Sorted by date / most viewed. Showing 10, 25, 50, 100 per page.
27 Nov 2008
COMEDY The phrase ‘all-female sketch show’ shouldn’t necessarily send a shiver down the spine, but it just does. And before anyone says Smack the Pony I’ll trump you with Tittybangbang. But maybe things are changing. After a good Fringe for female…
17 Jan 2008
ROMANCE (12A) 95min According to legend, Lady Godiva was the wife of an 11th century nobleman, who rode naked through the streets of Coventry in a successful act of protest against her husband’s taxation of his subjects. Here, in her debut…
6 Sep 2007
There’s nothing particularly new about updating Shakespeare’s medieval Scottish tragedy to a modern criminal underworld setting - see the 1956 American mob movie Joe Macbeth - but Australian filmmaker Geoffrey Wright nevertheless makes a decent stab at…
9 Aug 2007
Doubtless huge progress has been made regarding gay rights in recent decades but there are still reports of gay people being persecuted across the world.
13 Nov 2008
DRAMA Having coped admirably with the distasteful task of bringing the early political career of Margaret Thatcher to fruition during The Long Walk to Finchley, Andrea Riseborough steps into the shoes of another headstrong historical female. Born…
3 Jul 2008
SUPERHERO/COMEDY (12A) 91min The writers and director of Hancock take a hyper-powered leaf out of the Mystery Men and Return of Captain Invincible school of heroism with Hancock. Will Smith plays a nihilistic superhero who has fallen out of favour…
3 Jan 2007
ACTION/ADVENTURE Welcome to the jungle. A place where pierced savages josh and jest as they rip the flesh of a freshly speared boar. Life is simple, life is good, but trouble is hiding in the undergrowth and young family man Jaguar Paw (Rudy…
23 Aug 2007
There’s a very fine line between a send-up of a ropey cultural item and something that’s just plain ropey. Almost from its shrill opening bars it becomes crystal clear that Debbie Does Dallas – The Musical has crossed the line. The fundamental…
Michael McIntyre has the look of someone your mother would like. Unashamedly middle class in his dress, mannerisms and speech, it’s easy to see why he is being heralded as the latest thing in ‘posh comedy’. In terms of demeanour and delivery, McIntyre…
29 Nov 2007
IDIOSYNCRATIC SCI-FI I Killed Adolf Hitler (Fantagraphics) Having re-imagined heavyweight modernist writing icons Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound as criminals involved in a heist in The Left Bank Gang, and plundered George Romeo’s zombie…
27 Nov 2006
UNCLASSIFIABLE When the BBC were planning their resurrection of Jackanory, Tom Waits may well have been on the longlist of proposed readers. But maybe they got wind of his disturbing night-time terror ‘Children’s Story’ and revoked the invite. Like…
COMEDY/ANIMATION (PG) 91min In the words of Carl Douglas’ 1974 disco hit: ‘Everybody is kung fu fighting.’ Everybody, that is, apart from overweight panda Po (voiced by Jack Black). He dreams about joining his heroes, the Fierce Five, in butt-kicking…
19 Jun 2008
DRAMA (15) 99min Despite a fairly miserable showing at the box office 2006’s Kidulthood has spawned a sequel. Like its predecessor Adulthood’s London-centric depiction of inner-city struggles won’t speak as immediately to a Scottish audience but it’s…
4 Oct 2007
Although rock’s snootiest critics might have it that The Stereophonics are one of the most blasphemous and superannuated crimes ever inflicted on music, it’s hard to underestimate the value of giving a fanbase what they want. Certainly, the band’s…
16 Oct 2008
DOCUMENTARY A loving mother is driving her daughter into town for a special 21st birthday treat. In between a massage and hairdresser appointment, Hannah asks her mum to make a quick stop. But she’s not popping to the shops for a chocolate bar or a…
30 Oct 2008
Following recent criticism about the lack of native history being taught in Scottish schools and widespread whinging about BBC Scotland spending increasingly less cash on home-grown fare, the corporation has risen to both challenges with this ambitious…
14 Aug 2008
Get set to cross your legs and grit your teeth as Lisa Rogers fronts a very different kind of scrapheap challenge as part of Channel 4’s The G-Spot strand. We’ve all read the headlines and overheard the news that women are literally queuing up round the…
22 May 2008
ROCK King Tut’s, Glasgow, Thu 15 May In case you missed the memo, pop punk is cool again, and judging by those on this Give It a Name festival spin off tour, beards are too. But the trouble with all four bands being rotating headliners is that…
21 Aug 2008
COMEDY ‘Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream’ is the George W Bush quotation which opens new Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers. Such crude expression sets the tone for a sporadically funny but generally gross comedy in…
5 Jun 2008
PAINTING, SCULPTURE Inverleith House, Edinburgh, until Sun 6 Jul It’s a weekday lunchtime in spring and the Royal Botanic Garden is teeming with new life. Mothers push buggies, primary school children dig into the earth and the plants are a riot of…
26 Apr 2007
The weight of expectation hasn’t affected the Arctic Monkeys one iota. They’ve hardly broken their stride and have tossed off a second album of casual brilliance. It almost feels unfair how off the cuff Favourite Worst Nightmare feels; the lyrics are as…
ROMANCE/COMEDY (12A) 98min ‘What is this, Hogwarts?’ exclaims bratty Californian kid Poppy (Emma Roberts, niece of Julia) on her arrival at a genteel girls boarding school in England, ruled over by tough-but-fair headmistress (Natasha Richardson).
18 Oct 2007
ELECTRO Overpowered (EMI) A love or hatred of Roisin Murphy’s former band aside, there’s no arguing with the fact that this ex-Moloko vocalist currently makes some of the most sophisticated electro pop around. Boasting catchy melodies, demonic…
16 Aug 2007
Back in the heady days of 2004, Sarah Kendall became the first woman to receive a Perrier nomination in nine years, and deservedly so. Having taken time out to trot the globe, she returned last year with a show that was worryingly patchy and left some…
COMEDY (12A) 112min Anyone who tries to understand Middle Eastern politics based on the contents of an Adam Sandler comedy deserves all they get. Despite his good intentions he bites off more than he can possibly chew in this, his new comic opus. For…
20 Sep 2007
FOLK In Our Nature (Peacefrog) For most people, Swedish-Argentine troubadour Gonzalez will always be known for his song ‘Heartbeats’ soundtracking that Sony Bravia ad with the bouncy balls in San Francisco, and that’s his main problem. What makes…
24 Apr 2008
ROMANCE/COMEDY (15) 110min The Judd Apatow movie production line shows no signs of abating as Forgetting Sarah Marshall follows the template of Knocked Up to deliver some laughs, banal moralising and side characters that outshine the lead. Writer and…
MUSICAL Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 27 Oct There’s no flying car, singing animals or pyrotechnics, yet Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, which explores class, poverty and unemployment, remains one of our longest running musicals. Just…
7 Aug 2008
Based on ‘The Undefeated’, one of three stories from Irvine Welsh’s 1996 novel Ecstasy, this piece centres around Lloyd (Jack McGowan), an ageing clubber who wants more out of life than living for the weekend. In the meantime, though, he’s content to…
Coming out in a wheelchair and disarming everybody with her offbeat chatter, Abigail Burdess shows it’s no big thing to break your foot if you’re a comedian. She warms up the audience with her quirky, wide-eyed observations and quotes from her…
1 Aug 2007
Chilean Raul Ruiz is one of the most remarkable avant-garde filmmakers working today. Having exited Chile after the Allende assassination he found a home in Paris and made a series of films that played with narrative structure and form in a manner…
Now this is how to work a crowd. ‘You’ve got the wrong band, mate’, says Nick Cave, as someone up the front makes a call for something not actually performed by he and his Bad Seeds (it must have been a Grinderman or Birthday Party track, we’re…
31 Jul 2008
ANIMATION/COMEDY (U) 80min Crowded out in the summer schedules by WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda, Space Chimps is the latest effort from Vanguard Animations destined to suffer the also-ran status of Valiant and Happily N’Ever After. On the whim of a…
17 Jul 2008
ANIMATION (U) 103min Can Pixar do no wrong? On the evidence of the CG animation studio’s ninth feature film, the answer is a resounding no. Once again Pixar pushes the envelope in the field it’s been trailblazing since the early 1980s, delivering…
10 Apr 2008
INDIE/RAVE/GRIME/PUNK/ELECTRO (Atlantic) The so-called new rave scene has been responsible for spewing out a load of old meaningless tosh since it was coined by desperate music journalists two years ago, but its latest wrong comes in the form of the…
Macbeth, like most of Will’s plays, has suffered from many strange interpretations, including a film that transposes the action to a 90s rave and an American theatre version that quite literally strips the characters bare. These wacky interpretations…
COMEDY/ANIMATION When Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) escaped from their Manhattan zoo in 2005 hit Madagascar, they were leaders of…
CRIME NOVEL In the opening scene of this high-octane crime debut, a victim is eviscerated on a boat while still alive, his steaming innards and gutted body tossed overboard. Welcome to the flipside of African crime fiction where instead of Precious…
Evelyn wishes to be ‘rescued from the boredom of her life’ and it’s in Emil, the beneficiary of a rich Ceylon family, that she finds her non-white knight in shining armour. What seems like an exotic fairy tale in 40s Ceylon, however, is an altogether…
PHOTOGRAPHY Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Sun 16 Nov Working class artist, photographer, Marxist, feminist, teacher and publisher Jo Spence was an extraordinary talent. Issue-based but always accessible, her work can be seen as the progenitor…
4 Jan 2008
PAINTING Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until Sun 13 Jan The peculiar psychology which leads many notable artists’ works to only truly be appreciated after they have died is hard to explain, with the premature passing of an artist lending an…
Hollywood costume designer Edith Head worked on almost 500 films in her 54-year career. She dressed Mae West, Dorothy Lamour and Barbara Stanwyck in their most iconic outfits. She played with the big boys at Paramount (and later Universal) and her onyx…
Usually at home as a simple back-up slot in the monthly Batman: Gotham Knights, Batman Black & White has taken on a life of its own and has quickly become a jewel in the crown of DC’s myriad caped crusader titles. A creative playground for various…
27 Feb 2007
If the substance of all painting is light, then artist Alison Watt has got a dark sense of humour. Perhaps best known for her luminous oil paintings of shapely white calico fabrics and creamy brocade drapes, Watt has quietly spent two years creating her…
CRIME/DRAMA Clint Eastwood’s feel for actors doesn’t desert him in this true story of 1920’s Los Angeles featuring Angelina Jolie in a similar Oscar-baiting vein to her role as Mariane Pearl in Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart. Jolie…
11 Nov 2008
The most surprising thing about Jack Daniel's isn't that it is distilled in the town of Lynchburg, Tennessee, in a dry state where the law decrees that alcohol can neither be bought nor sold. It isn't that it's the world's biggest selling single brand…
MUSICAL There are several factors that separate Mary Poppins from the average musical, but the main one is there are no weak links. No stars bussed in purely to put bums on seats, dragging down the standard with weak vocals. No second division set…
NARRATIVE BALLET Theatre Royal Glasgow, Wed 4–Sat 7 Jun Big narrative ballets are filled with opulent sets and long drawn-out scenes – right? Not this time. Scottish Ballet has taken a different approach to Shakespeare’s tragic love story. Gone is the…
DOCUMENTARY (15) 96mins After last year’s Control, Anton Corbijn’s considered and stylish dramatisation of Ian Curtis’ life, it would be easy to think that everything you need to know about the legend and legacy of English post-punk outfit Joy…
15 Nov 2007
In 1966 the artist Tom Phillips went on a shopping expedition in Peckham, casually looking for a book to play with and adapt. Chance led him to a copy of WH Mallock’s A Human Document, an obscure and relatively forgotten Victorian novel, which the…
JAZZ It has been too a long a wait for a follow up to pianist Brian Kellock’s award-winning Live At Henry’s set. This album is an excellent launch for a potentially significant new recording project from Cathie Rae’s Thick Skinned Productions, and…
Last year, Michael McIntyre apparently harangued two judges on the if.comedy panel for doing this nation the great disservice of not handing him the award on a plate. Still, he could at least reassure himself of his genius with all those flattering star…
13 Dec 2007
The pitch It’s time for Princess Beauty to put away childish things, say goodbye to her childhood friend Chester the Jester (aaawwww!) and get ready for some right royal action. Carrion the witch and Norval her son (or is he?) have other ideas, however…
13 Mar 2007
PAINTING DRAWING SCULPTURE Trenton Doyle Hancock is a storyteller and mythmaker - a highbrow comic book artist struggling with a complex psyche and an unruly inner child. His conviction is admirable, developing a narrative based on characters that…
SOCIAL DRAMA Copper-turned-crime writer Charlie Owen’s third novel is another retro-fitted 1970s police procedural set in a grim Manchester overspill named Handstead aka Horse’s Arse. Picking up the year after the previous book, Foxtrot Oscar, this…
There are a few gossipy titbits in showbusiness that are generally read as fact. Madonna and Guy were not quite made for each other. Jordan isn’t the sharpest nailfile in the drawer. And the Jackson family is, well, a bit weird. Wacko you might say.
The Bad Plus continue to push at the boundaries of what might constitute a jazz repertoire – and a jazz style of playing it – in the 21st century. This time round the tunes include Nirvana’s ‘Lithium’, an electrifying version of Pink Floyd’s…
8 May 2008
DRAMA (15) 114min Despite suffering a cerebral haemorrhage in 2004, the French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has returned with her most entertaining and accessible work to date. Based on the 19th century novel by the controversial writer Jules-Amédée…
MUSICAL SECC, Glasgow, until Sat 27 Apr Truly global phenomena are becoming something of a cliché: there’s a McDonald’s on every street corner, a Nestlé product in every home, and a production of Mamma Mia! running in every country in the world…
ROCK (EMI) Released to loosely accompany the Icelandic outfit’s superb recent film, Heima, this two-CD album is a revelation. The Hvarf half contains outtakes and rarities from 12 years of full-band studio sessions and is full of the sumptuous epic…
HORROR (15) 103mins (Tartan Asia Extreme) Based loosely on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, and the Powell and Pressburger film of the same name, this Korean psychological horror flick’s biggest inspiration is perhaps the likes of The…
(4DVD) 196min Almost five years ago to the week that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were threatened with being burnt at the stake, another witch-hunt was conducted for another man merely seeking to thrill us. In October 2003, Derren Brown asked a…
While it may have been slightly dispiriting for Lucy Porter to hop out on stage to a less than packed auditorium, there's little in her jovial demeanour to suggest crushed hopes. To spend an hour in Porter's company is akin to having a litre of Jelly…
Moving and darkly comic one-(wo)man show. Jonny Woo, drag queen darling of the London alt.queer scene appears onstage beneath sequined butterfly make-up and various costumes. He knows that the act of wearing a mask is designed to reveal rather than…
DRAMA (15) 110min Dylan Thomas, he of the milk wood, once remarked that: ‘When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.’ The Edge of Love is the story of how the great Welsh poet burnt a very big bridge, one that connected him to an…
MUSICAL Playhouse, Edinburgh, until Sat 19 Jan Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s enduring piece of theatrical bubblegum may have started life as a modest school production, but the atmosphere in the packed Playhouse auditorium is as feverish as a…
COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 107min Brenda Blethyn is on Little Voice form in this touching, bittersweet Australian comedy. She plays Jean, an ageing stand-up comedienne whose best days are behind her. She’s also a control freak who refuses to accept that her…
To do justice to Hamlet is no easy task, but to render the Danish play as a one man performance is almost laughable in its ambition. There is, of course, the obvious novelty value to witnessing Hamlet being performed by one man. But Hamlet Solo is far…
PAINTING The literature accompanying this show sets the bar high: ‘One of the greatest and most influential European artists of the last 50 years’. Whoever chose those words wasn’t wrong. This first retrospective in the UK for 20 years of Gerhard…
(15) 128min As with 2001’s Black Hawk Down, South Shields’ most famous filmmaker Ridley Scott again attempts to pull a callous zeitgeist from international news headlines, with unconvincing results. CIA operative Roger Ferris (Leonardo Di Caprio…
The long overdue DVD release of Franco Rosso’s seminal 1980 tale of working class black youths and their music in South London really is something to celebrate. A kind of reggae counterpart to Quadrophenia, Rosso’s naturalistic film details the…
4 Sep 2008
Emiliana Torrini Me and Armini (Rough Trade) Torrini is frustrating. The Icelandic chanteuse is gifted both in terms of her gorgeous natural voice and her perceptive pop songwriting (she co-wrote ‘Slow’ for Kylie, for example). But she also likes…
The title of this show, Domestic Godley, doesn’t refer to the cooking, cleaning, dinner parties ‘domestic goddess’ stereotype. Janey Godley’s candid stand-up is specific to her east end of Glasgow upbringing and subsequently eventful life. With a…
This dodgy production of New Zealand playwright Greg McGee's landmark 1980 play is played out in the locker room of a local rugby club changing room. A couple of really appalling performances and some less than inspired direction derail things. Still at…
COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 104min The best things in life are free, but all seasoned Riviera gold digger Irène (Audrey Tautou) wants is her own credit card from an ageing sugar daddy. Meanwhile, luckless, impoverished bar tender and dog walker Jean (Gad…
DRAMA/ROMANCE (15) 102min In the words of Faithless’ Maxi Jazz, art student and late night supermarket shift worker Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) ‘can’t get no sleep’. Ever since he split up with his girlfriend Suzy (Michelle Ryan) he’s been wandering around…
The Hold, Glasgow, Thu 8 Nov Fife electro duo Motormark have done a Bis, splitting up then reconvening under so many new guises it’s hard to keep track. First they were Fake Fang, with the garage-horror sound such a name permits, and now they’re back…
(U) 110min COMEDY/ANIMATION Writer/director Brad Bird’s animated version of The Iron Giant made him the obvious candidate to follow on from John Lasseter’s innovative groundwork at Pixar, where he scored an immediate hit with The Incredibles. So even…
BLACK COMEDY When Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker came up with Nathan Barley on Channel 4 a couple of years back, many people were perturbed that its main sticking point was in poking fun at a group who seemed no longer ripe for satire. Surely…
FOLK (Greentrax) The Irish band’s second release on Greentrax offers a characteristic mix of lively, infectious tunes and wistful songs, the latter courtesy of another new young singer and fiddle player off the Irish production line, Claire-Anne…
HEIST/THRILLER Sometimes diamonds are not a girl’s best friend. It’s London in 1960 and Laura Quinn (Demi Moore) is beginning to realise that her hard won managerial post for the South African owned London Diamond Company may not be as secure as she…
NEW PLAY Two kids from opposite sides of the tracks. She’s a glamorous socialite, daughter of the owner of a successful chain of Scottish restaurants and a Sikh of Punjabi origin. He’s a suicidal job-seeker who’s never left the country and, although…
STADIUM INDIE For a man so widely reported as having lost his rock’n’roll mojo, Jonny Borrell has either fired into the Prozac or rediscovered ‘the light’. A packed and extremely enthusiastic Corn Exchange didn’t take long to put their hosts’ minds…
DOCUMENTARY Dead Ringers once made a big impersonating deal of the rivalry between TV historians Simon Schama and David Starkey. Maybe one day we’ll see small screen art guys Waldemar Januszczak and Matthew Collings doing some doppelganger bitching…
DRAMA Channel 4, Wed 20 Aug, 11.35pm Amid yet another summer of bland sport and tedious evictions, it’s reassuring to know that there are still programmes being made which at least try to bend our minds a bit. However, this latest instalment of C4’s…
Melting together genres from Celtic to klezmer, the pioneering Australian folk band CWQ present the result of mixing musical traditions from across the world in The Bastard Children of Australian Folk. Exploring and moulding the entire gamut of…
Tracey Emin seems to polarise opinion – just check out the online comments on her column in The Independent. One of Britain’s most recognisable YBA artists, she’s been nominated for the Turner Prize and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, but…
REVIEW INSTALLATION The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 6 Sep Cathy Wilkes is adept at creating compelling discomfort, making us look, and look again at queasy or disturbing phenomena in search of hidden meanings and narratives. In this…
Andrea Riseborough must have a thing about playing scary people. While she wafted in to view as a spectral ghost in the BBC3 pilot of Being Human (a one-off that was the subject of such a frenzied online petition that the show was eventually…
13 Mar 2008
CULT STRIP (Fantagraphics) Having made his first appearance in Real Pulp Comix in 1971 Zippy is getting old. For the uninitiated Zippy is a polymath, free associating pinhead who wanders the consumerist besieged wastelands of the US. Griffith’s…
14 Feb 2008
WAR (15) 87min (Optimum DVD rental/retail) ‘War’ as the French statesman, physician and journalist Georges Clemenceau remarked ‘is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.’ But then again he never met this raggle-taggle bunch of escaped…
When you see the word ‘at’ (or the symbol ‘@’) in a restaurant name there’s always a bit of a suspicion that it’s something of a forced marriage. Like a double A-side or joint top billing it’s a rather clunky effort to tempt the public into believing…
1 Nov 2007
DRAMA/HISTORY (12A) 114min The allure of the Virgin Queen continues. It’s 1585 and Queen Elizabeth I of England (Cate Blanchett) is being besieged by possible suitors, sedition and the Spanish superpower led by bow-legged arch Catholic fundamentalist…
After a decade away from the stand-up circuit, you’d think that quite a fuss would have been made of Frank Skinner’s Edinburgh return, back in the exact same room where it all started for him with his Perrier-winning year of 1991. Yet when the lights go…
Of all the descriptions Andrew Lawrence gives himself - ‘a voice like Joe Pasquale’ or ‘hair the colour of sexual rejection’ – the one that gets the biggest laugh is his ‘special needs character from a Dickens novel’. Returning after last year’s…
9 Jan 2007
GAY Edited by two of its contributors, Robert Kirby and David Kelly, The Book of Boy Trouble brings together selected highlights of the first ten years of the alternative fanzine of the same title (minus the ‘book’ bit). It’s a collection whose…
NEW PLAY It’s hard to shake off the feeling that this final production in the National Theatre of Scotland’s series of Traverse Debuts is set in a bygone era. The story of a young man returning home from the seminary, disillusioned with Catholicism…
DRAMA There is no Shakespearean ‘eternal summer’ for Shaun (Robert Carlyle) and Daz (Steve Evets). Shaun looks after wheelchair bound Daz in an impoverished ex-mining community in Derbyshire. Daz is mouthy, bitter and demanding while Shaun is silent…
POP IN INDIE CLOTHING As much as they try to conceal it with dodgy facial fuzz and crunchy guitar riffs, The Killers are just a big brash pop band at heart. The clues are in Brandon Flowers’ penchant for outlandish outfits and, of course, his way…
19 Nov 2008
You’d probably have a better chance of looking cool wearing a pair of bowling shoes in a supermarket than dancing at a Guillemots gig. Tight, skilled musicians they may be, party starters they are not. Their following evidently accept this, why then…
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