Issue 595

Pick-up techniques - interview with Neil Strauss

31 Jan 2008

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…

The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath

31 Jan 2008

(Universal) ROCK Listening to the barrage emanating from the speakers for 78 minutes it’s hard to believe that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala (for they are the heart, soul and hair of The Mars Volta) have reeled things in for album…

Eating out on Valentine's Day

31 Jan 2008

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…

Azur and Amar: The Princes' Quest

31 Jan 2008

In Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest writer and director Michel Ocelot (Kirikou and the Sorceress, Princes and Princesses) opts to use digital technology over the hand drawn animation technique that livened up his ‘Kirikou’ trilogy. The technology might…

Day of reckoning for Caltongate project

31 Jan 2008

Edinburgh City Council is due to make a decision regarding the controversial £300m Caltongate development at a special meeting on Wednesday 6 February. The project involves demolishing listed buildings in Edinburgh’s Old Town to make room for a hotel…

Bob Mould - District Line

31 Jan 2008

(Beggar’s Banquet) ROCK Mould is rightly regarded as a legend for his work in seminal hardcore outfit Hüsker Dü, and the bristling grunge-pop of Sugar, but his solo outings have been hit and miss. District Line is no different, showing glimpses of…

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

(12A) 112min

31 Jan 2008

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…

Azur and Asmar: The Prince’s Quest - interview with Michel Ocelot

31 Jan 2008

Name Michel Ocelot Born Villefranche-sur-Mer, France in 1943 Background While Ocelot spent much of his childhood in Guinea, West Africa and his teenager years in Anjou, he now lives in Paris. He made his name by writing and directing the Kirikou…

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

(PG) 124min

31 Jan 2008

Replace the religious sub-plot from The Da Vinci Code with some spurious blather about the history of the US Constitution and you have the successful formula for the National Treasure franchise. The second instalment finds adventurer Ben Gates (Nicolas…

The Hard Rain Picture Show

31 Jan 2008

Presentation and lecture by Mark Edwards, one of the most widely-published environmental photographers in the world. Neither a travelogue, nor another exercise in handwringing, The Hard Rain Picture Show takes audiences on a journey through rainforests…

There Will Be Blood - Daniel Day-Lewis interview

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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…

Mark Everett interview

Family plot

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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…

Love nests - where to stay on Valentine's Day

31 Jan 2008

Full hearts, empty pockets If you want to show how deep your love is without breaking the bank, this cute Cornish Shepherd’s Hut might be the solution. Originally used as a shelter during the long nights of the lambing season it has been restyled as a…

Split Personality - Alan Michael

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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

31 Jan 2008

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…