Comedy and Paul Dale

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.

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…

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.

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…