Issue 646

2010 preview: Fashion

20 Jan 2010

Fashion, with its strictly observed seasons marked by the various equinoxes of London/New York/Paris/Milan Fashion Weeks, is a cyclical beast. It likes to understand a decade as a fixed unit of time with a distinctive identity, defined sharply against…

St Trinian’s 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold

20 Jan 2010

(12A) 100min More naughty girl’s adventures in this revived Ealing comedy franchise starring Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and Lily Cole and various members of Girls Aloud. This time the girl’s go in search of hidden treasure. General release…

Danny and the Champions of the World - Streets Of Our Time

8 Jan 2010

(Loose Music) It’s fitting that Oxford’s Jericho Tavern and the Farmhouse in Canterbury feature in Danny’s upcoming touring schedule. Banjos, harmonicas and pedal-steel inform you that this is goodtime folk and country territory, and you’re welcome…

Pet sounds - Frightened Rabbit interview

7 Jan 2010

With an obscene amount of expectation surrounding the March release of their third album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, Frightened Rabbit look set to be the Scottish sound of 2010. Jonny Ensall visits front man Scott Hutchison in a snowy studio outside…

2010 preview: Great expectations

7 Jan 2010

Favourite things are ending, exciting things are beginning and old things are coming back. 2010 is already shaping up to be a thrilling year and here are the 30 good reasons why we can’t wait

Alasdair Roberts, The Low Anthem and Buffy Sainte-Marie set for Celtic Connections

7 Jan 2010

With Alasdair Roberts, The Low Anthem and Buffy Sainte-Marie all featuring, the Celtic Connections festival just keeps going from strength to strength, says Ninian Dunnett

2010 preview: Courses and activities

7 Jan 2010

There are a few standard rules of healthy eating: low carb intake; five-a-day etc. But instead of advocating these shallow mantras and (supposedly) quick fixes, we’re opting for the ‘eat well’ approach. There are numerous establishments equipped to help…

First word - Natty Brooker interview

7 Jan 2010

First record you ever bought It’ll be some rubbish from the 70s. I had good exposure because I had an older brother to give me music at an early age like Pink Floyd. I was listening to that when I was like ten: Roxy Music, David Bowie and Pink Floyd.

IndigoSilk offers spiritual retreat in East Lothian

New Moon

7 Jan 2010

January is traditionally the month for decluttering. Your cupboards, your insides, your bad habits; the start of the year is a perfect time to fling out the old and welcome in the new. But what about getting rid of bad juju? Detoxing your emotional…

Ryan Crosson interview

Detroit rock city

7 Jan 2010

Among techno devotees of a certain age, it’s a real brand of quality when a DJ tells you they’re from Detroit. In the case of Ryan Crosson, though, there are one or two qualifiers. ‘Well, I actually grew up in a suburb north-east of Detroit,’ he says…

Public Image Limited

7 Jan 2010

‘Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?’ Those were John Lydon’s last words as Johnny Rotten at the close of The Sex Pistols’ chaotic 1978 San Francisco swansong. It was a sentiment echoed this September when the first live dates in 17 years by…

New York state of mind

7 Jan 2010

Nestled at the heart of Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City is a duality. Leading with the tagline, ‘Lethem does Manhattan’, the Brooklynite’s latest owes much to a slight, yet significant switch in New York perspective. ‘Manhattan has a quality of being far…

Back to the future - Toby Paterson interview

7 Jan 2010

It’s amazing what you find when you’re clearing up old debris. While rummaging through materials for his forthcoming retrospective alongside new work at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, former Beck’s Futures winner Toby Paterson discovered a Super 8…

Return of the King

7 Jan 2010

When it comes to living legends of the theatre world, they don’t come much more distinguished than Peter Brook. Having helmed his first play in London in 1943, the hugely influential experimental theatre and film director rose to prominence in the 1950s…

Blipfoto, Channel 4, NTS and Scottish Screen launch photography competition

7 Jan 2010

With the New Year’s resolutions now in full swing, daily photo blogging community Blipfoto has teamed up with Channel 4, the National Theatre of Scotland and Scottish Screen to create a unique international photography competition. With followers and…

Music highlights of 2009

7 Jan 2010

Best bit of something for nothing When Spotify let UK users sign up for free this February, the floodgates were open for hours of random music searches. (Beatles, Fugazi, Metallica, no; Battles, Can, Phantom Band, yes) Non-stop, customised radio – and…

The Yummy Fur

7 Jan 2010

‘There’s no rhyme or reason to this,’ says Jackie McKeown of his first notable band’s forthcoming reunion. ‘There’s no tie-in or media event window we’re trying to sneak into. We’re getting back together for a week, it’s purely for our own amusement and…

Stewart Francis hits the Stand

7 Jan 2010

Stewart Francis used to open his set with, ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t heard of you either.’ Between hosting schlocky gameshow You Bet Your Ass in his native Canada, then moving to Spain, his memorable one-liners were an itinerant treat on the UK circuit to…

Tracy Beaker Returns

7 Jan 2010

Anyone who tunes in to CBBC from time to time might not know it, but it’s five years since the last new episode of the show featuring the abandoned and shouty Tracy Beaker. But that constant loop of archive 20-minute snapshots of life within the…

Barbera Ehrenreich - Smile or Die

7 Jan 2010

(Granta) What’s wrong with positive thinking? Anyone who’s been forced on a team bonding day or made to sit through the platitudinous drivel of a ‘motivational guru’ by their employers will tell you exactly what’s wrong with it. And that culture of…

Mark Thomas set for gig at The Stand

7 Jan 2010

1 Mark Thomas was born in South London, to a midwife mother and a self-employed builder dad who was at one point a lay preacher at Clapham Junction’s Nazarene Church. Thomas declared himself to be an atheist at the age of 12. 2 While he was trying…

Restaurant review - pickledgreen

7 Jan 2010

Rose Street is a right hotch-potch when it comes to its eating and drinking scene: from bland chain restaurants to venerable old boozers, unadorned Japanese noodle-bars to buzzy seafood bistros. Into this unlikely setting, and fired with the optimism…

Curtain up

7 Jan 2010

The National Theatre of Scotland has launched its programme for 2010, with highlights including a new piece of work by the team behind worldwide hit Black Watch. In line with the company’s ethos of working with a variety of art forms, in February and…

Food culture: What to expect in 2010

7 Jan 2010

The new vegetarianism Nigel Slater Tender and Simon Hopkinson The Vegetarian Option made the Christmas bestseller lists with books giving much more respect to vegetables. It’s not about going completely veggie, but eating less meat, of better…

Five health books

7 Jan 2010

Susan Hepburn Hypnodiet Subtitled ‘Lose Weight, Feel Fabulous the Stress-Free Way’ this claims to help reprogramme your mind into making the right choices about grub. Should you care, Lily Allen is an advocate. Piatkus. Paul McKenna I Can…

Five Christmas books

7 Jan 2010

Augusten Burroughs You Better Not Cry: True Stories for Christmas A twisted collection of Yuletide tales in which the face of a stuffed Santa is eaten off and a tenement is constructed entirely from gingerbread. Atlantic. Loek Koopmans The…

William Styron - The Suicide Run

7 Jan 2010

(Jonathan Cape) On first glance at the cover image depicting a uniformed soldier speeding across a field, The Suicide Run looks like your average war story. But this is no ordinary tale; we should have guessed really, as William Styron is no…

Alex Horne - Wordwatching

7 Jan 2010

(Virgin Books) Alex Horne is a true logophile. He’s a lover of words, especially rare words, like ‘logophile’, that seldom make it into dictionaries. Or ‘bollo’, ‘pratdigger’ and ‘mental safari’, his own recent coinages that the comedian has been…

David Hughes - Walking the Dog

7 Jan 2010

(Jonathan Cape) David Hughes is an illustrator, graphic designer and artist whose work is pitched somewhere in the hinterland between the poignantly funny line scribbles of artist David Shrigley and the acerbic splashes of Pink Floyd collaborator…

Tiffany Murray - Diamond Star Halo

7 Jan 2010

(Portobello) Inspired by her own upbringing at Monmouthshire’s Rockfield Studios – the world’s first residential recording studio whose alumni include Queen, Iggy Pop and Oasis – Tiffany Murray’s second novel is part dysfunctional family drama, part…

Shut Up And Dance

7 Jan 2010

It may seem like a strange booking for Fortified at first glance but duo Philip ‘PJ’ Johnson and Carl ‘Smiley’ Hyman, aka Shut Up And Dance, were one fo the first acts to fuse Jamican dancehall with UK rave beats – they even hit the charts with ‘Raving…

Alex Smoke

7 Jan 2010

City Vibes launches in Edinburgh with this one-off Boxing Day special of minimal house and techno as the Lithuanian DJ collective are joined by special guest Alex Smoke. Signed to Soma and his own Hum+Haw record label, Smoke is the master of complex…

Ajamu X: Familiar Strangers

7 Jan 2010

Artist Ajamu X has been working with Black and Minority Ethnic communities as well as members of the LGBTI community for over 20 years, exploring the ways that these marginalised communities operate outside the formal mechanisms of support. His new…

Jason Cook

7 Jan 2010

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as Geordie stand-up delivers the kind of honest-to-goodness material that makes you laugh out loud one minute then get all emotional and gooey the next. The discovery of the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe…

It’s A Wonderful Life

7 Jan 2010

Christmas would not be Christmas without Frank Capra’s sentimental classic in which James Stewart’s small-town banker (yes, a good hearted one) learns the hard way that his life has worth. All those crooks who ruined the economy ought to be locked in a…

Vivian Girls

7 Jan 2010

The second abum from this trio, ironically named Everything Goes Wrong was described by one music mag as ‘sickeningly good’ when it came out in the autumn. The VGs bring indie pop at its raw and edgy best, but with a moodier feel that cites Nirvana and…

10 for 2010: Divorce

7 Jan 2010

Noise, beautiful noise is the speciality of Glasgow’s Divorce. Smarter than you’re average metal band, there’s hints of the brilliance of Lightning Bolt or Liars in the fivesome’s 10” EP, released last year on Optimo Music. Plus they deliver an awesome…

You Me At Six - Hold Me Down

7 Jan 2010

(Virgin) Chances are, if you liked YMA6’s first effort Take Off Your Colours, you’ll find plenty to like here. Spiky pop-punk riffs, catchy choruses and guest vocalists from The Blackout and Kids in Glass Houses ensure there’s nothing to disappoint…

The Road - John Hillcoat interview

6 Jan 2010

John Hillcoat says his favourite road traverses the Simpson Desert in the outback in Australia. Not such a surprise given that he was born in Queensland in 1961 and that both his previous directing efforts – prison drama Ghosts... of the Civil Dead…

Comanechi - Akiko Matsuura interview

6 Jan 2010

Dalston boy/girl duo Comanechi have been slogging away at the national indie circuit for four years, with only obscurity to reward them. That is, until vocalist and drummer Akiko Matsuura’s other group The Big Pink (she’s their drummer) took off in…

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

6 Jan 2010

(18) 113 min Michael Winterbottom protégé Mat Whitecross (The Road to Guantanamo, The Shock Doctrine) shows a previously unseen penchant for the spectacular in this amusing biopic of Ian Drury. Whitecross sets up the story as a vaudeville act fronted…

Anguish With Posie

6 Jan 2010

Fans of spoken word night DiScomBoBuLate will be no stranger to Ian Macpherson’s ability to wax lyrical. A creative powerhouse for writers, actors, comics and directors, the night helped provide the inspiration for Macpherson’s upcoming play, Anguish…

What You See is Where You’re At

6 Jan 2010

‘Everything is going to be alright,’ announces the neon installation by former Turner Prize winner Martin Creed as you approach the grand entrance to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It’s a fitting curtain raiser to the re-hang of the…

Profile: Wire

6 Jan 2010

Occupation Multi-genre club night that welcomes a different Scottish band to DJ each month all under the watchful gaze of Craig Jamieson (Modern Lovers). So what’s the music policy? ‘It doesn’t really have a music policy, it is after all…

Labels of love: Song, By Toad Records

6 Jan 2010

When and why did you launch the label? Basically, we got plastered with Broken Records and promised them that if they didn’t get signed by March 2008 then we’d release their album. They did get signed [to indie institute 4AD], but by then the idea had…

Teenage Lust

6 Jan 2010

‘The way I see it,’ says Teenage Lust promoter Richard Scott, ‘if you’re going out clubbing, you’re generally stuck with three options. You either go to an indie night, where you’re going to hear that Smiths song four times and meet a lot of assholes.

Rod Jones and The Birthday Suit

6 Jan 2010

When Idlewild guitarist Rod Jones was piecing together his debut solo album A Sentimental Education, there was one simple test to decide which songs to use himself and which ones to pass on to Roddy Woomble and co: did they feel so personal that only…

We Are . . . Electric

6 Jan 2010

In terms of clubbing, We Are … Electric has ruled the midweek party scene in the capital for the last few years. ‘It’s a punk-funk electro-disco,’ says WAE mastermind and resident DJ Gary Mac. ‘Essentially it’s an electronic-body-music club that crosses…

The Sound of Music

6 Jan 2010

For decades, the swansong of legendary musical writing partnership Rodgers and Hammerstein was associated with the 1965 Academy Award-winning film adaptation, in particular the iconic image of Julie Andrews spinning around on a Salzburg…

Thao With The Get Down Stay Down - Know Better, Learn Faster

6 Jan 2010

(Kill Rock Stars) Someone once described Thao Nguyen as ‘like Sufjan Steven’s cute little sister’. She could also probably pass for a bouncier, chirpier cousin of Cat Power, or a more playful, joke-cracking relative of Natasha ‘Bat For Lashes…

Bobby McFerrin

6 Jan 2010

Celtic Connections has always cast widely for artists, and jazz musicians have figured in the programme over the years, but few with quite as high a profile as American singer Bobby McFerrin. Actually, singer doesn’t quite seem to cover it in McFerrin’s…

Stomp

6 Jan 2010

Our instinctive desire to hit things that make a noise is evident from an early age. For the sake of our parents’ sanity, most of us grow out of it. But fortunately, Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas never quite managed to shake that desire…

It's Complicated

6 Jan 2010

(15) 118min Eschewing Hollywood’s usual tendency towards ageism Something’s Gotta Give and The Holiday writer/director Nancy Meyers’ new film is a farce of revived lust. Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep play ex-husband and wife who suddenly get the hots…

The Link

6 Jan 2010

A fascinating project combining exhibition, auction and gig aims to examine the crossover between music and visual art, showcase artworks made by musicians, and throw a live show into the bargain. Appropriately named the Link, it’s the brainchild of…

BP Portrait Award 2009

6 Jan 2010

The popular annual exhibition arrives at the Dean Gallery following its first outing in London, featuring a host of familiar names as well as some new international entrants since the competition expanded its reach beyond the British Isles. Of the 56…

Them Crooked Vultures

6 Jan 2010

There aren’t many musicians who can overshadow Queens of the Stone Age mainman Josh Homme. Teaming up with Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Nirvana) on drums and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) on bass, Them Crooked Vultures have an enviable back history and…

Beak>

6 Jan 2010

After the lengthy gestation of Portishead’s Third, it’s understandable that Geoff Barrow wanted to do something a little less painstaking with BEAK>. Written and recorded in a week, their eponymous album offers stripped down takes on the krautrock and…

Eagleowl

6 Jan 2010

As one door opens, another closes, as Eagleowl launch their gift-wrapped ‘Sleep the Winter’ 7” single at the penultimate show at the Bowery before the venue’s sad and frankly unnecessary closure (well done, Edinburgh University Settlement, for thinking…

Various Artists - Alternative Christmas

6 Jan 2010

(Avalanche Records) Anticipating the annual landslide of pap music that descends round about Jesus’ birthday, and inspired by the Saddle Creek Christmas album, Avalanche Records commissioned a non-rubbish collection of Christmas songs, with no child…

John Turville Trio - Midas

6 Jan 2010

(F-IRE presents) John Turville is a London-based pianist whose CV includes work with saxophonists Gilad Atzmon and Tim Garland. This trio with bassist Chris Hill and drummer Ben Reynolds were winners of the 2009 PRS Promoter’s Choice award, and this…

Staff Benda Bilili - Très Très Fort

6 Jan 2010

(Crammed Disks) One of last autumn’s world music highlights, this spookily beautiful album, which includes musicians, amphibians and some catchier-than- the-cold rhythms, is still irresistible. The slightly eerie sound of the plucked string of the…

Delphic - Acolyte

6 Jan 2010

(Polydor) By the time this review is printed, we’ll know if Manchester quartet Delphic are in the final top ten of the tastemaking BBC Sound of 2010 poll. We wouldn’t bet against it right now, though, because this album covers all bases. From the…

Fake Tan - Pieces

6 Jan 2010

(Floppy Records) The effort pumped into this release is phenomenal. It was recorded over an 11-year period on phones, mp3 players and computers, and Tom and Nikki Fraser’s love for the material is obvious. Pieces also comes uniquely packaged in the…

Peter Nicolson and Raymond Macdonald - Streetlevel

6 Jan 2010

(Iorram Records) More adventures in free improvisation from this Glasgow-based, musician-run label. Nicholson’s cello and the alto and soprano saxophones of MacDonald are deployed in characteristically free ranging fashion, coaxing a broad spectrum…

Slam set to play Return to Mono

6 Jan 2010

Way back when, Slam used to host a little acid house night called Atlantis at the Sub Club. Since then they have taken over the Arches with their own Pressure night, run perhaps the best dance tent at any mainstream festival with their constantly rammed…

Peter von Poehl - May Day

6 Jan 2010

Bella Union This second album from the Swedish singer-songwriter is a more outward looking affair than his debut, and is full of considered arrangements, intriguing instrumentation and plenty of ideas, but it’s ultimately a tad underwhelming. Still…

Vampire Weekend - Contra

6 Jan 2010

(XL) Where would these Ivy League afro-pop boffins be without Paul Simon’s Graceland? Half an album short of songs on their second long-player, Contra, that’s where. If the New York quartet’s much-hyped debut merged African rhythms and art-rock…

Charlotte Gainsbourg - IRM

6 Jan 2010

(Because) Why in the name of God (or Scientology) isn’t ‘Heaven Can Wait’ – the recent duet from Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck – massive? It’s the best song Oasis never wrote. It’s also a highlight on this second album from actress/chanteuse…

Laura Veirs - July Flame

6 Jan 2010

(Bella Union) On July Flame, the seventh album from Portland, Oregon’s Laura Veirs, the wistful songstress takes a more stripped-down approach compared with recent efforts. Conceived from a chance summer meeting with an unusual peach at a local…

Adam Green - Minor Love

6 Jan 2010

(Rough Trade) Looking like he’s walked straight off a Strokes album wrap party and now sounding exactly (I mean exactly) like Transformer-era Lou Reed, the former half of NYC’s Moldy Peaches delivers his sixth solo album. If or when you get over the…

New Voices: Iain Morrison

6 Jan 2010

This Outer Hebridean singer-songwriter has dabbled in indie pop – as a member of Crash My Model Car, dipped a toe in to alt.folk – as frontman of the Sleepy Cafe Band, and done a bit of traditional piping too. Just before the release of his album Trust…

Treeless Mountain

6 Jan 2010

(PG) 89min One summer young sisters Jin and Bin are left with their bad tempered aunt when their mother goes in search of their estranged father. As they wait for their mother’s return they fill up their piggy bank and acclimatise themselves to…

Book of Eli

6 Jan 2010

(tbc) tbcmin Man has destroyed the earth and all that is left is a ravaged post apocalypse landscape. Loner Denzel Washington wanders through Mad Max style communities with just one aim – to protect the sacred tome that could hold the key to the…

Fish Fry

6 Jan 2010

For funk, soul and Latin, Fish Fry is always a good bet, featuring live bands in the intimate surrounds of the Jazz Bar every week. Keeping things mixed up this fortnight, it features the reggae-tinged sounds of Bob Hillary (pictured, 9 Jan), who was…

Daybreakers

6 Jan 2010

(15) 97min It’s 2017, and the undead now outnumber the living. A virus has spread across the earth, turning its inhabitants into vampires. With their blood supply dwindling, the vampires must find a way to sustain their source of food. Intelligent…

Three American Artists: Randy Bolton, Michael Krueger & John Schulz

6 Jan 2010

We’re accustomed to American imagery pervading our own culture, but these three critically aware artists – whose work is displayed at the Glasgow Print Studio this month – themselves scrutinise and re-imagine American printed imagery. Bolton explores…

RSNO Naked Classics

6 Jan 2010

Stripping Beethoven’s 7th Symphony bare, the RSNO’s enthusiastic presenter Paul Rissmann reveals its all. Telling the stories behind the music with a bit of assistance from projections, lighting, interviews with players and the conductor, and, not to…

Laura Veirs

6 Jan 2010

One of indie pop’s more literate songwriters, Laura Veirs’ hotly anticipated album July Flame is out this fortnight, and you can check out what her live show’s like too, at this Celtic Connections gig. Recalling the vivid lyrics and starkly incisive…

Way to Blue - Songs of Nick Drake

6 Jan 2010

A quarter of a century since his untimely death, Nick Drake’s poignant, haunting acoustics leave an enduring legacy, cited by Coldplay, Kate Bush and Paul Weller among others as a major influence. This special tribute concert, brings together Vashti…

Turner in January

6 Jan 2010

It’s the start of a new year, which means another chance to enjoy the annual display of JMW Turner watercolours at the National Galleries. The collection was bequeathed by Henry Vaughan, and the work ranges from early topographical wash drawings to the…

OSS 117: Lost in Rio

6 Jan 2010

(15) 101min New French comedy film franchise begins to unfurl with this follow up to the equally silly OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies. Jean Dujardin returns as France’s dumbest super spy, this time he’s looking for ex-Nazi’s in Brazil with a sexy…

Wolfmother

6 Jan 2010

Channeling 60s psychedelic rock, Aussie band Wolfmother earned themselves a good few new fans on both sides of the pond with last October’s album, Cosmic Egg. ‘White Feather’, the band’s latest anthem from the album, hints at Velvet Underground with an…

Chew Lips - Unicorn

6 Jan 2010

(Family Recordings) Track four on this electro-pop debut is entitled ‘Karen’ – very fittingly, as the entire album sounds remarkably like Yeah Yeah Yeah’s last album It’s Blitz! Maybe it’s the synths, maybe it’s the strong female vocals – in any…

Rolo Tomassi

6 Jan 2010

‘Synth driven mathcore’: surely everyone’s favourite subgenre. Signed to Hassle Records and fronted by the diminutive Eva Spence, Rolo Tomassi specialise in complex, abrasive, clattering hardcore punk mixed with stabbing rave blast beats for a truly…

OK-Go

6 Jan 2010

Energetic punk rock band OK-Go draw attention as much through their music as their bizarre part glam, part geek-rock fashion statements. They’re compellingly vivacious – watching them live is a bit like watching Franz Ferdinand meeting Queen. ABC…

Icons of Elegance - Dancing Is Easy

6 Jan 2010

(Dinner With Daisy) A broad musical smorgasbord from the Swedish brothers – small, three-minute nibbles of Peñate-pop, boogie-woogie, melancholy surf-rock and jingle-jangle guitars. Very sugary-sweet, and entirely unconcerned with being anything…

Justin Sandercoe - Small Town Eyes

6 Jan 2010

(Ocean Reds Records) The man who taught millions how to play guitar via YouTube releases his first album. As expected, it’s extremely guitar-orientated, with acoustic strum-along riffs plus Santana- or Clapton-esque solos.

Big River Man - Martin Strel interview

5 Jan 2010

‘The director John Maringouin first contacted me and my son Borut in 2002 after John’s wife Molly had seen a report on CNN about me swimming the Mississippi. When they found out that I was planning to swim the Amazon in 2007 to raise environmental…

Crude

5 Jan 2010

(15) 104 min This complex yet absorbing cinema-vérité documentary from American director Joe Berlinger (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Revelations: Paradise Lost), concerns a multi-billion dollar legal action in the field of environmental…

Elin Jakobsdóttir: Hinges Between Days

5 Jan 2010

Various artistic attempts to render the familiar strange are here assembled in an extraordinarily neat sequence of objects, films and photographs. Icelandic artist Jakobsdóttir has got the knack for styling, and it’s the fastidious nature of these…

Up In The Air

5 Jan 2010

(15) 109min Rarely has a film felt so timely. After his satirical study of an unscrupulous tobacco lobbyist in Thank You For Smoking and the charming teen angst tale Juno, director Jason Reitman delivers an absorbing examination of our recession-hit…

Ninja Assassin

5 Jan 2010

(18) 98min ‘He doesn’t look like a ninja, he looks like he should be in a boy-band,’ comments a police investigator on first sighting of Ninja Assassin’s pyjama-clad killer Raizo, played by pop-star Rain. Given Rain’s pedigree as a crooner, it’s a…

The Sea Wall (Un barrage contre le Pacifique)

5 Jan 2010

(12A) 115min A measured if unexceptional adaptation of Marguerite Duras’ semi-autobiographical first novel by Cambodian-born director Rithy Panh (S-21:The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine), The Sea Wall unfolds in French Indochina in the early 1930s.

The Road

5 Jan 2010

(15) 111min As far as apocalyptic movies go, this is a lot better than sitting through Armageddon and The Day After Tomorrow. And yet, John Hillcoat’s largely faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s text proves unsatisfying. Hillcoat and…

All About Steve

5 Jan 2010

(12A) 98min Sandra Bullock follows twin box-office strikes The Proposal and The Blind Side with supposedly kooky comedy All About Steve. Combining the male charms of The Hangover’s Bradley Cooper and Sideways star Thomas Hayden Church must have…

Night of The Comet

5 Jan 2010

(15) 91min (Optimum) Cult classic alert! This 1985 sci-fi horror parody benefits from just the right combination of genre knowing and lightness of comic touch. Its apocalyptic storyline has the Earth pass through the path of the titular celestial…

The Other Man

5 Jan 2010

(15) 84 min (Metrodome) Whatever Richard Eyre’s importance as a theatre director, working on plays by Hare, Griffith and Brenton, his recent cinema work (Iris, Notes on a Scandal) has sometimes struggled for significance. This adaptation of Bernhard…

Treasure Island

5 Jan 2010

(PG) 86min (HBF) Robert Louis Stevenson’s 19th century tale of peg-legged pirates, treasure maps and derring-do has been surprisingly ill served by cinema. Countless Disney adaptations aside, this 1971 Russian version and Chilean filmmaker Raoul…

Under The Mud

5 Jan 2010

(12A) 86 min (Hurricane Films) Of Time and the City producer Sol Papadopoulos’ well-intentioned and warm-hearted modern Liverpool fable is a bit like a cross between Peter Mullan’s Orphans, and an episode of late lamented soap Brookside. Liverpool…

Cross-cutting

5 Jan 2010

This current exhibition at one of Edinburgh’s newest and most exciting galleries, Sierra Metro, brings together artists from across the UK to create a group showcase of contemporary film and video art. Cross-cutting features films from the eleven-strong…