Issue 586

Alasdair Gray Interview

20 Sep 2007

Claire Sawers meets Alasdair Gray at his Glasgow home and finds that he has created yet another iconic, naïve and semi-tragic anti-hero.

King Creosote and Emma Pollock interview

20 Sep 2007

We meet in Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery Café in the middle of the day. Not because Emma Pollock and King Creosote (AKA Kenny Anderson) are living the rock’n’roll lifestyle and couldn’t get out of bed because of terrible hangovers, but to give both…

Vintage clothes in Glasgow and Edinburgh

20 Sep 2007

Throwing out old clothes can be an emotional task and parting with that ripped pair of jeans you wore every day when you were 19 can be hard, but with a little imagination and some creative stitching, rips, tears and pinching waistlines need no longer…

The Barber of Seville

20 Sep 2007

She’s 31, he’s 62. She’s a young Scot at the start of her operatic career, he’s a singer who seems to have been at the top of his for ever. But in Scottish Opera’s new production of The Barber of Seville, it is not as singers that the two come together.

Kylie – The Exhibition

20 Sep 2007

EXHIBITION Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Fri 21 Sep–Sun 23 Jan 2008 ‘The interesting thing about Kylie is that she represents that world of glitter and glamour and sparkle that so many gay people wrap around themselves as a form of…

Andrew Weatherall

20 Sep 2007

If you know dance music you already know Andrew Weatherall. He’s been at the forefront of the scene since the early days of acid house. He’s one of the most respected DJs in the world, his techno mixes often veering off into new undiscovered…

Merchant City Festival

20 Sep 2007

We’re not short of festivals in Scotland. The months between April and November have begun to feel like one of those Strip the Willows that happen at particularly drunken céilidhs, where you’re buffeted relentlessly between cultural events and…

George Clooney in Michael Clayton

20 Sep 2007

There are two sides to George Clooney that are as bipolar as his famed salt-and-pepper hair. Although it would be fair to say that when he popped up in Venice to promote Michael Clayton, for which the former ER star is heavily tipped to be in Oscar…

A Mighty Heart

20 Sep 2007

THRILLER/TRUE CRIME (15) 107min For a number of reasons, it’s difficult not to think of Henry Miller’s remark that ‘whatever there be of progress in life comes not from adaptation but through daring’ when watching Michael Winterbottom’s powerful…

The Bow

(15) 89mins (Tartan/DVD retail)

20 Sep 2007

Best known in Western audiences for Bad Guy, 3-Iron and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, enfant terrible Korean director Kim Ki-duk has some serious twisted form in Asian cinema. This one, like most of the others, comes recommended. The…

The Yacoubian Building

20 Sep 2007

EPIC DRAMA (PG) 172min With the possible exception of Iran, new cinema from the Arab world gets a fairly raw deal in the UK, so it’s a rare pleasure indeed to immerse oneself in this accessible but sprawling multiple story drama from Egypt based on…

Death Proof

20 Sep 2007

HORROR/ACTION (18) 113min Like the best roller-coasters, Death Proof takes an eternity to get moving, but once in top gear, Quentin Tarantino’s thriller will leave you hanging on tighter than poor Zoe Bell, who clings grimly to a speeding car’s…

Transylvania

20 Sep 2007

DRAMA (15) 101min Tony Gatlif’s latest musing on Romany life is a visually stunning road movie that attempts to evoke the freewheeling spirit of Fellini’s La Strada. Wild-eyed Zingarina (Asia Argento) discovers she is pregnant and heads to Romania…

Evening

20 Sep 2007

DRAMA (12A) 117min From its literary origins through its evocative photography and exquisite production design to its award-winning crew and all-star cast, Evening is the kind of class act that Hollywood refers to as a ‘prestige picture’. Adapted…

The Brave One

20 Sep 2007

CRIME/THRILLER (18) 122min There is no actor working today who portrays motivational fear better than Jodie Foster. Her performances in The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs and to a lesser extent the more recent Panic Room and Flight Plan are…

Ibiza travel feature

20 Sep 2007

If you’re in search of a relaxing holiday, then Ibiza probably isn’t high on your list. After programmes like Ibiza Uncovered in the 1990s followed hoards of football shirt-bedecked British tourists throwing up in the streets of San Antonio’s notorious…

Jack Peñate

20 Sep 2007

With a toe-tapping, top-ten hit under his belt, two incendiary sold-out UK tours and a highly anticipated debut album on the way, Jack Peñate really shouldn’t have a care in the world. However, when we catch up with the London-born lad in a Covent…

The Winter's Tale - interview

20 Sep 2007

Ever dealt with the green-eyed monster? If not, you’re lucky, but most likely you have. Mark Thomson, never one to shirk the “difficult” plays of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, has chosen to begin the Lyceum’s autumn season with The Winter’s Tale. Aside from…

Xavier Giannoli

20 Sep 2007

The French director Xavier Giannoli can pinpoint the moment cinema entered his life. He was five years old and asleep in his parents’ flat in Paris, when he woke up to the sound of tanks and machine guns. It turned out that the noise was coming from the…

Johanna Billing

20 Sep 2007

Modern life often forces us into strange and awkward social situations, something Swedish artist Johanna Billing seems painfully aware of. Somewhere between document and fiction, her films record moments that she breezily calls ‘on the surface, quiet…

Mental Health Arts and Film Festival

20 Sep 2007

Ahead of Scotland’s first Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, Kirstin Innes spoke to organiser Lee Knifton about dialogues, drama and positive mental action

Bella Mbriana - restaurant review

20 Sep 2007

There are, probably, too many Italian restaurants around. Don’t take this the wrong way: Italian cuisine and, perhaps more importantly, the Italian attitude to food, bows to no-one on earth. Yet a month hardly passes without the appearance of another…

Elf Analysis - theatre preview

20 Sep 2007

Few young writers of recent years can have had quite so rapid a rise to prominence as Morna Pearson. Before November of last year, few beyond a handful of mentors would have heard of the Elgin born writer, but after her Critics’ Awards for Theatre in…

DVD Round-Up

20 Sep 2007

On hearing of Marilyn Monroe’s death, the filmmaker and actor John Huston said: ‘It’s a terrible pity that so much beauty has been lost to us.’ Forty-five years on, the first of two definitive DVD collections dedicated to her are coming out. Marilyn…

Peer Gynt - preview

20 Sep 2007

Dominic Hill’s last project at Dundee Rep, here combining its resources with the National Theatre of Scotland, shows no lack of ambition. The soon-to-be artistic director of the Traverse has chosen a complex, picaresque classic full of incident as his…