Saturday night, or Tuesday afternoon, at the movies

I've always liked going to the pictures, to the cinema. It's not just the film but the experience. It's true you can see the pictures and hear the words on Netflix or Apple TV, or even on the broadcast telly, but it's hardly the same. The cinema is total immersion, a darkened room with one focus of attention, and a screen that dwarfs even the largest television screen. I also like that it involves popping out of British territory and into Spain.

I used to go to the pictures in the UK too. A huge advantage that we Britons have, in relation to film viewing, is that we speak English. This means that the films produced by the US film makers aren't seen as being foreign, even though they are. Italian and French and Iranian films, those that come with subtitles are foreign. I don't think I ever saw a dubbed film in a cinema in the UK, foreign films always came with subs. Not so in Spain. Here nearly all foreign language films (which obviously embraces Hollywood product) are dubbed. Historically films in Spain were dubbed because of high illiteracy rates, because of the work it provided and because it allowed what was said on screen to be controlled and censored. Now it's just a sort of tradition or expectation. 

Dubbing and subtitling still change the words in foreign films (and TV series). It's no longer a political or church censorship but words are sometimes changed to reflect a Spanish worldview - a BLT becomes a cheese sandwich for example. Hearing Colin O'Farrell or Margot Robbie speak with a Spanish accent is unnerving: even more so when the voice is a particularly recognisable one like Samuel L. Jackson or Morgan Freeman. The same dubbing artist usually sticks with the same star for the whole of their career and some dubbing artists are quite famous. The same voice artist may do more than one actor. The Spanish voice of Cillian Murphy, Ethan Hawke and Leonardo di Caprio is David Robles for instance. One of the strangest things is when a Spanish actor makes an English language film because, when the film is shown in Spain, their Spanish voices will be dubbed back into Spanish by a voice actor. It is quite surreal to hear well known actors, like Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem or Penelope Cruz, speaking Spanish but with someone else's voice.

My film count in 2023 was 59 films in cinemas: 31 of them in English and 28 in Spanish. Seven so far this year. For me the films dubbed into Spanish, from say English or Norwegian, tend to be easier to understand than a film shot originally in Spanish. Equally some sorts of Spanish language films are easier to understand than others - anything with low life criminals is going to be, for me, much harder than a family comedy. Films with Latin American roots, particularly from the deep South, like Uruguay and Argentina, I find particularly difficult.

There is no cinema to speak of in Pinoso. In summer there are a couple of outdoor films and on most of the first Fridays of the month the Pinoso Platform Against Gender Violence shows a film in the Local Associations' building, the old Casa de Cultura, but if you want to see a film that is doing the rounds then you are going to have to travel.

The closest cinema is probably the Cine PYA in Yecla but the PYA, interesting cinema though it is, isn't really what you'd call a modern cinema experience. For that the nearest cinema is the ten screen Yelmo Vinalopó, next door to the Carrefour supermarket. There was another cinema in Petrer but the pandemic did for it. The Vinalopó seems to have stopped getting anything but the potentially most profitable films and recently it hasn't even been getting the mid range Spanish films. Prices vary a lot from day to day and depend on whether you can get any form of discount. I usually pay around 6.50€ but I get pensioner rates. Even at its most expensive I don't think the Vinalopó gets over 9€ for a ticket. On Tuesdays the Vinalopó, like all cinemas in the Yelmo chain, shows films in Versión Original Subtitulado en Español (VOSE) - original language with Spanish subtitles. Usually that means English with subs but not always. Bear in mind that the Italians and Koreans make films too and they usually make them in their home language. One of the, often unexpected, difficulties with VOSE films is that if even if it's basically an English language film there may be sections in, say, German or Arapaho, and the subtitles for that will be in Spanish for a Spanish audience. 

There's another Yelmo on the outskirts of Alicante, on the Pinoso side, at the very "white elephant" Puerta de Alicante shopping centre. That Yelmo does get most of the Spanish films that are doing the rounds but it gets almost none of the even vaguely arty Spanish films. To be honest though if I'm going to go a bit further to see a film I'd go to the ABC, in the L'Aljub shopping Centre in Elche, simply because it has a better selection of films. Prices at the ABC are a bit higher than at the Yelmo, partly because they are in a successful shopping centre, but there are offers. Their "day of the viewer" tickets, on Wednesday, are just over 6€ but their regular price is nearly 9€. The ABC has it's VOSE films on Thursday. All of the cinema chains have websites where you can buy online so you can check prices. Sometimes, often, web prices are better than the box office prices. 

There are a couple of single screen cinemas in Alicante city, in the Centre, the most reliable being aAna which tends to the non blockbuster films that are doing well. In Elche there's an arthouse cinema, the Odeon, which is dead cheap.

There are plenty more cinemas which are a bit further from Pinoso and I'm not going to try and list them all but I will mention the ones we occasionally go to. Kinepolis in Plaza Mar 2 is on the wrong side of Alicante for us but it has a pretty full programme and they have English language stuff on several days of the week. Going the other way there are cinemas in the shopping centres outside Murcia - The Thader - next to IKEA - has a Neocine which is a local Murcian chain. Neocine leans towards popular rather than arty films as does the Cinesa in the much more popular Nueva Condomina - the one with Primark - shopping centre. There are a couple more Neocines in Murcia City and there is also an arthouse cinema, the Filmoteca, quite near the Cathedral. 

Plenty to go at even if they are a little way away.

But no popcorn

Going to the pictures in Spain is a bit sad at the moment. The cinemas are just so quiet. The reports say 35% down on pre pandemic figures. I suppose that when everyone was locked in their homes they subscribed to Apple TV or Netflix or Filmin. At that time the film makers and distributors thought, well, if anyone is going to see my film then I have to put it on HBO or Amazon Prime or the Disney Channel and the rest. So film making is healthy enough, lots of product, but with many releases going direct to platforms or having very short cinema runs.

Although I go to the flicks a lot, I go at unpopular times. Not for me the crush of Saturday evening but, more usually, the peace of Tuesdays. Even then the fall off in numbers is noticeable. I've been in cinemas where, so far as I can tell, there are no other customers in the whole building. Tuesday is favourite because the nearest cinema to Culebrón, the Yelmo in Petrer, does its original language films then. It's become a habit so when there's nothing any good in English but something worthwhile in Spanish then Tuesday is still favourite. The exception is when the Yelmo has nothing worth watching. The ABC down in Elche often has a better range and their cheap day is Wednesday so that's when I go. Given the choice I go for the early showings, the ones at 4.30 or 5pm, which isn't a popular time for anything outside the home in Spain. This week we went to the Yelmo in Alicante for the 7.30pm show and the place was quieter - much quieter - than your average Spanish funeral parlour. Bear in mind that lots of the larger tanatorios, the funeral parlours, have 24 hour bar service.

I spent a lot of my early years in a town in West Yorkshire called Elland. There was a chip shop called Kado. I forget the detail but I remember that it was foundering. As it failed the price went down, then up, then there were the strange menu combinations - pineapple fritters with curry sauce - and all sorts of buy one get two free type offers. It's been a bit like that at the Yelmo cinema recently. I've paid as little as 4.50€ and as much as 6.20€ on the same day of the week and with the same pensioner discount. There's always some sort of offer on - this week it was the Black Friday effect. Full price, at the Yelmo, on a Saturday is still only 8.20€ or 8.80€ at the Elche ABC.

I don't really mind the price. I'm pleased to say that a couple of euros isn't a deal breaker and going to the cinema always seems like a cheap night out. Well unless you eat popcorn and drink fizzy pop. Do that and look out for those arms and legs. The Yelmo's "menu" offer, for what I think is the medium sized salty popcorn (sweet costs 50c more) and a 50cl pop, is 9.45€.

Most of the cinemas are part of a shopping centre. I often feel for the cinemas that chose the wrong shopping centre. The Thader Centre in Murcia is a bit of a White Elephant so the Neocine there is a lot less popular than the Cinesa place across the road in the very successful Nueva Condomina. In fact the Regional Murcian chain of Neocines has chosen two other failed shopping centres in Murcia city and Cartagena. The Cinesmax in the Bassa El Moro, now Dynamia, shopping centre in Petrer died along with the centre and the Puertas de Alicante shopping centre in Alicante, where there's a yelmo cinema, is another Mary Celeste type operation. 

All of the shopping centre cinemas are just like multiplex everywhere. They have multiple screens and thin walls and VERY LOUD sound. Most of their theatres are relatively small but they'll have a couple of decent sized theatres for the more popular films. If you've been to the Odeon in Maidenhead or the Showcase in Springdale, Ohio then you will be at home in the Multicines Al-andalus in Cádiz. There are still a few of the older style, one big screen, cinemas left. There's one in Yecla, the PYA, for instance where the seats are raked back at the front of the theatre and raked forward at the back. They still give you tickets torn in half too rather than something you buy online or on the app on your phone. Cines Ana in Alicante is very similar.

Nearly all the films in Spanish cinemas are in Spanish, either as the original soundtrack or with dubbing. Sometimes, when I come out of a cinema having failed to grasp most of the linguistic nuances, I'm more than a tad cross with myself and a bit disappointed. It's not the same at the start of the film. I've seen thousands of pictures but when the lights go down and the film starts there is always that thrill, that moment of anticipation, something I never get watching a film on telly.

The Yecla Amusement Park?

I keep a database of the films I've seen. For complicated and boring reasons one database ran from 1986 to 2009 and a second one from 2010 to present. Thanks to my brother in law the two were, finally, combined into one long list just a few days ago. Apparently I've seen 2,706 films at the cinema between 1986 and today. The busiest year was 1995 when I saw 132 films. The quietest was 2008 when I was living in Ciudad Rodrigo. In 2017 I saw 81.

Ciudad Rodrigo is in Salamanca province in Castilla y León very close to the Portuguese border. It's a clean, safe, friendly, walled town that's lovely to look at. It's a long way from anywhere though and the nearest decent sized supermarket or car dealer or cinema is in Salamanca about 90km away. In fact I'm lying because the nearest cinema or main dealer for the Mini was actually in Guarda and that was only 75kms away. Guarda though is in Portugal where they speak Portuguese and as we don't we tended to stick to Spain. It was too far to pop over to the town to see a film but we did see a couple in the multiplex in Guarda when we were there anyway having done something else. The big advantage, for us, is that the Portuguese show their films in the original language with subtitles, unlike Spain where most films are dubbed. Because it was too far to go to Salamanca or Guarda we generally saw films in the Cine Juventud in Ciudad Rodrigo.

The Juventud was a really old fashioned cinema in some huge stone built building. The admission, the sweets and the popcorn were cheap, the seats were past their best and the sound and projection quality were a bit dodgy too. As I remember it the emergency exit lead out through the gardens of the Bishop's Palace. The huge plus of course was that it was close: we could walk into town, see the film, get a drink and walk home. There was only one show a week and, sometimes, that film wasn't for us which is, I suppose, why we only saw 21 films that year.

This evening we went to see a mentalist type magic show in Pinoso at 6pm and then we hurried off to Yecla to see the 8.15 film. A movie that we missed when it was first released; La librería - The Bookshop. We've never been to the cinema in Yecla before. We've seen posters for films but I've always presumed they were shown in the municipal theatre. In fact there's a cinema, the Cine PYA (Initials for Parque Yeclano de Atracciones - the Yecla Theme Park), which apparently opened in 1952 and "closed for good" in 2013. Google has nothing to say about how or why it reopened. The cinema doesn't have much of a frontage but it does have a big screen and, by modern standards, it is a big theatre with row after row of seats on a traditional theatre stalls type plan rather than the steeply raked seats in a modern multiplex. The ticket was torn from a roll, there were no computers in sight to deal with seat allocation and there were even some red velvet curtains over the multiple entry and exit doors. It was a good sized crowd, our regular cinema, the Cinesmax in Petrer would be glad to have such a big audience, and a surprising number of them chose to sit on the same row as us. I read somewhere, in one of those strange surveys that you see from time to time, that Spaniards are one of the nationalities with the least need for personal space in the world. Spaniards, unlike Britons, like to be up close

I didn't particularly care for the film, a bit television drama, but it was a really good outing.

At the flicks - again

I go to the flicks as often as I can. As with everything else I write in this blog I've mentioned it before. My life just isn't exciting enough to sustain a flow of new adventures.

All films at the cinema are dubbed into Spanish. I've discussed this several times with Spanish chums and students. They try to argue that the Spanish versions are as good - better for them. They're wrong. Changing the language just mashes up the film. Nonetheless I still love going to the pictures.

How much of the film I understand is down to chance. I never catch all the nuances or get all the puns and subtleties but it's rare for me to be completely lost. It does happen from time to time and when it does I come out of the film disappointed and angry in equal measure. The easiest films to understand are British ones followed by other European fare. Hollywood films are usually relatively straightforward but action films are an exception. I miss the vital links amongst the explosions and CGI. Spanish language films are the hardest because they are loaded with idioms. I saw one called El Niño yesterday and I was well lost.

In Pinoso there is a group called something like the Platform Against Gender Violence. Amongst their activities they often show films in the local cultural centre. There was one tonight  - a 2005 French Canadian film called Crazy.

Now around these parts as well as the language we Brits call Spanish there is a regional language called Valencian. To differentiate we use the term Castilian for the standard Spanish and Valenciano for the local one though I think it's actually Valencià in Valencian - if you see what I mean. The posters for the film were in Valenciano.

Being an event the local press were there to take some snaps. The photographer is a chum from our village, someone who recently helped me to arrange a language exchange with one of her friends. She came over to ask me how it was going. I stuttered and spluttered in barely comprehensible Castilian. It just compounded the trouble I'd had when we went on a bodega tour earlier today. It did not bode well for another adventure with the language. 

Being an arty sort of film there was an intro from one of the group members. It was in Valenciano. I crossed my fingers that the dubbing would be Castilian. It was. It would have been very difficult to get up and walk out as we were a very select group. It didn't help though. I understood next to nothing. 

Not knowing what was going on the film seemed to drag on and on. I was very relieved when the gay son reconciled with his dad and the credits started to roll. But nobody moved. We had to critique the film. Blow me if that wasn't in Valenciano too.

It won't stop me though. If there's another one, and I can go, I'll be there.