Issue 568

Fawlty Towers Experience

The hotel inspectors

31 Jan 2007

A swarthy waiter pursues a hamster beneath a table of dinner guests, chased by a tall, quiveringly angry man with a moustache. The diners erupt with laughter as the waiter re-emerges, accidentally displacing the wig on a female guest’s head. The furious…

Various - Songs for the Young at Heart - album review

Various

29 Jan 2007

KIDS COMPILATION Nostalgia might not be what it once was, but in the Staples and Boulter households, the past is far from imperfect. Stuart and Dave, the guys from the Tindersticks, have lovingly recreated the songs they remembered from their radios…

* Hitlist

Hitlist

29 Jan 2007

Stephen K Amos The genial and talented wag will be on Channel 4 soon talking about being both black and gay. Catch him now before he’s far too famous for the likes of us. The Stand, Glasgow, Thu 1-Sat 3 Feb.

The Ministry of Burlesque

Preview

29 Jan 2007

More and more burlesque nights are setting their sights on Scotland. This fortnight, Ministry of Burlesque return with their ‘High Tease’, a mix of saucy cabaret and tongue in cheek striptease featuring the rather wonderful Kittie Klaw (pictured), Dusty…

Glasgow Film Festival - Half Nelson - Ryan Gosling interview

School daze

30 Jan 2007

GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL Named after a wrestling hold in which an opponent’s strengths are turned against themselves, the US indie Half Nelson is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the Glasgow Film Festival. The directorial debut of Ryan Fleck, whose…

DVD Round-up

29 Jan 2007

Shy, prone to stage sickness, deep depression and melancholia the British comedian Frankie Howerd was still the funniest man ever tp have been born in the city of York, England. A brilliant, stammering pontificate of a stand-up comedian, Howerd’s talent…

Niall Griffiths

Runt

15 Feb 2007

What a courageous writer Niall Griffiths is. In the seven years since his debut Grits - an ambitious and occasionally brilliant study of modern hedonism in West Wales - he has divined, deviated and experimented with a bravery that is only really…

Glasgow Film Festival

Best of the fest

31 Jan 2007

GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL Cashback The opening night gala revolves around a heartbroken insomniac and his quest to find new love - through nightshift work. See Sean Biggerstaff interview. GFT, Thu 15 Feb, 7.30pm; Cineworld Renfrew Street, Fri 16…

Where to eat on Valentine's Day

Love is in the fayre

31 Jan 2007

The night of 14 February is traditionally one where restaurants are overrun by couples on their lone dining foray of the year. Spare a thought not only for them (and the sustained periods of silence between courses) but also for the restaurant staff who…

Loch Fyne

Love in a cold climate

31 Jan 2007

It’s not always easy doing nothing, but that’s what we’re here to do. Stop, relax, get away. And Loch Fyne, a blue grey landscape cut in two by an opaque, metallic body of water, gives the impression we’re hundreds of miles away from home and not just…

Guy's Restaurant and Bar

Sweet and mellow

31 Jan 2007

When chef/proprietor Guy Cowan first opened his eponymous restaurant on North Street in December 2005, the basement premises with alcoves provided an intimate space which seemed tailor-made for dining. When he relocated across town last November to a…

Glasgow Film Festival - horror movies

Day of the dead

31 Jan 2007

The all-day marathon is a right of passage for any horrorphile; a chance to wallow in the garish glory of the most extreme cinematic genres. For the second year, GFF features FrightFest in association with Zone Horror.

Valentine's Day gift guide

Planning to surprise that special someone on the m

31 Jan 2007

1 Elemis Skin Treatment Voucher £45; Elemis Daily Moisture Boost for Men £25; Elemis Ice Cool Foam Gel £18. All available at Harvey Nichols, 30-34 St Andrew’s Square, Edinburgh, 0131 524 8388

Cate Blanchett interview

Woman of note

30 Jan 2007

‘If I knew that my son’s art teacher was banging his brains out in the art room, I’d be in there with a meat cleaver.’ Cate Blanchett is reflecting on her new film, Notes on a Scandal, in which she plays an art teacher who has an affair with one of her…

How MySpace took over my space

30 Jan 2007

I was 19 when I got my first real job and my first mobile phone. The job introduced me to the World Wide Web and my beloved email, where there is always post on a Sunday and the postman comes with hourly treats. The internet opened up so many…

Glasgow Film Festival - best of the fest

Best of the fest

30 Jan 2007

Cashback The opening night gala revolves around a heartbroken insomniac and his quest to find new love - through nightshift work. See Sean Biggerstaff interview. GFT, Thu 15 Feb, 7.30pm; Cineworld Renfrew Street, Fri 16 Feb, 6.30pm. A Guide to…

The Horrors interview

Smoke & mirrors

30 Jan 2007

The Horrors are in need of a fag. Having had their ch ance for a nicotine fix disrupted by fans who are loitering outside The Caves in Edinburgh hoping for a glimpse of the band, they now find themselves upstairs experiencing first hand the realities of…

Fast Food Nation

Food for thought

30 Jan 2007

Eric Schlosser touched a nerve with the public when he exposed the unethical and unhygienic practices of America’s junk food industry in his book Fast Food Nation. It swiftly became an international bestseller and required reading for anyone concerned…

Venice Biennale

Six of the best

30 Jan 2007

Congratulations to Charles Avery, Henry Coombes, Louise Hopkins, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer and Tony Swain, who have been selected to represent Scotland at the 52nd Venice Biennale of Art, after months of deliberation. The Scottish show, which will…

Venice Biennale - who's going

Six of the best

30 Jan 2007

Congratulations to Charles Avery, Henry Coombes, Louise Hopkins, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer and Tony Swain, who have been selected to represent Scotland at the 52nd Venice Biennale of Art, after months of deliberation. The Scottish show, which will…

Leech

Sucking the blood of popular entertainment

30 Jan 2007

It’s Hollywood awards season, meaning a succession of worthy films and actors acting seriously and actorly. Pictures like Babel, Bobby, Last King of Scotland, Blood Diamond and Letters From Iwo Jima represent a grim condemnation of war and political…

Klaxons interview

Big noise

30 Jan 2007

For the first time the NME tour is splitting into two camps. The Indie Rock strand is headed by The Automatic who share the bill with Dundee’s indie saviours The View, rockabilly goth punks The Horrors and Mumm-Ra. But perhaps it’s the second leg, the…

Glasgow Film Festival - Cashback - Sean Biggerstaff interview

Money talks

30 Jan 2007

GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL Sean Biggerstaff has just returned from the seventh annual British Film Festival in Israel where Cashback was screened simultaneously in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But though the film was well received, Biggerstaff wasn’t…

Radio romance

BBC calls on budding authors to write more than a

30 Jan 2007

The Glasgow-based author Janice Galloway begins her short story ‘Valentine’ with a simple disclosure. ‘I hate February,’ she writes. ‘There is no natural excitement about the second month of the year. Valentine’s Day makes me embarrassed.’

Glasgow Film Festival - Mira Nair interview (The Namesake)

A tale of two cities

30 Jan 2007

GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL After her sojourn into the upper echelons of British society with her adaptation of Vanity Fair, Mira Nair returns to the multicultural themes that established her reputation with The Namesake. It’s a cinematic rendition of…

Glasgow Film Festival - John Wayne tribute

Shooting star

30 Jan 2007

GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL Asked towards the end of his life why he had never written an autobiography John Wayne replied, ‘Those who like me already know me, and those who don’t like me wouldn’t want to read about me anyway.’ Modern day celebrities would…

News in brief

30 Jan 2007

Al Gore’s climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, is to be shown in all of Scotland’s secondary schools. Friends of the Earth Scotland’s Chief Executive, Duncan McLaren, said of the Executive initiative: ‘For the sake of future generations we hope…

Gudgin steps down as Fringe director

30 Jan 2007

Edinburgh Fringe director Paul Gudgin has announced that he is to leave the post in June. Gudgin, who has held the post for eight years, led the annual celebration of theatre, comedy, music and dance to its most successful year in 2006, with ticket…

Remote Control - TV round-up

Brian Donaldson finds that comedy-drama is often a

29 Jan 2007

There are few things on British TV more comedic and dramatic than Johnny Vegas’ shape. Showing that he has a lot of guts, the northern funnyman graces Benidorm (STV, Thu 1 Feb, 10pm - 3 stars) with a full frontal exposé of his plentiful girth after…

Unconquered, The

Betts on two horses

29 Jan 2007

Steve Cramer Tell me a little about the origins of The Unconquered. The central character’s a girl, I understand, who is brutalised for standing up to reactionary forces?

Hold Steady, The

How swoon is now

29 Jan 2007

As timely dates go, The Hold Steady stomping their way through their set on Valentine’s Day is about as apposite as you can get.

Valentine's Day

Blazin’ quad

29 Jan 2007

Martin Sterling is a very enthusiastic man with a very dark sense of humour. ‘There are two types of mad, aren’t there? Good mad and bad mad.’ He assures me that he is the former, and not just because he’s coming up to Glasgow on Valentine’s Day to…

David Diamante at Club Noir

Diamond geezer

29 Jan 2007

David Diamante is to modern British burlesque what Charlie Chaplin was to comedy - its Godfather, its energy and its salesman, but definitely not in a pushy double-glazing type way. The ‘product’ speaks for itself: ‘glamour’ is priceless and affordable…

John Huston retrospective

A drunken god

29 Jan 2007

The prolific, gifted and deeply eccentric writer/director John Huston preferred to think that ‘God is not dead, just drunk.’ It’s a cute quote, which fits in with the air of Irish whimsy that Huston attempted to generate around himself and his uprooted…

2000AD 30-year anniversary

Thrill seeker

29 Jan 2007

Those of us at a certain age might remember the tooth-gnashing wait every Wednesday morning for 2000AD to drop through the letter box. The boys’ adventure comic was first published in February 1977, and the particular pool of creative genius and…

LGBT History Month

Back to the future

29 Jan 2007

Love and life for LGBT people in the UK is looking a particularly rosy shade of pink in 2007. Civil partnerships have failed to wreck the institution of marriage, same-sex couples have the legal right to adopt children jointly, and the Equality Bill…

National Review of Live Art

Inner visions

29 Jan 2007

Now in its 27th year, the NRLA is taking over Glasgow’s Tramway for four days of live art, performance and installation from an international cast of established and emerging artists.

Stop the War Scotland

Glasgow University, Sat 10 Feb

29 Jan 2007

CONFERENCE Rival MPs, senior citizens, human rights activists, students, artists, prisoners, religious leaders, journalists, aid workers, members of the Armed Forces and ordinary single mothers from Glasgow. The Stop the War Coalition has forged…

Singles & Downloads

29 Jan 2007

Singles? Downloads! Seeing as 2007 is the year when MySpace makes it really big, so much so that your mum and dad will be using it to check out that fun new pop act they heard on Jools Holland, let’s celebrate new music. Without wishing to bark in your…

Living in the Modern World

City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sun 4 Mar

29 Jan 2007

PAINTING, FILM, PHOTOGRAPHY and INSTALLATION The spaces we inhabit and the buildings that surround us shape much of modern life as we know it. This is the basic premise for this densely packed exhibition, which spills out over two floors of the City…

Stage Whispers

29 Jan 2007

There’s something about a Robert LePage production which is quintessentially of its director/devisor. One need only sit for a few minutes in a LePage production to see its strengths shining through as the product of a particular mind working with…

Noisettes, The

King Tut’s, Glasgow, Thu 8 Feb

29 Jan 2007

ROCK The Noisettes Mishaps in rock music are hardly a rarity. However, if we are to believe the far-fetched tales of The Noisettes’ Shingai Shoniwa, good can often come of them. ‘One stormy night in 2003, Dan (Smith, guitar) went up the ale soaked…

Dreamgirls

29 Jan 2007

Dreamgirls has made Oscar history and the ceremony hasn’t even taken place yet. It is, allegedly, the first picture to have the most Academy Award nominations in a given year and still not be nominated for Best Picture. And, for once, the Academy seems…

Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Wayward Thinker

Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 10 Feb-Sun 8 A

29 Jan 2007

DRAWING AND INSTALLATION Fifty thousand years ago an ape man ejaculated into a field of flowers. His act culminated in the creation of the Mounds: part-human, part-plant mutants that have taken over one of the many parallel universes in artist…

Venice Biennale

The big four

29 Jan 2007

As one of the most varied line-ups that Scotland has presented at this year’s biennale, Doggerfisher’s Lucy Skaer, Rosalind Nashashibi, Louise Hopkins and Charles Avery will head out to the Scottish Palazzo Zenobio to make new work for their…

Word Up - club news

Word Up

29 Jan 2007

There are some interesting developments afoot in Glasgow clubland as CPL are putting Cube and the Tunnel up for sale. ‘What we do best is cater to the rock and student market,’ explained CPL Managing Director, Donald MacLeod, ‘so we will be…

Xplicit

29 Jan 2007

DRUM & BASS By the age of two most of us were doing well. We could walk, run, talk and generally fend for ourselves. Xplicit, however, have surpassed us all. In their short existence they have become the country’s biggest drum & bass night with…

Jazz from Sweden

Various venues, Scotland-wide, Thu 8 Feb-Mon 19 Ma

29 Jan 2007

JAZZ The Swedes are finally coming, and if this five-week extravaganza of Swedish jazz is a little later than originally envisaged, it promises to be a memorable one. Assembly Direct and the Stockholm-based Rikskonserter first started to plot an…

Kaput!

This month: Kaput!

29 Jan 2007

INTRODUCING... Residents Colin (AKA Kid Twist) Duncan from Dananananaykroyd and Tom of 50pbadges.com. Guests Regular live guests from the Scottish music scene and beyond will be a feature. Music policy 50s rockabilly, rock’n’roll, 60s French…

Rock Action Singles Club

This Issue: Rock Action Singles Club

29 Jan 2007

EXPOSURE Guardians of all things loud, strange and just plain unique in modern music, Glasgow independent record label Rock Action - set up and maintained by post-rock demigods Mogwai - have launched their own Singles Club. Label manager Craig…

Child Genius

Channel 4, Thu 8 Feb, 9pm

29 Jan 2007

DOCUMENTARY Most of us would like to have a few more brain cells than we currently have at our disposal. But who would really want an IQ of 170, putting us into the top 0.002% of the population? And what if we had that mental ability and were around…

Indigitous

Studio 24, Edinburgh, Fri 2 Feb

29 Jan 2007

TRANCE Although trance is more of a niche market these days, in contrast to its Goan heyday in the mid-90s, there’s still a dedicated audience for it out there. Those who live in Edinburgh will have been disappointed of late, however, because the…

Notes on a Scandal

29 Jan 2007

Barbara Covett (Judi Dench) - note that grasping surname - is not a popular figure at the North London comprehensive where she teaches history. To the staff and the students she is, in her own words, ‘a battleaxe’, and to the headmaster, she is an…

Baby Balloon

Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 6-Sat 10 Feb; North Edi

29 Jan 2007

TODDLER THEATRE Parents sneaking out the door with a crying baby is a familiar sight at children’s theatre shows. Dragged along with an older sibling to a show too scary, confusing or just downright dull for tiny tots to endure, toddlers aren’t…

* Hitlist

Hitlist

29 Jan 2007

NME Indie Rock The View, The Automatic (pictured), Mumm-Ra and The Horrors are this year’s would-be contenders for global rock stardom. Or a toddle back to indie obscurity. The choice is yours. Carling Academy, Glasgow, Thu 1 & Fri 2 Feb. (Rock & Pop…

Running with Scissors

29 Jan 2007

Nip/Tuck writer/executive producer Ryan Murphy does a very fine job of cutting/pasting onto the big screen the horrific and hilarious teenage memoir of journalist Augusten Burroughs. Abandoned first by his alcoholic father Norman (Alec Baldwin) and then…

Niall Griffiths

Runt (Jonathan Cape)

29 Jan 2007

SOCIAL DRAMA What a courageous writer Niall Griffiths is. In the seven years since his debut Grits - an ambitious and occasionally brilliant study of modern hedonism in West Wales - he has divined, deviated and experimented with a bravery that is…

Play

29 Jan 2007

‘Times were hard but they were modern’ runs the unattributed Italian proverb at the beginning of this vibrant debut feature from young Chilean writer-director Alicia Scherson, which provides a real tonic for jaded cinematic palates. Described by its…

Simon Periton

The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 24 Feb

29 Jan 2007

WORK ON PAPER It is easy to find superficial anti-art and anti-aesthetic urges in Simon Periton’s spray painted collages and assemblages on show at The Modern Institute. The materials he takes his inspiration from appear to have been ripped from…

Belle de Jour

(18) 99min

29 Jan 2007

The very great Spanish filmmaker and surrealist Luis Buñuel wrote in his fantastic autobiography My Last Breath that Belle de Jour was ‘my biggest commercial success, which I attribute more to the marvellous whores than to my direction.…

Risk

Tron, Glasgow, Thu 8-Sat 10 Feb, then touring

29 Jan 2007

NEW WORK If you believe what you see and hear in the media, there are gangs of hoodies lurking around every street corner in Britain these days. In truth, of course, teenagers have always been demonised for the kind of mischief that they get up to.

Aereogramme

The Classic Grand, Glasgow, Mon 12 Feb

29 Jan 2007

EPIC ROCK If you’ve ever sniffed around the Scottish post-rock underground, you might be familiar with the work of Aereogramme, but, trust me, you won’t be familiar with this Aereogramme. Because, after two years out of the limelight, the band are…

For Your Consideration

(12A) 86min

29 Jan 2007

The law of diminishing returns finally hits Christopher Guest and the team who have worked together since This Is Spinal Tap reconfigured the rockumentary back in 1984. Encouraged by the success of that film, which, despite being directed by Rob Reiner…

* Hitlist - LGBT History Month

Hitlist

29 Jan 2007

The Celluloid Closet A history of homo Hollywood, as told in this 1995 film based on Vito Russo’s book. From secretly gay actors like Rock Hudson (pictured, in Pillow Talk, where he played a straight man pretending to be gay to charm Doris Day’s…

Goya - Monsters and Matadors

National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, until Sun

29 Jan 2007

ETCHING There is something unsettlingly contemporary about the etchings on display in this exhibition; they are vivid and raw. Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’ is the centrepiece to this modest collection, and rightly so. The important series, not published…

Zoe Lyons

29 Jan 2007

STAND-UP Back in 2001, reality TV might not have been the scabrous slice of vermin that it is now. The innocent spirit of adventure probably reigned and people who went onto those shows may actually have wanted to get on with each other. This is…

Another Little Piece of My Heart

Oran Mor, Glasgow, Mon 5-Sat 10 Feb

29 Jan 2007

NEW WRITING ‘Long live Janis Joplin.’ With this declaration, Suzy, one of the two central characters in Liz Lochhead’s new piece nails her colours to the mast. Now, before we go into the various clichés about flowers in hair, or untimely ends, bear…

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

29 Jan 2007

REVIVAL Judy Garland said to her daughter: ‘Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.’ The title character of Little Voice seems to have it the wrong way round; she’s unsure of herself but first rate at imitating…

* Hitlist

Hitlist

29 Jan 2007

All My Sons Arthur Miller’s early classic is given a high quality revival at the Lyceum under the direction of John Dove. The story of an ostensibly ordinary American bourgeois family with a secret connected to the tragic loss of their son, this piece…

* Hitlist

Hitlist

29 Jan 2007

Club NME The indie club finds a new home featuring a variety of live acts including Pop Levi (1 Feb), Ratatat (8 Feb) and Jakobinarina and The Whip (15 Feb). The Arches, Glasgow, weekly Thu.

* Hitlist

Hitlist

29 Jan 2007

Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco The queen of Tartan Noir (as Mina probably hates being dubbed) makes her debut trip into graphic novels with Hellblazer: Empathy is the Enemy, which features the chain-smoking Constantine relocating to Glasgow.

Lorna Macintyre

Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Fri 23 Feb

29 Jan 2007

DRAWING, SCULPTURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY When the natural and unnatural are understood to be artificial concepts, the art object that takes this bleak state of affairs at its word is equally bleak. Lorna MacIntyre’s sculptures, photographs and drawings…

* Hitlist

Hitlist

29 Jan 2007

Goya - Monsters and Matadors Three famous folios of etchings by the Spanish Master are dragged up from the bowels of the NGS for our delectation. ‘The Tauromaquia’, ‘The Horrors of War’ and ‘The Proverbios or Follies’ drip with muck scraped from the…

Arthur and the Invisibles

(U) 93min

29 Jan 2007

If Luc Besson (The Big Blue, Leon) is to be believed, this, his tenth film, will also be his last as director. In adapting his own children’s book, Besson mixes live-action and CGI animation with decidedly patchy results. It’s heavy on style but light…

Bevellers, The

The Bevellers

29 Jan 2007

REVIVAL No amount of ‘City of Culture’ or ‘Glasgow Smiles Better’ labels can conceal the stereotypical view of Scotland’s largest city. This less than perfect reputation runs deeper than sovereign-wearing bams swallying Buckie. As a follow up to…

The Ministry of Burlesque presents High Tease

29 Jan 2007

CABARET Burlesque, a word used with some specificity by this six-year-old company, is a quite separate form from music hall or vaudeville although it has many traditions in common. Granted, many of the turns are the same - comics, singing, dancing…

Out to Lunch - Live!

Profile

29 Jan 2007

What’s that then? Lunch and 50 minutes of improv comedy for five shiny pounds.

Charlotte's Web

(U) 96min

29 Jan 2007

As a farmyard community story, EB White’s much loved kids story fits somewhere between cutesy fantasy Babe and Orwell’s bleak political parable Animal Farm, with cheery talking animals sugar-coating a bittersweet finale that touches on practical matters…

Dirty Dancing: 20th Anniversary Edition

(15) 100min

29 Jan 2007

For the few who don’t know the plot of Emile Ardolino’s 1987 romantic musical: it’s the summer of 1963 at Kellerman’s Holiday Resort. Misunderstood, frustrated in-house dance teacher, Johnny (an unconvincingly teenage Patrick Swayze), meets…

Malcolm Ross

Ego, Edinburgh, Wed 13 Dec

29 Jan 2007

INDIE The sad but true fact of Edinburgh’s current music scene is that, unless you have local knowledge of the great bands bubbling under the radar, there is no major scene which might burst forth and capture the imagination of the nation. It wasn’t…

Charley's Aunt

Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Mon 12-Sat 17 Feb, then to

29 Jan 2007

WEST END TOUR It’s probably to the detriment of Brandon Thomas’ Charley’s Aunt that, a couple of years after its premiere in 1892, another play featuring two young men willing to engage in a bit of deception and disguise in order to gull elderly…

Birchville Cat Motel

Tremors@Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, Wed 10 Jan

29 Jan 2007

EXPERIMENTAL Last time Stills Gallery white-not-quite-cubed space played host to live music was in 1998, when Quebeçois baroque apocalypsists Godspeed You! Black Emperor marked their low-key live UK debut before a phone box capacity audience (ignore…

Ads, The

The Ads

29 Jan 2007

INDIE If Glasgow’s Ads want to make it they’ll have to strike while the iron is both hot, and unsplattered by the remains of every unwelcome Fratellis and View clone that will inevitably crawl from the woodwork during the next year. They’re both good…

Spare Snare

King Tut’s, Glasgow, Thu 28 Dec

29 Jan 2007

INDIE Once proudly crowned the 46th best Scottish band in history by this very organ (one lower than Dogs Die In Hot Cars, but one above the Average White Band), Dundee’s Spare Snare are finally getting round to cashing in on the accolade with this…

Caucasion Chalk Circle

Dundee Rep, until Sat 3 Feb

29 Jan 2007

CLASSIC We’ve got so wrapped up with having our own National Theatre in Scotland that we’ve been apt to forget of recent times that there’s also a pretty formidable one south of the border, still obliged by its remit to visit us once in a while. The…

Chris Ware - comic review

Chris Ware

29 Jan 2007

WARPED HUMOUR The 17th volume of Chris Ware’s now self-published irregular comic continues the sad tale of Rusty Brown, a pre-pubescent dork who lives in a snowbound small town in America’s mid-west, where he stubbornly clings to his best friend, a…

Molly McGrann

Exurbia (Picador)

29 Jan 2007

TEEN DRAMA The 80s may have been the decade that taste forgot (unless you reckon that was the 70s or 90s), but it’s been wildly in vogue for writers looking to pick on an even meaner, reckless period than the one we are currently dragging ourselves…

Woman in Black, The

The Woman in Black

29 Jan 2007

WEST END TOUR These days, the reckoning of the commercial sector in the theatre runs that if it isn’t a musical, it won’t play. Yet, the living, breathing, if at the same time undead contradiction to this truism still seems to have ghostly legs…

Grand Illusion, La - DVD review

La Grand Illusion

29 Jan 2007

WAR After La Grande Illusion won a prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1937, the Nazis declared it ‘cinematic enemy number one’, and when Germany invaded France a couple of years later Goebbels had prints of the film destroyed. Jean Renoir’s…

Natsuo Kirino

Grotesque (Harvill Secker)

29 Jan 2007

PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA The title of this book alone should have you assuming the brace position, particularly in light of award-winning Japanese author Natsuo Kirino’s reputation for driving right to the slippery limits of the human psyche. Long and…

Angel-A - DVD review

Angel-A

29 Jan 2007

FANTASY DRAMA For Berlin, read Paris. For Wings of Desire, transpose Angel-A. But while Wim Wenders’ 80s classic still sparkles, this occasionally charming Luc Besson effort instantly pales by comparison. The problems are several fold, but the jovial…

Anthony Swofford

Exit A (Simon & Schuster)

29 Jan 2007

MILITARY DRAMA It comes as no surprise that Anthony Swofford, a military base kid raised in the US and Japan, should set his debut work of fiction in that very same environment. After the success of the bestselling and critically acclaimed memoir…

Jenny Turner

Brainstorm (Jonathan Cape)

29 Jan 2007

COMEDY DRAMA Set in the booming London of the 1990s, Jenny Turner’s debut novel is already a period piece. Her astringent comedy of manners captures ‘media chicks’ and their men, swearing and scheming, cocooned in Canary Wharf, unaware of the cracks…

Mika - album review

Mika

29 Jan 2007

POP Let’s play Spot the Influence. Queen! The Communards! Frankie Goes To Hollywood! Just when you’ve got Mika pinned as a retro-glam Hi NRG soundalike, he whaps the horns out for a Blur-ry knockabout caper on ‘Billy Brown’. Which sounds a bit like…

Passenger (Pasazerka) - DVD review

Passenger (Pasazerka)

29 Jan 2007

DRAMA Passenger is one of the great, overlooked films to deal with the Holocaust. Andrzej Munk’s film stands alongside Night and Fog and Shoah as a seminal examination of this crater in 20th century life and thought. Unlike those films, however, this…

Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy - comic review

Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy

29 Jan 2007

LITERARY ADAPTATION Robert Louis Stevenson’s celebrated historical adventure doesn’t need pictures to enhance its power. But this graphic novel adaptation, produced as part of the One Book ?" One Edinburgh reading campaign, successfully captures the…

Warren Ellis & Mike Deodato Jr - comic review

Warren Ellis & Mike Deodato Jr

29 Jan 2007

SUPERHERO Having run for the past few years as a fanboy-friendly graveyard for all of Marvel’s most colourful and perhaps least inspiring villains, this first issue of Warren Ellis’ tour of duty as writer promises to make it a title worth…

Cold War Kids

Robbers & Cowards (V2)

29 Jan 2007

INDIE Cold War Kids Since we all live in a deathly dull, post-post modern society where we’ve heard it all before and nothing is new, it is nice to hear something that can fill your belly with a warm glow anyway. Lead single ‘We Used To Vacation…

Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco - comic review

Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco

29 Jan 2007

HORROR Bitter mage John Constantine makes his way to Scotland, as crime writer Denise Mina (Field of Blood/The Dead Hour) makes her first foray into comics, bringing Constantine onto her home territory, Glasgow, the setting for most of her mystery…

Avenge But One of My Two Eyes - DVD review

Avenge But One of My Two Eyes

29 Jan 2007

DOCUMENTARY Avi Mograbi’s tough-minded documentary on the horrors of today’s Israeli-Palestine conflict looks at events not from the point of view of Palestinian fanaticism and Israeli brutality, but chiefly from the long established fanaticism…