Platinum Pied Pipers to play rescheduled Edinburgh date

5 Sep 2008

Detroit-based hip hop and R&B group the Palatinum Pied Pipers play at Edinburgh's Voodoo Rooms on Monday 15th September. Promoting their new album Abundance, PPP take a soul-based foundation and mash it up with their array of vintage & modern…

Tropic Thunder

Reality bites

4 Sep 2008

Shaping up as this season’s most riotous comedy, Tropic Thunder casts Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr as three self-important actors making a movie in a real war zone. They talk to Miles Fielder about satirising Hollywood and scandalising…

Bon Iver - Lone justice

4 Sep 2008

The breathtaking debut album from Bon Iver is evidence that isolation can produce something truly special. Colin McKean revels in this most singular of musical visions Disillusioned and frustrated by the disintegration of DeYarmond Edison, the band…

Janice Galloway - A Selfless Act

Interview

4 Sep 2008

After an absence of six years, Janice Galloway has returned with a memoir rather than a novel. Her fans won't be disappointed, though. Kirstin Innes meets her

Only the brave

Arches Live!

4 Sep 2008

As Arches Live! returns to Glasgow for its sixth year, David Pollock talks to new artistic director Jackie Wylie about her vision for the annual celebration of experimental theatre and performance art

David Simon - Man on Wire

4 Sep 2008

With his true crime books and epoch-forming TV shows, David Simon has painted a bleak picture of modern America. Miles Fielder hears him pray that it all turns out OK

Angel

4 Sep 2008

After years of gleeful, near bi-polar genre shifting, France’s greatest living film parodist, Francois Ozon (5x2, 8 Women, Sitcom), makes the film that every gay teenager, who has grown up in the latter part of the 20th century, would kill to…

Annie Proulx - Fine Just the Way It Is

4 Sep 2008

Fine Just the Way It Is marks Annie Proulx's return to Wyoming, the setting of two previous collections of short stories. The cast is, at once, familiar and fantastic. The devil refurbishes hell, adding to the décor centuries of portraits by mortals…

Calexico

4 Sep 2008

‘It’s not what some people have called a return to form, because there are new elements on the record,’ says Joey Burns, singer, songwriter and co-founding member (with percussionist John Convertino) of the idiosyncratic alt.country outfit Calexico.

Exposure: Punch and the Apostles

4 Sep 2008

‘We’re not exactly palatable, but not immediately repulsive,’ suggests lead singer Paul Napier, to sum up the sound of Punch and the Apostles, the Glasgow seven-piece who’ve been bringing chaos to traditional folk music for almost a year now. Mashing up…

Fast punk club

4 Sep 2008

‘We call it a punk night,’ says Christopher Fast, ‘but it’s more about a punk attitude to music. From rockabilly, 60s soul, garage and hip hop to disco and electro, we set out to make different genres work together in an interesting way.’ For five…

Islay Jazz Festival

4 Sep 2008

If the idea of a successful jazz festival on Islay once seemed more than a touch outlandish, the actuality has been quite the opposite. The Islay Jazz Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary this year with a line-up that typifies the programming policy…

Macbeth

4 Sep 2008

The last time Liam Brennan starred as Macbeth it was in a modern-day interpretation in Musselburgh in which the soldiers wore khaki, news was conveyed by TV screen, and when the thane of Cawdor heard bells it was the sound of his mobile. Ten years…

Pineapple Express

4 Sep 2008

As with last year’s Superbad, male bonding lies at the heart of the latest Judd Apatow production which also comes from the screenwriting team of Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. After playing one of the cops in Superbad and starring in Knocked Up, Rogen…

RocknRolla

4 Sep 2008

Is there a filmmaker in Britain who’s been more derided than Mr Madonna? A bit unfair all this criticism is too: it’s not Guy Ritchie’s fault that the competent, very watchable gangster flicks Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch were some of…

Scottish Ballet

4 Sep 2008

Since its reinvention five years ago, Scottish Ballet has embraced a wide variety of dance styles, the full gamut of which it's managed to squeeze into one diverse mixed bill. Featuring works by the mother of American postmodern dance, Trisha Brown, New…

Stewart Lee: 41st Best Stand Up Ever!

DVD

4 Sep 2008

When Stewart Lee first wrote this 2007 show, he was seriously hacked off with the BBC. Having been commissioned by the corporation to make a series of half-hour comedies which would feature Lee performing in front of unusual audiences (a group of…

Sunset Song

4 Sep 2008

Director Kenny Ireland is looking to instil some pride in the nation's literary heritage by bringing Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic tale of community, national identity and sexual awakening back to the stage. Set in an early 20th century farming…

The 9/11 Faker

Channel 4, Thu 11 Sep, 9pm

4 Sep 2008

And so let's roll with the annual grief-fest which marks the day when planes smashed into the heart of New York's business sector and flattened any notions of US impregnability. In the years which followed, tales of heroism and sacrifice emerged from…

The Banishment

4 Sep 2008

Fledgling master Russian filmmaker Andrei The Return Zvyagintsev’s flawed second feature is a nonetheless interesting fusion of British gangster flick Sexy Beast, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and (thematically at least) Scenes from a Marriage as created by…

The Duchess

4 Sep 2008

In his second film feature UK filmmaker Saul Bullet Boy Dibb retells the tragic true life story of 18th/early 19th Century aristocrat Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. Celebrated beauty and socialite Georgiana (Keira Knightley) is married off…

Words 2008

A way with words

4 Sep 2008

How do you create an exhibition of creative writing? And why? Kirstin Innes finds out about Words 2008

Wrong Island

4 Sep 2008

‘Last month, a guy from London came up to us and said, “this is exactly what I remember the old Basement Jaxx parties being like”,’ says Teamy, co-promoter and DJ at Sleazy’s finest basement party since it won itself a late licence. ‘That’s just what…

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain

4 Sep 2008

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain (Granta) Balti Britain is a comprehensive and startling exploration into how Britain and India have shaped each other's fates. Ziauddin Sardar, an academic and cultural commentator, admits to his own ignorance of…

Alt-w: New Directions in Scottish Digital Culture (group show)

4 Sep 2008

Alt-w funds artists whose work engages with new technologies and the worldwide web. Featuring artworks by practitioners funded over the last eight years, this exhibition should be an embarrassment of riches. Yet, with such a heavy reliance on new media…

Mother Courage and Her Children

4 Sep 2008

One of the neglected aspects of Mother Courage and Her Children, Brecht's great condemnation of capitalism as it is manifested in war, is its humour. There's a certain dark perversity to Brecht's story, which depicts a mother inadvertently sacrificing…

Peak Practice

4 Sep 2008

'The Lighthouse Architecture Series is a new five-year series celebrating a range of Scottish architectural practices, which have delivered nationally, and now deserve recognition in the international market,' says Leonie Bell, programme director at…

Sister Corita: Power Up

4 Sep 2008

Anti-war art is largely a samizdat operation, in which the means of production are seized via cheaply-made DIY posters and pamphlets. In the 1960s especially, pop art was imbued with a political context often left out of more hedonistically-inclined…

Steven Campbell: Wretched Stars, Insatiable Heaven (new work 2006-2007)

4 Sep 2008

Steven Campbell's work may not be to everyone's taste, but it's certainly powerful and affecting. Large-scale paintings assail the viewer with bright colours; paisley patterns merge with abstract designs and motifs borrowed from art history while…

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

4 Sep 2008

Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the nine-year-old son of a Nazi Commandant (David Thewlis). When his father is seconded to manage a concentration camp in a remote area of the Fascist empire, the lonely Bruno makes a new friend, Schmuel (Jack Scanlon), beyond…

List picks: Theatre

4 Sep 2008

Scottish Ballet, Sunset Song, Mother Courage and her Children, Fleeto, Macbeth, Arches Live!, Don Juan

5 things you might not know about Pete Firman

4 Sep 2008

Firman was born in Middlesbrough, he made the breakthrough into TV by filming himself doing some tricks in his back garden, he was hugely influenced by Penn and Teller, he once did a trick with an egg and sparkler which went down a storm and his…

Absurd Person Singular

4 Sep 2008

Alan Ayckbourn's decades-long journey through English suburban angst was seldom better exemplified than in Absurd Person Singular. Central to the story is the compulsion of people to consume and accumulate wealth to the detriment of their emotional…

Also published - 5 History paperbacks

4 Sep 2008

Germaine Greer - Shakespeare's Wife, Lucy Worsley - Cavalier, TJ English - The Havana Mob, Richard Fortey - The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum, John Man - The Terracotta Army

Amada

4 Sep 2008

Stories about prostitutes in the theatre are generally tales of suffering and abuse, yet this piece, adapted by Cora Bisset from a short story by Isabel Allende, takes an unorthodox approach to familiar subject matter. There's a transformative beauty to…

Amy Thomas

4 Sep 2008

Sultry songstress Amy Thomas started off as a classical singer but is now more at home dipping into the Great American Songbook for some classic jazz vocals. And while she'll be performing jazz at the Jam House she's also fronts a band that mashes…

Arnaldur Indridason - Arctic Chill

4 Sep 2008

Crime fiction is routinely disregarded by literary types, but at its best it can provide the kind of sharp commentary on society that a million Oxbridge dinner party novels could only dream of. Arnaldur Indridason's Icelandic crime procedurals are…

Bangkok Dangerous

4 Sep 2008

Arriving in Bangkok to execute some contracts, hitman Joe (Nic Cage) quickly finds himself immersed in the city’s corrupt and dirty lifestyle. Hiring local henchman Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm) to serve as a middleman, he goes about his brutal business with…

Beyond the Book Fest

4 Sep 2008

Following their success this summer, The Edinburgh International Book Festival will present a special autumn event with award-winning Australian author David Malouf. Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, his book Remembering Babylon was shortlisted…

Black, White + Gray

4 Sep 2008

James Crump’s documentary revisits the contentious work, life and times of seminal 80s photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The artist’s legacy is re-examined through a close study of the life of his partner and patron, the curator and collector, Sam…

Bloc Party - Intimacy

4 Sep 2008

Sending out mixed messages is hardly a new tactic in the already fickle world of indie rock. Kele Okoreke and his clan have been issuing out puzzling notices for some time now, topped off with the claim that their Leeds Festival show would be their last…

Botched

4 Sep 2008

An inept jewel thief (Stephen Dorff) is given one last chance by Russian Mafiosa with a heist from an apartment block. Our robber and his Russian cohorts inevitably screw up, and are the pursued, along with an eccentric group of hostages, through a…

Bowerbirds

4 Sep 2008

Nu-folk trio in the same vein as Devandra Banhart, professing a love of uncluttered natural living in their gorgeously constructed tumbledown tales of love, longing and the great outdoors. There’s a warmth and delicate beauty in their tracks built on…

Cail Bruich West

Gael force

4 Sep 2008

No one quite expected the Gaelic renaissance to include food. Fiona Anderson took along her phrasebook for a meal in Glasgow's West End.

Caledon

4 Sep 2008

They’ve toured all over the world, but for the first time in a couple of years Scotland’s three tenors, Caledon, are performing back in their home city of Glasgow. Classically trained Alan Beck, Jamie MacDougall and Ivan Sharpe bring a programme of…

Cocktail Kudos

4 Sep 2008

Chris Stock, the newly appointed assistant bar manager of Edinburgh's Bramble Bar, shares his latest cocktail innovation with The List: 'I invented this one especially for cocktail competitions, and call it The Green Dragon Julep. I make it by smashing…

Coming soon

4 Sep 2008

Witness the fitness of this autumn’s movie schedule - 88 Minutes, Blindness, Body of Lies, Burn After Reading, Choke, Death Race, Easy Virtue, Faintheart, Fears of the Dark, Ghost Town, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr Hunter S Thompson, How To Lose…

Constantines

4 Sep 2008

When Bryan Webb and Doug MacGregor’s hardcore act Shoulder broke up they toned their rock fury down to form Constantines with Steve Lambke and Dallas Wehrle. Starting out signed to Sub Pop, they play raw art punk mixed with college rock for a groove…

Constantines - Kensington Heights

4 Sep 2008

Look up ‘nearly men’ in the Dictionary of Obscure Indie Rock Lore and you’ll find a long, arduous, hand wringing essay about Constantines. A band who in nine years, have never quite had their moment in the sunshine but work away feverishly, secretly…

Cut to the chase

4 Sep 2008

Eddie Harrison investigates the low fi, low budget revolution going on in Scottish filmmaking. Jean-Luc Godard said all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun. But anyone who has ever picked up a camera knows that cash in the bank helps too. The…