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Sunset Song

Sunset Song

2 Oct 2008

ADAPTATION It was some time in the early-60s when His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, last produced a play of its own, barring the annual pantomime. To return to the fray with a ten-strong company and a mainstage tour after so long was ambitious but…

The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall

The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA In January 2004, British photography student Tom Hurndall died after being left in a coma for nine months, the victim of a bullet fired by a member of the Israeli Defence Force. The fact that the killer, Taysir Hayb, was handed an 11-year…

88 Minutes

88 Minutes

2 Oct 2008

THRILLER Someone really should keep Al Pacino away from director Jon Avnet. The star of Sea of Love and Carlito’s Way has struck up an unfortunately productive relationship with the hack director of Red Corner and Up Close and Personal. Avnet…

Ali Smith - The First Person and Other Stories

Ali Smith - The First Person and Other Stories

2 Oct 2008

SHORT STORIES In this, her fourth collection of short stories, Ali Smith sets out her philosophical stall as quickly as she can. Her opening tale, ‘True Short Story’, ponders the very nature of the form itself as two men debate the merits of the…

Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Julian Jarrold’s revamp of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel pares back the opulent trimmings of the television series to expose the bare bones of Waugh’s lament for the civilised past. Charting blithe social-climber Charles Ryder (Matthew…

Cherry Blossom

Cherry Blossom

2 Oct 2008

MULTI-MEDIA PLAY Catherine Grosvenor’s Cherry Blossom is an impassioned attempt to represent the experience of Poles migrating to the West, while Lorne Campbell’s direction ensures that the play – performed in English and Polish – is understandable…

Don Juan

Don Juan

2 Oct 2008

CLASSIC John D is a 21st century mover and shaker. He sets up meetings with celebrities, has his photograph on billboards and indulges in high-profile charity work. He is all ego and, as played by Mark Springer, both charismatic and…

Gomorrah

Gomorrah

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Movies like The Godfather have tended to make life in the Mafia seem glamorous, Shakespearean and operatic. Heck, it’s so appealing that at times it seems like the Mafioso is the best Italian export since pasta. Now it’s time for the more…

Good Dick

Good Dick

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Glasgow-born, Los Angeles-resident 27-year-old filmmaker Marianna Palka has written, directed, co-produced and taken the leading role in her feature debut, which she is currently self-distributing in America. That’s an impressive achievement in…

Mark Doty - Theories and Apparitions

Mark Doty - Theories and Apparitions

2 Oct 2008

POETRY COLLECTION Mark Doty’s talent has always been in bringing elegance to simple, normally very recognisable, snapshots from everyday life. The American poet starts out with a plain observation – some rude truck driver tearing up the NYC streets…

Richard Hughes

Richard Hughes

2 Oct 2008

SCULPTURE Richard Hughes makes some of the most repulsive sculptures around, and some of the most attractive. His subject matter is the sort of abandoned tat that would make most folk wrinkle their noses in disgust. Hughes lavishes attention on…

SMITH Magazine - One Life, Six Words, What’s Yours?

SMITH Magazine - One Life, Six Words, What’s Yours?

2 Oct 2008

MINIMALIST MEMOIRS Ernest Hemingway, challenged to write a six-word story, came up with ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’. Inspired by that, literary website SMITH Magazine accumulated six-word memoirs from everyday punters and authors alike. This…

The Fall (Myrin)

The Fall (Myrin)

2 Oct 2008

FANTASY Extravagant, self-indulgent, amazing, eye-catching, confusing: the second feature by Tarsem Singh, the Indian-born director who gave us the wacky The Cell with Jennifer Lopez, warrants all these adjectives and more. By the end of it all, you…

Alan Skidmore's Ubizo - 50 Journeys

Alan Skidmore's Ubizo - 50 Journeys

2 Oct 2008

JAZZ Another foray into the fusion of Coltrane-influenced jazz with a vibrant African vibe that saxophonist Alan Skidmore has previously explored with Ubizo, but with a stronger slant toward the world music pole than on their two earlier discs. The…

Also Published - 5 Humour Books

2 Oct 2008

Benrik Ltd - A Book for People Who Want to Become Stinking Rich But Aren’t Quite Sure How The folk who annually bring us This Diary Will Change Your Life offer tips on overhauling airport security and getting really close to the mega-famous. Boxtree…

Also Released - Film

Also Released - Film

2 Oct 2008

Drona (12A) 125min ••• Indiana Jones-style Bollywood adventure based on a mythological Indian text about one man’s journey through a mystical cosmos. Some good special effects, great locations and a compelling central performance from Abishek Bachchan…

Ben Folds - Way To Normal

Ben Folds - Way To Normal

2 Oct 2008

INDIE Divorce is a bitch. But instead of languishing in his underpants, all beardy and beer-soaked following a much publicised split from his wife, Ben Folds jumped straight back into the studio and has come up with these 12 energy-packed tracks for…

CHEETA - Me Cheeta: The Autobiography

CHEETA - Me Cheeta: The Autobiography

2 Oct 2008

SHOWBIZ SATIRE At first glance it might sound as daft as a bag of monkey nuts. But this ‘autobiography’ of the septuagenarian chimpanzee who became world famous as the companion of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan is actually a brilliantly conceived and…

Curt Sibling - Total Fear: Collection 2

Curt Sibling - Total Fear: Collection 2

2 Oct 2008

CARTOON SATIRE It’s obvious right away that pseudonymous Scots comic creator Curt Sibling is taking the mickey, but the way in which he does it really has to be spot-on in its execution to succeed. This self-published, black and white anthology takes…

David Sanborn - Here & Gone

David Sanborn - Here & Gone

2 Oct 2008

JAZZ Saxophonist David Sanborn takes on the staple blues and R&B repertoire in a disc that many will doubtless see as just another commercial gambit from a very successful musician. The stacking up of guest artists – Derek Trucks on ‘Brother Ray’…

Desalvo - Mood Poisoner

Desalvo - Mood Poisoner

2 Oct 2008

ROCK The fringes of rock music are littered with bad intentions. Bands of grunts that wish to thrill us, disorient us, frighten us and make us feel mildly queasy. Glasgow’s own Desalvo achieve all of this in one long-coming, fast burning debut album…

Doug Hoekstra - Blooming Roses

Doug Hoekstra - Blooming Roses

2 Oct 2008

ALT-FOLK COUNTRY Now several solo albums and 14 years into his career (not counting his pre-solo time with Chicago outfit Bucket No.6), Nashville-based Hoekstra returns with another set of whispering, easy-on-the-ear songs. While Dylan, Cohen and…

Fleeto

Fleeto

2 Oct 2008

NEW PLAY No doubt it’s Fleeto’s origins as a piece of lunchtime theatre in A Play, a Pie and a Pint that mean this revival by Glasgow’s V.amp is stripped back and elemental. The set amounts to nothing more than a table and a couple of chairs – and…

Fly Me To The Moon

Fly Me To The Moon

2 Oct 2008

ANIMATION A 3D film describing man’s first trip to the moon is a lively sounding prospect, and moments in Ben Stassen’s animation offer a genuine wow-factor, depicting a space-rocket blasting into the atmosphere, or the view from above the…

Garth Ennis & Gary Erskine - Dan Dare

Garth Ennis & Gary Erskine - Dan Dare

2 Oct 2008

SCI-FI ADVENTURE Following cold on the heels of Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ controversial, and some might say ugly, early 90s update of Britain’s noblest comics hero, this seven-part revival from Richard Branson’s comics line, now repackaged in…

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

2 Oct 2008

COMEDY Toby Young’s semi-scandalous memoir about the period the gobby English journo spent carousing with the rich and famous, while working at Vanity Fair magazine in New York is given a mainstream movie makeover with this enjoyable enough romantic…

Iglu & Hartly

Iglu & Hartly

2 Oct 2008

ROCK ‘Glasgow make some fucking NOISE! We’re Iglu & Hartly and we’re here to party!’ If you’d ever wondered what would happen if a chiselled boy band took a brace of hook-laden pop songs to the wrong side of the tracks, then this was your answer.

Import Export

Import Export

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA The great Werner Herzog would surely approve of the way the Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl (Dog Days) dissolves the traditional boundaries between the ‘real’ and the fictional in his films. With Import Export he works without a traditional…

Jacques Chessex - The Vampire of Ropraz

Jacques Chessex - The Vampire of Ropraz

2 Oct 2008

CRIME NOVELLA Taking a true story, apparently, Swiss author Jacques Chessex has crafted a disconcerting novella of horrific sexual crime that alternately seduces and appals. Set against a bleak 1903 backdrop of rural belief in black magic, the Jura…

Kings of Leon - Only By The Night

Kings of Leon - Only By The Night

2 Oct 2008

ROCK Darwin’s theory of convergent evolution states that disparate, unrelated organisms evolve similar traits when adapting to similar environments, and it’s clearly in evidence amongst stadium rock bands. Using the blustery, overblown U2 blueprint…

Kjell Bjorgeengen/Paul Sharits

Kjell Bjorgeengen/Paul Sharits

2 Oct 2008

SOUND INSTALLATION Do not adjust your sets. The 15 TV monitors arranged every which way in ‘Figment Light’, Norwegian auteur Kjell Bjorgeengen’s series of flicker-based sound and light installations, developed primarily at New York’s Experimental…

Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross - Marvels

Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross - Marvels

2 Oct 2008

SUPERHERO Comics are often repackaged and reprinted, sometimes seemingly ad infinitum, but when it’s as gorgeous a package as 1994’s Marvels it’s hard to argue with another opportunity for new readers to discover such a wonderfully rounded work of…

Mirrors

Mirrors

2 Oct 2008

HORROR Korea has recently surpassed Japan as the go-to guys for rubbish horror-movie ideas, with this remake of 2003’s Into the Mirror a good example of an already hokey plot getting seriously lost in translation. Alexandre Aja’s disposable shocker…

Mungo's Hifi - Sound System Champions

Mungo's Hifi - Sound System Champions

2 Oct 2008

REGGAE ETC Sound system culture is surprisingly at home in a dreich Scotland and one has come of age here throughout the course of the last decade. Here Mungo’s self-congratulatory debut long-player champions the collective as no less proactive in…

Nate Powell - Swallow Me Whole

Nate Powell - Swallow Me Whole

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Although Nate Powell’s graphic novel about the growing pains of a pair of step-siblings living in small town America is in the magic realist mould, the fantastic elements here are definitely – and in no way contrarily – of the mundane variety.

Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul

Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul

2 Oct 2008

ROCK Liking a new Oasis album nowadays has less to do with the actual songs and more to do with how you feel about them. They, like their fellow indie spods turned megastars Coldplay and Razorlight, provoke wrath and rapture in equal measure in our…

Offshore

Offshore

2 Oct 2008

NEW PLAY It’s easy to imagine that the countryside exists without money. With all that fresh air, isn’t cash just a distraction? Of course, just as the wilderness is actually the result of centuries of industrial exploitation, so the rural population…

Popup - A Time and a Place

Popup - A Time and a Place

2 Oct 2008

INDIE If it has felt like a long time coming for Popup’s debut long player to land in our arms then maybe it’s because we’ve been aware of them being damn good from very early on. Furious early demos, bursting with barely contained energy, recorded…

Stephen Fry in America

Remote Control

2 Oct 2008

With the USA on the brink of its most epoch-making presidential election since the one four years ago, chances are that Afghan cable networks and Iraqi terrestrial channels will be doing their utmost to ignore the ensuing bunfight between Barack and…

Singles & Downloads

Singles & Downloads

2 Oct 2008

Nothing draws a groan of predictably quite like finding a new Oasis shortplayer on top of the singles pile, so we’ll keep this brief. ‘Shock of the Lightning’ (Big Brother) •• is another bit of drony fluff Noel Gallagher probably found down the back of…

The Dykeenies

The Dykeenies

2 Oct 2008

LIVE INDIE ROCK WEBCAST This live webcast with The Dykeenies is a promo for the Red Bull Bedroom Jam website, which invites up and coming bands to post footage of gigs in their own bedrooms online. Except, erm, we’re not in a bedroom, but rather…

The Fire and I

The Fire and I

2 Oct 2008

POWER DUO Congratulations to Bathgate duo The Fire and I, who have managed to strip the whole concept of the rock ‘n’ roll band back down to its most basic elements. Essentially a four-legged rhythm section, they combine the drumming of Hooligan (we…

The Starlets

The Starlets

2 Oct 2008

INDIE They might be clad in jeans and speak (if not sing) with pronounced Glasgow accents, but The Starlets are the model of sophistication, from their choice of covers – a Go-Betweens song ‘to warm up’ – to their impeccable arrangements.

Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation

Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation

2 Oct 2008

WORLD LOUNGE Leaders of the horizontal protest Thievery Corporation remain resolutely political in their approach and there is really no mistaking who programmed this set of sophisticate dub lounge. The breadth of styles treated to their signature…

Times and Winds (Bes Vakit)

Times and Winds (Bes Vakit)

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA It’s taken a couple of years for Times and Winds, the fourth feature of Turkish writer-director Reha Erdem, to find a British distributor, but it’s been worth the wait: this magnificent work provides a striking vision of childhood in a…

Travis - Ode To J Smith

Travis - Ode To J Smith

2 Oct 2008

INDIE This, Travis’ fifth studio album, is both their finest since 1999’s The Man Who and just, y’know, alright. The fact is, after making a glistening splash with Good Feeling and then predictably repeating the winning formula hit on with The Man…

TV on the Radio - Dear Science

TV on the Radio - Dear Science

2 Oct 2008

POP Since they first sneaked into view five years ago, throwing down doo-wop takes on Pixies tunes and post-MBV space funk, TV on the Radio have been, to say the least, awkward customers, their sonic tricksiness often being a barrier to the enjoyment…

Unrelated

Unrelated

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA British TV director Joanna Hogg’s debut feature, shot during a hot summer in the Tuscan hills, has none of the trappings of Merchants Ivory’s A Room with a View, that other British heritage film made in the same location. Forty-something…

What Just Happened?

What Just Happened?

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Tales about the mechanics of the movie industry and the bloated egos that work within it are the stuff of fantasy to filmmakers. Robert Altman’s The Player is pretty much the definitive account of Hollywood, although that hasn’t stopped films…

Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

18 Sep 2008

GOTHIC TALE With so many books on all our to-read lists, brevity is a virtue. The Gargoyle flouts this with great success. Framed by the sceptical voice of a severely burned car crash victim, events swing from medieval times to the present, from…

Art Spiegelman - Breakdowns

Art Spiegelman - Breakdowns

18 Sep 2008

BIOGRAPHY Subtitled ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@*!’, this was the first collected book of comic art which the Jewish-American Spiegelman had published. Created between 1972 and 1977, the volume is reissued with an illustrated 20-page…

Harry Hill - Tim the Tiny Horse at Large

Harry Hill - Tim the Tiny Horse at Large

18 Sep 2008

KIDS STORY You can virtually smell Harry Hill at his keyboard, big collar tickling his neck, tongue flicking in and out (‘hmm, hmm, yeah, hmm?’), eyes blinking maniacally as the ideas bristle through his cranium. There is a chance, of course, that he…

Ian Rankin - Doors Open

Ian Rankin - Doors Open

18 Sep 2008

CRIME NOVEL After 18 novels, John Rebus retired in his last outing, Exit Music. Whether the detective inspector will return is unclear, but in the meantime Ian Rankin is having some fun spreading his authorial wings. This heist story was first…

Velcro Quartet

Velcro Quartet

18 Sep 2008

GLAM POP Many fine young Scots bands are already lined-up to play The Mill, Miller beer’s new branding doohickey come weekly live gig in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and The List can report it’s actually a pretty good night out. The bands are well-chosen…

Autumn Music Preview 08 - Mogwai

Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling

18 Sep 2008

ROCK The line between familiarity and contempt is drawn thinner than ever currently, but Mogwai, six albums and 12 years in, seem in no danger of wearing out their welcome. Given how limiting the initial wordless loud-quiet-loud grind on which…

Mother Courage And Her Children

Mother Courage And Her Children

18 Sep 2008

CLASSIC It’s an austere landscape through which Ann Louise Ross drags her cart, scratching a living in the title role of Bertolt Brecht’s epic. Naomi Wilkinson’s set is a wall of grim metal panels, the stage a carpet of grey. Even the iconic cart is…

Kate Davis: Outsider

Kate Davis: Outsider

18 Sep 2008

DRAWING AND SCULPTURE As a reaction against her own previous work in this space – 2004’s Participant, which invited the audience to place themselves within the art – Kate Davis’ latest is a complete volte face. Outsider’s intention is to isolate the…

Adrian Tomine - Sleepwalk and Other Stories

Adrian Tomine - Sleepwalk and Other Stories

18 Sep 2008

COLLECTION There is a lightness of touch and simplicity that is both brave and endearing in the work of Adrian Tomine. He created Optic Nerve, an outlet for his stories and art from his university dorm in the mid 90s and was picked up by underground…

Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun

Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun

18 Sep 2008

POP There’s no disputing Brian Wilson’s genius – Beach Boy’s classic Pet Sounds is proof alone – and it’s wonderful to have him back from his self-imposed exile; performing live (particularly his joyous set at T in the Park in 2007) and releasing…

Charles Lloyd - Dream Weaver - The Atlantic Years 1966-69

Charles Lloyd - Dream Weaver - The Atlantic Years 1966-69

18 Sep 2008

JAZZ Saxophonist Charles Lloyd is now a respected elder statesman in jazz circles, but in the late 60s his group with pianist Keith Jarrett and drummer Jack DeJohnette was making inroads into the rock audience with appearances at venues like the…

Death Race

Death Race

18 Sep 2008

After a long gestation as a big budget vehicle for Tom Cruise, Paul W Anderson’s rehash of elements from Roger Corman’s 70s cheapie Death Race 2000 finally rolls into theatres to be met with suitably lowered expectations. It’s hard to cheapen the memory…

Euchrid Eucrow

Euchrid Eucrow

18 Sep 2008

ALT.FOLK Two young women in full-length angel-white Victorian frocks flank a bearded young man in a tank top sitting on a stool. As he clutches his acoustic guitar for dear life, the dark-haired woman on his right puts her bow to her viola while the…

Half Moon

Half Moon

18 Sep 2008

DRAMA (PG) 107min (ICA DVD retail) *** Mamo (Ishmail Ghaffari), a brusque Kurdish musician living in Iran has spent months trying to arrange a permit for one final concert in Kurdish Iraq. When this is resolved, his problems really start. He…

Heartbreak - Lies

Heartbreak - Lies

18 Sep 2008

ITALO DISCO Heartbreak, where have you been all my life? It seems only fair to point out – before excessive scenester fawning turns the increasingly resurgent Italo disco sound into a mutated make-believe genre of new rave proportions – that this…

Humble Boy

Humble Boy

18 Sep 2008

REVIVAL Following its 32-week sell-out nationwide tour of Abigail’s Party, London Classic Theatre returns to Musselburgh with Charlotte Jones’ award-winning Humble Boy. Artistic director Michael Cabot has mixed memories of his last visit to Scotland…

I've Loved You So Long (Il Y a Longtemps Que Je T'aime)

I've Loved You So Long (Il Y a Longtemps Que Je T'aime)

18 Sep 2008

DRAMA (12A) 117min Novelist and screenwriter Philippe Claudel makes his directorial debut with this patient and sensitively shot family drama. Plainly-dressed, middle-aged Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) comes to stay in Nancy in north east…

Inner Space Music - Five Animal Dances

Inner Space Music - Five Animal Dances

18 Sep 2008

JAZZ The name most likely to catch the eye on this release is probably drummer Seb Rochford, although the disc was actually recorded back in 2004, and Tim Giles seems to have taken his place in the band’s more recent live dates. Nonetheless, he makes…

James Buchan - The Gate of Air

James Buchan - The Gate of Air

18 Sep 2008

GHOST STORY James Buchan’s most recent main protagonist isn’t the most likeable of chaps. Jim Smith – an emotionally closed, ex-London business entrepreneur with a love of complete solitude – moves to the Brackshire countryside, taking early…

Jar City

Jar City

18 Sep 2008

THRILLER (15) 94min ‘Another typical Icelandic murder - messy and pointless’, sighs Inspector Erlendur (Ingvar E Sigurdsson) following the killing of an elderly Reykjavik low-life towards the beginning of Jar City, a starkly atmospheric detective…

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

18 Sep 2008

POP Lewis is a sultry indie poster girl with Rilo Kiley and delivered a beautifully moving country record, backed by The Watson Twins, two years ago. This second solo album lacks the focus of those projects, but it’s still a cut above the average…

Keith Ingham: Urban Echoes

18 Sep 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY As the title implies, Urban Echoes focuses on representations of the city environment. An experienced photographer, Keith Ingham has explored this well-worn theme through images taken both locally and internationally, using the…

LGBT DVD Round-Up

18 Sep 2008

International interest in the sciences may have been piqued by the recent, less-exciting-than-it sounds Big Bang experiment but let’s face it – the most important question is: ‘If time and space are curved, where do all of the straight people come…

Linha De Passe

Linha De Passe

18 Sep 2008

DRAMA (15) 113min The title, Linha de Passe, refers to a Brazilian game where the players attempt to pass a football to one another without it touching the ground. Yet the phrase also echoes the dramatic structure of this São Paulo-set film…

Lords of Bastard - Lords of Bastard

Lords of Bastard - Lords of Bastard

18 Sep 2008

ROCK Some people just know how to say the right things and this trio of Edinburgh bams got two stars for the top name and the sticker on the CD case alone declaring ‘ … if you like albums, then this might be for you …’ Maybe ‘if you like The Melvins…

Macbeth

Macbeth

18 Sep 2008

CLASSIC On the surface, Lucy Pitman-Wallace’s Macbeth is set up brilliantly. Set in medieval Scotland – as opposed to modern gun-slinging versions – we see a wild, desolate land; large wooden beams rising into the air, creating a fortress around…

Manda Rin - My DNA

Manda Rin - My DNA

18 Sep 2008

ELECTRO POP After 14 years in bands like Data Panik, The Kitchen and most famously Bis, this is the first time Amanda McKinnon has stepped away from the collaborations and released under her own (stage) name – although listening to the album, it…

Marilynne Robinson - Home

Marilynne Robinson - Home

18 Sep 2008

FAMILY DRAMA With its groaningly slow pace and scriptural debate-heavy prose, labouring through Marilynne Robinson’s thick-set third novel – a companion piece of sorts to 2005’s Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead – is an experience recommended only to the…

Mat Johnson & Warren Pleece - Incognegro

Mat Johnson & Warren Pleece - Incognegro

18 Sep 2008

DRAMA Comics of course can tackle any subject matter – it’s a medium not a genre after all (despite the predominance of superhero titles), and Vertigo at DC has been pushing leftfield stories into the mainstream since its inception in 1993. Set…

Mercury Rev - Snowflake Midnight

Mercury Rev - Snowflake Midnight

18 Sep 2008

ROCK The Rev are like an indie version of Madonna, constantly reinventing themselves and their sound with each album, and this seventh studio outing is another successful reincarnation for these dreamy loons. Their early drone-rock weirdness and even…

Merlin

Merlin

18 Sep 2008

DRAMA It would perhaps be unfair to describe this new BBC1 post-teatime ‘is it ok to let the kids watch?’ show as ‘Robin Hood meets Doctor Who’, but you can see what the schedulers were going for when they plopped this fresh take on the Arthurian…

Metallica - Death Magnetic

Metallica - Death Magnetic

18 Sep 2008

METAL That Metallica have become metal’s answer to the Rolling Stones – an endlessly touring megalith who’s albums have be come increasingly irrelevant as their live shows have become greater spectacles – should not negate getting the most out of…

Profile: Baltasar Kormakur

18 Sep 2008

Name : Baltasar Kormakur Born : 27 February 1966 Background : A graduate of Iceland’s National Academy of Fine Arts, Kormakur worked as both an actor and theatre director, before making his debut feature in 2000 with the slacker comedy 101…

Redbelt

Redbelt

18 Sep 2008

ACTION/DRAMA (15) 99min David Mamet – master of the con trick and rapid fire verbal jousting, writer of award-winning plays and respected political commentator – pulls a rabbit out of the hat by making a martial arts movie with a moral code and a…

Remote Control

Remote Control

18 Sep 2008

Older viewers may recall Christina Applegate as the slightly slutty teenage airhead from annoying 80s US sitcom Married with Children. And should you have not seen the cinematic likes of Anchorman or Employee of the Month in the intervening years, you…

Righteous Kill

Righteous Kill

18 Sep 2008

MURDER/MYSTERY (15) 100min When Robert De Niro and Al Pacino had one scene together in Michael Mann’s Heat, the sense of anticipation of these two legendary New York actors sparking off each other (rather than just being in the same film a la The…

Salo

Salo

18 Sep 2008

DVD (18) 112min (BFI DVD retail) Pier Paolo Pasolini’s loose 1975 adaptation of the Marquis De Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom gets an excellent two disc DVD (and Blu-ray) makeover with a ton of fantastic extras. Pasolini transposed De Sade’s tale…

Singles & Downloads - Local Special

Singles & Downloads - Local Special

18 Sep 2008

Locally-sourced produce is all the rage these days, so let’s have a cheeky wee Scottish round-up this issue, eh? Quality meat to kick off in the form of Frightened Rabbit , whose ‘I Feel Better’/’The Twist’ (Fat Cat) •••• is excellently jittery…

Still Life

Still Life

18 Sep 2008

DRAMA (15) 109min (BFI DVD retail) Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke (Platform, Unknown Pleasures) hails from the tradition of Asian long-take, observational masters that include Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, but Zhang-ke’s work often has a…

Swing Vote

Swing Vote

18 Sep 2008

What if the fate of the US presidential election came down to the vote of one man? This is the premise rolled out in this pleasing comedy directed by Joshua Michael Stern. Bud (Kevin Costner) is a trailer-trash father being looked after by his 12…

Taken

Taken

18 Sep 2008

THRILLER/ACTION (15) 93min *** When it comes to his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), retired US secret agent operative Bryan (Liam Neeson) is feeling pretty redundant. Her new stepfather (Xander Berkeley) is wealthy enough to give her everything she…

The Chaser (Chugyeogja)

The Chaser (Chugyeogja)

18 Sep 2008

THRILLER (18) 124min ** South Korean director and screenwriter Na Hong-jin’s festival award winning debut is this year’s largest grossing domestic film in its homeland and, unsurprisingly, Leonardo DiCaprio has snapped up the remake rights.

The Duplets - Tree of Strings

The Duplets - Tree of Strings

18 Sep 2008

FOLK The harp is enjoying something of a resurgence at the moment, with new young players like Ailie Robertson, Rachel Hair and The Duplets pairing of Freya Thomsen and Gillian Fleetwood all focusing on the oldest of the Scottish folk instruments.

The Fnords

The Fnords

18 Sep 2008

GARAGE ROCK Anyone familiar with Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s doorstep epic of conspiratorial speculative fiction The Illuminatus! Trilogy will know where the Fnords name comes from, and might well expect big things from a band who use it.

The Fist Foot Way

The Foot Fist Way

18 Sep 2008

Getting a cinema release through the endorsement of Will Ferrell and his Anchorman/Tallegeda Nights director Adam McKay, The Foot Fist Way is a low-budget mockumentary about a small-time martial arts training school. Made in 2006, the central role of…

The Liar

The Liar

18 Sep 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 88min (Bluebell DVD retail) *** Written by and starring Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki and directed by his brother Mika, The Liar is an early 1980s monochrome mood piece with the nouvelle vague echoing in the distance. One critic…

The Sick House

The Sick House

18 Sep 2008

HORROR (18) 104min (Showbox DVD retail) Young archaeologist (Gina Philips) finds her research into London’s great plague of 1665 barred when public health officials reveal that the former orphanage she is excavating still contains plague.

The Wave (Die Welle)

The Wave (Die Welle)

18 Sep 2008

THRILLER/DRAMA (15) 107min A slickly produced examination of how fascism can enter everyday life, The Wave is a peer pressure teen drama where much of the heat comes from above, noticeably Jürgen Vogel’s high school teacher who wonders what will…

Then She Found Me

Then She Found Me

18 Sep 2008

Adopted, broody April (Helen Hunt) is rocked when her husband leaves her and her adopted mother dies, but everything changes again when her birth mother (Bette Midler) jostles her way into her life. The theme of actress Hunt’s directorial debut is…

Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder

18 Sep 2008

When location filming on the Vietnam war movie goes awry, three big name Hollywood actors become embroiled with a heroin cartel run by a tyrannical 12-year-old (Brandon Soo Hoo) and are forced to become the soldiers they are portraying. Excess is what…

Twin Atlantic and The Xcerts

Twin Atlantic and The Xcerts

18 Sep 2008

ROCK Both bands here follow in the wake of Biffy Clyro, and evoke moments of their early racket-making with considerable style. While The Xcerts (who are from Aberdeen and Exeter, collectively) are the poppier proposition of the pair, and have been…

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