Issue 584

Knocked Up

(15) 128min

23 Aug 2007

Production assistant Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she is given the chance to present on an entertainment TV channel. One day her producer tells her that her body could do with being a little ‘tighter’. But no…

New digital video service to teach fans how to recreate songs

23 Aug 2007

Aspiring musicians are being offered the chance to learn their craft from the music maestros themselves this month, following the launch of ‘Now Play It’, a new digital video service developed to help offer a more instant and direct way of learning, to…

Jarvis Cocker

23 Aug 2007

During the heady days of Britpop I was a Jarvis Cocker obsessive; following Pulp around from town to town, skipping school to buy concert tickets and waiting outside venues and hotels for autographs and photos until all hours of the morning. Once the…

Lady Chatterley

23 Aug 2007

Showjumping’s loss is cinema’s gain. As a teenager Marina Hands was a sufficiently accomplished equestrienne to feature in the French junior national team, along with the future actor-director Guillaume Canet. ‘We weren’t good enough to become…

Ricky Gervais

23 Aug 2007

There really can’t be too many comic names who would get away with performing a one-off gig at the Fringe for an International Festival ticket price, but Sir Richard of Gervais is one such man. With Fame, his obedient fans will be entertained with tales…

Mountain biking

23 Aug 2007

You’re tired and you’re sore. Nights on the vodka still don’t mix with nights on the air mattress. Sunlight splits the trees as the smells of pine forest, fresh earth and your own Red Bull–tinged breath fill your nostrils. It’s daft o’clock in the…

Björk

23 Aug 2007

It is a muggy summer’s afternoon, and although she has been doing interviews in an airless west London hotel suite for several hours, the Queen of Quirk is in fine form and fizzing with energy. Having recently released Volta – touted as her most…

The Easy Star All-Stars

23 Aug 2007

It seems that these days the cover version is more popular among artists and listeners than ever. Mark Ronson’s stone-cold funk renderings have made him friends aplenty (as well as a few enemies), and one cottage label has made the high concept leap…

1408

(15) 105min

23 Aug 2007

Mikael 'Derailed Håfström'’s mild chiller is pretty much a one-man horror vehicle for John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a world-weary writer who makes his living from staying in supposedly haunted locations and describing his experiences. After a mysterious…

Ae Fond Kiss

Greer Ogston

23 Aug 2007

Not to be confused with the 2004 film of the same name, Anne-Marie di Mambro’s play focuses on an awkward teen, Zed, who arrives for his birthday present – an hour with Lola. But Lola is not quite what he expected, in more ways than one. This tender…

AL Kennedy

23 Aug 2007

Dramatic career shifts don’t come more eye-opening than the transition from author to stand-up comic. But that’s the move AL Kennedy made over a year ago and she has gone on to prove to be just as adept in her new job. For this event, she will talk…

Alan Bennett

(Profile)

23 Aug 2007

Alan Bennett’s latest work is a charmingly subversive novella in which the Queen develops a taste for reading. She stumbles upon the Westminster travelling library thanks to her ill-mannered corgis, and swiftly moves from a determined and dutiful…

Alex Horne

23 Aug 2007

Alex Horne revels in trying to find comedy in the most unlikely of corners. It’s one thing to make fun out of ancient languages (the absurdities of Latin was the topic of his last full Fringe run) but he’s now moved on to the inherently unfunny pursuit…

Alyssa Kyria

23 Aug 2007

Kyria’s talents as a comic actor are evident in this patchy but entertaining character act. Compered by Ariadne the Greek socialite, the show also features an Australian New Age dimwit, a snooty tennis-playing nymphomaniac and plenty more grotesques.

Amsterdam Underground Comedy Collective

23 Aug 2007

If this is Dutch humour at its finest, I’m off to Germany for my laughs. The AUCC may have a cult following back home but there’s little reason to believe that their comedy travels at all well in this lame, tame hour. The supposed heavyweight talents of…

And When Did You Last See Your Father?

23 Aug 2007

‘It’s not my story, of course. It’s Blake’s story,’ says screenwriter David Nicholls of his latest project. Having cut his teeth on TV drama Cold Feet, Nicholls successfully adapted his own novel Starter For Ten for the cinema before he agreed to give…

Andrew Maxwell

23 Aug 2007

5 words to describe this year’s show, Waxin’? Beautiful, real life, white lies. 4 stand-ups/comedy acts who you think should be more famous in September than they are now? Rhod Gilbert, Jim Jeffries, Steve Hughes, Stephen K Amos. 3…

Andrew McClelland

23 Aug 2007

In one of the hottest rooms on the Fringe, this madcap Australian sweats buckets trying to get laughs from his show which is about nothing more or less ambitious than his favourite songs. You’ll either adore his mugging immediately or sit open-mouthed…

Andrew O'Neill

23 Aug 2007

Is Andrew O’Neill rock or folk? He has the heavy metal chains but he also has long hair and black framed glasses. He has a V-shaped guitar, but it’s acoustic instead of electric. More importantly, is this a comedy show or surrealist theatre? The answer…

Ann Patchett

23 Aug 2007

In the space of 24 hours, Ann Patchett’s Run covers an entire social spectrum: interracial relationships, Catholicism and its validity, familial conflict, economic and class equality, and political ethics. This is a hefty fallout from a single event for…

Arnold Wesker’s The Mistress

23 Aug 2007

We are all capable of turning a blind eye to the painful or immoral acts that happen all around us. Arnold Wesker’s tale of a lover’s guilt finds fashion designer Sam (Martha Lott) transposing facets of her personality onto her dressmaking dummies as…

As You Were

23 Aug 2007

Packing them in for their observational stand-up, tag-team Roger Hailes and Todd Womack and have caused quite a stir with a simple comedy club format, welcoming an alternative Fringe guest each night (on this occasion the sublimely smutty guitar duo…

Attic Lights and The Primary 5

23 Aug 2007

It was only last year that Glasgow fivesome Attic Lights climbed down the stairs from the attic where they’d been honing their big guitarry sound – a power pop blend of 60s Beach Boys harmonies and gently melodic Americana – and finally stepped outside.

Austin Low

23 Aug 2007

This jovial Aberdonian admits to gulping a couple of litres of fizzy pop every single day. Which perhaps explains his inability to stand still or focus on his material for any given amount of time. There’s a fine show in the caffeine-happy head of Mr…

Babble

23 Aug 2007

A monologue based on the Jorge Luis Borges short story ‘The Library of Babel’, Babble focuses on a secluded librarian’s (Jonathan Clarkson) quest for the answers to all life’s puzzles in his stacks of books. Though the fundamental ideas behind the play…