Issue 582

Jimmy Carr

9 Aug 2007

With his short sharp shocks, Jimmy Carr has outraged and amused audiences around the world. He tells Brian Donaldson why no one has the right to be hurt by a bit of wordplay

Take That

9 Aug 2007

Faced with the prospect of Never Forget, ‘a new musical based on the songs of Take That’, you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘Mamma Mia, here we go again...’

Norman Mailer

9 Aug 2007

Writing about difficult subjects helped turn Norman Mailer into a literary star. Rodge Glass analyses his career and believes only he could have broken the final taboo

Made in Scotland

9 Aug 2007

Think of Scotland’s most famous traditional exports and what comes to mind? While in reality they may now be as diverse as the people living within its boundaries, Scotland still sometimes struggles to escape the clichés – tartan, whisky, misty…

Tilda Swinton

9 Aug 2007

Even without her bright beacon of red hair, it would be difficult to miss Tilda Swinton at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. Enjoying her inaugural year as patron, alongside the venerable Sir Sean Connery, you can take your pick when it…

Ethan Hawke

9 Aug 2007

Kaleem Aftab talks to actor, writer and now director Ethan Hawke about adapting his novel The Hottest State for the big screen

Seasick Steve

9 Aug 2007

Every now and then pop culture throws something into the public consciousness based solely on quality. It may not be fashionable, it’s not part of a new movement, it doesn’t fit into any scene, it’s just good. This year’s phenomenal anomaly is…

Katrin Himmler

9 Aug 2007

Katrin Himmler was born into a family with a dark history, but has only now been able to write about it. She tells Doug Johnstone about reliving the past

Bill Callahan

9 Aug 2007

By way of a typically cryptic explanation, the enigmatic American singer-songwriter Bill Callahan once said – in response to what can only have been a helluva lot of queries about his willfully opaque moniker Smog – ‘I live in smog.’ He may have done…

Back to basics

Emerging talent in the world

9 Aug 2007

Flash gaming is a funny beast. For some it is a mere distraction while others see it as a formidable force in the gaming industry despite the odd ‘bad egg’ website devoted to vulgar cartoons and controversy.Flash gaming is a funny beast. For some it is…

Berlin Alexanderplatz: Remastered

9 Aug 2007

The recent deaths of art cinema colossi Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni – at the ages of 89 and 94 respectively – led me to wonder about some of the great filmmakers who did not make it to their fifth decade, let alone approach their tenth.

Bernadette Lafont

9 Aug 2007

The veteran French actress Bernadette Lafont is casting her mind back 50 years and recalling her first ever film role. It was in a short called Les Mistons (The Brats), made by a tyro filmmaker called François Truffaut. Shot in her hometown of Nimes…

Edinburgh Interactive Festival

That’s entertainment

9 Aug 2007

As The Edinburgh Interactive Festival roles into town, Henry Northmore looks at the links between art and technology

KG Cafe

Star attraction

9 Aug 2007

Too often tourist attractions boast deeply uninspiring cafés. Donald Reid is glad to discover the KG Café at Kelvingrove has culinary ambitions befitting such an important gallery and museum

David Rokeby

9 Aug 2007

The CCA continues its exploration of the relationship between technology and art, with the first major show and retrospective of Canadian-born artist David Rokeby. The exhibition brings together five of his award-winning installations, new media…

Ivan Smagghe

9 Aug 2007

Ivan Smagghe has a pretty impressive CV. Along with Mark Colin he formed Volga Select who released records on über fashionable French imprint Kitsune, 20:20 Vision and Output as well as being responsible for the Tigersushi compilation So Young But So…

Jess Weixler

9 Aug 2007

Jess Weixler is so all-American she looks like she’s jumped straight out of a photograph of high school cheerleaders. Her long blond hair and blue eyes make her the archetypal American beauty – just like all those Britney Spears wannabes lusted after by…

Josie Long

9 Aug 2007

A week in, The List’s columnist is having a fabulous Fringe, despite witnessing brutal scenes of child cruelty at the local swimming baths

Damascus

9 Aug 2007

Routines based on the business of translation are a pretty well precedented source of humour in the theatre. What gives a rare quality to David Greig’s new play, which amounts to an entire two-and -a-half hours of this schtick, is the subtlety and…

Scottish Opera appoints new director

News

9 Aug 2007

Italian conductor Francesco Corti signed up as new music director

Punt and Dennis

9 Aug 2007

It’s quite astonishing that Punt and Dennis, one of the household names of British comedy, have never quite performed a live show in Edinburgh as a duo.

Long Time Dead

9 Aug 2007

‘On this proud and beautiful mountain we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men. It is hard to return to servitude.’ With these words, French climber Lionel…

ENGLAND

9 Aug 2007

Tim Crouch, who has built a strong reputation at the Fringe with his shows My Arm and An Oak Tree has seemed a guaranteed banker in the months since this year’s show was announced. And this piece is worth the wait. It involves Crouch and performer…

The Walworth Farce

9 Aug 2007

Fringe audiences will be familiar by now with the dark gothic excesses of Enda Walsh’s language. Pieces like Disco Pigs and Bedbound over the last decade have employed his peculiar, violent lyricism to startling effect. There’s plenty of that in Walsh’s…

Andy Warhol

9 Aug 2007

Andy Warhol is 20th century America. It is impossible to decide which came first. Did he create that nation’s brash, shiny, sexy yet sickening materialism, or is he a product of it? The exhibition of his work at the National Gallery makes it impossible…

Will Hutton

9 Aug 2007

It’s not many people that can make dense economic theory and political machinations accessible to the casual reader, but Will Hutton is one such man. Formerly the editor-in-chief of the Observer and What the Papers Say political journalist of the year…

Frankie Boyle

9 Aug 2007

In some ways it would be difficult to imagine an encounter between Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr, what with them being, arguably, the two finest gag tellers in contemporary British stand-up comedy. How, you wonder, can they have a chat when they must be…

Stewart Lee

Confrontational comic getting grief from his mum

9 Aug 2007

It’s almost impossible to imagine that once upon a time Stewart Lee was in a creative and critical bunker. But after doing the Fringe for two decades he can look back on those days with wistful fondness, even remarking during this set that he half…

Rebecca Drysdale

An alternative and arresting set

9 Aug 2007

It’s not often that a comedian invites the audience to join in a chirpy singalong about children drowning in the Titanic disaster. It’s even rarer that it has the crowd in stitches. But then it’s not often you see a comedian like Rebecca Drysdale.

Wil Hodgson

Ex-wrestler grapples with mainly excellent materia

9 Aug 2007

Profiles don’t come much more distinctive than Wil Hodgson’s. With a meticulous pink Mohawk, kohl-rimmed eyes and camp/punk cargo trousers, he looks like a Viking berserker crossed with a highlighter pen. To add to this fairly splendid confusion of…

Kristen Schaal

Whispering genius cobbles together a hit

9 Aug 2007

The Assembly Rooms appears to have been putting up a determined campaign the last few years to platform a string of quirky female American comics with offbeat dispositions all of their own. Wendy Spero and Maria Bamford made inroads with varying success…

Reginald D. Hunter

Sprawling set from comedy icon

9 Aug 2007

One of the problems with the Fringe is that us reviewers often need to get in early during a run while comedians may take the month to refine their material so that the show we see on the 3rd is rarely the one performed on the 20th. It’s worth pointing…

The Last South: Pursuit of the Pole

9 Aug 2007

Between 1910 and 1912 two competing teams, one British one Norwegian, set out to become the first men to reach the South Pole. Only one managed to return home to tell the tale. Constructed from the diaries kept by the British explorer Captain Robert…

Hitlist - the best Festival music

9 Aug 2007

International Festival Opening Concert: Candide Jonathan Mills kicks off his first Internataional Festival at the helm with a concert that aims to bridge the gap between the Fringe and the Festival, featuring Bernstein’s vivacious Candide with Laura…

The Walker

(15) 109min

9 Aug 2007

‘I’m not naive, I’m superficial’, smiles Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson), the latest in a memorable line of existential loners created by Paul Schrader.

Maggie O'Farrell

9 Aug 2007

Imagination may be a writer’s most precious tool, but when it comes to historical novels, it can only take you so far. Having written three books set in the present day, Maggie O’Farrell journeyed back in time for her fourth, The Vanishing Act of Esme…

Also Released - Film

9 Aug 2007

• License to Wed (12A) 91min * When lovebirds Sadie (Mandie Moore) and Ben (John Krasinski) become engaged, Reverend Frank (Robin Williams) puts them through a tortuous marriage preparation course to see if they deserve to be married in church. The…

Exits and Entrances

9 Aug 2007

In Athol Fugard’s insightful new play, we find celebrated South African actor Andre Huguenet (Morlan Higgins) reflecting on all that he has sacrificed for his theatre career which is now reaching its end.

Waitress

(12A) 107min

9 Aug 2007

Jenna (Keri Russell) is a career waitress. She tends tables in a dead-end town in the deep south of the US.

Picasso: Fired with Passion

9 Aug 2007

The crowd puller/money spinner for this exhibition is its heavy emphasis on Picasso’s ceramic work, running from his later years of 1947–1961 and all produced whilst living and working in the South of France. And indeed they are fascinating, ranging…

Life in a Marital Institution

9 Aug 2007

There can be few more engaging acts on this year’s Fringe than James Braly. There’s a winning, self effacing smile, mixed with the occasional giggle throughout his performance, and despite the, at times, emotionally harrowing subject matter, Braly…

Taxidermia - profile

9 Aug 2007

Profile on György Pálfi, director of Taxidermia

Longing (Sehnsucht)

9 Aug 2007

Following on from the exorcism drama Requiem and the Stasi surveillance thriller The Lives of the Others, Longing is further evidence of the current resurgence in German cinema.

Hallam Foe

(David Mackenzie, UK, 2007) 95min

9 Aug 2007

All four of talented Scottish filmmaker David Mackenzie’s features have premiered at the EIFF. Mackenzie’s latest, an adaptation of novelist Peter Jinks’ Edinburgh-set psychosexual romantic drama, is as good as any of his previous work. But, while…

David Batchelor

9 Aug 2007

David Batchelor has been a busy man of late, scouring pound shops in London and Scotland for pegs, combs, cutlery, clothes pegs, children’s toys, girly hair accessories and a whole manner of other cheap plastic objects in preparation for this new site…

Singles & Downloads

9 Aug 2007

Nose plugs and a pair of Marigolds were required to sift through this week’s singles bag, such was its predominantly stinky content. The main offender being Shop Boyz’ gang banging rotter ‘Party Like a Rockstar’ (Universal) lllll, the fastest selling…

Hitlist - The best rock, pop, jazz & folk

9 Aug 2007

• Ari-Up She’ll always be best known as the lead singer of seminal grrrrl punks The Slits but now, club night Pretty Ugly welcomes her back witha new band The True Warriors, who will be playing new material plus the songs of The Slits with a heavy…

David Batchelor and Nikolai Suetin

9 Aug 2007

Now in its tenth year as one of Edinburgh’s established independent galleries, the Ingleby has chosen to mark the occasion with a series of 26 small-scale shows which present a work by a well-known contemporary artists alongside another ‘complementary…

Hitlist: Theatre

9 Aug 2007

• Damascus David Greig’s play will be the toast of the Fringe. A comedy of manners set in the city of the title, the piece involves a Scot on a business visit, and the effects of his cultural assumptions on those he encounters. See review, page 79.

William Kentridge

9 Aug 2007

One of South Africa’s most highly-regarded artists, it seems somehow appropriate that this first Scottish collection of William Kentridge’s print works should fall in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival. Although this show concentrates solely on his…