Got off to a dodgy start a couple of days ago with my tiny, three-student advanced English class. To my opening gambit of “What did you do today before you came to this lesson?”, the answers were: “I was sick all day and I didn’t get out of bed till half an hour ago.” “I […]
‘The Window’, Cinemateca Portuguesa, Lisbon
Cinemateca Portuguesa, located on Rua Barata Salgueiro in the centre of Lisbon, is a wonderful place for cinephiles. Great posters and marvellous black and white stills from the 1940s adorn the foyer walls: Bogart in All Through the Night, Howard Hawks’ The Thing from Another World!, Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in Rebecca, Spencer Tracy […]
Cecil B. DeMille triple bill, Cinemateca Portuguesa, Lisbon
Ghostly mist is swirling through the streets of Cacilhas this February morning. I decide to check out some local haunts before crossing the river into town for another Saturday triple bill of Cecil B. DeMille films. I start my wander on Rua Cândido dos Reis, where I drop into an anonymous bar opposite the offices of […]
‘Terminator 2’, Cinema Academia Almadense, Lisbon
Cinema Terminal is sold out for ‘Barton Fink’. So I take a quick look at SE7E’s film listings and see that in a quarter of an hour Fink is showing at São Jorge, ten minutes walk away up Avenida da Liberdade. There I scurry, only to find a queue so long that I would have […]
‘Far North’, Cine Incrível Almada, Lisbon
November has now rolled around. The tourists are long gone from Costa da Caparica. It’s a bright blue morning so I have a walk along the tiny narrow gauge railway which runs along the back of the wonderful beaches between Costa da Caparica and Fonte da Telha a few miles south down the coast. The […]
‘Backdraft’, Cinema Sâo Jorge, Lisbon
Sâo Jorge cinema, like Condes cinema just along the road, is another gigantic city centre dream shrine on Avenida da Liberdade. The avenue’s plane trees and palms are swaying and rustling in the blue afternoon gust. By the Sâo Jorge cinema entrance steps, plenty pre-Backdraft smoke is swirling up from a roast chestnut vendor. In Screen […]