Limp Wrist at Madrid

Limp Wrist, the legendary queer hardcore punk band, played at the madrilean venue, Sala Boite (looks like a strip club without the poles). The opening act was the local punk band, Muletrain. I have seen them a couple of times (opening for The Adolescents, twice) and it was their best performance so far. They get me bored easily because their songs are too long, they sang in a very bad english and every song sounds the same.

Almost an hour later, Martín (former Los Crudos frontman), Paul, Andrew and Scott came on stage. Hot pants, vests and biker hats were part of their wardrobe. They played a lot of songs from their discography with a tremendous energy. Martín crowd-surfed and sang in the pit with the young spaniard "moshers". He dedicated the song "Ode" to Darby Crash (Germs), Gary Floyd (The Dicks) and other pioneer gay punks. The last song was their classic "I love Hardcore Boys, I love Boys Hardcore". Overall was a good show but kind of short. Anyhow was worth it, only for the main act.

Milk by Gus Van Sant

Milk is the new feature film of acclaimed american director, Gus Van Sant. It tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected to the public office in the state of California, concretely to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sean Penn portrays Milk as one of the best performances of his career (he has been nominated to the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards). Also starring are Josh Brolin as Dan White, Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, James Franco as Scott Smith and Diego Luna as Jack Lira.

Van Sant is a great director visually and this movie proves it once again. The storytelling is creative and innovative by mixing it with real footage from the 70's, unconventional camera shots or simply by not telling the story in a lineal boring way. Also Penn's performance gives a very emotional picture of the gay struggle in the 70's against the conservative right wing. Even if you are not a gay yourself, you can identify with what that group of men and women made in favor of the concept of tolerance. Franco's performance was good after his hilarious portrait of a pothead in "Pineapple Express", Brolin, as a great actor himself, makes the perfect anti-thesis of Milk, youngster Hirsch (previously directed by Penn in 07's classic "Into the Wild") makes the job as the young gay activist and Luna's performance was not that good because he was type-casted as the token latino guy who dies, not having that much speaking time. Anyhow, the movie is great and my highlights are Penn's performance who was marvelous, Van Sant never goes wrong directing because he is one of the great american storytellers and the theme is well-developed in a entertaining, visually atractive and moving way. 9 out of 10 stars.