Issue 591

The Golden Compass - Heart of Darkness

29 Nov 2007

Everyone wanted Nicole Kidman to play Mrs Coulter. From the makers of the blockbuster film adaptation of The Golden Compass through the millions of fans of Philip Pullman’s bestselling fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials to the author of the novels…

M.I.A. interview

29 Nov 2007

M.I.A. – Maya Arulpragasam to her friends – is a hard woman to pin down. After a week spent scheduling and rescheduling an interview, I finally caught up with her in Minneapolis, a brief pause before she went on to soundcheck for her gig that night.

Burnsong - Songhouse

29 Nov 2007

When it comes to songwriting, only the brave or the stupid would be prepared to take him on. In just a couple of decades Robert Burns wrote over 360 songs that cover the whole gamut of human emotion from love and lust to loss and longing. Weighty issues…

Annuals

29 Nov 2007

Annuals were once the sole preserve of the young. Boys had their Beano and girls got their Mandy. Scots hooted at the charmingly formulaic plotlines of The Broons, while the English, one imagines, marvelled at the asinine ‘adventures’ of Rupert the Bear…

Bryan Lee O’Malley - Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together

29 Nov 2007

MANGA ROM-COM Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together (Oni Press) Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old slacker with no money, no job and no hope of getting either. Luckily, in the tradition of classic gen X wastrels he is totally irresistible, which is why the…

One Minute Wonder - Minute Masters

29 Nov 2007

One year ago The List and media production company Metro Ecosse launched our first ever short film competition. One Minute Wonder was an entry-level screenwriting competition open to anyone aged over 16 who lives in Scotland. It was also the first…

Hitman - Blood money

29 Nov 2007

Hitman is the latest in a long line of videogames to make the jump from console to big screen. Despite the flops (think Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter) studios just don’t seem able to keep their hands off videogame properties, with the Resident…

Quentin Blake

29 Nov 2007

ILLUSTRATION Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, until Tue 1 Jan When you take an illustration away from the text it was created for, the lone image can quickly become a very dire prospect or can leave the viewer scratching their head…

Children’s Classic Concerts

29 Nov 2007

CLASSICAL CONCERT Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Sat 1 Dec; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sun 16 Dec He’s more at home behind the shop counter in Still Game, but this Christmas Sanjeev Kohli is branching out. Instead of hanging out with old boys Jack and…

Steve Martin - Born Standing Up

29 Nov 2007

MEMOIR Born Standing Up (Simon & Schuster) Great comedy and psychological problems normally go together like Bill Hicks and nicotine. Nice guy Steve Martin’s ‘funny but weird’ schtick means he’s pulled off the near impossible by delivering…

The Golden Compass

29 Nov 2007

FANTASY/ADAPTATION (12A) 105min JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and JK Rowling may have all the initials and most of the sales but fair-minded fantasy fans know deep down that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is the genre’s true shining light.

The Speakeasy

29 Nov 2007

When The List visited Cabaret Voltaire there were two-and-a-half weeks to go until the opening night of the Speakeasy – the Cab’s revolutionary new second floor – and refurbishment work was building to a frantic pace. As tools were downed for the day…

Pecha Kucha

29 Nov 2007

PowerPoint presentations are really not sexy. Ask anyone who’s ever sat through a wobbly series of badly-punned headlines, dodgy clip art and incomprehensible animated pie charts meant to ‘jazz up’ a sales report or sector growth analysis... see, I’ve…

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

29 Nov 2007

WESTERN (15) 159min Arch confederate and violent outlaw Jesse James was and is a gift for dramatists. With numerous appearances in literature, film, theatre and music, American folklore’s Robin Hood seems as unstill in his grave now as he was when…

Baggage

29 Nov 2007

RADIO Radio 4, Wed 5 Dec, 11.30am With the Grumpy Old Women back doing their grumpy old thing on the nation’s stages, it’s good to hear of another female comic trio who aren’t just wielding rolling pins and frying pans while moaning about the…

Andrew Dominik - Contrary cowboy

29 Nov 2007

It’s taken New Zealand-born, Australia-bred filmmaker Andrew Dominik (pictured) seven years to make the follow-up to his much-praised debut, Chopper. Like that film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a wildly unconventional…

St Andrew’s Day

29 Nov 2007

Around this time of year, a flurry of twee tartan tat begins to take over our streets and schools. Gym halls fill up with tinny, taped ceilidh tunes, canteens are plagued with watery tatties and sloppy neeps, and supermarkets surrender to dusty displays…

Pantos - Pantomonium

29 Nov 2007

Pantomime is the theatrical version of the Woolworth’s pick and mix counter: sickly sweet, and full of unnatural additives. But once you’ve had your first bite you can’t stop until you feel sick. So, as the panto season begins for another year, The…

Ivy First Birthday Weekender

29 Nov 2007

ELECTRONICA The Ivy, Glasgow, Fri 30 Nov–Sun 2 Dec Over the last 12 months the Ivy has been busy building itself a reputation as one of the best pubs in Glasgow to catch great music. To celebrate its first birthday, the venue is hosting a special…

Q-Burns

29 Nov 2007

HOUSE Vacuum, Studio Warehouse, Glasgow, Fri 30 Nov The man they call Q-Burns Abstract Message (aka Q-BAM aka Michael Donaldson) is no stranger to Glasgow’s Studio Warehouse. This is the fourth time he’s bringing his unique brand of infectiously…

Girls Aloud - Tangled Up

29 Nov 2007

POP Tangled Up (Universal) First things first – there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. There is just good music and bad music, whether it be camp pop, pompous rock, electro-crunk, punk funk or the bizarre style now simply known as Rhydian.

St Nicholas

29 Nov 2007

ONE MAN SHOW Eastgate Theatre and Arts Centre, Peebles, Thu 13 Dec, then touring. Reviewed at Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow) Critics may well shift awkwardly in their seats during this piece, and it’s nothing to do with the hard benches in the Citz…

Winterfest Glasgow

29 Nov 2007

2007 is the first year that Glasgow has consolidated all of its wintry activities under one festive umbrella, the secularly-named Winterfest Glasgow. The main action happens at either end of Queen Street, with Glasgow on Ice (pictured) taking over the…

You Kill Me

29 Nov 2007

COMEDY/THRILLER (15) 92min John The Last Seduction Dahl’s latest film is a work of modest ambition that manages to hit just the right notes. The gleefully morbid script, by screenwriting team Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (The Life and…

Scottish Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty

29 Nov 2007

CHRISTMAS BALLET Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Tue 11–Sat 29 Dec Since his arrival at Scottish Ballet, Ashley Page has been like a Christmas cracker – when his festive shows open, you never know what you’ll find inside. Both The Nutcracker and Cinderella…

White Christmas

29 Nov 2007

MUSICAL Edinburgh Playhouse, until Sat 8 Dec Starring in a soap opera can leave you typecast forever. So it’s testament to Craig McLachlan’s ability that in White Christmas he’s most definitely Bob Wallace, ex-soldier turned performer – and not…

Trans-Siberian railway

29 Nov 2007

The Trans-Siberian railway is the sort of travel experience that divides people. The idea of multiple nights on a train, sharing a cabin with strangers, no access to showers, dependent on the vagaries of the buffet car for sustenance is many people’s…

Profile - Laurent Garnier

29 Nov 2007

Name Laurent Garnier Who? Techno DJ and producer Laurent Garnier is one of France’s most successful musical exports. Beginning as a Madchester house DJ he has gone on to rise to the giddy heights of a hugely in-demand globe-trotter, lugging his…

A Sheep Called Skye

29 Nov 2007

CHILDREN’S THEATRE Duns Volunteer Hall, Langtongate, Sat 1 Dec, then touring If the question of identity plagues people throughout their adult life, it might seem a good idea to get a start on resolving the problem early on. This seems the central…

Profile - The Wee Man

29 Nov 2007

Who’s he then? Creation of Neil Bratchpiece, smallest comedy member of the not very tall Bratchpiece Family, The Wee Man is a pure wee basturt Burberry fiend whose stage demeanour ranges wildly from quite threatening to really very threatening…

Glasgow grins and bares it

29 Nov 2007

Celebrate your cellulite this Christmas! Professional ego-booster Gok Wan is in town for the live How To Look Good Naked roadshow. Two audience members will get the full-on nudie glow, and a host of hairstylists and make-up artists will be doling out…

Two Fat Ladies at the Buttery - review

29 Nov 2007

When you see the word ‘at’ (or the symbol ‘@’) in a restaurant name there’s always a bit of a suspicion that it’s something of a forced marriage. Like a double A-side or joint top billing it’s a rather clunky effort to tempt the public into believing…

Lou Hickey

Pop

29 Nov 2007

‘I was brought up watching Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin movies, and when I was a little girl I wanted to be just like Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’. Lou Hickey is a bit of an anachronism – a classically-trained…

Burlescapades

29 Nov 2007

It’s almost Christmas so why not treat yourself to a night of feathers, tassels, striptease and slapstick at this burlesque festive special. Expect vintage sounds and a dose of saucy cabaret from Amber Topaz, Red Sarah, Leyla Rose (pictured) and…

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone - interview with Tsai Ming-liang

29 Nov 2007

Tsai Ming-liang is one of the great contemporary filmmakers. Tony McKibbin meets him. Like Béla Tarr, Abbas Kiarostami, Wong Kar-wai, Lars Von Trier and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Asian filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang has contributed in proving that if the great…

Remote Control

29 Nov 2007

They say that getting hitched is one of the most stressful events in anyone’s life. But what if you are sharing your big day with a woman you barely love while another 2000 weddings are going on in the same city? Probably happens in most major…

News Extra

29 Nov 2007

Edinburgh’s Hogmanay has launched in suitable style with the final big name acts being added to the bill. King Creosote appear on the Waverley Stage, while Scotland’s Red Hot Chilli Pipers will join forces with British Asian fusion band, Kismet and Go…

Roman Signer - Action man

29 Nov 2007

Since the 1970s Swiss artist Roman Signer has been making eccentric kinetic art, enlivening both himself and found objects with elemental forces such as wind, fire, water or explosives. At first glance, Signer’s clowning around seems to lack substance…

Benbecula Records - Our friends electric

29 Nov 2007

The Scottish electronica scene is probably healthier now than it’s ever been, and that’s down in no small part to Benbecula Records. Formed eight years ago by artists Beluga and Phase 6, and currently run on a day-to-day basis by general manager Steven…

Singles & Downloads

29 Nov 2007

As it’s all a bit gloomy outside at the moment, here’s a mellow selection of singles to wrap your freezing fingers round. Starting off the collection is the latest offering from Kate Walsh ‘Tonight’ (Mercury - 3 stars), with vocals so warm and lovely…

Interview - Carol Rhodes

29 Nov 2007

Carol Rhodes, known for her landscapes painted from a vertiginous aerial perspective, talks to Alexander Kennedy about her new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Alexander Kennedy Can you share some of the main themes and…

Profile - Rigoberto Castaneda

29 Nov 2007

Name Rigoberto Castaneda Born 27 February 1973, Mexico City Background Castaneda was working as a runner in a production house in Mexico City when he was given a book about Alfred Hitchcock and was inspired to take a course in filmmaking. Having…

Monika Sosnowska: Display

29 Nov 2007

INSTALLATION / SCULPTURE Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 8 Dec Stripping architecture of its purpose and concentrating purely on the aesthetic possibilities of public space, the work of Monika Sosnowska plays games with the formalities of…

Writer’s Guild awards - Talent show

29 Nov 2007

On Sunday 18 November the 2007 Writer’s Guild Awards ceremony took place at BAFTA in London. The List sponsored the first ever Best Screenplay Award for a British film shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2007. After a few words of support…

Also Released - Film

29 Nov 2007

Earth (U) 90min ••• Feature-length version of the BBC Planet Earth documentary series from the team who brought you 2003’s Deep Blue. Cineworld Renfrew Street, Glasgow from Fri 30 Nov. All About Eve (U) 138min •••• Digital re-release of Joseph L…

Silent Light (Stellet Licht)

29 Nov 2007

DRAMA (15) 182min To mention Carlos Reygadas’ winsome Silent Light in the same breath as key directors Carl Theodor Dreyer, Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson, and the more recent Bruno Dumont is not hyperbole. The six-minute opening shot of a…

The Killing Of John Lennon

29 Nov 2007

By his own admission Mark David Chapman was nobody until he killed the biggest somebody on earth. That somebody was ex-Beatle John Lennon who he shot on 8 December 1980 outside the Dakota Buildings in New York. Despite being completed over 18 months…

Coming Up

29 Nov 2007

DRAMA SEASON Channel 4, various dates and times Obviously sick and tired of BBC3 taking most of the credit for giving new writers a real shot at small screen glory, Channel 4 have taken up the cudgel big style with documentary strand First Cut and…

World AIDS Day

29 Nov 2007

AWARENESS-RAISING Various events, Sat 1 Dec Now in its 20th year, World AIDS Day is dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic and related issues. The event, which takes place annually on 1 December, is the culmination of a year-round…

Nuts & Seeds Presents…

29 Nov 2007

‘I like things to be inclusive and fun, I don’t enjoy elitism, and I think when the main concern is money it ruins everything,’ says Giles Bailey of independent promoters Nuts & Seeds. Their DIY ethos dictates that door prices are kept low, there are no…

Isosceles

29 Nov 2007

Tomorrow’s music today. This Issue: Isosceles Band names don’t come much more angular than Isosceles, but math rockers this Glasgow quartet certainly aren’t. You’ll much sooner find them slaving over a hot cowbell or a full blooded Hammond organ than…

Ten Decades

29 Nov 2007

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sat 19 Jan Like a weighty history text, this commemorative retrospective, celebrating the centenary of Edinburgh College of Art, is exhausting. While seepage thankfully dapples its linear…

The Parsonage

Choral folk country blues

29 Nov 2007

Choirs are not cool, right? Wrong. Glasgow 50-strong vocal ensemble The Parsonage have played at festivals including Indian Summer and Connect, contributed to Echo and the Bunnymen’s forthcoming new album and recorded an EP for release on Optimo’s…

Southland Tales

29 Nov 2007

SCI FI/COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 144min Los Angeles, 4 July 2008. Society is on the brink of social, economic and environmental collapse and an action star/boxer, a porn star and a police officer are making a last stand. Writer/director Richard Kelly’s…

Ahlaam (Dreams)

29 Nov 2007

WAR/DRAMA (15) 110min Based on the real life testimonials of some of the mental asylum patients who found themselves cut loose on the streets of bombed out Baghdad in the early days of the invasion by American led Coalition forces in 2003…

He Was A Quiet Man

29 Nov 2007

DRAMA/COMEDY (15) 95min It seems a long time ago that Christian Slater was making a living as the ‘young Jack Nicholson’ in teen yarns Heathers and Pump Up The Volume. In this audacious crime caper, written and directed by Frank A Cappello (No Way…

Fred Claus

29 Nov 2007

FAMILY/COMEDY (PG) 115min In his third film with director David Dobkin (Clay Pigeons, The Wedding Crashers) Vince Vaughn trades far too heavily on his familiar wise-guy charms in this cloying Joel The Matrix Silver-produced Christmas offering.

Thomas Houseago

29 Nov 2007

SCULPTURE The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 5 Jan LA-based, Leeds-born Houseago makes his Glasgow debut at the Modern Institute with slashed and scraped figurative works, sculptures that amalgamate stylistic elements from Cubism…

The Magic Flute

29 Nov 2007

OPERA (PG) 138 min Kenneth Branagh’s version of As You Like It was the most misconceived Shakespeare movie in living memory. News that he planned to transfer Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute to the battlefields of World War One did not bode well…

Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds

29 Nov 2007

MUSIC THEATRE SECC, Glasgow, Wed 5 Dec In the last years of the 20th century, no one would have believed that a bunch of old stadium rockers would be planning the launch of a new theatrical version of Jeff Wayne’s 70s album. But slowly, and…

Seven Miles from Fortune City

29 Nov 2007

REHEARSED READING Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Thu 6 Dec Given that some of Louise Ironside’s earlier work dealt with prostitution in issue-based drama such as Risk and Trade, you might expect her new piece to run along similar lines. But you’d be…

5 Reasons To Go See - Ryan Adams

29 Nov 2007

1 He’s Ryan Adams not Bryan Adams One specialises in alt.country/americana of the highest order, switching between heart-wrenching ballads and some of the catchiest rock tunes you’ll ever hear. The latter does not. 2 He’s focussed, man! Ol’ Ryan’s…

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

29 Nov 2007

DOCUMENTARY (PG) 83min With The Guardian recently offering the front page headline ‘World economy shakes as oil nears $100 a barrel’, A Crude Awakening is nothing if not pertinent, giving credence to the film’s thesis that it isn’t money that…

The Openended Group: Moves

29 Nov 2007

FILM INSTALLATION CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 12 Jan In response to the CCA’s ethos of promoting electronic and digital work, the OpenEnded Group exhibits a series of ‘moving image’ works exploring the relationship between choreography, space and…

Jason Nelson

29 Nov 2007

PRINTMAKING, FILM The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 22 Dec The Collective Gallery’s annual New Work Scotland exhibition this year showcases, among others, the work of Dundee-based artist Jason Nelson. Born in the ex-mining town of Kelty…

Syndromes and a Century

29 Nov 2007

DRAMA (15) 106min Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s undeniably mysterious film is loosely based on his parents’ experience of working in a rural hospital in Thailand. As with the director’s other work (notably 2002’s Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady…

Codename: The Cleaner

29 Nov 2007

COMEDY (12A) 84min So-called comedian Cedric the Entertainer should change his name to Cedric the Complete Non-Event on the evidence of this painfully un-entertaining spoof on the Jason Bourne movies. Having directed genuinely unfunny vehicles for…

Brady Cole - review

29 Nov 2007

SECC, Glasgow, Fri 9 Nov If you want to make Dave Grohl a happy man, listen to Brady Cole. Inexplicably, the Foo Fighters’ shouter-in-chief has heard tell of the Kinghorn quartet, and seems to be on a one-man crusade to make them famous. This was…

Luva Anna - review

29 Nov 2007

Barfly, Glasgow, Fri 9 Nov Dundee may currently be famous musically for giving the world The View, but other than a similar capability for whipping the audience into a frenzy, it’s clear from their opening, perfectly harmonised sea shanty that Luva…

Chi Weapon - review

29 Nov 2007

The Beat Club, Glasgow, Wed 7 Nov For every band breaking new territory by moving too fast to be pigeon-holed, there are plenty more who are spreading themselves too thinly. Chi Weapon, originally from Bute but now Glasgow-based, live up to their…

Correcto & The Gummy Stumps - review

29 Nov 2007

Stereo, Glasgow, Tue 13 Nov Shiny new things galore at this gig: two (very different) Glasgow bands, both fresh out of the can, play in a venue so virginal it still resembles a building site in places. Post-punk noise-mongers The Gummy Stumps…

The Orange Box

29 Nov 2007

PC/XBOX 360 (Valve) ‘Oh Mr Valve, with zees expansions you are really spoiling us!’ The Orange Box is ridiculously good value, containing the genius of Half Life 2 and its episodic expansions, the mind-bending challenge of Portal and Team Fortress 2…

Fleeto

29 Nov 2007

LUNCHTIME THEATRE Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Sat 1 Dec For a couple of decades now, the name Paddy Cunneen has been associated with quality music and soundscapes in Scottish drama. His work has travelled far beyond our borders, with a number of…

WWE Smackdown! Vs Raw 2008

29 Nov 2007

XBOX 360/PS3/PS2 (THQ) You know the score by now: lots of grunting, grappling and men in lycra as yet another in the seemingly endless, but always popular, WWE wresting series hits the market. As you’d expect, on the next gen machines this looks…

News in Brief - By the book

29 Nov 2007

Scottish travel guide returns with a new look and additional sections Scottish tourism comes under the microscope again this year with the latest edition of Pete Irvine’s Scotland the Best. Now in its seventh year, Irvine’s book arrives on…

Assassin's Creed

29 Nov 2007

XBOX 360/PS3/PC (Ubisoft) How refreshing to enjoy an interesting story well told: thanks to an imaginative, if slightly bonkers, flashback device, Assassin’s Creed tiptoes nimbly through the obvious modern politics of a story set in the Holy Land…

Jay-Z - American Gangster

29 Nov 2007

HIP HOP American Gangster (Roc-a-Fella) Retirement plans seem like a long way off as the Jigga Man produces his second album in a little less than 12 months. If Kingdom Come was all bluster and no substance, then Jay-Z redeems himself with this…

Robin Ramsay - Who Shot JFK?

29 Nov 2007

TRUE CRIME Who Shot JFK? (Pocket Essentials) Early on in this pacy dissection of the current state of the JFK assassination industry, Robin Ramsay asks why we should still be bothered about the slaying of an American president in downtown Dallas…

Alistair Findlay (ED) - 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems

29 Nov 2007

POETRY 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems (Luath) When it comes to transferring the beautiful game into the arts sphere, all we can see is a litany of own goals. Can you remember a half-decent football film? No, Escape to Victory doesn’t count…

Zadie Smith (ED) - The Book of Other People

29 Nov 2007

ANTHOLOGY The Book of Other People (Hamish Hamilton) ‘Write a short story about a person,’ said Zadie Smith to 23 of fiction’s finest. And they did, each author taking the remit into a vastly different direction. From a New York socialite to a human…

Oliver Sacks - Musicophilia

29 Nov 2007

MUSIC ANALYSIS Musicophilia (Picador) Listening to music is something most of us take for granted; millions of commuters can’t even go on a bus ride without hundreds of songs in their pockets, but what’s really happening when we lodge those…

Kylie – X

29 Nov 2007

POP X (Parlophone) On listening to Kylie’s tenth long player it wouldn’t be completely unfair to assume that a substantial portion of her adult fan base (like many Oasis fans) are more in love with the idea of Kylie than with the musical reality.

Simon Spurrier & Tan Eng Huat - Silver Surfer: In Thy Name No 1

29 Nov 2007

SUPERHERO SCI-FI Silver Surfer: In Thy Name No 1 (Marvel) With extensive work for 2000AD, various licensed and original novels, and his recent Gutsville series for Image already behind him, Simon Spurrier is the hottest young British writer in…

Also Published - 5 US Crime Dramas

29 Nov 2007

Otto Penzler (ed) Dead Man’s Hand A collection of newly written poker-based tales from crime writers such as Jeffrey Deaver, Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley. Quercus. James Lee Burke The Tin Roof Blowdown A cache of stolen diamonds has floated…

Jason - I Killed Adolf Hitler

29 Nov 2007

IDIOSYNCRATIC SCI-FI I Killed Adolf Hitler (Fantagraphics) Having re-imagined heavyweight modernist writing icons Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound as criminals involved in a heist in The Left Bank Gang, and plundered George Romeo’s zombie…

Calum Martin - The Megantic Outlaw: A Gaelic Legend

29 Nov 2007

FOLK The Megantic Outlaw: A Gaelic Legend (Ridge Records) Calum Martin is better known for leading the Lewis Gaelic Psalm Singers these days, but this CD goes back to 1983, when the original version of his Gaelic-rock opus was issued. The songs were…

Across the Universe

29 Nov 2007

When Julie Taymor’s musical homage to the hippy era came out at the end of September it received terrible reviews and slipped off cinema screens quicker than you could say ‘all you need is love’. Taymor has previous form for daring to film the…

Delta Saxophone Quartet - Dedicated to You . . . But You Weren’t Listening

29 Nov 2007

CONTEMPORARY Dedicated to You... But You Weren’t Listening (Moonjune) The Delta Saxophone Quartet have been around since 1984, but this project involves the group engaging with the music of an even earlier band, Soft Machine. Their approach to the…

Justin Gray, Jimmy Paliotti & Adam Archer - Friday the 13th

29 Nov 2007

HORROR Friday the 13th (Wildstorm) Movie spin-offs are often pretty ropey affairs, desperately trying to wheedle a few bucks from fans clamouring for more product while the hype is still clouding their judgement. Which is why Wildstorm’s tribute…

Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Anthony Marwood

29 Nov 2007

Temperatures are dropping, fires are starting to burn in the grate and teeth are heard in rhythmic chattering. As the seasons change and winter makes its first appearance, that’s the picture painted by Vivaldi in his tribute to this time of year.

Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil

29 Nov 2007

ROCK Good Bad Not Evil (Vice) OK, so it’s patently obvious that Black Lips forgot to bone up on any of the many thousands of records which came along after the day ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ was released. That’s probably unfair; they’ve obviously listened…

Foxface - This is What Makes Us

29 Nov 2007

INDIE This is What Makes Us (Gargleblast Records) This Glasgow outfit’s three members have been kicking around the Scottish indie scene for years, two of them most famously as members of Peeps into Fairyland, but their decision to join forces as…

Art of the matter

29 Nov 2007

Following a slew of successful exhibitions, the National Galleries of Scotland have announced the recent purchase of two ‘Glasgow School’ pictures from the private collection of Andrew McIntosh Patrick. In collaboration with The Art Fund, the Galleries…

Project Ability

29 Nov 2007

Teenage Fanclub will help launch Project Ability’s pre-Christmas exhibition at Monorail in Glasgow next month. The Glasgow band will show their longstanding support for the organisation with a short gig at the event, which takes place on Tuesday 4…

Deborah Kerr

29 Nov 2007

Farewell to Helensburgh’s celebrated movie goddess. Kerr died in October this year after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Both cities honour this ironically-labelled ‘quintessential English rose’ this month. In Glasgow a short season of three…

J-Zone and DJ Sheep

29 Nov 2007

A double bill of hip hop talent with a twist. They’ve christened this the ‘Extra Chee$e’ tour and are planning on playing anything and everything but current hip hop. J-Zone has seven full-length albums under his belt and has worked with everyone from…

On the Buses

29 Nov 2007

In the run up to International Human Rights Day on Monday 10 December, Edinburgh and Glasgow bus passengers just need to look up to do their bit. After a series of workshops run by Oxfam Scotland and the Scottish Poetry Library, five poems written by…

Rodrigo y Gabriela

29 Nov 2007

Not many instrumental acts can step up and headline the Barras, but guitar duo Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero have proved sheer talent alone makes for a fascinating night of live music. Surprisingly the Mexican double act met while playing in…

A Massacre Foretold

29 Nov 2007

Scottish documentary maker Nick Higgins’ commendable and deeply disturbing film investigates the murder of 45 people at a prayer meeting in a Mexican village in 1997. The film gets a brief outing in both cities this fortnight. Also showing is Higgins…

Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra

29 Nov 2007

Glasgow’s large free improvisation ensemble has already racked up a number of significant collaborations with major figures on the international improv scene, and score another coup here with the premiere of a Scottish Arts Council-funded project to…