Issue 566

Gaelic arts

Slainte mhath (good health)

4 Jan 2007

GAELIC ARTS Does Scotland still have a cohesive national identity? In the late 1980s, when Runrig’s Gaelic drumbeat pulsed through the charts, Wildcat staged ambitious promenade pieces and we all hated Thatcher, ‘Scottishness’ felt tangible. These…

Win a Rapal MP3 player

4 Jan 2007

Gaelic Arts and the new BBC 2 show Rapal have very kindly given us an mp3 player, a Teach Yourself Gaelic audio course, two tickets to see There’s No V in Gaelic at the Citizen’s Theatre, a selection of CDs and assorted other Gaelic goodies. To be in…

* Classical Hitlist

Hitlist

3 Jan 2007

National Youth Orchestra of Scotland: New Year Concert What a way to start the year. Almost 100 of the cream of the country’s young musical talent show what can be done after their winter residential course. Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Thu 4 Jan.

* Hitlist

Hitlist

3 Jan 2007

Hansel and Gretel The age old folk tale is brought to panto-life with the Dundee Rep ensemble firing on all cylinders with lots of laughs and a quietly moving dénouement. Dundee Rep, until Sat 6 Jan.

* Hitlist

Hitlist

3 Jan 2007

The Last King of Scotland Director Kevin Touching the Void MacDonald and Peter The Queen Morgan’s nuanced and clever adaptation of Giles Foden’s excellent novel. General release from Fri 12 Jan. Read review , profile of director Kevin Mcdonald or…

11:14 - DVD review

11:14

3 Jan 2007

DRAMA This clever cubist thriller examines a single moment in time from the varying perspectives of a dozen people for whom 11:14 pm proves to be a pivotal moment in their lives. Writer-director Greg Marcks’ inspired and assured feature debut begins…

Ad Lib Restaurant & Bar

Early doors

3 Jan 2007

The best time to review a budding restaurant is probably not in the first week of its operation. Nine times out of ten, the initial fortnight can be bedevilled by a variety of hiccups from staff training lessons still to sink in, to noisy butt-cheek…

Apocalypto

(18) 138min

3 Jan 2007

ACTION/ADVENTURE Welcome to the jungle. A place where pierced savages josh and jest as they rip the flesh of a freshly speared boar. Life is simple, life is good, but trouble is hiding in the undergrowth and young family man Jaguar Paw (Rudy…

Art School Confidential - DVD review

Art School Confidential

3 Jan 2007

COMEDY/DRAMA The surprisingly swift DVD release of Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes’ adaptation of Clowes’ graphic novel is saddening but hardly surprising. By far and away the weakest film that Zwigoff has made (following on from the off kilter joys…

Barbarossa - album review

Barbarossa

3 Jan 2007

FOLK It must be fun down the Fence Collective way with all those pseudonyms being hidden behind. And so following in the footsteps of the label’s mentor King Creosote (Kenny Anderson) here we have James Mathe aka Red Beard (‘barbarossa’ in Italian)…

Brian Ferguson

3 Jan 2007

FACE FOR THE FUTURE He’s not exactly a new face: He’s kicked around the Scottish theatre for three or four years in this reviewer’s recollection, and probably longer, but Brian Ferguson’s 2006 has launched him as a substantial actor on the Scottish…

CATS Awards

3 Jan 2007

AWARDS ROUND UP We’re about at half term for the awards season, with the CATS Awards occurring in early June this year. So far, the chatter among the critics has covered a great variety of work, from grand scale projects to more modest pieces. It’s a…

Charles Rennie Mackintosh's house

Top of the property ladder

3 Jan 2007

A house designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh has been put on the market and looks likely to become the country’s most expensive home. Windyhill House in Kilmalcolm, Renfrewshire, 15 miles outside Glasgow, is the only remaining Mackintosh-designed…

Day the Country Died, The - DVD review

The Day the Country Died

3 Jan 2007

DOCUMENTARY Subtitled ‘A History of Anarcho Punk’ this is actually a visual retelling of Ian Glasper’s excellent book of the same name. Exploring in minute detail the obscure, esoteric, UK anarcho-punk scene of the early 80s, this absolutely…

DVD round-up

3 Jan 2007

Welcome one, welcome all and Happy New Year. To mark the end of the old we would like to bring in something new. Until, of course, you get totally bored of it and we will try something else.

Executive campaign set to sponsor Outsider Festival

3 Jan 2007

Highland 2007, the year-long celebration of Highland culture, has announced that The Outsider Festival will be sponsored by the Scottish Executive’s sustainable development campaign, It’s Our Future.

Field Music - album review

Field Music

3 Jan 2007

INDIE Although their drummer Dave Brewis is a sometime Futurehead, Sunderland’s Field Music take a refreshingly different tack from their new wave apeing compatriots. There are still a good deal of crunching, right-angled guitars in the mix, but…

Heirloom, The - DVD review

The Heirloom

3 Jan 2007

HORROR In this polished haunted house movie, an architect returns from the UK to take up his inheritance: a huge but dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of Taipei. At first his girlfriend and friends can’t get enough of the house, with its high…

Hold Steady, The - album review

The Hold Steady

3 Jan 2007

ROCK’N’ROLL Sometimes, a band provides one of those kind of songs that always stay in your heart and record collection forever. The Hold Steady have an old song of theirs called ‘Your Little Hoodrat Friend’, a throttling, acerbic bombast of a rock…

Kevin Mcdonald profile

Profile

3 Jan 2007

Name Kevin Macdonald Born 28 October 1967, Glasgow, Scotland. Background Celluloid runs like blood through Macdonald’s veins. He’s the grandson of legendary writer/director Emeric Pressburger and younger brother of Trainspotting producer Andrew…

Killswitch Engage

3 Jan 2007

5 REASONS TO SEE 1 They’re the illegitimate sons of Slayer They are leaders of the metalcore movement that take the blueprint of thrash as laid down by Slayer, but ramp it up with elements of their hardcore roots. In fact, their rock forefathers…

Leech

The Leech

3 Jan 2007

What do George W Bush, Adolf Hitler, the Leech and you have in common? No, not that. Misshapen or mono-genitalia is a surprisingly widespread condition and there’s absolutely no evidence linking testicular envy to genocidal impulses. Not yet anyway.

Mark Zusak

Death and the maiden

3 Jan 2007

The literary canon is riddled with unreliable narrators. From Holden Caulfield to Humbert Humbert and the voices which lead you through Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart the first-person perspective can…

Mary Chapin Carpenter

3 Jan 2007

Celtic Connections have secured the first Scottish show from Mary Chapin Carpenter in five years. And it’s a long overdue return to our shores for the multi-Grammy award-winner, famed for her humorous, fast-paced country-rock songs, though not afraid of…

One minute wonder

3 Jan 2007

The American Industrialist and philanthropist John D Rockefeller may have had a point when he wrote that ‘All competition is a sin.’ But let’s face it some competitions are less reprehensible than others and indeed, by that same measure, some…