Taken Friday night on Barcelona’s La Rambla, maybe six or seven blocks north of the harbor.

My son Dylan and I happened to be standing on 6th Ave. and 36th Street around 7:35 or 7:40 pm when President Barack Obama‘s motorcade came howling by. He and Michelle had been to dinner at a West Village restaurant called Blue Hill, and were on their way to the Belasco theatre for a performance of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

I didn’t know what was up at first. Something obviously was with all the cops around and the cross streets blocked off. More and more people began to congregate on both sides of Sixth Avenue. The word got around fast. By the time the motorcade made its way through the area it almost felt like we were watching the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Lots of sirens, a good 20 or 30 motorcycles, eight or nine cops cars vans and SUVs came before and after the two Presidential limousines. People clapped and cheered when they finally came by. Which one carried Barack and Michelle? Most likely the second.

With all the hullaballoo over the last several months about John Madden‘s Killshot being delayed, regionally released (barely) and generally being shown little love by the Weinstein Co., you’d think there’d be a bit more reaction to this adaptation of an Elmore Leonard thriller coming out four days ago on DVD. Apparently it’s a bit underwhelming, but are there any HE reader reactions?

“Killshot hasn’t enjoyed the easiest road to a suitable release,” wrote DVD Talk‘s Brian Ondorf. “Filmed nearly four years ago, the picture suffered through endless rounds of editorial indecision, reshooting, and the embarrassment of a pathetic five-screen theatrical release earlier this year. While the feature’s unpleasant personal history shouldn’t be at play during a viewing, it’s hard not to spot the sloppy stitch marks on the motion picture. While certainly endowed with a few startling moments of tension, Killshot is messy and unfocused, taking the stinger out of this Elmore Leonard adaptation.”

This is going to be a super-busy catch-up weekend watching this one plus Drag Me To Hell and Pontypool in theatres.

The first message I read after landing this afternoon was from former Newsday film writer Lewis Beale, to wit: “Don’t know if you’re back, but you should check out Pontypool, a Canadian low budget zombie flick. It plays like a horror film written by a semiotician. Utterly unique.”

N.Y. Times critic Stephen Holden wrote that “when one infected character is reduced to spouting gibberish as she suicidally hurls herself at [a] glass booth that has become a fortress against the zombie terror, the notion that we are all being driven mad by an incessant verbal deluge makes nasty comic sense.”

Got into JFK from Barcelona around 1:30 pm. Currently sitting in the terminal that houses Iberia Airlines, waiting for son Dylan’s plane to arrive at 4:07 pm. Sitting next to a Starbucks, a Subway and other manifestations of corporate sterility. It was awfully nice to be away from all that. Yes, corporate chain branding is ubiquitous worldwide, but the climate feels a tad earthier and more home-grown in Europe.

JFK Terminal 7 — Saturday, 5.30, 2:40 pm.

“I caught The Hangover at a screening in London a couple of weeks ago, and it really was a great little comedy,” says HE reader James Smith. “Zach Galifianakis is superb, and the sequence in the [end] credits is fantastic — the night they can’t remember is finally seen through digital camera photos (although I overheard a few studio people say at my screening that a couple of frames featuring a blowjob won’t be in the final released version).

“It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but you wouldn’t expect it to. It’s loud and it’s stupid, but not derivatively or in a way that would make someone as notoriously pissy as yourself (like me!) irritated that it’s pandering to the masses. Sometimes a movie comes along with enough belly laughs to see you through an evening and part of the next day, and The Hangover does just that. And I’m saying this as someone who didn’t like Old School.

“I disliked only two things. Bradley Cooper seems to be chewing gum through the first hour and it really pissed me off. And Ken Jeong is playing a strangely camp Asian gangster and the characterisation seemed to play to the crowd a little too much. A bit too broad for my liking, but I chuckled with a hint of guilt a few times.

“I’ll be doing a full review for Little White Lies, a beautifully designed movie magazine I think you’ll love. Check it out.”

“Swift and sure, Drag Me to Hell unfurls in vertiginous, comic-book frames, like a long-lost issue of Tales From the Crypt” writes N.Y. Times critic Jeannette Catsoulis. “Neither small humans nor smaller animals are exempt from the carnage, which is orchestrated by director Sam Raimi and his screenwriting sibling, Ivan.

“As for Alison Lohman, she suffers the indignities of the genre like a champ, morphing from mouse to hellion as her expiration date approaches. And while no one will mistake her journey — whose title sounds like a desperate plea from the director’s fan base — for a masterpiece, the movie has a crackpot vitality that breaches our defenses.

“In films like Darkman and the thematically similar Spider-Man 2, Mr. Raimi revealed a gift for merging the human and the fantastic, sustaining poignant love stories in the midst of horror and revenge. His talent is greater than this, but for now this will do.”

Catsoulis is an excellent writer and critic, but how come Scott and Dargis fobbed this one off?

“The obvious solution is to brand ‘new IMAX’ so customers know what they’re getting,” Roger Ebert wrote the day before yesterday. “Call it IMAX Lite, IMAX Junior, MiniMAX or IMAX 2.0. Or call the old format ‘IMAX Classic.’

“Hey, that worked for Coke. Significantly, a lot of exhibitors favor specifically identifying the new format, perhaps because they’re offering something better than on their other screens, yet getting flack from customers because it’s inferior to IMAX Classic.

“One reason exhibitors are friendly to IMAX is that the company is spending money to convert the target theaters. The exhibitors themselves, however, are expected to pay for an upgrade to the latest 3-D technology. Everybody is short of money these days, and both formats offer an excuse for a $5 surcharge.”

The view-of-the-valley Arcos de la Frontera effect can’t be conveyed with a still — you have to slowly pan across. Apologies for the jigglies. At least I didn’t do one of those idiot zip zooms. Taking decent video photography is hard.

Two pieces of official but not finalized concept art from James Cameron‘s Avatar, taken from the forthcoming The Art of Avatar: James Cameron’s Epic Adventure and passed along yesterday by Marketsaw.