Issue 595

There Will Be Blood - Daniel Day-Lewis interview

Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t make many films but when he does there’s almost always a seat reserved for him near the podium at awards ceremonies. The London-born, Ireland-based actor has already won an Oscar for My Left Foot and has amassed a further 40…

Valentine's Day tango classes

It’s bucketing down on Buchanan Street with all the maudlin misery of your traditional Glasgow winter. However, if you divert up a side alley, local dancers are generating the sort of heat and wild, sensual rhythm better suited to the backroom of an…

Pick-up techniques - interview with Neil Strauss

IceDragon, Scotland’s number one PUA (pickup artist), is trying to lock me into conversation. However, he’s quickly surrounded. Deep Vertigo has perched at his shoulder and five other members of the Glasgow lair are hovering on the fringes. Chance, 20…

Mark Everett interview

Family plot

When Mark Oliver Everett was nine years old and home alone, a plane crashed in his neighbourhood. Stumbling outside, he wandered through the carnage of burning wreckage and body parts before returning to his house. ‘Just another day in my weird life,…

Golden Virginia

Beguiling singer and storyteller Devon Sproule’s songs are so evocative they could be used as adverts for her home town. Rachel Devine gets in a state If the Virginia tourist board ever needs an advertising jingle to sell their leafy state, they…

State of Play - David Edgar and Testing the Echo

It might tell us something about the current preoccupations of the theatre in Scotland that, following a long period in which his plays were seldom performed here, revivals of David Edgar’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Nicholas Nickleby have both toured…

Chris Clark at Ctrl. with Ballers Social

Since the release of his debut album Clarence Park on Warp Records in 2001 Chris Clark has occupied a position at the darker end of the electronica spectrum and subsequent releases Ceramics is the Bomb and Empty the Bones of You consolidated his…

2008 Rock Ness line-up unveiled

The picturesque surrounds of Loch Ness are set to host some of the biggest names on the UK rock scene. The Rock Ness music festival, named after its location on the banks of the famous Scottish loch, will showcase top bands, including Editors…

Tim Minchin

Considering the few acts who are able to pull it off without being greeted by a sea of groaning, musical comedy must surely be one of the most difficult cross-pollinations in the arts. There’s Bill Bailey, Flight of the Conchords and, erm, well that’s…

A-Z guide to love in the 00s

Al fresco sex Scots are happier than ever to admit doing it outdoors. Whether it’s about getting back to nature, Lady Chatterley’s Lover–style, or something a little more sordid (think Stan Collymore), 69% of us claimed to have had sex in the open air…

Eating out on Valentine's Day

St Valentine’s Day is anticipated with equal amounts of optimism and dread in the restaurant trade. No different from the rest of us, then, though for different reasons. As buoyed as owners are by a full restaurant and healthy champagne sales, staff…

Split Personality - Alan Michael

Rosie Lesso creates an imaginative map of associations as she considers the work of painter Alan Michael Like many artists before him, Alan Michael’s first point of reference is the sea of visual information we encounter as by-products of…

The best chocolate for Valentine's Day

Cocoa Mountain Balnakeil Craft Village, Durness, Sutherland, www.cocoamountain. co.uk, 01971 511233 ‘Summit Collection’ with 20 chocolates £19.50 Plain but neat cardboard box and dividers with a wholesome recycled feel. Classic dusky textured…

The Lady Vanishes

(U) 95min

Originally released in September 1938, a few days before Neville Chamberlain stepped off a plane at Heston airport waving the stationary which was to end his political career, Alfred Hitchcock’s splendidly entertaining pan-European railway caper looks…

OurSpace

What better way of rescuing the neglected history of the nation’s LGBT community than through the great Scottish tradition of storytelling? OurSpace: Making Inner and Outer Space for LGBT Lives presents a wide array of LGBT lives through oral histories…

Films for lovers

First flush Wim Wenders’ 1987 urban romancier, Wings of Desire, about an angel willing to give up his winged status for the love of a homo sapien, is a great film for those wishing to take their relationship to a more ethereal level. If this isn’t…

Ansel Adams: Celebration of Genius

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY The name Ansel Adams is virtual shorthand for landscape photography at its finest. A shy child prodigy, home-schooled and self-taught to read and play music at the age of 12, the teenaged Californian first experienced…

She Stoops to Conquer

CLASSIC Could an 18th century play ever provide a better insight into contemporary relationships than last night’s episode of Eastenders? Director Jonathan Munby thinks so. Apparently, it’s all in the framing: in this new production for the King’s…

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

(12A) 112min

On 8 December 1995 Jean Dominique Bauby – the 43-year-old editor of French Elle magazine suffered a huge stroke. Twenty days later he awoke, unable to move anything apart from his mouth; he could also grunt and blink his left eyelid. He was diagnosed…

Juno - interview with Ellen Page

The elfin Canadian Ellen Page has been nominated for a Best Leading Actress Oscar for her titular role in the independent comedy drama, Juno. If she wins that prestigious prize at the Academy Awards on Monday 25 February, four days after her 21st…

Aesop Rock

INDIE HIP HOP Five albums deep, and with a cable access TV slot and Nike Original Run project under his belt (because even slacker heads need to exercise), Aesop Rock’s murky stew of hip hop, rock and post-apocalyptic commentary still proves a…

Penelope

(U) 89min

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away from self-conscious satire, there lived a girl named Penelope (Christina Ricci). With her moneyed background, good sense of humour and French language skills, Penelope should be a bit of a catch. Sadly, Penelope…

Equus

REVIVAL Anyone who has ever felt that the drudgery of everyday life is denying them some greater experience (that is, pretty well all of us) might feel able to relate to Peter Schaffer’s legendary international hit. Its recent London revival cast…

Blonde Bombshells of 1943

REVIVAL Because it’s based on recreated and imagined history, the peculiar emotion of nostalgia is something anyone, even people who weren’t there, can indulge in. Alan Plater’s World War Two-set Blonde Bombshells of 1943, originally devised by…