Issue 571

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…

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…

Strangers, Babies

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 17 Mar

13 Mar 2007

NEW WORK Does our behaviour depend upon where we’re from, or where we are now? That hoary old chestnut, the nature versus nurture debate still rages on in every field of human knowledge. So it is that while it emerges quite plainly that the woman at…

Nick Evans: Rational Slab

Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 14 Apr

13 Mar 2007

SCULPTURE Nick Evans’ last exhibition at Sorcha Dallas was one of the highlights of 2005. But the new work on show at Mary Mary, created after his enormously successful residency and exhibition at Tate St Ives in 2006, further develops many of the…

Ice Cream Dreams

Citizen’s Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 28-Sat 31 Mar

13 Mar 2007

NEW WORK When writer Martin McCardie, currently best-known for his work on Channel 4’s Shameless, was approached to write a play set during the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars of 1983, he resisted the ready-made plot of drug-dealing and unsolved murder. ‘I…

Reviews - Peepshow Launch

Peepshow Launch

13 Mar 2007

INDIE Already inundated most nights of the week, cynics might say that Glasgow needs a new band night like it does another rainy day. Peepshow, refreshingly, is a showcase with a difference, however. On the last Wednesday of every month at The…

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…

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…

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…

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?

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…

Tim Berne's Paraphrase

The Lot, Edinburgh, Thu 29 Mar

13 Mar 2007

JAZZ Tim Berne is a leading light on New York’s so-called Downtown jazz scene. This very rare opportunity to catch him live in Scotland sees him in the familiar setting of Paraphrase, a trio with two of his most compatible collaborators, bassist Drew…

Climates

13 Mar 2007

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 wife Ebru Ceylan)…

Scottish Dance Theatre

Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Tue 27 Mar

13 Mar 2007

MODERN DANCE Diversity is fast become the calling card of Scottish Dance Theatre. Visiting Edinburgh as part of its UK tour, the company will perform three works which, although choreographically distinct, have one common factor - an emotional…

Exposure - The Sounds

Exposure

13 Mar 2007

Like Debbie Harry in a dance-off with Roxette, this sexy Swedish pop-punk band set tongues wagging with last year’s synth-heavy hit, ‘Tony the Beat’. Their debut, Living in America, established them in the States, and Pharrell Williams and Quentin…

Old Joy

13 Mar 2007

Less is more in this rueful and sensitively observed study of male friendship undermined by the passing of time. Written and directed by Kelly Reichardt (River of Grass, Ode), and accompanied by a melancholic Yo La Tengo soundtrack, Old Joy follows two…

Monks

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 16 Mar-Sat 7

13 Mar 2007

NEW WORK I expect at times we all wonder what life is all about. Beyond all the ceaseless trudging on and on, the struggle with mortgages, the hassles at work, the stress of supermarket queues and so on, there’s surely some greater purpose. Whether…

Little Howard's Kids Show

13 Mar 2007

GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL COMEDY FESTIVAL Never work with children or animals goes the surely outdated cliché. But what about an audience of children? Or a crowd of animals? Could you tell the difference? In his dual life as a grown-up’s and children’s…

*Hitlist

Hitlist

13 Mar 2007

The Wonderful World of Diisocia Anthony Neilson’s brilliant commentary on mental illness, looked at from the points of view of both the sufferer and those around her is as richly comical as it is moving. The NTS is to be congratulated on its revival of…

!!!

ABC, Glasgow, Mon 19 Mar

13 Mar 2007

AVANT PUNK !!! don’t like to make things easy for themselves. Choosing a name that’s not just unpronounceable (‘Chk Chk Chk’ is the most popular method) but also un-Googleable (try it), was always likely to cause complications for one thing. Then…

Europe

Dundee Rep, Wed 4-Sat 7 Apr

13 Mar 2007

REVIVAL Reviving a play that is old enough to merit revisiting but too young to be called a classic carries a certain risk. What seemed timely and topical a decade ago might now seem tired and trite. The remarkable thing about David Greig’s Europe…

Iraq In Fragments

13 Mar 2007

Photographed, edited and directed by the American filmmaker James Longley over a two year period following the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003, this haunting documentary doesn’t take the familiar perspective of the occupying forces. Instead it goes…

Catch A Fire

(12A) 101min

13 Mar 2007

THRILLER/TRUE STORY Just a decade before South African State President FW de Klerk un-banned the ANC and other anti-apartheid organisations, and announced that Mandela would shortly be released from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl on 11 February 1990…

The Trap

BBC2, Sun 18 Mar, 9pm

13 Mar 2007

SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY Writer and director Adam Curtis gained waves of acclaim and acres of flak for his Power of Nightmares series which suggested that the threat to the West from a network of Arab terrorist cells is nothing short of a…

Sleeping Dogs

(18) 89min

13 Mar 2007

A sexual indiscretion - and that’s putting it mildly - kicks of this tasteless but sweet natured comedy about a girl who’s hiding a traumatising secret (again, mildly put) from her fiancé. But although this consistently amusing and frequently hilarious…

5 Reasons To Go See

Jackie Leven

13 Mar 2007

1 He’s an underground legend The 56-year-old singer songwriter from Fife has spent a lifetime on the periphery of various music scenes and genres, but has influenced generations. His 1971 debut, Control, is considered a psychedelic folk classic and his…

Michael Clark Dance Company

Tramway, Glasgow, run ended

13 Mar 2007

MODERN DANCE Bare breasts and the Sex Pistols - it could only be Michael Clark. Over the past 20 years, Clark has invented his own mini genre; a style of dance that pushes boundaries, dancers’ abilities and audience expectations. Performed as part…

Body Parts 3

RSA, Edinburgh, run ended

13 Mar 2007

PERFORMANCE The essence of performance art is its unpredictability. From the medium’s rise in the 1960s and 70s with early shock tactics, such as artist Chris Burden’s infamous ‘Shoot’ where the artist was shot in the arm at close range, to work like…

Ceilidh Culture

Various venues, Edinburgh, Sat 24 Mar-Sun 15 Apr

13 Mar 2007

ROOTS FESTIVAL Edinburgh’s Ceilidh Culture, the council-led celebration that runs for three weeks around Easter, brings together the city’s traditional arts under one umbrella. Eclectic sounds range from the percussion-driven dance grooves of the…

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait Of Diane Arbus

13 Mar 2007

Director Steven Shainberg broke plenty of taboos a few years ago with his sado-masochistic love story Secretary, and he’s clearly been emboldened to create an even more outré romance in Fur. It’s hard to imagine, however, that the estate of Diane Arbus…

Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Wayward Thinker

Trenton Doyle Hancock:

13 Mar 2007

PAINTING DRAWING SCULPTURE Trenton Doyle Hancock is a storyteller and mythmaker - a highbrow comic book artist struggling with a complex psyche and an unruly inner child. His conviction is admirable, developing a narrative based on characters that…

Rob Churm

Sorcha Dallas Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 7 Apr

13 Mar 2007

DRAWINGS Crying roses, knitted clouds, bare lightbulbs, Japanese symbols and hand drawn texts are among the fantastical images found in Glasgow-based artist Rob Churm’s surreal, layered monochromatic drawings. At the root of Churm’s works is a…

Simon Carroll

Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde, Glasgo

13 Mar 2007

CERAMICS, PAINTING AND PRINTS The alchemy and leap of imagination that’s involved when throwing, decorating and firing a humble pot is not to be underestimated. Each glaze - whether ice-cream pink or emerald green - begins life as inert grey swill…

Esma's Secret

13 Mar 2007

The past haunts the present in this coming-of-age drama from Bosnian writer-director Jasmila Zbanic, which won the a prize at last year’s Berlin festival. The film’s original title Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams refers to a Sarajevan suburb, where in…

*Hitlist

Hitlist

13 Mar 2007

Thea Gilmore A country rock troubadour in the best sense, Gilmore’s a poet and album Harpo’s Ghost is dark, expressive beast. Now we know what KT Tunstall’s imaginary older, smarter, slightly twisted sister might sound like. King Tut’s, Glasgow, Mon 26…

*Hitlist

Hitlist

13 Mar 2007

Nick Evans: Rational Slab A group of large sculptures, developing themes and techniques which the Glasgow-based artist had developed whilst being artist at residence at Tate St Ives. The sculptures continue Evans’ examination of philosophically…

The Wonderful World of Dossocia

Seen at Tron Theatre, Glasgow, run ended. Now tour

13 Mar 2007

REVIVAL As children we’re enthralled by adventures to far off lands with tin men, talking animals or witches and wizards, where good overcomes evil. Anthony Neilson’s play appeals to both our childhood imaginings and our adult sensibilities. Lisa…

Amazing Grace

(PG) 118min

13 Mar 2007

Amazing Grace tells the story of how William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) persuaded the House of Commons after a series of attempts to end the slave trade in the British Empire. Alas, the subject matter is far more interesting than the execution. Slavery…