Issue 579

DVD - Aaltra

BLACK COMEDY Gustave de Kervern and Benoit Delépine - the writers, directors and stars of this odd but strangely heart-warming Belgian road movie - are comedians in their home country, and quite obviously blessed with the blackest and most…

Eternals

Comics

SUPERHERO Neil Gaiman, the world’s most populist cult writer, flexes his comic muscles to update the story of Marvel’s Eternals. Originally outed in 1976 by Jack Kirby, the race of superhumans are immortal-ish, god-like creatures with human…

DVD - Silent Tongue

WESTERN Although filmed on the expansive plains of the Old West, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard’s 1994 western is a very stagy affair, switching between handfuls of dusty, dialogue-heavy scenes and boasting some scenery-chewing…

Hitlist - The best comedy

• Improbabble The crazy gang brings us some more games and skits and general larking about in their own inimitable Whose Line Is It stylee. The Brunswick Hotel, Glasgow, Fri 6, 13 Jul. • Jo Caulfield One of the more solid performers on the circuit…

DVD - Ghost Ship

HORROR In this genial, seaworthy but fright-lite low budget British horror film from 1952, a couple purchase an old steam boat with the intention of turning it into a luxury love nest only to find the crate has a history akin to that of the Marie…

Girls Of Riyadh

CHICKLIT If ever a book could carry an accusation of being designed to inspire contention, Girls of Riyadh might well be it. A tale of four young and fashionable middle-class Saudi girls who live under the strictures of Islamic tradition, yet who are…

Have a Nice Doomsday

SOCIAL ANALYSIS In this bizarre and quite frankly worrying book, Nicholas Guyatt journeys to the United States Bible Belt to find out why 50 million Americans believe that the apocalypse will take place in their own lifetimes. Guyatt’s main goal is…

Six Feet Over

POPULAR SCIENCE Did you know that sea urchins were the key to understanding the process of sperm/egg fertilisation? Before microscopes came along, the theories of reproduction that reigned now seem ludicrous. In this entertaining history of science…

Hitlist - The best events, talks and sport

• West End Fashion Show Edinburgh’s streets are usually quiet in July, biding their time and preparing for the oncoming storm of crazed unicyclists. House of Fraser have decided to liven things up a little by staging a huge outdoor fashion show…

Flood!

Comics

Like Paul Auster’s celebrated New York Trilogy, Eric Drooker’s triumvirate of tales set in the Big Apple depicts life in the city as lonely and alienating. As with Auster, there’s more than a touch of Kafka about these stories, which concern a…

Jason Starr - The Follower

A story about a stalker is hardly a novel idea, and Brooklyn-born and bred Jason Starr’s unimaginative treatment of the phenomenon brings absolutely nothing new to it. Set in a Manhattan populated with jocular and bimbotic college graduates, The…

Comics - World War Hulk No.1

SUPERHERO Any follower of Marvel’s output over the last year might have found themselves growing tired of the almost relentless, ashen-faced politicking of Mark Millar’s ubiquitous Civil War crossover. In which case, this return to the company’s…

Comics - Jonah Hex: Guns of Vengeance

WESTERN Westerns were once a huge subgenre in comics, and with Loveless and Jonah Hex back on the shelves there’s a bit of a resurgence in sequential stories of cowboy folk. Making his first appearance in 1971, Hex is basically a disfigured take on…