Issue 631

God Help the Girl

‘You have been warned, I’m going to be contrary,’ sings the beautiful Catherine Ireton on God Help the Girl – the new album written by Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian fame. Murdoch could be speaking about himself, for he has always confounded…

Stadium rock in Scotland 2009

Mark Robertson gets out his giant foam finger and keeps his fingers crossed that his topless torso turns up on the big screens as we look at just what this summer’s massive outdoor shows have to offer.

Cycle fashion

Speaking plainly here: cycling is really not very cool at all in this country. It usually seems to involve strapping a multitide of bulky Velcro accessories to yourself and donning unflattering skin-tight Lycra costumes, and not even in the privacy of…

EIFF 2009 - Fish Tank

Andrea Arnold is a director who likes to work on instinct. She makes films that are defined by their acute observation of real lives rather than informed by a movie buff’s love affair with cinema. The point is underlined at the Cannes launch of her new…

Spotlight on Leith

There they were, defiantly choosing not to choose life. Five years after The Proclaimers put ‘Sunshine’ on it, there were Irvine Welsh’s seminal Trainspotters peeing on Leith’s disused railway tracks, a fitting metaphor for the area’s seedy, debauched…

Kelburn Garden Party

It may seem that there were enough stories of big weekenders failing to establish themselves – such as Isle of Skye and Indian Summer – even before the financial downturn, which has this year claimed the scalps of Connect, Dunstaffnage and The Outsider.

EIFF 2009 - Roger Corman

The Hollywood legend Roger Corman is guest of honour at the 63rd EIFF, which is this year hosting a very welcome retrospective dedicated to the man they rightly call the king of the Bs. Given the 83-year-old auteur has written, directed and/or produced…

EIFF 2009 - Peter McDougall and John Mackenzie

Poor, white, Protestant and on the run from Greenock’s shipyards, Peter McDougall may not have possessed the background to execute the first two Reithian tenets of public service and probity, but he certainly knew about universality. The mythology goes…

EIFF 2009 - Mark Kermode

What are your thoughts on the EIFF? My line has always been that Edinburgh is like Cannes only civilised. Cannes is horrible, genuinely horrible. It’s completely the wrong culture to watch films; it’s a hideous broiling Riviera full of incredibly rich…

EIFF 2009 - Wide Open Spaces

Wide Open Spaces was a co-production between the UK and Ireland. I raised the money from the UK end. Co-productions are becoming much more important for any producer, really just in order to raise enough money to make films. Normally it’s difficult to…

Cycling to work

Cycling is enjoyable, healthy and makes us feel good. But that’s not why most people in cities do it. Not me anyway. I don’t have ‘reasons’ for cycling any more than I have reasons for walking. Neither do I make use of specialist equipment. ‘Distrust…

The Clyde: Films of the River 1912–1971

As a new exhibition celebrating the River Clyde, as seen through amateur and professional films opens, Paul Dale salutes Glasgow’s cine-camera chroniclers.

Art College Degree Shows

Edinburgh College of Art Lizzy Stewart: Illustration Stewart’s work adorns record sleeves, editorial pages, zines and books. Her vivid prints, including ‘Giant Bear in a Tiny Village’ (pictured), will be on display alongside illustrations for Dee…

Bike Week Scotland 2009 - Danny MacAskill Inspired Bicycles

The UK’s biggest mass participation cycling event kicks off this issue, promoting the idea of communities bandying together to get fit and have fun. With Bike Week 2009, organisers are encouraging everyone to ‘get more out of life’. To help…

Cycle routes in Scotland with food

With its handy bridges and riverside cycle paths, the Clyde is an inevitable focus for cyclists in central Glasgow, so it’s worth keeping in mind that the City Café (0141 227 1010, www.cityinn.com) in the City Inn on Finnieston Quay is a pretty decent…

First word - Shazia Mirza

First record you ever bought? Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. I thought he was really hot but then I was 14 and I’d never seen a man before. I still play it from time to time; it reminds me of school, having a Lady Di hairstyle, and thinking…

Bard in the Botanics

There are probably fewer people in Scotland more excited about the Met Office’s predicted heatwave this summer than Gordon Barr, artistic director of Bard in the Botanics, Glasgow’s annual outdoor Shakespeare festival. ‘I’m really keeping my fingers…

David Nicholls

The accepted wisdom that you should ‘write about what you know’ has worked well for David Nicholls. In his debut novel, Starter for Ten, he plundered his time as a student to produce pages of well-observed situations, while in The Understudy, Nicholls…

Edvard Munch

When a daring daylight robbery liberated Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ from Oslo’s Munch Museum in 2004, the international art world was in despair. Once recovered, the painting was damaged externally to the extent of being kept out of view for…

Rock Ness 2009

Starting life as a Fatboy Slim gig in 2006, Rock Ness has staked its claim as a major Scottish festival. This year’s event boasts big names such as Basement Jaxx, Dizzee Rascal, Orbital, Soulwax and The Prodigy. And, while it’s still mainly…

Refugee Week Scotland 2009 - Fugee la la

Given the recent increase in profile of the BNP across Scotland, the timing and focus of this year’s country-wide Refugee Week are particularly prescient. This year, the multi-artform festival which aims to raise awareness of the issues facing and…

Taste Test - Energy food for cycling

Banana £0.30, fruit shops everywhere. ••••• Good old-fashioned natural food and what all energy products are trying to recreate in their caffeine or carbohydrate pumped products. Combinations of carbohydrates and B vitamins in bananas give a huge…

Roni Horn: The tiniest piece of mirror is always the whole mirror

PHOTOGRAPHY Internationally renowned New York artist Roni Horn exhibits samplings from her oeuvre spanning three decades. Most of Horn’s exhibitions are site-dependent, and this selection too responds to the specifics of the venue. With her tendency…

Buying films on VHS Special

Never mind uploads, downloads, video on demand or any of today’s new fangled methods of seeing films; the cheapest way to see film must be the good, old-fashioned charity shop. With many shops offering five tapes for £1, the credit crunch is an ideal…

Sugar

DRAMA Premier Baseball’s Latin American slave trade route and the immigrant experience go under the microscope in this offbeat and compelling character study from the makers of 2006’s Half Nelson. Miguel Santos (Algenis Perez Soto) aka Sugar is a…