Issue 650

Dundee Rep take on Peter Schaffer's pony tale Equus

It’s not entirely down to Daniel Radcliffe’s torso that Peter Schaffer’s 1973 work Equus is undergoing something of a renaissance, but it was certainly the prospect of naked boy wizard that reignited interest in the play. It’s the kind of interest that…

First Word - Tom Conti interview

First record you ever bought Stokowski conducting Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, which featured in a movie I had just seen called A Hundred Men and a Girl. Last time you were chatted up Last week, in a bookshop. (40, gorgeous, shapely, dark…

Punishment Park

(15) 88min 'Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.' Abbie Hoffman (1936 --1989) American political activist and author; co-founder…

Carl Donnelly set for The Stand

As a jaw-dropping introduction to the mad old world of stand-up, Carl Donnelly’s second ever gig takes some beating. When telly channel Five were putting together a typically sensitive Race Swap show, it might have seemed like a good idea at the time to…

Why Fife is celebrating illustrious son Richard Jobson

Here in Scotland, we love a tale of the local boy doing good, and musician-turned-writer and film-maker Richard Jobson has done just that. A former member of punk band, The Skids, Jobson often sets his scene – whether it be his music, photography, film…

Poppy and Dingan

Imaginary friendships are a part of life for many children and, just like real ones, they come with no guarantees. When Kellyanne Williamson, a young girl living in the Australian outback, loses her invisible pals in Pobby and Dingan, life is never the…

Edinburgh's Royal High School to be transformed into arts hotel

Developer also behind Odeon cinema project

Following months of speculation it has been revealed that the former Royal High School on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill will be transformed into an arts hotel. The £35m redevelopment, awarded by the city council to Duddingston House Properties, will see the…

Martin Amis - The Pregnant Widow

(Jonathan Cape) On page 395 of this 465-page endurance test, Martin Amis promises the following from one of his characters: ‘Gloria Beautyman, at least, will be giving us something that Life badly needs. Plot’. Life, Martin – and indeed your latest…

Channel Hopper

A tough, highly trained US operative is chained to a wall soon to be tortured by a nasty European. Even when his captor brings out the jump leads, you just know he won’t talk. No, it’s not the 348th day of 24 but Archer (Fiver, Thu 25 Feb, 10.30pm), an…

Backbeat

Iain Softley’s 1994 film Backbeat charted the pre-stardom career of The Beatles, focusing on the relationship between John Lennon, his best friend and fellow art student Stuart Sutcliffe, who succumbed to a brain tumour aged 22, and Sutcliffe’s lover…

Hot Chip

You get the feeling that everyone who’s anyone in Edinburgh was out for this show. It wasn’t just a big gig, it was one by a band whose new album One Life Stand has set the benchmark for crossover electronic pop style in ‘10. Did it live up to its own…

Jeans Team

Berlin duo Jeans Team have been doing the thing they do better than most and for longer too, both predating and outliving the electroclash scene during which they came to prominence, after originally emerging from Berlin’s art and music scene a decade…

Delphine De Vigan - No and Me

(Bloomsbury) When Lou Bertignac decides to focus on the homeless of Paris for a school project, she is unprepared for the battle with herself she is about to undertake. Already life is barely tolerable with her dad often to be found crying in the…

Pedro Juam Gutierrez - Our GG in Havana

(Faber) To fans of the author behind such classic works as Brighton Rock and The Quiet American, it might come as something of a surprise to read the first 30 pages in this curt novel. Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, himself the scribe of the acclaimed Dirty…

Andy C set for Xplicit show in Edinburgh

Hooked on the rave and hardcore scene in the early 90s, it was Andy C’s formation of Ram Records back in 1992 that really helped secure his place as a D&B superstar. Specialising in the harder end of the spectrum, with names like Sub Focus, Chase…

Capitalism: A Love Story

(12A) 102min Michael Moore’s credibility has taken something of a dint since the populist, glory days of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko, but his new opus sees him going for broke by taking on the whole capitalist system. But without his old pal George…

Kenny Knots set for date with Mungo’s Hi-Fi

Genuine roots and dub from Kenny Knots, who started his career in reggae singing with North London’s Unity Sound System as a teenager in the 80s. Debut single ‘Watch How The People Dancing’ was his first big success going on to have releases on…

From Paris With Love

(15) 92min Following on from his surprise action hit for Liam Neeson in Taken, Pierre Morel comes a cropper in his latest venture by teaming Jonathan Rhys Meyers and a shockingly bald John Travolta for the usual run-of-the-mill Parisian…

Life Long

The Arches Off-Site strand continues with this peformance piece from Glas(s), which celebrates the 52-year marriage of Tillie and Ronnie Jeffrey, who met at Paisley Town Hall in 1952. The show movingly explores what it means to share a lifetime with one…

Solomon Kane

(15) 104min Based on a lesser-known character by Conan The Barbarian creator Robert E Howard, James Purefoy dons Solomon Kane’s Witchfinder General hat and sets out to bloodily revenge the murder of an innocent family who befriended him. Jason…

Freestyle

(12A) 85min Brit director Kolton Lee’s second feature, made under the auspices of Film London’s Microwave scheme, which also produced Shifty, stars Lucy Stanhope as Ondene, a young woman who falls for freestyle basketball player Leon Chambers (Arinze…

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Young violinist Nicola Benedetti performs an emotionally-loaded concerto from the Finnish composer, Sibelius, followed by Shostakovich’s epic Tenth Symphony. Shostakovich’s Tenth was the first the Russian composer had composed since he was denounced by…

The Room

Is Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 horror the worst good bad film ever made? Allegedly screening for the first time ever at a Scottish cinema, you can now judge for yourselves. Late night screening. Cameo, Edinburgh on Sat 20 Feb.

Nosferatu

FW Murnau’s 1922 expressionist horror masterpiece gets the live music treatment in this special one off screening. Filmhouse, Edinburgh on Sun 21 Feb.

Efterklang - Magic Chairs

(4AD) If Alphabeat’s brand new sped-up hyper-pop effort The Spell makes you wonder what you ever saw in Denmark in the first place, fellow Danes, Efterklang deliver subtle, tinkling orchestral pop by way of national apology.