Issue 571

Feature - Sean Hughes

Renaissance man

12 Mar 2007

After 40, the old joke goes, everyone gets the face they deserve. Sean Hughes has had the same hangdog expression for years but he maintains that he hasn’t lost the drive which made him a star in his 20s. ‘When I started out I was full of young comic…

French without tears

Life & Style - Eat

12 Mar 2007

Could Edinburgh be at the zenith in its history of dining out? It is now home to three Michelin star-holding operations, while several others at the top end of the market have their own share of accolades and loyal custom. The choice is rich, from…

Feature - Polish culture

The Pole position

12 Mar 2007

Pictures: Jannica Honey ‘If they wanted to, a Pole could live a whole year here without ever speaking English,’ says Iwana Zurawska, who moved to Edinburgh from Malbork, North Poland in 2003, a year before the country entered the European Union. ‘The…

Remote Control

Brian Donaldson finds some new dramas about madnes

13 Mar 2007

Without wishing to be cruel, Jessie Wallace isn’t the kind of actress you’d associate with roles which anyone could dub as ‘classy’, not in the stereotypically glamour sense of the word anyway. Maybe feisty, shouty and boozy, but never ever classy. The…

Interview - Mads Mikkelsen

Mad As A Dane

13 Mar 2007

It’s been a little over a decade since Mads Mikkelsen terrorised his way into public consciousness playing the violent enforcer Tonny in Pusher. It was his debut film and the start of a career that now has him commonly touted as the face of Danish…

Interview - Katrina Brown

Alexander Kennedy talks to Katrina Brown, who retu

13 Mar 2007

Alexander Kennedy Why did you become involved with The Common Guild?

Records - Unkle Bob

Unkle Bob

13 Mar 2007

INDIE Like the newest member of an inbred family, Unkle Bob’s debut album has numerous musical baby daddies. Like Snow Patrol they formed in Scotland; like Keane they are prone to stirring emotional anthems and singer Rick Webster’s voice performs…

Deerstalker

Rural rat race

12 Mar 2007

If you go down to the woods this month, be sure of a big surprise. Unless, of course, you are one of the 500-plus loons who have already signed up for the Deerstalker, an assault course through the countryside, forests and hills around the Borders…

Edinburgh Fringe names new boss

Edinburgh Fringe names new director

26 Mar 2007

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has named Jon Morgan (pictured), executive producer with Contact Theatre in Manchester, as its new director, following the resignation of Paul Gudgin earlier this year.

P Diddy Glasgow gig to go ahead

26 Mar 2007

Snoop Dogg has had his UK visa application rejected so is unlikely to go ahead with his Glasgow gig this Friday.

Comics - Captain Britain Volume 1

Chris Claremont & Herb Trimpe

14 Mar 2007

SUPERHERO It may have stemmed from a slightly cynical, ‘lets see if we can cash in on the British market with a thinly disguised take on Captain America’ but Chris Claremont may well be one of the greatest comics story tellers of his time (admittedly…

Comics - The Blackest Gnome

Malcy Duff

14 Mar 2007

ABSTRACT/SURREAL More dreams, schemes and half remembered memories from Edinburgh based cartoonist Duff. This, his 31st comic book is, according to the press notes, ‘inspired by the cancellation of the last black and white minstrel show in Scotland…

Kate Dickie & Pol Heyvaert

Beyond the news

13 Mar 2007

Whenever a murder occurs, particularly that of a child, there’s often an understandable outcry of grief, sometimes fuelled by sensational media coverage. We can name these unfortunate children as if we ourselves knew them. As part of the news coverage…

Malcolm Middleton

The future’s bright

13 Mar 2007

It was a truly miserable day when the mighty Arab Strap called it quits last year but this grey cloud did, in fact, have a silver lining of sorts: it shifted the spotlight onto the solo work of Malcolm Middleton. Never the most talkative of characters…

Zach Snyder

Spartan battlefield

13 Mar 2007

Zack Snyder’s blockbuster adaptation of graphic novelist Frank Miller’s fantastical visualisation of the battle between a handful of Spartan warriors and the whole of the Persian Empire is wilfully divorced from reality. So it must have come as…

Kate Dove & Victoria Morton

Light and Dark

13 Mar 2007

Kate Dove is a sculptor turned animator, who paints. Victoria Morton avoids representation but insists she does not paint abstract canvases. Luckily, this slightly confusing cross pollinated bouquet of disciplines cannot be felt in their work shown at…

Records - Singles & Downloads

Singles & Downloads

13 Mar 2007

There’s good and bad to be found in every country, and so as not to waste too much of your precious time let’s just concentrate on the music for the time being... So for every Super Furry Animals in Wales there is a Kelly Jones, in Ireland an Ash and a…

Also Released

13 Mar 2007

Premonition (12A) 96min (2 Stars) The deeply unemployable Sandra Bullock attempts to resuscitate her diseased career with this blatant but uncredited remake of Norio Tsurutu’s 2004 J-horror (based on Jirô Tsunoda’s manga series). For what it’s worth the…

Interview - Nuri Bilge Ceylan

The Changing Man

13 Mar 2007

‘I was on holiday with my wife Ebru, and we were discussing ideas over lunch for a film about a marriage. We went to the beach and did some test shots with ourselves playing the parts of a husband and wife. I liked our performances so much in these…

Bad Jazz

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Wed 21-Sat 24 Mar

13 Mar 2007

NEW WORK It’s hard not to feel a certain resistance to the term ‘play within a play’ these days. After over 20 years of those pieces which hide behind the terms ‘postmodern’ and ‘meta-narrative’ in order for members of the profession to talk about…

Profile - Gerard James Butler

Profile

13 Mar 2007

Name Gerard James Butler Born 13 November 1969, Glasgow, Scotland Background Raised by his divorced mother in her hometown of Paisley, and Canada, Butler studied law at Glasgow University but allegedly gave up on that career after losing his job…

Playlist

13 Mar 2007

The point of the monthly Playlist column is to gently guide you towards material you’re unlikely to find by chance. These films may currently be importable on expensive DVD, or as grainy bootlegs for hardcore connoisseurs, but they’re now available on…

Hughie

The Arches, Glasgow, until Sat 17 Mar

13 Mar 2007

NEGLECTED CLASSIC An ageing New York gambler lords it over a luckless hotel night clerk, spinning unlikely tails of his continuing prowess in gambling and womanising. Both the gambler and the hotel have seen better days. Such is the scene in this…

La Femme de Nulle Part - Group Show

Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, until Sat 28 Apr

13 Mar 2007

FILM, SCULPTURE AND PRINTS In the past, any woman who wandered from the respectable path, or whose intelligence dared question the male forces that be, was usually then classified as an unholy hysteric, and was either excommunicated or ‘treated…

Climates

(15) 101min

13 Mar 2007

DRAMA/TRAGEDY Written and directed by the Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Climates charts the breakdown of a relationship between a middle-aged university professor Isa (played by Ceylan) and his younger girlfriend Bahar (the director’s real-life…