This year’s Spanish Film Festival featured Ema, which I saw in March at the Somerville. The title character and her husband (played by Gael García Bernal – pictured above) adopt a child, but give him back after he burns Ema’s sister. Ema later has regrets. But no fear. The publicity material proclaims: ‘SHE HAS A…
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May
I particularly related to this film at the Spanish Film Festival because it was mainly set in Argentina in 2003: the year I first visited that country and began my random love affair with it. For me, the currency crisis at the end of 2001 meant that Argentina became a much cheaper place to visit….
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May
This movie at the Spanish Film Festival is about a boy fleeing through the Spanish desert in 1946. The young actor who plays him handles the confronting subject matter extremely well. Luis Tosar (pictured above), who plays the man he befriends, has – for me – become one of those ‘It’s him! It’s him’ actors….
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May
I took this photo in 2013 on a day trip from Bariloche, in Argentina’s lake district. I’m not sure that the sign would have been much help if there had been an avalanche. Thankfully, there wasn’t.
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Apr
Cancer was the subject matter in the comedy Wishlist, which I saw at a journo preview for the Spanish Film Festival. It’s interesting what does and doesn’t work with comedy. When I performed The Sound of a Social Climbing Nun, I suggested the Maria in The Sound of Music was eaten by cannibals. That always…
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Apr
One: Because it’s happening (we hope!), having been cancelled in 2020. It’s due to start on 28 April. Two: Because Mario Casas (pictured above) is in one of the films. I’ve seen him play a determined but naïve rock star, a father reconnecting with his family, a ruthless killer giving a false narrative, the romantic…
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Apr
This was the list of entrance fees in 2007 to the national park on the Argentine side of Iguazu Falls: As an adult foreigner, I paid 40 pesos every time I entered. Argentine adult nationals only paid 14 pesos, or half that if they were from the province of Misiones, unless they were from Puerto…
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Apr
My first trip to Washington DC consisted of my friend JJ and I arriving on a night bus first thing and leaving on another that evening. I did the same thing eight years later when I made a last-minute trip from New York City to catch up with some old friends from Antarctica. As you…
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Mar
