Issue 612

Tropic Thunder

Reality bites

Shaping up as this season’s most riotous comedy, Tropic Thunder casts Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr as three self-important actors making a movie in a real war zone. They talk to Miles Fielder about satirising Hollywood and scandalising…

Bon Iver - Lone justice

The breathtaking debut album from Bon Iver is evidence that isolation can produce something truly special. Colin McKean revels in this most singular of musical visions Disillusioned and frustrated by the disintegration of DeYarmond Edison, the band…

Janice Galloway - A Selfless Act

Interview

After an absence of six years, Janice Galloway has returned with a memoir rather than a novel. Her fans won't be disappointed, though. Kirstin Innes meets her

Only the brave

Arches Live!

As Arches Live! returns to Glasgow for its sixth year, David Pollock talks to new artistic director Jackie Wylie about her vision for the annual celebration of experimental theatre and performance art

David Simon - Man on Wire

With his true crime books and epoch-forming TV shows, David Simon has painted a bleak picture of modern America. Miles Fielder hears him pray that it all turns out OK

Words 2008

A way with words

How do you create an exhibition of creative writing? And why? Kirstin Innes finds out about Words 2008

Macbeth

The last time Liam Brennan starred as Macbeth it was in a modern-day interpretation in Musselburgh in which the soldiers wore khaki, news was conveyed by TV screen, and when the thane of Cawdor heard bells it was the sound of his mobile. Ten years…

Pineapple Express

As with last year’s Superbad, male bonding lies at the heart of the latest Judd Apatow production which also comes from the screenwriting team of Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. After playing one of the cops in Superbad and starring in Knocked Up, Rogen…

Scottish Ballet

Since its reinvention five years ago, Scottish Ballet has embraced a wide variety of dance styles, the full gamut of which it's managed to squeeze into one diverse mixed bill. Featuring works by the mother of American postmodern dance, Trisha Brown, New…

Calexico

‘It’s not what some people have called a return to form, because there are new elements on the record,’ says Joey Burns, singer, songwriter and co-founding member (with percussionist John Convertino) of the idiosyncratic alt.country outfit Calexico.

RocknRolla

Is there a filmmaker in Britain who’s been more derided than Mr Madonna? A bit unfair all this criticism is too: it’s not Guy Ritchie’s fault that the competent, very watchable gangster flicks Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch were some of…

Exposure: Punch and the Apostles

‘We’re not exactly palatable, but not immediately repulsive,’ suggests lead singer Paul Napier, to sum up the sound of Punch and the Apostles, the Glasgow seven-piece who’ve been bringing chaos to traditional folk music for almost a year now. Mashing up…

Fast punk club

‘We call it a punk night,’ says Christopher Fast, ‘but it’s more about a punk attitude to music. From rockabilly, 60s soul, garage and hip hop to disco and electro, we set out to make different genres work together in an interesting way.’ For five…

Stewart Lee: 41st Best Stand Up Ever!

DVD

When Stewart Lee first wrote this 2007 show, he was seriously hacked off with the BBC. Having been commissioned by the corporation to make a series of half-hour comedies which would feature Lee performing in front of unusual audiences (a group of…

The 9/11 Faker

Channel 4, Thu 11 Sep, 9pm

And so let's roll with the annual grief-fest which marks the day when planes smashed into the heart of New York's business sector and flattened any notions of US impregnability. In the years which followed, tales of heroism and sacrifice emerged from…

Sunset Song

Director Kenny Ireland is looking to instil some pride in the nation's literary heritage by bringing Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic tale of community, national identity and sexual awakening back to the stage. Set in an early 20th century farming…

Angel

After years of gleeful, near bi-polar genre shifting, France’s greatest living film parodist, Francois Ozon (5x2, 8 Women, Sitcom), makes the film that every gay teenager, who has grown up in the latter part of the 20th century, would kill to…

The Banishment

Fledgling master Russian filmmaker Andrei The Return Zvyagintsev’s flawed second feature is a nonetheless interesting fusion of British gangster flick Sexy Beast, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and (thematically at least) Scenes from a Marriage as created by…

The Duchess

In his second film feature UK filmmaker Saul Bullet Boy Dibb retells the tragic true life story of 18th/early 19th Century aristocrat Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. Celebrated beauty and socialite Georgiana (Keira Knightley) is married off…

Wrong Island

‘Last month, a guy from London came up to us and said, “this is exactly what I remember the old Basement Jaxx parties being like”,’ says Teamy, co-promoter and DJ at Sleazy’s finest basement party since it won itself a late licence. ‘That’s just what…

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain (Granta) Balti Britain is a comprehensive and startling exploration into how Britain and India have shaped each other's fates. Ziauddin Sardar, an academic and cultural commentator, admits to his own ignorance of…

Islay Jazz Festival

If the idea of a successful jazz festival on Islay once seemed more than a touch outlandish, the actuality has been quite the opposite. The Islay Jazz Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary this year with a line-up that typifies the programming policy…

Annie Proulx - Fine Just the Way It Is

Fine Just the Way It Is marks Annie Proulx's return to Wyoming, the setting of two previous collections of short stories. The cast is, at once, familiar and fantastic. The devil refurbishes hell, adding to the décor centuries of portraits by mortals…

Peak Practice

'The Lighthouse Architecture Series is a new five-year series celebrating a range of Scottish architectural practices, which have delivered nationally, and now deserve recognition in the international market,' says Leonie Bell, programme director at…

Steven Campbell: Wretched Stars, Insatiable Heaven (new work 2006-2007)

Steven Campbell's work may not be to everyone's taste, but it's certainly powerful and affecting. Large-scale paintings assail the viewer with bright colours; paisley patterns merge with abstract designs and motifs borrowed from art history while…