRS
And he so nearly pulled it off…The first hour of this film had some great setups, was brilliantly shot, excellent performances and a really good story but it definitely was a game of two halves and revisiting familiar ground of slow-motion gunfights on wastelands of floating paper debris meant that we ranted our way out of the cinema and straight into the queue for our next film – Duncan Jones´s MOON.
…..Unfortunately, it was late, we´d had a few beers and Rick Skywalker´s spanish was spoken far too quickly so we have no idea why the screening was delayed for 30 minutes just so we could see the DVD ´Making Of´ for CORALINE. Anyway, after some vociferous booing from the Spanish crowd, MOON began and they weren´t dissappointed.
MOON – EL RETIRO – 22:45HRS
Harking back to such ´70s classics as ´Silent Running´and ´Space1999´, Jones´s impressive debut wins through due to an outstanding performance from our man, Sam Rockwell.
…..We ended the evening on a high, and retired to The Corner Bar to discuss cloning, Japanese LSD trips and talking Belgian Horses that play piano.
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