Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona

Another reason to love Asheville - the Cinebarre. A movie theater where the seats are comfortable and recline; there's a counter for your drinks and food; and they bring you food - pizza, burgers, sandwiches, all cooked to order during the movie - right to your seat. I don't know which pizza I had, there were 7 to choose from, and yes, they were called the Magnificent Seven (btw one of my all-time favorite movies), I might've had the First Blood (extra tomato sauce and red peppers) or the Passion of the Christ (Jesus loved a little hummus and fig paste on his pizza. Yuppie, yummy and Yahwehlicious all at once).
Speaking of the Magnificent Seven, i love that Yul Brynner is the leader of the 7. We hear where they all came from to fight for the little Mexican village. One came down from Abilene, one had just killed the Johnson brothers and needed to lay low. But Brynner is never asked cause what would he say - "I had a run in with some Cossacks in Vladivostok and had to leave or the Tsarina would have me mounted. And I mean mounted, if you get my catherine the Great drift. Hey-O!" But its got Brynner and McQuuen and Bronson and Coburn with the knife and Robert Vaughn and Brad Dexter, the man who owed his career to the fact that he saved Sinatra from drowning on a movie shoot, and Horst Bucholz, an Austrian/German (same thing, ask Hitler) playing a young Mexican and they're all fighting Eli Wallach, a Jew from Brooklyn playing the Mexican bandito Calvera which almost means skeleton in Spanish. So... I was at Cinebarre to see the latest Woody Allen movie, Vicki Cristina Barcelona. Haven't really enjoyed any of his last, oh, 10 movies. But when he was on, like Annie Hall, Manhattan and Crimes and Misdemeanors on, he was in my Pantheon. And I loved this movie. Not for Scarlet J. She does nothing for me. She looks like a mouth-breather and her eyes are just a bit too vacant and bovine. Maybe that's acting but I don't think so. Loved her in Ghost World and now that she's a blonde with big tits I understand the appeal but as for acting chops, don't buy it. And not for Penelope Cruz although she is much more my idea of a woman - sensuous, gorgeous and a bit or a lot crazy. But so hot. No, I loved the movie because he makes Barcelona his new New York. I came home and immediately downloaded and printed out the passport renewal form. I have to go. I was there when I was 18 and I need to go now as an older man. I'll settle for meeting Penelope Cruz's mother! The movie is yet another indictment of bland American WASP culture as compared with the bohemian artistry of soulful, sexual Spanish artists and artistes with seemingly no money problems at all. There are never money problems in Woody movies. Everyone's always free to go to afternoon movies and afternoon bike rides and afternoon lunches that go on for hours. Painters keep great hours. I love movies that are indictments of bland American WASP culture. Easy target, I know, but angst and art and angina and culture are always ethnic and loud and sweaty. Jews and Spaniards (or Catalans) are the same, only the geography has changed. The father who won't publish his love poems because the world is an ugly place. If Javier Bardem says it, that's a deep, meaningful line. If Woody had said it it would have had a zetz, and a shpritz and a joke to top the punch. "My father won't publish his love poems. He says the world is too ugly for such beauty. Here, read this one. He calls it Ode to the Toothless Whore Who Saved Me." Bardem is perfect; you never expect him to kill the entire cast with the pneumatic stun gun from No Country. Cruz speaks Spanish like a native and has the best hair ever. And Patricia Clarkson has the market cornered on the WASPISH woman of a certain age who has ashes and wants love. And best of all, Woody went to Europe and left the movie with a real European ending. No one is happy at the end. That's real, that's life. If he had made this in America surely someone would have had a happy ending. We need to believe the fairy tale. We are children. But Europe raises adults. They can take real. They can take heartbreak. And keep living. Cannot wait to go back to Barcelona. Spain was a mighty country once. Then they kicked out their Jews and pretty much vanished from the world scene. It took a few years 1492-the destruction of the Armada but it happened. Now that the Jews are coming back in the person of Allen Konigsberg (Woody Allen), Spain is moving forward. I cannot wait to go.