Whenever I see The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, I think of Alphonse Laurencic

And here. I would dearly love to find out more about Alphonse and his creations. Someone once showed me a magazine with a few relevant pictures, but I’ve forgotten who/what/where. All but the blind will have noticed my background tribute on this blog’s front page to Robert Wiene. The OpenFlix/YouTube publishing of Dr Caligari is…

Catalan language policy: Marxist, Stalinist, Francoist or fascist?

The precedents for, and some possible implications of, the Catalanisation of Barcelona’s cinemas. Plus some crowd-pleasing video of the Quebec language police in action. (Allez! Allez! Allez! And the hell with the economy!) All in somewhat fevered response to an article by Martin Dahms in the Tages-Anzeiger.

Albacete / Birmingham / New York

In Amor se escribe sin hache (Amor is written without H, 1929), “an almost cosmopolitan novel,” Enrique Jardiel Poncela describe Birmingham as “the Albacete of the United Kingdom.” Not to be outdone, José Martínez Azorín (who also gave the Generation of 98 its name) baptised Albacete “the New York of La Mancha.” That all this…