Comedy and Paul Dale

Ruby Wax: Losing It

A fevered and empowering comic monologue

19 Aug 2011

According to a 2009 report, one in ten people in Scotland take daily medication for depression. This demographic are Ruby Wax’s kind of people. Broadened out from a community project that Wax and best friend/musician Judith Owen toured around NHS mental…

Paul Foot: Still Life

Childish ingenuity and some laughs but feels like going through the motions

16 Aug 2011

Like Frankie Howerd before him, procrastination and performance deconstruction filtered through a mesh of silliness are Foot’s stock in trade. Despite previous Fringe prowess, Still Life has him going through the motions. There’s childish ingenuity and…

Danny Bevins

Muscular comedy from the former soldier, jailbird and redneck

15 Aug 2011

Former soldier, jailbird and dysfunctionally raised red neck, Bevins is a gifted and dyspeptic stand-up, stringing together material on the ancient theme that all humanity is excrement. Like a mildly less political Bill Hicks, Bevins likes to confound…

Carey Marx

The thinking man’s shock jock

12 Aug 2011

Middle-aged and feeling decrepit and pointless, Carey Marx believes in speaking his sordid little mind. Opinions on clitoral stimuli, fat people who stop suddenly in the street, feminists and circumcision-revenge-rabbi-rape spill easily from his…

Doctor Brown

Silent and vulgar tedium

8 Aug 2011

Surrealism and silent comedy have a long and healthy relationship. Ask Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. You’d have to dig them up first, but that may be preferable to spending time with the hirsute Doctor Brown. In his silk dressing gown…

Colin Hoult

Talented and energetic performer targets UK provinces

8 Aug 2011

Somewhere between Angry Boys and The League of Gentlemen lies Colin Hoult. A clearly talented and energetic performer, Hoult’s bag is the grotesquery of the provinces. Crap Welsh poets, crime stoppers from East Midlands, gleeful northern dogs and…

Opening film Potiche and Little White Lies among GFF highlights

An overview of the careers of both actresses

17 Feb 2011

The Catherine Deneuve-starring Potiche, opens the 2011 Glasgow Film Festival, while another programme highlight is Little White Lies starring Marion Cotillard. Paul Dale examines the career of both actresses.

The Hot 100 2010 - Mark Millar, Kevin Bridges and Alasdair Gray take top 3 spots

Our annual chart of the people from Scotland being interesting, successful and creative

16 Dec 2010

The Hot 100 is a list of Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010. It includes musicians, artists, writers, actors, fashion designers, technological innovators, shop owners, festival directors, record label heads and one mad cyclist.

Greenberg

10 Jun 2010

(15) 107min The worst thing about a mid life crisis? You are only half way through. Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is 40 years old, unemployed, house-sitting for his rich brother and a minefield of mildly autistic behaviour. Obnoxious…

The Spy Next Door

31 Mar 2010

(PG) 94min Chan fans will enjoy the first five minutes of uber-hack Brian Levant’s patronising comedy-thriller, which opens with a montage of stunts from Chan’s earlier films. Thereafter, Chan struggles with a glib scenario in which, as secret…

How to Train Your Dragon

22 Mar 2010

(PG) 97min Commendable new DreamWorks animation set in the mythical world of Vikings and dragons, and based on the book by Cressida Cowell. Hiccup, a Viking teenager befriends a dragon. Voice work by Gerard Butler, America Ferrara and Craig…

My Last Five Girlfriends

22 Mar 2010

(12A) 87min Frothy, above average British romcom based on a novel by philosopher Alain de Botton. Brendan Patricks, Naomie Harris and Michael Sheen star. General release from Fri 19 Mar.

Machan

19 Jan 2010

Comedies about immigration are pretty thin on the ground these days but The Full Monty producer Uberto Pasolini’s directorial debut is a sweet anomaly. Based on the true story of a group of Sri Lankans who fly to Bavaria pretending to be their country’s…

Southern Softies

19 Nov 2009

Comic singer/organist makes his film debut in this comedy documentary which takes Shuttleworth and his ever on hand neighbour Ken down to the Channel Islands to find out if it really is ‘soft down south.’ A Q&A with star/director Graham Fellows will…

Morris: A Life with Bells On

4 Nov 2009

Lucy Akhurst’s very English comedy about an avant garde morris dancer gets a brief outing this fortnight. GFT, Glasgow from Fri 6-Sun 8 Nov.

Starsuckers

23 Oct 2009

Also out this fortnight is Chris Taking Liberties Atkins’ wonderfully mischievous documentary foray into the world of celebrity obsessed media. Atkins and his team hilariously illustrate just how easy it is to plant hoax celebrity stories with an…

National Lampoon’s Animal House

23 Oct 2009

(15) 108min John Landis’ seminal 1978 frat house comedy on new digital print. Selected release from Tue 3 Nov.

Playing Away

A 1980s sports comedy to transcend racial stereotypes

22 Oct 2009

This is a very welcome reissue of Horace Pressure Ové’s 1987 comedy of race manners. When a West Indian cricket team from Brixton travels to a Suffolk village to play against the local team as the culmination of the village’s Third World Week, racial…

Tales of the Golden Age (Amintiri Din Epoca De Aur)

Affectionate Romanian cinema

21 Oct 2009

Cristian Mungiu, the Palme D’Or winning Romanian filmmaker of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, would almost certainly find himself in contention with American communications magnate Harold S Geneen’s much quoted belief that ‘We must not be hampered by…

The 40 Year Old Virgin

23 Sep 2009

Despite the title The 40 Year Old Virgin is a surprisingly sweet film from comedy juggernaut Judd Apatow that brought Steve Carroll to the public at large’s attention in the titular role. Screening here with The Hangover for a smart comedy double…

Away we go

11 Sep 2009

After Revolutionary Road, director Sam Mendes takes a turn for the worse with this naff impersonation of an independent American comedy road movie written by publisher and memoirist Dave Eggers and his Mrs (Vendela Vida). Expectant parents Burt (John…

Andrew Watts

Without any decent jokes

18 Aug 2009

Taking a rough show chronology from The Kinks’ 1968 single ‘David Watts’, posh butterball and depressed ex-lawyer Andrew Watts takes us on a journey through his arcane obsessions and observations. With his talk of macro-economics and pharmaceutical…

John Bishop

Master of the familiar and familial anecdote

18 Aug 2009

Liverpool FC-loving dad prevaricates on age, fatherhood, pornography, playing a lesbian’s father in Skins, Elvis’ death, and (indulgently) his personal journey to Anfield. Broad, culturally conservative but funny, there’s nothing surprising here, but…

Plastic Fantastic - GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra

The action figure is now a movie star. But why stop there?

30 Jul 2009

It’s all come a little too late for me. It’s been a long time since I put my armless and legless Action Men (or GI Joes as they were called in America) in a shoebox and sent them back to Palitoy Ltd for repair. You could do that kind of thing in those…

Lake Tahoe

9 Jul 2009

More small-time deadpan shenanigans from Fernando Eimbcke, the mischievous young Mexican writer/director of 2004’s Duck Season. In a sleepy sun-baked Mexican suburb, teenage Juan (Diego Cataño) crashes the family car. Stranded and fearful of…

Also Released - Film

25 Jun 2009

Blood: The Last Vampire (18) 91min Vampire hunter Saya (Gianna Jun) is unrivalled, but that’s because she is half bloodsucker herself – on her mother’s side. Will she go to the dark side or will she carry on fighting for the mortals? Popular anime gets…

Blue Eyelids (Parpados Azules)

11 Jun 2009

Love, naivety and loneliness in a modern Mexican megalopolis are essayed in this charming and quirky bittersweet comedy. When factory worker Marina (Cecilia Suárez) wins an all-expenses-paid trip for two from her employer, she realises that, because of…

Synecdoche, New York: Crisis of faith

14 May 2009

‘How many roads must a man walk down / before you call him a man?’ Is Bob Dylan’s most famous protest song really a surrealist riddle? What’s the road made out of, and will it hurt the tender soles of my feet? That’s the thing about the Jewish…

O’Horten

30 Apr 2009

DRAMA/COMEDY Maturity, loneliness and the inherent freedoms of breaking with routine are investigated in delightful sixth feature from the gifted Norwegian filmmaker of Kitchen Stories and Factotum. Odd Horten (Baard Owe) is about to retire. After 40…

The Baxter

5 Mar 2009

COMEDY This likeably old fashioned comedy showcasing the talents of comic actors Michael Showalter (who also writes and directs), Paul Judd, Justin Theroux and a pre-Brokeback Mountain Michelle Williams has taken four years to cross the pond. And yet…

Glasgow Film Festival: Recommended Comedies

5 Feb 2009

Hamlet 2 Bad taste high school comedy starring the multi-talented Mr Steve Coogan. Cineworld, Sun 15 Feb, 7pm & Mon 16 Feb, 2.30pm. Lake Tahoe Deadpan and occasionally whimsical Mexican comedy from Fernando Duck Season Eimbecke.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

5 Feb 2009

COMEDY/ROMANCE Another year, another execrable Woody Allen film. Our bankrupt Icelandic friends have a proverb for this kind of thing – ‘mediocrity is climbing molehills without sweating.’ Young Americans Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina…

Faintheart

22 Jan 2009

COMEDY/ROMANCE If ever there was an argument that the business of popular filmmaking should be left to the professionals Faintheart is it. The result of an initiative by MySpace, Vertigo Films and Film4 to ‘harness the collective creativity of the…

The Hot 100 2008

11 Dec 2008

It’s been a helluva year. 2008 has been a time of significant global change, socially, politically and culturally, with Scotland no exception. So here, for your delectation, is The List’s pick of the 100 people, places and things that rocked our world…

Choke

13 Nov 2008

(18) 92min Unrepentant sex addict Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) has always believed that life is about making other people do stuff for you. By day he does as little work as he can at a historical theme park and by night he cons money in restaurants…

Easy Virtue

30 Oct 2008

England, the 1920s. Dashing young socialite John Whittaker (Ben Barnes) returns to his ancestral pile with his spunky new American wife Larita (Jessica Biel). A hotbed of dysfunction, xenophobia and bankruptcy the family home contains his highly-strung…

Burn After Reading

16 Oct 2008

THRILLER/COMEDY Modern idiocy and bleak humour are the order of the day in the Coen’s latest – a reworking (conscious or otherwise) of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of An Author. Foul-mouthed CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich…

Ghost Town

16 Oct 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE Middle-aged ‘smock-wearing tooth jockey’ (dentist) Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) is a hateful runt of a man. He lives a life as contained as it is misanthropic. After going into hospital for an endoscopy, Bertram starts to see dead…

The Rocker

16 Oct 2008

COMEDY Twenty years on from being dumped by big haired ‘soft-cock rock’ 80s legends Vesuvius, drummer Fish (Rainn Wilson) still burns with the indignation of the holy. While crashing at his sister’s house he agrees to be the drummer for his nephew’s…

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…

Eco-friendly Jihad

Saving the planet with fun

7 Aug 2008

Irish columnist and comedian Abie Philbin Bowman, creator of Jesus: The Guantanamo Years, returns for a second coming. This time, he wants to save the world and like his famous father (Irish broadcaster and historian John Bowman) he believes that real…

Bethany Black

Personal story told with little verve

7 Aug 2008

You would think that a goth, lesbian, post-op transsexual might have a few interesting stories to tell? And Bethany Black does, but she doesn't know how to tell them. From an early age Black felt she was in the wrong body. By her twenties she was…

Pete Firman

7 Aug 2008

For a bit of straightforward, old-fashioned entertainment you can't go wrong with comedy magician Firman. With the giddy fakir style trickery skills of Tommy Cooper and the flirtatious warmth of Eric Morecambe, he's a northern crowd-pleasing wonder.

Priceless

5 Jun 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 104min The best things in life are free, but all seasoned Riviera gold digger Irène (Audrey Tautou) wants is her own credit card from an ageing sugar daddy. Meanwhile, luckless, impoverished bar tender and dog walker Jean (Gad…

The Boss Of It All

13 Mar 2008

Taking a break from vituperative deconstructions of US history, the ever playful Danish director, writer and producer Lars Von Trier brings us a comedy shot in Automavision, a process whereby the director chooses a fixed camera position and then allows…

The Band’s Visit

29 Nov 2007

Last chance to see Eran Kolirin’s warmly enjoyable comedy about an Egyptian ceremonial police band lost in Israel. Think Brassed Off in the Middle East. GFT, Glasgow & Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 7–Thu 13 Dec.

DVD Roundup

15 Nov 2007

‘No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees/No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds!’ That’s how English poet and humourist Thomas Hood chose to describe the month of November. There is some of Hood’s cheeky sense of observation in John Waters: This…

12.08 East of Bucharest

6 Sep 2007

On 22 December 1989, the Romanian Revolution that was to see the end of Communist rule and the execution of long-standing Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had spread to most major cities. It was a day of rebellion, demonstration and change that few…

Mutual Appreciation

(15) 108min

16 Aug 2007

COMEDY Andrew Bujalski’s excellent follow up to his highly acclaimed Funny Ha Ha (2002), helped break the whole concept of ‘mumblecore’ – a movement of low-fi, stilted North American comedy films – in this country when it was released a few months…

License to Wed

9 Aug 2007

When lovebirds Sadie (Mandie Moore) and Ben (John Krasinski) become engaged, Reverend Frank (Robin Williams) puts them through a tortuous marriage preparation course to see if they deserve to be married in church.