Issue 601

Persepolis - An interview with Marjane Satrapi

24 Apr 2008

Sitting across from me in a tartan-walled basement of a London hotel room, Marjane Satrapi cuts an imposing figure. Arms folded, with an all-black outfit reflecting her mood, the Iranian-born 38-year-old is in town to discuss Persepolis, her…

Nick Cave

24 Apr 2008

Nick Cave is in his car. It’s a big car, but no Chelsea tractor. He’s in the driving seat, howling madly along with the bombast blaring out of the speakers. This isn’t a cruise down endless stretches of autobahn, freeways of America or through the arid…

Nova Scotia - John Byrne

24 Apr 2008

‘Thirty years! Thirty years!’ John Byrne is standing in the middle of Victoria Street in Edinburgh, looking like one of his own drawings. Perfectly-sculpted, curled white quiff, battered layers of tweed and colour, thoroughly imposing, nicotine-stained…

Big in Falkirk - Ajay Chhabra and Mike Roberts

24 Apr 2008

Anyone staging outdoor theatre in Scotland crosses their fingers – and toes and eyes – that the weather will behave itself at showtime. But for Ajay Chhabra, co-artistic director of nutkhut, who is bringing the dance and pyrotechnic spectacle Bollywood…

Striped Bass

24 Apr 2008

All the best chefs and critics advise that the best way to cook fish and seafood is to keep it simple. Pop it in the pan or under the grill for a few minutes, with just a squeeze of lemon or a drizzle of oil or a scattering of herbs. Don’t over…

Alasdair Gray

24 Apr 2008

Sometimes it’s more fun to ignore the explanatory gallery text and have a good look at the work. This seems an obvious enough way of dealing with art objects, but usually makes for lazy viewing and reviewing on the part of the critic. But it is…

Winners of the 2008 List Eating and Drinking Guide Awards revealed

24 Apr 2008

The List is delighted to reveal the winners of this year’s List Eating & Drinking Guide Awards, as we launch our 2008 guide, free with the latest issue of the magazine. Now in their sixth year, The List awards highlight some of the best eating out…

Budget Star Fashion

24 Apr 2008

To hell in a handbag Let’s start with handbags. Celebrities are always snapped clutching the season’s most covetable, whether D&G’s Lily bag or a classic tote by Louis Vuitton. Fortunately, hiring a designer bag is the newest way of saying you’ve got…

The Drawer Boy - An interview with Andy Arnold

24 Apr 2008

The Tron seems to be undergoing its own version of a glorious 100 days at the moment as its newly appointed artistic director, Andy Arnold, hits the ground, not so much running as sprinting. The former artistic director of The Arches avows that a very…

Vampire Weekend

24 Apr 2008

The Paul Simon revival, inexplicably, just might start here. Preppy New York quartet Vampire Weekend borrow elements of their sound from Afrobeat, post-punk and new wave, but the fact of four well-off white kids co-opting African rhythms can’t fail to…

P2 - An interview with Wes Bentley

24 Apr 2008

Wes Bentley was just 21 when he played Ricky Fitts in American Beauty. It turned him into an overnight star. He was nominated for a BAFTA and fêted as the heir to Tom Cruise. The world was his oyster. Plastic bags could have been named after him. Then…

Ladyfest

Various venues, Edinburgh, Sun 4 May–Sun 1 Jun

24 Apr 2008

Ruby-red lips, set perms and Avon panstick. Not the traditional image of a feminist – certainly not the popular, laddish stereotype of a feminist. However, Ladyfest, Edinburgh’s first female-focussed festival, launches this fortnight with an event that…

Janelle Brown

Capital gains

24 Apr 2008

It might be set in a curtain-twitching west coast suburban American town rife with neighbourly intrigue and extra marital affairs, but Janelle Brown’s debut novel is no Desperate Housewives. In All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, far darker things go on…

The Budungo Trail

Kings of the swingers

24 Apr 2008

In Edinburgh a group of extrovert housemates have just moved into a new high tech environment where they will be under almost constant supervision by the public. For the next few weeks experts predict squabbles, group bonding and excessive personal…

Adele

24 Apr 2008

POP Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 26 Apr Nineteen-year-old South Londoner Adele has some big shoes to fill. Already being hailed as ‘the New Queen of British Soul’ and ‘the New Amy Winehouse’, she bagged the Critics Choice prize at the Brit awards…

Jim Lambie: Forever Changes

24 Apr 2008

SCULPTURE AND INSTALLATION Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Mon 29 Sep Lambie seems to be an ideal choice for the Gallery of Modern Art’s contribution to the Glasgow International, particularly given his established international reputation yet…

The Emperor’s New Kilt

24 Apr 2008

CHILDREN’S THEATRE Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Thu 24–Sat 26 Apr It’s hard to know who to praise most for this clever, funny and engaging show. There is not a single weak link to be found. The intelligent script blends humour, pathos and insightful…

Jimmy Carr

24 Apr 2008

STAND-UP Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Thu 24 Apr Some people out there have looked upon his stand-up and TV work and judged Jimmy Carr to be a smug, self-satisfied posh guy who would undoubtedly be prepared to eat himself were he comprised of the…

Shrink Rap

24 Apr 2008

TALK SHOW More4, Mon 28 Apr, 10pm Alongside Billie Piper’s transformation from pop pixie and booze-sodden celebrity missus to respected TV actress, the most unexpected showbusiness career shift of our times has to have been Pamela Stephenson’s…

Kalup Linzy

24 Apr 2008

FILM, PERFORMANCE AND PAINTING Washington Garcia, Glasgow, until Sun 27 Apr New-York based Kalup Linzy is more Vaginal Davis than a ‘Paris is Burning’ starlet, more Judy la Bruce (Bruce’s alter-ego) than Hedwig. But it cannot be denied that all of…

James Kelman - Kieron Smith, Boy

24 Apr 2008

POST-WAR NOVEL (Hamish Hamilton) James Kelman doesn’t have a reputation for writing easy-to-read books. Not necessarily a bad thing, since often the most rewarding fiction is the most demanding. Compared to his last two novels, Translated Accounts and…

Ulrich Schnauss

24 Apr 2008

ELECTRONICA Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Sun 4 May Without British Forces radio, Ulrich Schnauss’ brand of transcendent electronica wouldn’t be quite so lovely. In early 90s small-town Germany, it was the only way quintessentially English bands such as…

Private Property

24 Apr 2008

DRAMA (15) 95min ‘The story of an explosion in a closed world’ is how the young Belgian writer-director Joachim Lafosse has described Private Property, his emotionally complex and mordantly amusing family drama, in which the boundaries between parents…

5 Things you might not know about - Nick Doody

24 Apr 2008

Nick Doody’s debut Fringe show in 2006, Before He Kills Again, kicked off with a disturbing song about clowns. So disturbing that the imagery cannot be repeated in a family publication. He shares a house with fellow stand-up Matt Kirshen. Noam Chomsky…

Remote Control

24 Apr 2008

It’s the end of the world as we know it and not even Hamish Macbeth or Hercule Poirot can save us. Or rather, Robert Carlyle doing a dodgy cockney accent as a hotshot engineer or David Suchet coming over all governmental as the beleaguered deputy PM in…

That Night Follows Day

24 Apr 2008

NEW WORK Tramway, Glasgow, Thu 1–Sat 3 May ‘My own observations show that we have rated the powers of children too low and that there is no knowing what they cannot be given credit for.’ Freud believed growing up became a matter of submitting to…

Profile - Gus Van Sant

24 Apr 2008

PROFILE Suzanne Black considers the work of one of Queer cinema’s great auteurs as two of his key films are released on DVD Gus Van Sant is one of a handful of directors to have crossed from arthouse credibility to mainstream pennies and back again.

The Oxford Murders

24 Apr 2008

CRIME/THRILLER (15) 104min Having graduated from the kitsch sci-fi satire of Acción mutante and the heavy metal horror of The Day of the Beast to the Hitchcockian black comedies Common Wealth and Ferpect Crime, Bilbao-born filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia…

The Xcerts

24 Apr 2008

INDIE Barfly, Glasgow, Tue 6 May Indie rock is the musical opiate of the masses. Recapture that first hit ecstasy with The Xcerts, a fresh-faced three-piece from Aberdeen and Exeter. Get Cape Wear Cape Fly liked their fully-formed, captivatingly…

Maternity: Images of Motherhood

24 Apr 2008

PAINTING, PRINT, SCULPTURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Sun 22 Jun This exhibition takes us down the well-trodden path of ‘maternity in art’ and, for the most part, succeeds in eliciting ideas beyond the…

Andrew Drummond - Elephantina

24 Apr 2008

HISTORICAL TALE (Polygon) Scottish author Andrew Drummond has a strong reputation for writing comedic historical novels, and while this third book covers similar territory, it seems thinner on substance than his previous outings. Purporting to be the…

Stop-Loss - An interview with Kimberly Peirce

24 Apr 2008

Two films in ten years is a meagre output by any filmmaking standard. But then American writer-director Kimberly Peirce’s striking 1999 debut, Boy’s Don’t Cry, won an Oscar, and her belated follow-up, Stop-Loss, might be the first film about Iraq to…

Elephant

24 Apr 2008

VISUAL SPECTACULAR Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 3 May We’ve seen enough McTheatre in recent years to spot the big, spectacular, all singing, all dancing, massive special effect extravaganza a mile off. Inside the profession such shows are…

Brent Ghelfi - Volk’s Game

24 Apr 2008

CRIME THRILLER (Faber) This debut novel from former US Court of Appeals clerk Brent Ghelfi introduces us to Alexei Volkovoy. ‘Volk’ (‘wolf’), a one-time sniper for the Russian Army in Chechnya, is now an unscrupulous gangster commissioned to steal a…

Joy Division

24 Apr 2008

DOCUMENTARY (15) 96mins After last year’s Control, Anton Corbijn’s considered and stylish dramatisation of Ian Curtis’ life, it would be easy to think that everything you need to know about the legend and legacy of English post-punk outfit Joy…

Pendulum

24 Apr 2008

DRUM & BASS Carling Academy, Glasgow, Sat 3 May Pendulum, the drum & bass production trio from Perth, Australia shifted more than 200,000 copies of their debut album Hold your Colour. Like Roni Size, LTJ Bukem and a few others that had gone before…

Trumpets and Raspberries

24 Apr 2008

FARCE Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 10 May Farce is a form that seems to thrive on dangerous times. From the great war disillusionment and depression that saw Travers and Coward at their peaks, on to the social revolution of the 60s that…

Magpie

24 Apr 2008

CONTEMPORARY DANCE Dundee Rep, Wed 7 May Aptly named after a cocky wee beastie with an eye for cherry-picking gems, Magpie is an expertly-curated rummage through some of the most exciting contemporary choreography of the last 20 years – a modern…

New Restaurant - Pani Solinska

24 Apr 2008

The bright idea. I was standing in the Kirkcaldy sunshine looking at an empty restaurant. I had been made redundant from my job after over 20 years and I felt a little at sea. Slowly the dawning of an old dream came to me. Why not now? A Polish…

Triptych Club Nights

Living for the weekend

24 Apr 2008

For the last ever Triptych, performance is more crucial than ever. It’s nothing new to declare bands who find their natural habitat in clubs as a developed and established trend over the last couple of years. What does seem worth commenting on, however…

Taste Test - Olives

24 Apr 2008

Osmin Olives Speciality Mixed From Bread & Olives, 17 Queensferry Street, Edinburgh Black olives are simply green olives that have been left longer on the tree to ripen further. Mixing olives can be one way to divert attention away from less…

Last Word - Dave Gorman

24 Apr 2008

First record he ever bought; Last time he was chatted up; First film he saw that really moved him; Last lie he told; First movie he ever went on a date…

DVD Round-Up

24 Apr 2008

Horror has to be one of the most prolific genres, particularly on the direct to DVD market, so as per usual there’s plenty to get through this issue. For the true aficionado Mother of Tears (Optimum) ••• (pictured) is the sequel you’ve been waiting 28…

Persepolis

24 Apr 2008

ANIMATION (12A) 96min Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical coming-of-age graphic novel Persepolis has been expertly adapted to screen by the author and graphic artist Vincent Paronnaud. The dubbed English language version features the voices of…

Profile - Park Chan-wook

24 Apr 2008

Name Park Chan-wook Born 23 August, 1963, Jecheon, South Korea Background While studying philosophy at Sogang University in Seoul Park started a ‘cine-club’ showing films to the students. Then, one day he played Vertigo and it all fell into…

Singles & Downloads

24 Apr 2008

Independents, ie self-released records and downloads, are the current music industry trailblazers, but talk of ‘independence’ may account for the broad Scots accents on at least some of the current local releases. Comrade Down – 1/3 of former John Peel…

Les Vampires

24 Apr 2008

SILENT SERIES (PG) 339min (Artificial Eye DVD retail) Times of crisis are often also eras of escapism; yet the forms of art produced in such periods often unconsciously reflect the very crises we seek to escape. This is certainly the case in Louis…

Group Show: Run 'Run'

24 Apr 2008

SCULPTURE, FILM AND DRAWING The Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, until Sat 3 May There has always been an indubitable relationship between art and science. A charcoal mark made on a cave wall is the result of various scientific…

Profile - Laidback Luke

24 Apr 2008

Name Laidback Luke Occupation DJ/producer Location Aalsmeer, Holland A Dutch guy playing house music – you must be having a giraffe... Understandably when you think of Dutch dance music you instantly think ‘trance’. Ferry Corsten, Tïetso…

Tennent's Mutual promises a more inclusive approach for Scots music fans

24 Apr 2008

Following the announcement that this year’s Triptych festival will be the last, Tennent’s lager has revealed its latest venture, The Tennent’s Mutual. In a move to make music fans active participants in the all-new project, interested parties will…