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…

Singles & Downloads

20 Sep 2007

The Cult are back! Raaaaaaaaar, let’s party like it’s 1987! Actually, let’s not bother, because Ian Astbury and co’s latest comeback, ‘Dirty Little Rockstar’ (Roadrunner) •• is a lacklustre rehash of their Stones and AC/DC roots, except creakier in the…

Scott Myles - Askit

20 Sep 2007

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING It would be wrong to immediately dismiss the new work on show by Scott Myles at the Modern Institute at first glance, as your initial aesthetic reaction will be incorrect. It may seem overly dramatic to say that the painted…

Macbeth: Kill Bill Shakespeare

20 Sep 2007

As the Scottish king might ask: ‘What bloody man is that?’ Well it’s not quite William Shakespeare that’s for sure. Writer/director Malachi Bogdanov loves Shakespeare but he also loves the films of Quentin Tarantino. Describing Macbeth: Kill Bill…

Profile - Killa Kela

20 Sep 2007

Name: Killa Kela Occupation: Internationally renowned beatboxer extraordinaire, collaborator to the stars, sometime gossip magazine mainstay. Where’s he from? Twenty-eight year old Lee Potter is originally from Billingshurst, West Sussex, and he…

The Algebra of Freedom

20 Sep 2007

It’s not often we’re called upon to be sympathetic to the police officers who mistakenly killed Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground in July 2005. Nor are we expected to find time for those fundamentalists who prefer the bomb to the ballot…

Exposure - Foals

20 Sep 2007

Tomorrow’s music today. This issue: Foals Mixing a love of techno, Timbaland and loud guitars really is no rarity these days but what sets Foals apart from the rest is the Brighton-based quintet’s musical prowess, math rock tendencies and fierce…

Ricky Gervais and Harry Hill

20 Sep 2007

CHILDREN’S BOOKS Once upon a time, it was perfectly acceptable for an entertainer to devote their life to one career. These days, however, if you don’t learn to ice skate, cook or dash off a kids’ book in your spare time, you’re a veritable…

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

20 Sep 2007

NEW SEASON Classic Bites, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 21 Sep; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Sat 22 Sep; Opening Concert, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 28 Sep; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Sat 29 Sep The leaves on the trees are starting to…

Meeting Joe Strummer

20 Sep 2007

Joe Strummer, the son of a crofter’s daughter and foreign service diplomat who became the poster boy for leftist, politically astute rock music is not lying quietly in his grave. Since his death in 2002 from an undiagnosed congenital heart defect there…

Hamlet - preview

20 Sep 2007

If I had a Kroner for every time someone reinvented Hamlet, I could afford a cruise to Denmark. If it’s not being set in Nazi Germany or a mental institution, the lead is being performed by – Gosh o’blood – a woman, the whole thing’s being done in the…

Crazy P

20 Sep 2007

DISCO HOUSE Ultragroove at Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Sat 22 Sep With a new album recorded and all-but mixed, the artists formerly known as Crazy Penis have toned down to appeal to the popular market. ‘Yeah, the Penis has gone,’ says singer…

Hitlist - the best books, comics & events

20 Sep 2007

Bruce Parry, the intrepid BBC guy, helps launch the book of the TV series Tribe. Yann Martel, the Canongate author who sprung a major surprise with his Booker win for Life of Pi, drops by for a couple of events to mark the illustrated version of his…

Tom Findlay at SoCo Social

20 Sep 2007

HOUSE/FUNK/SOUL The Buff, Glasgow, Fri 28 Sep There is a now an alternative to the customary quick drink after work and it comes in the form of the SoCo Social, a series of free gigs in Glasgow that run from 6pm until 10pm. The first event took…

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY (12A) 110min Adam Sandler’s determination to earth his angry-funnyman persona within real-life tragedy has already resulted in the flop of maudlin post-9/11 drama Reign On Me. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry offers a rather sunnier view of…

Hitlist - the best theatre

20 Sep 2007

Peer Gynt Dominic Hill’s last production at Dundee Rep takes on Ibsen’s classic picaresque adventure centring on a single, wasteful, very modern man. Keith Fleming leads in this epic existential caper. Dundee Rep, Mon 24 Sep–Sat 13 Oct. Rupture A…

Old Crow Medicine Show

20 Sep 2007

BLUEGRASS ABC, Glasgow, Thu 27 Sep Like the American travelling bands from whom they take their name, Old Crow Medicine Show’s musical education came on street corners and county fairs. They came together in 1998 in upstate New York, bought…

Feist

20 Sep 2007

FOLK POP Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wed 26 Oct If Leslie Feist has done one thing in her varied career that deserves to make her a star, it’s the day she spent shooting the video to her recent, mesmerisingly cheerful single ‘1234’. Google it or find it on…

Hitlist - The best dancefloor action

20 Sep 2007

• Merchant City Festival Club Every night the best in local DJs play the hottest sounds to round off your festival day including Bebado, Harri and the Trouble DJs. Carnival Arts Centre, Glasgow, Thu 20 Sep–Sun 23 Sep. • Our Haus Set in a tenement…

Slam

Nick Hornby

20 Sep 2007

Sam is 15. He skates, chases girls and narrates his own coming-of-age novel. Things are going well until he gets one of those girls pregnant and is introduced to the world of adult responsibility. Plus, his father figure is a poster of pro-skater Tony…

Richard Strachan

20 Sep 2007

PAINTING Amber Roome, Edinburgh, until Thu 4 Oct As verdigris slices through neon lime, which in turn is edged with bright jade, Richard Strachan’s pragmatically titled ‘Green/Yellow’, becomes a crystalline image that seems to take you deep into the…

Hitlist - The best rock, pop, jazz & folk

20 Sep 2007

• Dean Owens and the Whisky Hearts This masterful Edinburgh songwriter kicks of ten days of shows in Darvel with a full-blooded, full-band show of his beguiling Americana. Darvel Music Festival, Darvel Town Hall, near Kilmarnock, Wed 26 Sep. (Folk…

Chuck Prophet

20 Sep 2007

AMERICANA King Tut’s, Glasgow, Thu, 27 Sep Not to be confused with the current trend for trucker-chic and check shirts, Americana in the musical sense magics up the sound of smoky bars, whisky-soaked nights in the desert and heartbroken farm boys.

Mark Thomas

20 Sep 2007

STAND-UP There’s still something horribly unfashionable about political comedy in Britain. It can’t simply be that most comics have such sensitive leftist tendencies that they find it unbearable to go hell for leather at attacking the government that…

Also Released - Film

20 Sep 2007

The Sound of Music (U) 174min ••• This restored print re-release of the popular sugar-coated family musical is a must for fans but hardly essential viewing for everyone else. Selected release from Wed 26 Sep. Across the Universe (15) 133min •••…

Hitlist - The best exhibitions

20 Sep 2007

• Scott Myles This exhibition of installed sculptures and work on paper frustrates easy judgements of taste, and plays with ideas of illusion, reflection and artifice with a sense of humour. Myles’ sculptures, as fixtures and fitting, stand apart from…