Issue 569

Rage!/Rave! - Mika

To believe or not to believe the hype

14 Feb 2007

Doug Johnstone: Mika is not the next big thing. He is merely the latest creation of the music industry’s marketing machine.

The Leech

Sucking the blood of popular entertainment

14 Feb 2007

All you need is love. Love and the trademark rights to your music. In a deal that will have at least one soon-to-be divorcee hopping for joy, computer giant Apple and The Beatles reconciled their long-running dispute over the Apple name, with the best…

News Extra

14 Feb 2007

Lonely Planet is making a jaunt north of the border to host screenings of the 1969 cult classic The Italian Job and offbeat French romantic comedy Amelie on Thursday 22 and Wednesday 28 March at Edinburgh’s Cameo cinema. The films are being shown as…

News - The View play Edinburgh Castle

A view from the castle

14 Feb 2007

Words: Allan Radcliffe It’s a venue usually reserved for MOR rock royalty. Rod Stewart and Lionel Ritchie have both graced the main stage in front of vast audiences, while Elton John and his entourage transformed the Great Hall into a…

Five things

Websites where you can get something for nothing

14 Feb 2007

Whoever said you can’t get something for nothing was clearly lying. Here are the websites that should be in every cheapskate’s favourites.

News in brief

14 Feb 2007

Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer are making a rare visit north of the border for the next series of Channel 4’s Location Location Location. The straight-talking property gurus will be in Glasgow at the end of February and are keen to hear from anyone…

Music promoter Billy Kelly dies

14 Feb 2007

We at The List were saddened to hear of the death from cancer of Billy Kelly, who was a driving force in Scotland’s live music industry. Kelly was perhaps best known as the visionary behind Glasgow’s Big Big World and Big Big Country showcases through…

Love!/Hate!

Love!>>Lost

14 Feb 2007

Ignore the criticisms. Lost, which returns to UK screens this month, is the best soap opera on television, the kind that keeps you awake wondering what a polar bear is doing on a desert island. It has more layers than a deep-fried Mars Bar, and always…

Protect the human

14 Feb 2007

Darius Danesh stands in a swimming pool, Courtney Love sprawls on the floor of the Dorchester Hotel, newspaper in one hand and placard in the other. Terry Jones mugs as he loads the dishwasher and protests about control of the arms trade and Dougray…

Singles and downloads

Singles and downloads

13 Feb 2007

An almighty Single of the Fortnight has this reviewer’s eager digits already itching to rattle off their glowing textual praise. But first credit where it’s due to some of the largely stiff short-playing competition coming your way in the next 14 days…

Grapevine - showbiz news

Grapevine

13 Feb 2007

Expect many cries of ‘there’s been a murder’ with news that more episodes are to be filmed of ITV ScotCop dramas Taggart and Rebus. Four new 90-minute mysteries of the former start filming in April and further adventures for Ian Rankin’s world-weary…

Idlewild - album review

IDLEWILD

13 Feb 2007

ROCK (Sequel) Around the time of his folky solo project’s first release, Roddy Woomble hinted at a return to heavy music for his main band Idlewild. And boy was he right. Make Another World sees the Edinburgh quintet get back to blasting out…

The Decemberists - album review

THE DECEMBERISTS

13 Feb 2007

INDIE (Rough Trade) It is increasingly difficult to find records that are pure in their intentions. The Decemberists wear their ambitions on their (record) sleeves, wishing to create an album filled with quirks that remains welcoming. It recalls…

Kris Drever - album review

KRIS DREVER

13 Feb 2007

FOLK (Reveal Records) Folk music is not the usual field of activity for this label, but they were so impressed with singer and guitarist Kris Drever playing live that they snapped him up to record this debut album. It has been eagerly anticipated…

Miles Davis - album review

MILES DAVIS

13 Feb 2007

JAZZ (Rhino) A single disc selection from the final phase of the trumpeter’s career, drawing on the music he released after his switch from Columbia in 1985. It is billed as the Very Best of Miles Davis, but is well short of meeting that claim.

Preston Redd - album review

PRESTON REED

13 Feb 2007

JAZZ (Outer Bridge Records) Guitarist Preston Reed continues to elude precise genre classification in his his distinctive style of solo guitar music, but this ballad-oriented set is the closest he has come to a straight jazz outing. In his insert…

Endrick Brothers - album review

ENDRICK BROTHERS

13 Feb 2007

POP ROCK (Hypertension) Wearing your heart on your sleeve has always sounded like a painful and messy sacrifice to me, while displaying your musical influences like a big clanging medal round the neck is nothing short of a grave mistake. So…

MSTRKRFT - album review

MSTRKRFT

13 Feb 2007

EVIL ELECTRO (Modular) You probably know this Canadian duo as Death From Above 1979, or perhaps from their stellar remixes of Kills, Gossip, Metric and Bloc Party. But scrap all that: ‘MSTRKRFT, purveyors of the most thrilling dance music around…

GusGus - album review

GUSGUS

13 Feb 2007

HOUSE (Gung Ho!) Starting out life as a sprawling 12-strong Icelandic art/film/music collective in 1995, GusGus have mutated over the years. At their heart has always remained a soulful electronic throb wrapped in alternately soothing and wanton…

Explosions in the Sky - album review

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY

13 Feb 2007

POST ROCK (Bella Union) Girls’n’stuff bothereth not Texas post-rock rangers Explosions in the Sky. On their fourth long player, they have infinitely more important thematic fish to fry. Take opener, ‘The Birth and Death of the Day’ for instance…

Amy Winehouse interview

Life and soul

12 Feb 2007

It’s the morning after the tabloid outrage the night before. The weekend before we meet, Amy Winehouse was due to perform at GAY, the full-on, no-holds-barred club institution in the heart of London. Kylie’s done it with her sister Danni, McFly dropped…

Science of Sleep, The - feature

Sleep talking

12 Feb 2007

A love story set in Paris might not sound like terribly promising material, but Michel Gondry lets his feverish imagination run riot in The Science of Sleep. The resulting romantic fantasia is undoubtedly one of the most original films of the past year.

Toni Davidson

Eight years on from the publication of Scar Cultur

12 Feb 2007

So, what’s in a name? Quite a lot as far as Toni Davidson is concerned. The author of 1999’s cult classic Scar Culture wants you to have his characters ingrained on your memory. And if giving them a title which will leap out at you from the relative…

Michael Clark interview

Dancing with demons

12 Feb 2007

It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it that counts, as the saying goes. And from an early age, Michael Clark had beauty. A beautiful face, a beautiful spirit and a beautiful style that other dancers tried, and failed, to emulate. And what he…

William McIlvanney interview

The big man

12 Feb 2007

The publication of William McIlvanney’s novel Weekend was like welcoming an old friend home after a very long holiday, and finding that the time away has left them in extremely rude health.

Second Life interview

Another world

12 Feb 2007

I don’t know if anyone else saw it, but earlier this month there was a riot involving anti-racism protestors and Front National (the French equivalent of the National Front). One online commentator described it as a ‘conflagration of mini-guns, cursing…

Kitchin restaurant - interview

Star turn

12 Feb 2007

I’m in the restaurant speaking to Mr and Mrs Kitchin. It could be a game of Happy Families. It certainly has been for the team at The Kitchin in Leith who, for the last couple of weeks, have been basking in the glory of their newly acquired Michelin…

Gay movie round-up

Gay screen

12 Feb 2007

The Glasgow Film Festival programmes five films with a queer bent this year. It’s unbearably hot in The Wayward Cloud, where Taiwan’s heatwave causes the sales of watermelons to shoot up. Hsiao-Kang tries to hide the fact that he’s a porn actor from…

Remote Control - TV round-up

Remote Control

12 Feb 2007

The folk at Channel 4 have a particular, and peculiar, idea of what sums up the experience of pregnancy: it’s the lilting scouse poetry of Roger McGough and Brian Patten aided by some bubbly, ambient synth. Some mums might have cause to argue that…

Cabaret Voltaire's second birthday

Come to the cabaret

12 Feb 2007

Regardless of musical tastes, most people will be able to find a great night out in Edinburgh if they pick the right club on the right evening. Unlike anywhere else in the city, however, turning up on just about any night at Cabaret Voltaire is likely…

Jed Mercurio interview

Scaling the heights

12 Feb 2007

As someone who knows all about living up to a legacy, F1 racing driver Damon Hill once said: ‘Winning is everything. The only ones who remember you when you come second are your wife and your dog.’ It’s a sentiment that sits well with the protagonist of…

Life drawing meets burlesque erotica

Gothic horror picture show

12 Feb 2007

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m loitering outside the entrance to Edinburgh’s newest art class trying not to look too much like a pervert. Some passing tourists catch sight of the Dr Sketchy’s poster advertising ‘Drawing & Drinks & Dames & Dudes’ and I…

Patrick Wolf

Do you believe in magic?

12 Feb 2007

Vicious little Dorothy Parker got it right when she said that the term ‘artist’ is overused, and that the category of ‘art’ is not elastic. It isn’t fashionable to say this, of course, where a restrictive version of ‘inclusion’ has meant that we can all…

Wonderful World of Dissocia, The

Gut instinct

12 Feb 2007

Back in 2004, the Edinburgh International Festival debuted a play at the Lyceum that would subsequently win five of the ten categories in the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland. Anthony Neilson’s The Wonderful World of Dissocia was an astonishing…

DVD Round-up

12 Feb 2007

Back in the early part of the 20th century when cinema first spluttered to life, all films were short films. Film stock was expensive and temperamental and the idea that anyone would want to spend longer than 15 minutes in a Nickelodeon was an anathema.

Ahlam Shibli

Everyday war

12 Feb 2007

Shibli’s lens attends to the bleak realities of Palestinian identities lived within Israel and the Occupied Territories. Born in Galilee, which became part of Israel in 1948, Shibli explores the topographical and emotional contradictions of people…

PlayList - the best film downloads

PlayList

12 Feb 2007

'Intertainment’ isn’t something that requires you to be an über geek with a bit torrent jack plug in the back of your head. The streams on popular sites like You Tube, Google Video or Dailymotion don’t require complicated downloads, all you have to do…

Plumed Horse - restaurant review

12 Feb 2007

January must have been a difficult month for chef Tony Borthwick. Not only were the workmen back in the restaurant sorting out a few snags after infuriating delays getting the place open before Christmas, but Borthwick also learned that the Plumed…

The Good Shepherd

12 Feb 2007

In 1977 a US Privacy Study Commission surmised that the real danger of the Central Intelligence Agency is ‘the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems…

Aye Write! highlights

Write In

12 Feb 2007

Raj Persaud With a twinkle in his eye, the dapper broadcaster, author and psychiatrist entertains with talk about seduction. It’s fine, though, you can trust him, he’s a doctor. Fri 16 Feb, 6pm.

Hot Fuzz

(15) 120min

12 Feb 2007

It is slightly depressing that the highest grossing British films of last year and this were, and will be, television spin-offs. Last year Sacha Baron Cohen delivered up the better-than-we-probably-deserve feature film Borat, and now comedian Simon Pegg…

15 Storeys High

12 Feb 2007

DVD With questionable wisdom, voters in the BBC’s Best Sitcom Ever poll back in 2004 utterly ignored 15 Storeys High, instead opting to find slots near the business end of the top 100 for the risible likes of ‘Allo Allo’ and Vicar of Dibley. History…

Strangers, Babies

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 23 Feb-Sat 17 Mar

12 Feb 2007

NEW WORK It’s pretty easy, when you think about it, to spot the difference between how men and women treat their relationships. Men are driven by ego - the person they go out with is their own business, and just try to tell them otherwise. Women, on…

The Science of Sleep (La Science des Reves)

12 Feb 2007

French auteur Michel Gondry asserts himself as the natural heir to Jean Cocteau in this his third feature proper. Welcome to the mind-bending world of Stéphane Miroux (Gael García Bernal), a shy Mexican who exists in a perpetual confusion between…

To Kill a Mockingbird

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, Tue 20 Feb-Sat 24 Feb

12 Feb 2007

ADAPTATION To Kill A Mocking Bird was the pretty near universal novel for teenagers at school. The film version saw Gregory Peck turned into an icon of integrity and justice. So much so, in fact, that Peck would later do his Atticus Finch in front of…

Stage Whispers - theatre news

Stage Whispers

12 Feb 2007

It might be a little while before we see Cora Bisset on a Scottish Stage but she will be lending her talents to a section of our theatre world that might well put them to good use. The outreach company Ankur, which encourages the participation of ethnic…

Mrs Warren's Profession

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 16 Feb-Sat 10

12 Feb 2007

CLASSIC Much of what passes for love these days is really about economics. Which of us hasn’t heard a man or woman criticise their loved one’s ‘lack of ambition’ in lieu, in fact, of a shortage of cash. In a society where so much of our emotional…

Dispatch - Roddy Woomble

The Dispatch

12 Feb 2007

Celtic Connections passed by in all its hazy, folky glory. I had a great time during the festival, and managed to see a few concerts I’d been looking forward to: John Martyn performing Solid Air, and Dick Gaughan performing his 1981 folk masterpiece…

Profile - Annette Bening

Profile

12 Feb 2007

Name Annette Bening Born May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, US. Background Bening’s acting career began when she played the lead in her high school’s production of The Sound of Music. After graduating from San Francisco University she took to the…

Out of the Bedroom - Out of the Closet

The Canon’s Gait, Edinburgh, Tue 20 Feb

12 Feb 2007

MUSIC The acoustic musician is a sensitive soul, and according to James Whyte, who runs the Out of the Bedroom open mic nights, not all of them are writing love songs about the opposite sex. ‘Quite a lot of the regular performers at Out of the…