Issue 564

Arab Strap

Belt up

OBITUARY It’s September 1996. A message is being left for me by Arab Strap’s Malcolm Middleton. ‘One of us looks a bit like Chris Evans, the other looks like, em, Tony Slattery.’ As a means of setting up a face-to-face interview with people I’ve…

Insider our readers' homes

Inside I'm Dancing

What do our homes say about us? Out of town furniture stores may be cheap and easy, but most people want to avoid an identikit approach to interior design. We had a hunch that there’s a maverick spirit in Scotland’s approach to home-making, and we…

Remote Control - TV round-up

Remote Control

Yes, but is it art? This is the question that the good people of Margate are asking with both their mouths and their eyes as Antony Gormley creates his latest controversy. But rather than the constant Geordie reminder that is his Angel of the North…

Pantos

Psychorella

Well, we’ve only ourselves to blame. If we, as adults, persist in dragging our children along to pantos and Christmas shows, what grounds do we have to complain that they turn out to be twisted and violent? The stories themselves seem to display an…

Scottish Mining Museum

Life at the coal face

There’s a yellow canary called Bev that lives in a well-appointed cage at the Scottish Mining Museum. He’s been there five years, and is named in honour of Ernest Bevin, Minister for Labour during World War II. Bevin’s the one who decided that 10% of…

Wild Japan - Outlaw Masters

Nippon rising

Wild Japan: Outlaw Masters is a BFI Touring programme of twelve of the most extraordinary films you may ever have the chance to see. This selection of Japanese cult films made between 1963 and 1977 covers most bases, from westerns to gangster and…

Thomas Pynchon

Silent witness

T is for Tinasky Wanda Tinasky was a bag lady living under a bridge in Northern California who wrote witty correspondence to a local paper during the 1980s. Rumour was rife that Thomas Pynchon was behind the letters, but more prominence has been given…

Heroes

Theatre Royal, Glasgow, until Sat 2 Dec

WEST END TOUR Perhaps the thing that haunts most of us about old age is the fear of loneliness. The need to create human bonds, and the fear that poverty and isolation will prevent this is something demonstrated in our own society each time we see an…

Stranger Than Fiction

We’re so used to Will Ferrell playing the crazed maniac that it’s a pleasant surprise to see that he can play the straight guy equally well. He’s Howard Crick, a taxman with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder whose life is turned upside down when he hears…

London to Brighton

‘One year they wanted my ho to be a poster girl... for birth control.’ Jackson Brown, US comedian, pimp. It’s just after 3am in a rundown London toilet and seasoned prostitute Joanne (Georgia Groome) is trying to console a tearful young girl…

Stage Whispers - theatre news and views

Stage Whispers

For those of you in despair at the lack of theatre other than pantos and Christmas shows at this time of the year, Whispers has glad tidings. If you look long and hard enough, you’ll find that other kinds of theatre are still out there, if largely…

Ingmar Bergman Collection - DVD review

The Ingmar Bergman Collection

BOX SET For a filmmaker who’s recently denounced Godard as a ‘desperate’ bore, Welles as a ‘phoney’ and Antonioni as someone who never learned his craft, Bergman wouldn’t make much of a critic. But how does he compete with the people he condemns?

Big Nothing

(15) 85min

Sometimes things just don’t work out. Particles and elements shift and design gets de-railroaded. That’s how you end up with a koala bear instead of a kangaroo or in this case a Big Nothing instead of Blood Simple or Fargo Big Nothing is a smalltown…

Green Whale

Traverse Theatre, Thu 7-Sun 24 December

KIDS THEATRE Panto season may be amongst us, but one woman is making sure there’s a viable alternative in at least two of our theatres. Virginia Radcliffe and her Lickityspit theatre company will be taking up residence at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews…