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Issue 621

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Barrowland

Scotland The Great - We are good

22 Jan 2009

Bin the shortbread tin! Trash those Runrig albums! Here are, in The List’s humble opinion, some real reasons why Scotland is worth shouting about

Homecoming TV Advert

Scotland The Great - Homecoming

22 Jan 2009

Four skinny boys stare up at a mountain. The mountain stares back at them. The hairiest one throws his arms out and roars: ‘Does it not make you proud to be Scottish?’; the prettiest one looks up from his vodka bottle, and hurls back bile. It’s been…

Franz Ferdinand

Scotland The Great - Franz Ferdinand

22 Jan 2009

You’ve basically built an entire studio complex in the bowels of this beautiful old building in Govan? Bob Hardy, bass Yeah, its a great place. Nick [McCarthy, guitars and keyboards] found it. David MacKenzie the filmmaker has his office down here.

Are you dunroamin’?

22 Jan 2009

The last time I heard Dougie McLean’s whisky-tinged ‘Caledonia’ was on the banks of the River Thames, an impromptu, late-night rendition by McLean himself, leading a ragged band of Scots exiles like the Pied Piper. My eyes were as moist as everyone…

Guilty Lily

Guilty Lily

22 Jan 2009

Guilty Lily is not, nor does it aspire to be, a gastropub. That label, for many good reasons (not least the ugliness of the name), hasn’t really made much headway north of the border. Guilty Lily is a local pub serving real ale, bowls of olives, decent…

Taste Test - Water

Taste Test - Water

22 Jan 2009

Highland Spring - Still Spring Water ••• Various stockists, 330ml glass bottle around £1.30. Filtered through land certified as organic by the Soil Association, this is pleasant without being remarkable. While being a refreshing drink, it didn’t…

Festival express

22 Jan 2009

February used to be particularly problematic for the Scottish-based film obsessive. With the Rotterdam, Berlin and Sundance festivals running back to back from the end of January through February, it used to seem like the whole world was getting to…

Danny Byrd

Edinburgh Drum & Bass

22 Jan 2009

Manga may no longer be with us but drum & bass heads still have plenty to celebrate in Edinburgh. This fortnight sees two exemplary events taking place across the city. First up is Xplicit, which makes its mark with a huge night of hard and dark jungle…

Chris Killen

Chris Killen - The Bird Room

22 Jan 2009

As with many readers of a certain young age, Chris Killen made formative connections with the cult fictions of Charles Bukowski, John Fante and Richard Brautigan. When he started writing seriously at the age of 18, though, he imitated his heroes with…

Bob Dylan’s Art

Bob Dylan’s Art

22 Jan 2009

‘My father, who was plain speaking and straight talking had said, “Isn’t an artist a fellow who paints?” when told by one of my teachers that his son had the nature of an artist. It seemed I’d always been chasing after something, anything that moved – a…

The National Theatre of Scotland - Dolls

The National Theatre of Scotland - Dolls

22 Jan 2009

Cinema and theatre have a long history of sharing stories. Plays are adapted into films, and every second blockbuster seems to flip easily into a Broadway musical. However, what tends to happen is a straight transfer of plotline and character. In…

Branford Marsalis

Celtic Connections - Branford Marsalis

22 Jan 2009

Celtic Connections has never been overly troubled by any lack of an actual Celtic connection in the artists who visit the festival, but Branford Marsalis must surely qualify as one of the furthest stretches so far from any perceived Celtic-ness.

Valkyrie

Valkyrie - Assassins

22 Jan 2009

There’s nothing like an assassination to stave off boredom. From Ancient Rome to modern day America the fundamentalist agenda of the man with the deadly plan has found support in the disparate philosophical writings of Voltaire, Molière, and David…

Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road

(4 stars)22 Jan 2009

DRAMA Age of Anxiety writer Richard Yates’ first and arguably finest novel gets a Titanic big screen makeover courtesy of reunited stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and director hubby Sam Mendes. It’s 1955 in suburban Connecticut; the…

Brokeback Mountain

Out at the Movies

(3 stars)22 Jan 2009

With Gus Van Sant’s Milk generating significant Oscar buzz and the latest big budget gay-themed movie I Love You Phillip Morris about to hit the silver screen, Steven Paul Davies history of gay cinema is timely. Working chronologically from the 1920s…

Of Montreal

Of Montreal

22 Jan 2009

INDIE POP Although Athens-based concept-poppers Of Montreal have been active for over a decade now, their ninth and latest album Skeletal Lamping has seen the group reach their highest watermark yet. The record was a top forty entry in America, and…

Martyn

Martyn

22 Jan 2009

DUBSTEP While Dutch producer Martyn Deykers does not strictly consider himself a dubstep artist, his innovative combination of the throbbing, soulful chord progressions of early Detroit techno and the percussive intricacy of 90s drum & bass have…

Michael Nyman

Celtic Connections - Michael Nyman

22 Jan 2009

CELTIC CONNECTIONS Despite his ongoing frustration at being shunned by the BBC Proms, Michael Nyman remains the most widely heard of contemporary ‘serious’ composers in the UK. An early experimentalist in the 60s avant-garde, Nyman is one of the very…

Follow That!

Celtic Connections - Follow That!

22 Jan 2009

CELTIC CONNECTIONS The title of this latest round of commissions inspired by the music of the late Martyn Bennett underlines the far-reaching influence of his eclectic, open-minded approach to traditional music (while simultaneously suggesting that…

Croatia

The death of budget travel?

22 Jan 2009

We must have known that it wasn’t going to last, and that future generations would look back on the early years of the 21st century as a lost golden age of rock-bottom-cheap travel, when you could zip to Paris for a weekend in almost less time, and for…

Robert Burns

Scotland The Great - Robert Crawford: The Bard

22 Jan 2009

‘One of my friends said to me that a new biography of Burns is the least necessary book in the world, but actually quite a lot of the previous biographies aren’t up to scratch, either because they aren’t all that well written or they didn’t have much…

Last word: Amanda Hamilton

22 Jan 2009

Best known for detoxing the nation, nutritionist and television presenter Amanda Hamilton stops by to talk Morten Harket, Buddhist retreats and extra-terrestrials

Couchsurfing

Couchsurfing

22 Jan 2009

What if I said you could travel anywhere in the world and not pay for accommodation; that you could leave your Lonely Planet at home and be given a personalised itinerary of everything to see and do? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, no…

Ae fond kiss

Scotland The Great - Nine Inch Will Please a Lady

22 Jan 2009

The Burnsian band I am in, with Malcolm Ross and my brother Russel, The Bum-Clocks, has a version of ‘Nine Inch’, a witty ditty in celebration of quantity. We usually locate it in our mash-up of the poetry of Burns and Iggy Pop which kicks off with ‘A…

Haggis

Burns Night

22 Jan 2009

The man of the moment is not, as you might mistakenly be thinking, Barack Obama (guh! We’re so over that inauguration shizzle!), but a 250 year old womanising ploughman from Ayrshire. Here’s our guide to the best ways to mark Burns Night. Why not…

Fat Bastard

Scotland The Great - Scotland smiles better

22 Jan 2009

Cheapskates Penny-pinching, tight-arsed misers. They say when a Scot drops a coin, they bend down to pick it up so quick, it hits them on the back of the napper. But what about the US of A’s Hetty Green, the world’s biggest miser according to the…

Operation Valkyrie

DVD Round-Up

22 Jan 2009

Two great documentaries, available for the first time on DVD, get co-opted into the advertising campaigns for big cinema releases Valkyrie and Milk (reviewed on pages 42 and 43 respectively) this fortnight. Rob Epstein’s excellent Oscar winning 1984…

The Sound of Arrows

Singles & Downloads

22 Jan 2009

When is an EP not an EP? When it’s basically a single plus three forgettable remixes, ala Future Loop Foundation ’s ‘The Sea & the Sky EP’ (Just) •• – a decent floaty chill out tune all told, but surrounded by such unnecessary filler tracks as to do a…

Milk

Milk

(4 stars)22 Jan 2009

BIOPIC Gus Van Sant’s fairly conventional biopic of the first openly gay elected politician in the United States succeeds in overcoming genre limitations to create a powerful, compassionate film that’s up there with the director’s best work. We…

Frost/Nixon

Frost/Nixon

(4 stars)22 Jan 2009

DRAMA If you didn’t get a chance to see Michael Grandage’s celebrated and award-winning production of Peter Morgan’s two-hander, which dramatised one of the most famous interviews in the history of television broadcasting, then Ron Howard’s film…

Dev Patel

Profile - Dev Patel

22 Jan 2009

Name Dev Patel Born London. April 1990 Background Raised in Harrow, Dev turned to drama when his exuberance got him into trouble at school. He was a natural, performing in a school production of Twelth Night. Indeed, drama was the only subject…

Vivian Girls

Various - Rough Trade Shop: Counter Culture 08

(4 stars)22 Jan 2009

MOST THINGS In today’s, blog-a-minute, ‘download my free songs!’, digital overload age, there is such a thing as too much information. Therefore, it takes people like those at Rough Trade Shop (and of course the discerning critic types at The List…

Naked Neighbour (Twitching Blind)

Naked Neighbour (Twitching Blind)

22 Jan 2009

THRILLER Anyone who remembers Aruba, the engaging and whimsical Fringe hit of a couple of years back, which received five stars from this publication, will be interested in this coming piece at Tramway. Rob Evans, writer of this playful and gently…

The Proclaimers

Scotland The Great - Alternative Anthems

22 Jan 2009

For a country with such a fine musical heritage and tons of songwriting talent, Scotland has piss-poor candidates for a national anthem. ‘Flower of Scotland’, ‘Scotland the Brave’ and ‘Highland Cathedral’? Really? Even worse, a poll to find an…

Marcel Woods

Profile - Marcel Woods

22 Jan 2009

Name Marcel Woods Occupation Hard house, trance and techno DJ, who has cut a searing path across the larger clubs in Europe throughout the 00s. The future looks bright. Where is he from? The Netherlands, where Woods recently played both the…

X Factor Dance Company

X Factor Dance Company

22 Jan 2009

CONTEMPORARY DANCE When you’re used to getting your own way it’s not easy to let someone else have a say. Only once in X Factor’s 19-year history has artistic director, Alan Greig collaborated with another choreographer. But the company’s latest…

Oor Rabbie

Oor Rabbie

22 Jan 2009

BURNS CELEBRATION Scotland’s national poet penned some ripping yarns in his time. But getting your head, and your tongue, around the language of Robert Burns isn’t always easy – especially when you’re wee. Actor, writer and director, Andy Cannon is…

Also Released - Film

22 Jan 2009

Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans (15) 102min •• Movie mogul Len Wiseman’s madly popular horror-action hybrid series gets serious with this prequel to the first Underworld film. Michael Sheen and Bill Nighy reprise their roles as werewolf Lucian and…

Haydn Trio Eisenstadt

Haydn Trio Eisenstadt

22 Jan 2009

NEW COLLABORATION Born exactly 200 years apart, but living in Ayrshire communities just a stone’s throw away from each other, it is especially apt that celebrations for Scotland’s most famous poet should include a new setting of his work from…

Urban Reflections

Urban Reflections

(2 stars)22 Jan 2009

FILM/PHOTOGRAPHY Five artists attempt to answer novelist Jonathan Raban’s call (from his wonderful 1974 book of ‘interdisciplinary’ urban reflections, Soft City) to create a ‘vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the continual creative play of…

Raymond Mearns

Raymond Mearns

22 Jan 2009

STAND-UP If you’ve only witnessed Raymond Mearns on roistering compering duty, then you’ve barely experienced the burly Glaswegian’s skill with a well-spun anecdote. ‘I feel I can get a lot better if I get the opportunity to do longer sets,’ he says…

Tony Singh

Side Dishes

22 Jan 2009

Having passed over the running of Roti last year to Ryan Singh of Mr Singh’s Restaurant in Glasgow, Oloroso chef-proprietor Tony Singh has unveiled his new venture, Tony’s Table. A bistro-style restaurant, together with an on-site bakery and sandwich…

Baby Baby

Baby Baby

22 Jan 2009

TEENAGE DRAMA Everyone has heard the urban myth about the teenage girl who has children in order to get on a council house list. The persistence of the story speaks volumes about our prejudices against teenage mums, so it’s timely that Vivian…

Scottish open

Scotland The Great - Homecoming Highlights

22 Jan 2009

Scotland is calling everyone back for a homecoming and, without any sort of Scottish version of the Bat signal in sight, the country is hosting events throughout the year to get everyone celebrating their roots to coincide with Robert Burns’ 250th…

Two Voices III

Two Voices III – Horticulture Behind the Scenes

(2 stars)22 Jan 2009

PHOTOGRAPHY You can’t quibble with the aim of this small exhibition, the third in a series of collaborations between photographer Rosita McKenzie and illustrator Camilla Adams. It’s laudable to want to widen ‘accessibility for all visitors’ to the…

Norah Vincent

Norah Vincent - Voluntary Madness

(3 stars)22 Jan 2009

IMMERSION JOURNALISM ‘Immersion journalist’ Norah Vincent’s experience living undercover as a bloke for 18 months yielded a best-seller, Self-Made Man, but also triggered her depressive collapse and a frightening spell in a mental ward. She vowed to…

Stereotype

Stereotype

22 Jan 2009

HOUSE The Edinburgh clubbing institution that is Stereotype knocks up another successful year, making it six in glorious total. To celebrate this rather stunning feat they’re throwing a birthday bash to knock you sideways. Along with their regular…

The All American Rejects

The All American Rejects

22 Jan 2009

POP PUNK It sounds like effortless pop punk, but The All American Rejects almost went ‘crazy’ writing their new album, When The World Comes Down. Guitarist Mike Kennerty explains: ‘When we were writing the second album Move Along (which later went…

Cinderella on Ice

Cinderella on Ice

22 Jan 2009

ICE SHOW Giving your all for an audience is part and parcel of being a performer. Prior to joining the Imperial Ice Stars, however, Russian skater Olga Sharutenko had to ignore her adoring fans and channel everything in one direction – the…

The Brøken

The Brøken

(3 stars)22 Jan 2009

HORROR/THRILLER Edgar Allen Poe’s short story William Wilson meets Hitchcock’s Marnie in Cashback writer and director Sean Ellis’ second feature. When beautiful and seemingly stable radiologist Gina McVey (Lena Headey) wakes in a London hospital…

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