Notes from Spain

Last night I went to see Inception at the cinema.

One word review: Pointless

Slightly longer review: Clever clever director trying to show the world how immensely intellectually convoluted he can be, while a the same time having to explain every step to us carefully to make sure we ‘get it’, far too noisy (noisy score being used to try and create ‘suspense’ where the actual action couldn’t really do it), and far far too many guns and shooting.

It’s a film about planting ideas in people’s minds during dreams – an interesting idea, but does it really need all that violence? Hollywood has decided that we are not fully entertained enough any more without mass violence, and apparently now a ‘blockbuster’ wouldn’t be a blockbuster without it. And I guess the Public has decided to agree and laps it all up, all to the continued detriment and insured deterioration of our great collective consciousness! Oh well.

In summary: Inception = Too noisy, too ‘look how clever I am’, plus super-unnecessary violence. All in all – Pointless.

More interesting was the fact that the cinema was empty (only 8 others there at the Tuesday 10pm sitting), the terraza we had a drink on beforehand was empty, the other popular bar we went to beforehand was empty when we arrived and mostly empty when we left at 9.30, and the streets were empty during the taxi ride home.

The Taxi driver said what they have all been saying for the past 6 months: “Until there’s a change in government nothing’s going to happen…”

Either plenty of taxi drivers are right wing and can’t wait to see the PP get back in, or they really do believe that only a change of government will bring the ‘crisis’ to an end.

Note for Spanish Learners: We’ve made a great new Spanish learning video over at Notes In Spanish – lots of cool phrases explained – Do check it out here.