With The Expendables still doing excellent business at the box office, movie critics are predicting an upswing of interest in the action heroes of the 1980s. Older audiences are being offered a chance to reacquaint themselves with some of that era’s macho stars, while youngsters are enjoying their introduction to the appeal of Stallone, Lundgren, Rourke, Schwarzenegger and Willis.
Continue reading…Hollywood moves to Javea…
Connoisseurs of 1960s cartoons will probably react enthusiastically when Wacky Races is mentioned. This supremely silly story (and its equally popular offshoots, Dick Dastardly and Mutley in Their Flying Machines and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop) revolved around a race in which the contestants in an ongoing race pit their wits against each other – and cheat frequently!
Continue reading…Wacky racers head for Valencia in the Ramshackle Rally…
Though just 13 when the Civil War broke out, Santiago Grisolía’s parents thought it better to get him out of harm’s way and send him to Cuenca, where his father had contacts in a local hospital. Taller than most, he stood a chance of being recruited into the war machine, so he moved from his native Valencia to the picturesque hilltop town to begin working in a hospital at a time when most thirteen year-olds would still be at school.
Adulthood came early to Santiago, but then again, his intellectual gifts and fascination with chemistry and medicine made him take to his new environment with typical gusto. Adaptability and perseverance would become important personal traits, easily as valuable as his scientific abilities in what was to be a long and varied academic and research career.
An early start
With all the informality of the age and the situation they found themselves in, young Santiago was given some chemistry and medicine textbooks to get through before becoming an active member of the hospital’s soon overburdened team. Continue reading…Santiago Grisolía – a life in the service of science…
What is the weather going to be like tomorrow?
Throughout the year this is a question that most of us ask at least once a day. Whether we need to find out if we should carry an umbrella on a winter day or, during the summer, how few clothes we need to wear, the chances are that at least part of the reason that we turn on the radio or television in the morning is to find reliable meteorological information.
Continue reading…Weather Man: a meteorological superhero for our times!…
Jávea’s Espai d’Art is currently featuring the unique perspective of Swiss sculptor, Lukas Ulmi.
This imaginative artist specialises in creating sculptures with a difference; his pieces tend not to be solid shapes crafted from some heavy substance, such as bronze or marble, but are wonderfully striking and witty objects that move and change.
Continue reading…Lukas Ulmi: sculpture that moves…
It seems that, these days, even artists with significant international reputations have to do some lateral thinking when it comes to funding their projects. While the major movie studios aim their output primarily at younger viewers, appealing to teenage vampire fans, frat boys and, most particularly, to the pester power of young children, less commercial projects suffer.
Continue reading…Filmmakers resort to unusual means to secure funding…
As the author of the highly acclaimed Duende, Andalus, Guerra and Sacred Sierra, it is fair to say that Jason Webster has a feeling for Spain. Where so many have tried to come to come to grips with this fascinating country Webster seems to have a secret formula – he simply immerses himself and gets under the skin of one of Europe’s most multi-layered cultures.
“Spain is a country that repays your interest in it,” says Jason Webster as we sit in his country cottage on the outskirts of Valencia. All around are fields, though the city rises up no more than a few kilometres distant. It shows just how assimilated he has become, for where most foreigners seek the Spanish seaside or at least the elegant avenues of downtown Valencia, Jason has chosen a spot amid everyday Spanish people. “It always surprises me when people move here saying they love Spain, only to settle down in a Disney-style caricature of it.” As always, his comment contains no hint of judgement; instead, it is the kind of observation that has formed the basis of his writing on Spain.
Continue reading…A feeling for Spain…
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