Issue 594

Lady Godiva

17 Jan 2008

ROMANCE (12A) 95min According to legend, Lady Godiva was the wife of an 11th century nobleman, who rode naked through the streets of Coventry in a successful act of protest against her husband’s taxation of his subjects. Here, in her debut…

Holocaust Memorial Day

17 Jan 2008

For most of Scotland, the end of January means Burns Night. Whisky, tradition and rousing renditions of ‘A Man’s A Man For A’ That’; a time for national nostalgia and a noisy assertion, however fleeting, of equality. Perhaps it’s fitting then that a…

Manga

17 Jan 2008

It’s not always easy being a pioneer, something Neil Armstrong, Christopher Columbus or Marie Curie would have no doubt attested to. The same can be said for George Macdonald, lesser known perhaps, but equally forward thinking in his field: the world of…

Travel - Stavanger

17 Jan 2008

If Disney had designed the streets outside Duncan Robertson’s studio, you’d say it was too Mickey Mouse to be true. Like the view of the sunlit mountains that skirt the edge of the city, the wooden houses of Stavanger’s old town are chocolate box cute.

No Country For Old Men

17 Jan 2008

THRILLER (15) 122min After the public ambivalence and critical lambasting of their last two films – Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers – the Coen Brothers return to form with this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, which features many…

Plain White T's

17 Jan 2008

ALT.ROCK Barrowland, Glasgow, Fri 25 Jan Dave Tirio is asleep. Fifteen minutes after the interview is scheduled to start he’s probably dreaming about number ones and sell-out tours. But these things are fast becoming more than dreams for the…

The Young Republic - 12 Tales From the Winter City

17 Jan 2008

ECLECTIC (End of the Road) It’s a rare thing to have to turn the term ‘genre defying’ against a band, but in the case of Boston octet The Young Republic there’s little alternative. Although rich in melody, texture and skilled playing (all eight…

Out of the west

2008 Glasgow Film Festival programme launched

24 Jan 2008

On the day the 2008 Oscar nominations were announced, the stars and main players of Scottish film and media gathered at Glasgow Film Theatre’s Cinema One to hear some much more significant film news. On Tuesday 22 January the programme for the fourth…

Tight Budget

17 Jan 2008

Going for a song January is a great time to check out up-and-coming bands for free. Remember, even the most unpromising nights can be historic. On the west coast, Mono, Stereo, 78, the Liquid Ship and Tchai Ovna all have exciting free line-ups. In…

Eat - No 1 Sushi Bar

17 Jan 2008

THE MEAL Stories of fine Scottish wild salmon being caught, frozen and flown to high end restaurants in Japan are closer to the truth than you might think. Why then does sushi remain such niche cuisine in this country? In Scotland, Japanese…

Celtic Connections

17 Jan 2008

KIDS’ WORKSHOPS Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Sat 19 Jan (percussion) & Sat 26 Jan (singing) Given that most children derive pleasure from a) making lots of noise and b) hitting things, a drumming workshop for kids seems like a match made in…

Josh Brolin

17 Jan 2008

Josh Brolin has arguably been the most industrious American actor of the past year. In Robert Rodriguez’ Grindhouse homage Planet Terror, he was full of ticks and outlandish gimmicks as Dr William Block. In American Gangster Brolin acted Russell Crowe…

Headspin's 10th Birthday

17 Jan 2008

It was the winter of 98, and, inspired by fellow leftfield institution Messenger Sound System, Allan Dunbar and Steve Austen landed themselves a brand new club night at the old Bongo, determined they were going to put on something a little different…

Duty Free

17 Jan 2008

2008 heralds the arrival of a brand spanking new bunch of bands for us to sink our teeth into. But which ones will re-invent new rave, who will outdo The Horrors in the hair department, out-kook Kate Nash or beat the Arctic Monkeys in a pithy lyric…

The Savages

17 Jan 2008

DRAMA (15) 114min Nine years after her 1998 feature debut Slums of Beverley Hills, writer-director Tamara Jenkins returns with this richly observed and terrifically acted character study. The Savages of the title are a pair of intellectual…

Ever So Sweet launch party

17 Jan 2008

Now that we’ve got your attention, how exactly to describe this event? There are cakes, there are bands, there’s an auction. The cakes are very, very, very good, one of the bands is called Dick Dangerous & the Love Bastards (we’re, like, so there), and…

Derrick May

17 Jan 2008

TECHNO Pressure at the Arches, Glasgow, Fri 25 Jan ‘Trying to save the world from bad music.’ That’s the motto Derrick May lives by these days. Arguably he’s already done that though, given that, alongside his old Belleville, Detroit high school…

Alex Metric

17 Jan 2008

ELECTRO-HOUSE Sugarbeat at Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Fri 25 Jan. His star has been rising through a selection of remixes and self-productions for the last couple of years now, and it seems entirely possible that Alex Metric’s first date of 2008…

Introducing . . . Weak at the Knees

17 Jan 2008

The best new nights in town. This month: Weak at the Knees Residents Perry Louis (Jazz Café, Point 101, the JazzCotech Dancers) Guests Ronnie Coldsweat, London funk aficionado and devotee of all things Prince, Cameo and Leroy Burgess.

Edward Bond

17 Jan 2008

Steve Cramer A lot of your work involves the use of violence, both physical and psychological. Why do you think this is so prevalent in society? Edward Bond Human beings have a capacity, but not a need to be violent. In our society we have a basic…

Alan Grant

17 Jan 2008

We’ve passed several science fiction milestones in the last 25 years with George Orwell’s 1984, Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 and the speculative 1997 proposed in Predator 2. And, while the exact facts within these fictions may not have come to pass, there are…

Celtic Connections

17 Jan 2008

Music isn’t what it used to be. This is something we have to be thankful for as the constant evolution, recycling and re-fashioning of music means there’s always someone out there trying to do things a bit differently. While there’s been much carping…

Stars

17 Jan 2008

POP Oran Mor, Glasgow, Sun 27 Jan Stars describe their music as ‘melodramatic popular song’, an accurate if tongue-in-cheek description of the grandly-monikered In Our Bedroom After the War, released last year. But Stars’ emotional rawness and…

Pharoah Sanders

17 Jan 2008

JAZZ The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Tue 29 Jan The chance to hear jazz patriarch Pharoah Sanders in a small venue doesn’t come around often, and should be a memorable experience. He first came to wide notice when his acerbic, free-blowing saxophone…

Andrew O’Hagan (Ed) - A Night Out with Robert Burns: The Greatest Poems

17 Jan 2008

POETRY COLLECTION (Canongate) Robert Burns has been ‘sainted, painted, tormented and toasted’, as the book blurb playfully informs us. He is also a source of boredom for schoolchildren, linguistic perplexity for non-Scots and undiluted pleasure for…