Jean-Pierre Jeunet, of Amélie fame, makes so few films that whenever he pulls one out of that magic hat of his it feels like an event. At least it used to. The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, which has just had its world premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, is a lovingly made and sweet film; but the novelty of the director’s style – that minutely observed production design and full-blown whimsy – has now completely worn off, leaving one wishing for a new dimension.

Here's an association test - what's next in the sequence: flamenco, gypsy, soul? Yes, you win the free tourist trip to Andalucía along with writer Elizabeth Kinder, with whom you will almost certainly enjoy weak sangria and tapas while stumbling amusingly in bad Spanish, and you won't be troubled by a single unfamiliar thought about this alluring form of dance, music and poetic song.

Snow White in silent Seville is glib shorthand for director Polbo Berger’s tasteful Blancanieves, a beautiful, quirky take on the recognisable fable. Nicely shot and well cast, this silent melodrama, shot in black and white, is not sweetness and light. It’s more gleaming Spanish gothic that will charm and shock, dismay and delight in equal measure.

JThis year’s Proms have been accompanied by an unusual choral drone, a monotony of voices whinging about the prodigious heat at the Albert Hall. For one night only no one was complaining as the temperature gauge went up to something like 111. You’ve heard of the Hollywood Prom and Comedy Prom, the Gospel Prom and the Dalek Prom. As a troupe of classical Spanish dancers swished and swirled, stomped, strutted and thrust to pulsating Hispanic music, here was something never before seen: the Erotica Prom.

Happy truisms first: Paco Peña is still the greatest of flamenco guitarists, he works with a consummate team of regulars in the most vibrant of dance-art and he keeps it fresh by scouring the world for different players or ensembles to complement his own flamencistas. I’ll never forget equal artists Venezuelan Diego Alvarez, creating miracles from the simple plywood box with vibrating strings known as the cajón, and on this occasion the breathtaking Senegalese dancer Alboury Dabo.

Although Blancanieves seems to come on the back of the world-conquering The Artist, it was actually conceived before the French tribute to silent-era cinema. Rather than being about silent cinema, Blancanieves is a silent Spanish take on Snow White which, through sheer panache, verve and eccentricity, can’t fail to seduce. But like The Artist, it has an unforgettable animal actor. It’s impossible to see a cockerel in the same way ever again.

An operatic truism still doing the rounds declares that for Verdi's Il trovatore you need four of the greatest singers in the world. For Don Carlo, his biggest opus in every way, you need six. Nicholas Hytner's Covent Garden staging hits the mark third time around with five, the exception being a very honourable replacement for what would have been an interesting piece of casting.

"What makes you think all this is funny?" businessman Ricardo Galán (Guillermo Toledo) snaps after a particular high-spirited episode in Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's latest, and it's undoubtedly a remark that will resonate with some members of the audience. Almodóvar is one of modern cinema's finest auteurs - a director for whom we reserve the highest of expectations. However his latest is camper and more booze-fuelled than Christmas, coming after the comparably tortured The Skin I Live In and Broken Embraces this is the cinematic equivalent of a blowout.

If you want virtuosity, there’s only one place to be in London right now, and that’s watching the Mikhailovsky’s fine production of that demented old warhorse, Don Quixote, with Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev in the leads.

The annual Sadler’s Wells Flamenco Festival is a hidden treasure-house of brilliance, too quietly sneaking into London in the unappealing limbo between winter and spring, but surely one of the great global gatherings of the dazzling individualists in this mysterious dance form. Flamenco ranges from the red-top populists like the ebullient exhibitionist Farruquito to the wilfully innovative Israel Galván, who lit up two Sunday nights in a row which both brought the house to their feet in ovations.