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Issue 631

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God Help the Girl

God Help the Girl

11 Jun 2009

‘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 Gigs

Stadium rock in Scotland 2009

11 Jun 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

Cycle fashion

11 Jun 2009

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…

Fish Tank

EIFF 2009 - Fish Tank

11 Jun 2009

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

Spotlight on Leith

11 Jun 2009

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

Kelburn Garden Party

11 Jun 2009

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 - Roger Corman

EIFF 2009 - Roger Corman

11 Jun 2009

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 - Peter McDougall and John Mackenzie

EIFF 2009 - Peter McDougall and John Mackenzie

11 Jun 2009

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 - Mark Kermode

EIFF 2009 - Mark Kermode

11 Jun 2009

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 - Wide Open Spaces

EIFF 2009 - Wide Open Spaces

11 Jun 2009

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 to work

11 Jun 2009

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

The Clyde: Films of the River 1912–1971

11 Jun 2009

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

Art College Degree Shows

11 Jun 2009

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 2009

Bike Week Scotland 2009 - Danny MacAskill Inspired Bicycles

11 Jun 2009

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

Cycle routes in Scotland with food

11 Jun 2009

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 word - Shazia Mirza

11 Jun 2009

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

Bard in the Botanics

11 Jun 2009

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

David Nicholls

11 Jun 2009

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

Edvard Munch

11 Jun 2009

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

Rock Ness 2009

11 Jun 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…

Fugee la la

Refugee Week Scotland 2009 - Fugee la la

11 Jun 2009

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

Taste Test - Energy food for cycling

11 Jun 2009

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

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

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

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…

VHS Special

Buying films on VHS Special

11 Jun 2009

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

Sugar

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

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…

Edinburgh Festival 2009 - Fringe programme highlights

Edinburgh Festival 2009 - Fringe programme highlights

11 Jun 2009

Roll up, roll up. It may just seem like yesterday that the Edinburgh Fringe packed its bags for 2008 but now it’s back with a vengeance. Against stiff competition from its international and national counterparts, this year’s Fringe line-up looks…

Throbbing Gristle

Throbbing Gristle

11 Jun 2009

INDUSTRIAL When Throbbing Gristle issued a communiqué in 1981 announcing that ‘the mission is terminated’, it looked like the last self-destructive flourish by the UK’s premier avant-provocateurs. Sired from underground performance art troupe COUM…

Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis Cocker

11 Jun 2009

While many of his Britpop contemporaries are content to drag their increasingly saggy posteriors around the country – reforming for money-making purposes and trading solely on nostalgia – Jarvis Cocker can’t seem to stop re-inventing himself. It’s no…

The Amphetameanies

The Amphetameanies

11 Jun 2009

SKA PUNK Cult Glasgow ska punk veterans The Amphetameanies’ line-up, past and present, includes members of Bis, Belle and Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand. Bassist Gordon Davidson refutes the suggestion that it must be frustrating being in all these…

The Hangover

The Hangover

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

COMEDY It’s worth toasting The Hangover as one of the Hollywood comedies of the year. Todd Phillips’ film is a buddy movie that really delivers with its riotous cocktail of memorable characters, outrageous situations and explicit humour. Two days…

5 Reasons To Go See - Emiliana Torrini

5 Reasons To Go See - Emiliana Torrini

11 Jun 2009

1 She’s hot and cold Thirty-two-year-old chanteuse Emiliana Torrini is half-Italian, half-Icelandic (her full name is Emiliana Torrini Davidsdottir), so you get the fiery passion of the Mediterranean and the icy cool of the Arctic rolled into one. 2…

Food For Thought - Mark Beaumont

Food For Thought - Mark Beaumont

11 Jun 2009

Before a cycling expedition, I try and eat as much as possible and put on some reserves – basically, I try to get fat. So I eat a lot more than the average person, around five to six meals a day adding up to 6000 calories or more. Breakfast is a few…

London in the Raw/Primitive London

London in the Raw/Primitive London

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

DOCUMENTARY The British Film Institute launches its DVD strand Flipside with a pair of salacious dirty delights that certainly fulfil the mandate of the highbrow organisation to rediscover and reappraise overlooked and marginalised material.

Three others to try: Cycling gadgets

Three others to try: Cycling gadgets

11 Jun 2009

HyMini Personal Wind Turbine Comes with a bike mounting bracket and connectors for iPods and most mobile phones. If you are lucky enough to live in a country that’s windy even when you’re not moving, it can charge your goods all the time, so it’s…

The Joy Formidable, Chew Lips and Lemonade

The Joy Formidable, Chew Lips and Lemonade

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

INDIE On the tiny stage in the Art School’s Vic Bar, the roaming audience at this inaugural Glasgow leg of the multi-venue Stag and Dagger festival were treated to a line-up which was young and diverse enough to be mistaken for a possible future NME…

Gardens in Autumn

Gardens in Autumn

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

Anyone who’s seen Monday Morning by the Georgian Otar Iosseliani will know he is a filmmaker with a great sense of drift. He’s not interested in plot, but great on spatial texture, ably explored by the great cameraman William Lubtchansky. In Monday…

Alexandra

Alexandra

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

Few filmmakers do melancholic intimacy better than Alexander Sokurov. Maybe it has to do with his fascination with capturing vulnerability and the presence of death, exemplified by Taurus (about the dying Lenin) and Mother and Son (where a mother passes…

Two Horizons

Two Horizons

11 Jun 2009

The Artist Rooms exhibition occupying the ground floor of the Modern Art Gallery may have taken up most of the headlines, but there’s an equally impressive, if smaller, exhibition tucked away upstairs. Two Horizons features a selection of work by…

The Gossip - Music for Men

The Gossip - Music for Men

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

The Gossip’s extravagant firebrand Beth Ditto has bagged herself stardom in bountiful guises: disco-blues diva, brawling fashionista, feminist defender, media provocateur, political agitator — and, not least, the sexiest catsuit inhabitant since…

Norman Douglas & Company

Norman Douglas & Company

11 Jun 2009

CONTEMPORARY DANCE Norman Douglas isn’t afraid to do his homework. As part of the research for his new triple-bill, the Glasgow choreographer has been digesting some pretty heavy stuff, including a tome on critical theory. ‘It’s taken me a year to…

Vision/Aria

Vision/Aria

11 Jun 2009

VISUAL THEATRE Romantic love, in all its weird and wonderful permutations, has formed the basis for so much theatre, that it is virtually impossible to avoid cliché when taking on this hoariest of subjects. Yet, Palazzo Theatre have come up with an…

Site Specifics: Edinburgh Zoo

Site Specifics: Edinburgh Zoo

11 Jun 2009

What is it? It’s a zoo. In Edinburgh. The name’s a bit of a giveaway, to be honest, but if you’d like some numbers: 82 acres of parkland (mostly on Costorphine Hill), housing well over 1000 animals and birds, and attracting more than 600,000 visitors…

Douglas Rushkoff - Life Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back

Douglas Rushkoff - Life Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

POPULAR ECONOMICS Wake up Neo: the matrix has you. For social commentator Douglas Rushkoff, the current perilous economic landscape is only one of various possible versions that could have developed, and the economy’s greatest self-perpetuating myth…

Cooly G

Cooly G

11 Jun 2009

DUBSTEP Cooly G is hard to pin down. Coming from Brixton, she’s often placed within the growing UK funky movement, and her tracks almost always include a dancefloor-ready bassline. Yet she wouldn’t describe herself as part of the scene, even though…

The Electric Circus

The Electric Circus

11 Jun 2009

NEW VENUE/HOUSE There’s been bad news after bad news for the capital’s clubbers as a slew of venues have closed over the last few years. So it’s great to see one premises getting a new lease of life as Massa (formerly Club Mercado) relaunches as The…

T[r]APPED

T[r]APPED

11 Jun 2009

DANCE THEATRE With CCTV monitoring our city centres and vast databases intimately acquainted with our shopping habits, you’d be forgiven for thinking Big Brother was more than just a TV programme. Inspired by this over-zealous information gathering…

5 things you might not know about . . . Russell Howard

5 things you might not know about…Russell Howard

11 Jun 2009

1 Having made a steady name for himself with shows such as Skylarking, Adventures and Wandering, to become an Edinburgh Fringe staple, the Bristolian comic announced last year that he would no longer be doing the August sweatboxes. He felt bad at the…

George Pelecanos - The Way Home

George Pelecanos - The Way Home

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

SOCIAL DRAMA Having long since established his credentials as a chronicler of life on the mean streets of Washington DC, George Pelecanos more recently broadened his fanbase as screenwriter and story editor on The Wire, the Baltimore-based TV show…

Fly - Sky & Country

Fly - Sky & Country

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

Fly are three very well known contemporary jazz musicians, saxophonist Mark Turner, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard. That pedigree suggests something special and they pretty much serve up just that – an intelligent, intricate set of…

Siouxsie and the Banshees - At the BBC

Siouxsie and the Banshees - At the BBC

(4 stars)11 Jun 2009

This magnificent three-CD set doesn’t really unearth anything brand new but gathers together huge hunks of the quartet’s varied career via radio sessions and live sets, starting with their John Peel debut in November 1977, filled with the poisoned…

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