Issue 642

Alan Cumming, Calvin Harris and Glasvegas among nominees at Scottish Style Awards 2009

30 Oct 2009

Glasgow certainly knows how to do things with class, and this year’s Scottish Style Awards look set to raise the bar even higher. The starry event takes place on Hallowe’en and their stylish cauldron is likely to be spilling over with high profile…

Natalie Merchant, The Chieftains and Ry Cooder set for Celtic Connection 2010

30 Oct 2009

Celtic Connections launched with a suitable level of expectation this fortnight – and it doesn’t look set to disappoint. Comprising 1500 artists, 300 concerts, ceilidhs, talks, workshops, free events and late-night sessions, the programme of events will…

Scottish BAFTA nominations announced

30 Oct 2009

Peter Capaldi, Richard Jobson and Armando Iannucci are just some of the names nominated at this year’s BAFTA Scotland Awards. The awards, to be held at the Glasgow Science Centre on Sun 8 Nov, will see Capaldi fight it out with Stephen McCole and James…

The Dark Things

23 Oct 2009

Ursula Rani Sarma’s first full-length commission for the Traverse offers a fascinating commentary on contemporary attitudes to death, specifically as manifested in the confessional, commercial nature of contemporary art. The central focus of the piece…

David Austen: My love, I have been digging up my own bones in the garden again

23 Oct 2009

The topsy-turvy poetics of David Austen’s exhibition title are in keeping with the tragicomic works of which the exhibition is comprised. At once fragile and striking, this collection of watercolour figures, bold text paintings and a silent film study…

Confessions of a Justified Sinner

23 Oct 2009

Fans of this touchstone of the Scottish literary canon can breathe fairly easy. Mark Thomson’s adaptation of James Hogg’s 1824 novel Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner pulls off the neat trick of being very faithful to the plot of the…

Document 7

23 Oct 2009

The International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival just gets stronger and stronger. This year punters are spoiled for choice with a selection of local and international films dealing with everything from child neglect to women’s rights and endemic…

Dark Nature

23 Oct 2009

Special Hallowe’en screening of this scary Scottish eco thriller about one family’s not so relaxing holiday to a remote Scottish village. Up and coming producer/director Marc de Launey pulls out all the stops for this very low budget production, much…

Starsuckers

23 Oct 2009

Also out this fortnight is Chris Taking Liberties Atkins’ wonderfully mischievous documentary foray into the world of celebrity obsessed media. Atkins and his team hilariously illustrate just how easy it is to plant hoax celebrity stories with an…

Dead Man Running

23 Oct 2009

(15) 91min A loan shark gives an ex con 24 hours to pay his debt. Disappointing thriller from the writer/director of appalling 2004 boxing drama The Calcium Kid. The casting however which includes renta-mockney Danny Dyer, rapper turned self help…

Mike Inglis: Shadows Fade

23 Oct 2009

Inglis’ installation of prints and human scale paste-ups explores spiritualism and attitudes to grief, death and loss through the stories of the artist’s great aunt, a spiritualist in a Fife mining village and his grandmother, who lost her first…

Pigs and Battleships

23 Oct 2009

This very rare screening of Japanese auteur Shohei Imamura’s wonderfully barbed and surreal 1961 military satire brings to an end an excellent season of the great man’s films. If you have missed the others check this one out because it is also the most…

Tricks

23 Oct 2009

(12A) 95min Naturalistic but sweet natured Polish drama about one six-year-old boy’s attempt to change his family’s destiny by meditative will alone. Well observed, performed and directed by promising Kieslowski influenced filmmaker Andrzej…

Beyond Biba

23 Oct 2009

These screenings of Louis Price’s new film about the glamorous and troubled times of swinging London’s most famous clothing boutique, and its creator Barbara Hulanicki, will be followed by a Q&A with the great lady herself. GFT, Glasgow, Tue 27 Oct…

Michael Jackson’s This Is It

23 Oct 2009

Compilation of interviews, rehearsals and backstage footage of Jackson as he prepared for his final tour. Unnecessary and largely tedious documentary cobbled together by Kenny Ortega, the man who gave us the High School Musical films. One for the fans.

An American Werewolf in London

23 Oct 2009

(15) 97min Second John Landis directed reissue to be re-released this fortnight. Still good after all these years. Selected release from Fri 30 Oct.

National Lampoon’s Animal House

23 Oct 2009

(15) 108min John Landis’ seminal 1978 frat house comedy on new digital print. Selected release from Tue 3 Nov.

The Cove

23 Oct 2009

(12A) 90min Shocking investigative documentary about Japanese animal and sea life rights abuses. GFT, Glasgow from Fri 23 Oct.

Taste test: Vodka made in Scotland

It's not all whisky here

22 Oct 2009

Grafitti, Pincer, Glen's, Blackwood's, Straight Strawberry, Raspberry Vodka

Profile: Cristian Mungiu

A look at the award winning director before his latest work, Tales From the Golden Age

22 Oct 2009

Name Cristian Mungiu Born 27 April 1968 Background The graduate of the Bucharest Film School became the first Romanian director to win the Palme d’Or with his abortion drama 4 months 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Before becoming a full-time director…

Jeanne La Pucelle: The Battles/The Prisons

Epic Joan of Arc biopic

22 Oct 2009

Following on from Carl Dreyer and Robert Bresson in exploring the story of Joan of Arc, Jacques Rivette offers an account of the martyr that is as political and gender oriented as it is spiritual in this 1995 two-film epic finally available on two…

Colin

No-budget Welsh zombie horror

22 Oct 2009

(18) 97min Young Welsh horror movie fan Marc Price apparently made this zombie flick for just £45 – the cost of keeping his crewmates in tea and biscuits for the 18 months of weekend filming plus a few buckets of red food dye. If true, that makes…

Secret Defense

Menace in every moment

22 Oct 2009

Veteran New Wave filmmaker Jacques Rivette (Paris Nous Appartient, La Belle Noiseuse, Celine and Julie Go Boating) explores the sins of the past. Rivette regular Sandrine Bonnaire plays Parisian research scientist Sylvie Rousseau. When her brother shows…

Night Train to Inverness

Gutsy period curo

22 Oct 2009

Directed by oft overlooked British film and TV director Ernest Morris (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Court Martial of Major Keller), this tight, train-bound 1960 thriller has a lot to commend it. When ex-convict Roy Lewis (Norman Wooland) turns up in…

Playing Away

A 1980s sports comedy to transcend racial stereotypes

22 Oct 2009

This is a very welcome reissue of Horace Pressure Ové’s 1987 comedy of race manners. When a West Indian cricket team from Brixton travels to a Suffolk village to play against the local team as the culmination of the village’s Third World Week, racial…

Tales of the Golden Age (Amintiri Din Epoca De Aur)

Affectionate Romanian cinema

21 Oct 2009

Cristian Mungiu, the Palme D’Or winning Romanian filmmaker of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, would almost certainly find himself in contention with American communications magnate Harold S Geneen’s much quoted belief that ‘We must not be hampered by…

Goodbye Solo

Culture clashing in Queens

21 Oct 2009

Shooting on authentic locations and working with non-professional actors, writer-director Ramin Bahrani makes films about those surviving on the margins of American society. In his debut feature Man Push Cart his protagonist was a Pakistani street…

Halloween Guide: M - S

Yet more spooky goings-on

16 Oct 2009

M is for Movies Perhaps only rivalled by the upsurge in the plastic horn industry around 31 Oct, the annual economic boost for the horror film industry ensures that, every Halloween, there is a fresh crop of dismembered corpse-filled flicks to satisfy…

Interview: Wes Craven

As The Last House on the Left remake hits DVD, we talk to the legendary horror director

16 Oct 2009

The Last House on the Left was your first movie, shot in Super 6 and with a very low budget in 1972. How have you changed since then? I would like to think that I have acquired some wisdom along the way … How did the idea of making a remake come…

Halloween Guide: G - L

The next step in our Halloween runthrough

16 Oct 2009

G is for Ghost Vigil Ghost hunting is a serious business – Derek Acorah has proved that. If you fancy busting some ghosts, then this all night Ghost Vigil aboard the Tall Ship in Glasgow is a good place to hone your skills. Conducted by experienced…

Halloween Guide: A - F

All you need to know about October's most haunted evening

16 Oct 2009

A is for Arachnids Eight-legged creatures are making another notorious appearance this Halloween, with Glasgow Science Centre including them as part of the many horrid things in their children’s Halloween event on Fri 30 Oct. The truth is kids love…

Interview: Greg Dillahunt

Speaking to The Last House on the Left's most vicious villain

16 Oct 2009

Are you a fan of Wes Craven? I have always been a huge fan of Wes Craven! He was on my mental checklist of people I wanted to work with. When did you meet him? I met him just before we started shooting because he had the last word with casting…

Halloween Guide: T - Z

Our final tricks and treats

16 Oct 2009

T is for Tours It’s the eve of Halloween and you’re feeling a bit like an overgrown trick or treater – excited, but not sure what a sophisticated adult like yourself should be doing to celebrate. Chapping on strangers’ doors and singing for sugar…

Manhattan transfer: New York's Jane Hotel

Checking in to the New York hotel that has gone from seamen’s flophouse to celebrity hangout

16 Oct 2009

‘Hey, can you get me in?’ a woman with a brash New England accent squawks at me as I approach the entrance to the Jane hotel in New York’s West Village. Friday night is turning into Saturday morning, and what was a quiet residential street hours earlier…

Songs of Home

We find out about a festival and a screening looking at the darker sides of the Scottish Diaspora

16 Oct 2009

Between the numerous gigs, gatherings and soap carving workshops (we kid you not) squeezing under its umbrella, ‘Homecoming’ itself has become a rather vague concept this year. It’s refreshing, then, that in their 20th anniversary year the Scottish…

Ondine

Roy Brett's new restaurant brings a bit of swagger to seafood dining in Edinburgh

16 Oct 2009

Seafood has always been a Scottish speciality. There’s a line of argument that all the good stuff passes under our noses on the way to Spain, but if you know where to look it’s here alright. If you want to eat local food, then heading to a good seafood…

Africa in Motion: Jean-Stéphanie Sauvaire

The French director on Johnny Mad Dog - his take on Liberia's recent civil war

16 Oct 2009

The use of child soldiers is given a realistic and at times horrifying platform in French director Jean-Stéphanie Sauvaire’s depiction of the civil war that ravaged Liberia for over a decade until peace was declared in 2003. Sauvaire was familiar with…

DVD Round-up: TV/Film soundtracks

16 Oct 2009

Cool just doesn’t quite do the job of summarising the compilation of theme tunes and incidental bits from the Incorporated Television Company’s archive. Even if you’ve never seen the likes of Danger Man, The Saint or Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) – the…

Profile: Donnie Yen

The martial arts expert on playing Bruce Lee's mentor

16 Oct 2009

Name Donnie Yen Born 27 July 1963, Canton, China Background Born to a newspaper editor and a martial arts master, Yen began practising tai chi and wushu at the age of four. At 16 he was sent to the Beijing Wushu Academy, where he studied under…

An Education

Lessons in love

16 Oct 2009

Danish director Lone Scherfig is showing something of a liking for making films in Britain. The director of Glasgow-set Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself returns to the UK for this 1960s romantic drama featuring conmen, generation gaps, young love, swinging…

Profile: Ramin Bahrani

The film-making son of Iranian immigrants

16 Oct 2009

Name Ramin Bahrani Born 20 March 1975, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Background The son of Iranian immigrants to America, Bahrani grew up in North Carolina and studied film at Columbia University in New York, where he made several short films.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ 75th birthday

A festival of events to celebrate the great musician

16 Oct 2009

One of the UK’s best known and loved musicians, Master of the Queen’s Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, celebrates his 75th birthday with a festival of events presented by some of his dearest friends. That they happen to be the country’s leading…

Side Dishes

Bitesize info

16 Oct 2009

Glasgow’s curry scene is as active as ever with the opening of Dining In with Mother India, essentially an expansion of the Mother India Café on Argyle Street, offering takeaway food, a mini Indian deli and a handful of tables serving a simple menu. In…

Tam Shepherd's Trick Shop

Hunting for the perfect Halloween costume in the Glasgow institution

16 Oct 2009

Halloween costumes have not always been my forte, but I vowed this year not to have a re-run of 2002’s ‘bin bag suit’ or 2006’s ill-advised ‘shadow man’ (head-to-toe black body paint is most assuredly not a good idea). This year I needed professional…

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

16 Oct 2009

There’s always been something wistful and longing in the musical waywardness of Oklahoma’s finest ever export The Flaming Lips. Even at their most poptastic and goassamer there was an air of introspection. Nowhere is this more acutely illustrated than…

Glasgow Zombie Walk

Colin Armstrong explains the big idea behind his day out for the undead

16 Oct 2009

Colin Armstrong is a man with a dream, a dream to see a large group of mindless, dribbling corpses slowly wandering through Glasgow’s West End. Not everyone’s cup of tea perhaps, but for zombie movie fans this special Halloween crossover from B-movie to…

Top 5: Africa in Motion

Five films not to miss at this year's festival

16 Oct 2009

My Secret Sky Opening the fourth edition of the Africa in Motion film festival is the UK premiere of this South African film, the feature debut of filmmaker Madoda Ncayiyana. This magical realist tale of Zulu rugs, craft competitions and the need to…

Hitlist: Books

Two weeks of talks, readings and exhibitions

16 Oct 2009

Alasdair Gray, Scottish International Storytelling Festival, Edinburgh Independent Radical Book Fair, Ian Rankin, Helen Fitzgerald, James Ellroy, Gordon Burn

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Inspired take on the Dahl classic

16 Oct 2009

Wes Anderson’s animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s much loved book is no straightforward children’s film. Wee ones might enjoy it to a degree, but they won’t get much of the typically arch humour and wanton eccentricities the filmmaker once again…

Also Released: Music

16 Oct 2009

United States - Instant Everything Constant Nothing, Hello=Fire - Hello=Fire, Junior Murvin - Police and Thieves, Air - Love 2, Various - Crayon Angel: A Tribute to the Music of Judee Sill, Daniel Johnston - Is and Always Was