Latest reviews & features

Ciara Phillips: And More

Canadian-born and Glasgow-based artist presents new collection of screenprints

X marks the spot in Inverleith House's latest show in which a contemporary artist responds to work in the RBG's archival holdings of botanical-based art. Arriving just in time for the sun to belatedly shine, and running alongside 'Nature Printed'…

Jenny Mayhew - A Wolf in Hindelheim

Former screenwriter Mayhew's debut novel is a strong, atmospheric story set in pre-WWII Germany

War hangs heavy over the small German mountain community of Hindelheim in Jenny Mayhew’s unusual crime novel, set in 1926. WWI has left local constable Hildebrandt crippled and estranged from his adult son, while the war which we know is still to come…

Black Host - Life in the Sugar Candle Mines

Splendid mix of prog tentacles and free jazz goo

(Northern Spy) Bursting out of some back-alley Brooklyn laboratory in an explosion of prog tentacles and free jazz goo, Black Host are bizarro world mutant cousins to Little Women. As the sole horn player in a jazz-rock (of sorts) combo, Darius…

Little Women - Lung

Somewhere between free jazz, avant-classical and downtown art-rock

(Aum Fidelity) Like their more fidgety Brooklyn associates Zs, Little Women operate somewhere between free jazz, avant-classical and downtown art-rock. Lung is conceptualised around the human breath, treating it as a sound source and organising…

Quercus - Quercus

June Tabor and Huw Warren collaboration blending jazz and folk tradition

(ECM) The great English folk singer June Tabor has been working with Welsh pianist Huw Warren for several years, most notably on her 2011 album Ashore. Now, under the Quercus umbrella, the pair is joined by saxophonist Iain Ballamy, best known for…

Orchestre Poly-rythmo De Cotonou - The Skeletal Essences of Afro Funk

(Analog Africa) The third compilation of vintage recordings from Benin's greatest dance band, The Skeletal Essences of Afro Funk stands as a fitting tribute to founder Melome Clement, who died of a heart attack in December last year. His 'Ne Rien…

Top 5... time manipulation movies

Inspired by the trailer for About Time, we recount the 5 best chronologically-challenged movies

The trailer for writer-director Richard Curtis’ new time travel rom-com, About Time, was recently released, giving us first look at the love story between the chronologically gifted Tim (Black Mirror’s Domhnall Gleeson) and the object of his affections…

Singles and downloads - May 2013

Sad City, Carter Tutti, Jon Hopkins and Rob St John among this months new music

Sad City - ‘You Will Soon Find That Life Is Wonderful’ EP (Phonica Special Editions) ●●●● Glasgow-based producer Gary Caruth delivers an EP that is dripping with lush, undulating synth hedonism and blissed-out meditative swashes. It’s reminiscent in…

Outwork by Stephen Sutcliffe

Ambitious new show from the Glasgow video artist

One only has to look at the names on the spines of the books projected on the two large side-screens that flank a central one in Stephen Sutcliffe's large-scale film installation to get where he's coming from. Philosopher Jacques Derrida, semiotician…

Kevin Spacey set for talk at 2013 Edinburgh International TV Festival

MacTaggart lecture from actor will address change in ways TV is commissioned and watched

Actor Kevin Spacey will deliver the MacTaggart Lecture at the 2013 Guardian Edinburgh TV Festival. Being a broadly industry-focused festival, the lecture is only open to Edinburgh TV Festival delegates. Spacey recently starred in 13-part Netflix series…

Something in the Air

Olivier Assayas returns with bittersweet portrait of countercultural French 70's youth

French writer-director Olivier Assayas follows up his epic chronicle of legendary terrorist Carlos the Jackal with this bittersweet portrait of countercultural youth in early 70s France. ‘Diffusely autobiographical’ is how the filmmaker has described…

The King Of Marvin Gardens

Reissue of forgotten 70s film starring Jack Nicholson by director of Five Easy Pieces

'In the fun house how do you know who's really crazy?' that's the pertinent question in The King of Marvin Gardens, Bob 'Five Easy Pieces' Rafelson's third film. This reissue is a chance to re-appraise the 1972 financial flop starring Jack Nicholson and…

The Liability

Tim Roth and Jack O'Connell pair up for a seemingly familiar hitman film

You may get struck by déjà vu watching The Liability, the third feature film by former cinematographer Craig Viveiros. A story of a taciturn hitman and his callow assistant starring Tim Roth, it sounds suspiciously like a remake of Stephen Frears’ 1984…

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Adaptation of Mohsen Hamid’s book starring Riz Ahmed and Kate Hudson

A globetrotting adaptation of Mohsen Hamid’s allegorical first-person novella, director Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a thriller in which the character names are freighted with symbolic baggage. Britain’s Riz Ahmed is impressive as the…

Let the Right One In re-written for stage by Dundee Rep

John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett adapt Swedish vampire romance

Their screen-to-stage adaptation of Once won eight Tony Awards in 2012. Now, John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett are giving another cult film a theatrical makeover: Swedish vampire romance Let the Right One In. Adapted by John Ajvide Lindqvist from his own…

Blue Raincoat present The Poor Mouth

Irish theatre company Blue Raincoat apply eclectic style to Flan O'Brien's absurdist language

In their annual visits to Scotland, Blue Raincoat demonstrate a rare gift for combining spectacular visual theatre and the rigorous demands of a script. The Poor Mouth, the finale of their adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s trilogy of novels, sees the…

Deadfall

Contrived thriller from the director of The Counterfeiters

Stefan Ruzowitzky’s concentration camp drama The Counterfeiters won him an Oscar and promised to spring the Austrian director through the ranks of directorial talent. Strangely, it’s taken him five years to make his English language debut, and despite a…

Illicit Ink - Edinburgh spoken word night

Free spoken-word show from some of Edinburgh's newest undiscovered talents

The Bongo Club has become the home of one of Edinburgh’s freshest groups of writers, who come together to share short stories in the heart of the Cowgate. They recite pieces based on a common theme (the two most recent being school and sleep), each…

Wet Sounds - Glasgow event combines swimming and music

Float in a pool listening to sounds by Joel Cahen and La Horrox

It’s the most listening fun you can have without electrocuting yourself. You get in the pool. You listen to music either in the water, out of the water or somewhere in between, floating on the surface. There are speakers submerged below you and in the…

The Village at the End of the World

Sensitively-made documentary about remote village life in Greenland

Niaqornat is a tiny settlement in north west Greenland. Accessible only by helicopter or boat, home to just over 50 people and surrounded by ice and snow for much of the year, it’s truly deserving of the title of ‘the village at the end of the world’.

UK Green Film Festival 2013 - Glasgow screenings

Programme highlights include More than Honey, Promised Land and Trashed

Feed your conscience.So you’ve spent the whole winter with the central heating on full, the TV showing back-to-back Game of Thrones and the fridge stuffed with fruit flown in from Kenya. Necessary for survival, right? Perhaps not. Undo your ungreen…

Vehicle 19

Car-based thriller starring Paul Walker neither fast nor furious enough

Having made his name with souped-up vehicular antics in the Fast and Furious franchise, there’s a small smirk to be had when Paul Walker’s Michael Woods lands in Johannesburg and finds himself mistakenly saddled with a sedentary rental minivan. Fans of…

AJ Taudevin stages Some Other Mother at Traverse

Tapping into childrens' eyes and language to raise the topic of asylum seekers

AJ Taudevin's Some Other Mother, about the young daughter of an asylum seeker in a Glasgow high rise, comes from a close and personal place. An activist and worker within the city's asylum seeker community, Taudevin draws from the same material as Cora…

David Gaffney - More Sawn Off Tales

Small tales of great depth

When reading this collection of very short stories you will forget where you are, what you’re supposed to be doing and where you’re supposed to be going. It is utterly, and wonderfully addictive. Each 150-word story in this follow up to Sawn Off Tales…

Writer and perfume expert Alex Musgrave delivers talk on poetry and scent

Custom-scented verse, live music and free wine

What does poetry smell like? Would a rose by any other name smell... well, let's save the rest for Alex Musgrave AKA perfume blogger the Silver Fox, as well as a poet, novelist and business manager at the Edinburgh branch of perfumery store…