Location: set your location

Miles Fielder

Sorted by date / most viewed. Showing 25, 50, 100 per page.

Joost Swarte: Is That All There Is?

Joost Swarte: Is That All There Is?

Compendium of the Dutch cartoonist’s satirical alternative comics

(4 stars)3 Feb 2012

Apparently so. Or almost so. Is That All There Is? collects virtually all of the Dutch cartoonist’s alternative comics from way back in 1972 to the present day, translates them into English and assembles them, under Swarte’s own supervision, in this…

Glasgow Film Festival: Why I love Gene Kelly

Glasgow Film Festival: Why I love Gene Kelly

Miles Fielder makes a song and dance about the charismatic movie star

3 Feb 2012

For a film lover who hates musicals (this writer), the GFF’s Gene Kelly retrospective ought to be a hard sell. Telling stories through song and dance, Kelly’s forte (the latter of which endeavours earned him a special Oscar in 1951), is anathema to this…

GFF 2012 - 85A presents: Jan Svankmajer

GFF 2012 - 85A presents: Jan Svankmajer

Judd Brucke of 85A discusses the art collective's tribute to the Czech filmmaker

2 Feb 2012

‘One of our comrades was approached by the GFF to do something with the festival,’ says Judd Brucke, a member of the collective of Glasgow-based multi-disciplinary artists that stage weird and wonderful live events under the banner 85A. That something…

Geoff Dyer - Zona

Geoff Dyer - Zona

The multi-talented humourist turns his able hand to film criticism

(4 stars)27 Jan 2012

(Canongate) Having previously mashed-up fiction, journalism, essay, biography and travel writing, polymath and humourist Geoff Dyer once more defies genre with a book that’s one part film criticism, one part autobiography and several parts random…

Lambchop - Mr M

Lambchop - Mr M

Reassembled band present lovely low-key set recalling Sinatra, Bacharach and crooners

(4 stars)23 Jan 2012

(City Slang) Having taken a break from the long-lasting alt.country outfit (to collaborate with singer Cortney Tidwell on 2010’s KORT project), Lambchop founder and frontman Kurt Wagner has reassembled the Nashville-based band to make its 11th…

Preview of 2012 - Millennium Trilogy comics

Preview of 2012 - Millennium Trilogy comics

Scottish crime author Denise Mina adapts Stieg Larsson’s bestselling classics

6 Jan 2012

There’s not a lot left to say about Stieg Larsson. The three homegrown film adaptations of the late Swedish author’s novels – The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – along with David…

Rodrigo y Gabriela - Area 52

Rodrigo y Gabriela - Area 52

Orchestral backing and lots of special guests leads to a fun if over-wrought latin-funk-rock record

(3 stars)6 Jan 2012

(Rubyworks) For their fifth studio album the Mexican acoustic rock duo have teamed up with 13-piece orchestra C.U.B.A. to rework nine previous compositions. The radically increased personnel (which is also augmented by several guests including Cuban…

Alan Moore & Jacen Burrows - Neonomicon

Alan Moore & Jacen Burrows - Neonomicon

Moore takes some liberties with Lovecraft's stories, but as ever, does a grand job of it

(4 stars)5 Jan 2012

(Avatar) While we wait impatiently for the final instalment of the latest The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century (see our review of part two), we have this new graphic novella from the grand magi of comics to be going on with. Neonomicon is…

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester

Dreamily insubstantial album that's very, very Lynch

(2 stars)5 Jan 2012

(Double Six) Rightly or wrongly, a lot of bands find themselves being likened to the soundtrack of a David Lynch film. In the case of Trailer Trash Tracys’ debut the comparison is, in fact, justified. Mixing dark and disturbing soundscapes…

Dan Sartain – Too Tough To Live

Dan Sartain – Too Tough To Live

Old School punk album from the raw rock'n'roller

(4 stars)5 Jan 2012

(One Little Indian) The handsome Alabama rocker’s throwback blues and rockabilly sound has always been fuelled by a raw power reminiscent of punk. For his sixth album, the greasy-quiffed one has embraced the punk rock style as well as its spirit with…

Profile: Scottish photographer David Eustace

Interview: Michelle Yeoh on filming The Lady

Luc Besson biopic of iconic pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi

21 Dec 2011

Former Malaysian beauty queen Michelle Yeoh started her acting career co-starring with Jackie Chan in the likes of Supercop. She made her English-language debut opposite Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies before returning to China to…

The Hot 100 2011: 100-40

The Hot 100 2011: 100-50

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

100: Gordon Ferris. Kilmarnock crime author makes good. The already packed Scottish crime writing field has finally found a bit of elbow room for another burgeoning talent. Joining the likes of Rankin, Brookmyre, McDermid and co is this Ayrshire-born…

HOT 100 2011 - 49 to 1

Hot 100 2011 - No. 49 to 1

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

The Hot 100 is the definitive list of Scottish creative talent. From fashion designers to performance artists, everyone who has made a sizeable splash in 2011 has a place in this countdown. It’s for people who’ve created a buzz, but it’s also about…

The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera

Unmissable HD restoration of 1925 Rupert Julian version starring horror icon Lon Chaney

(5 stars)12 Dec 2011

(PG) 77/114min There have been several adaptations of novelist Gaston Leroux’s classic macabre horror romance, among them the original 1916 silent German version, the 1943 Hollywood version with Claude Rains, the racier 1962 Hammer offering, Brian…

Metaphrog - Louis: Red Letter Day

Metaphrog - Louis: Red Letter Day

Reissue of the Glasgow-based graphic novel duo's 2000 Louis debut

(3 stars)12 Dec 2011

(Metaphrog) A year after the publication of the fifth Louis book, Night Salad, the Glasgow-based writer-illustrator partnership Metaphrog celebrates a decade of their series of graphic novels for kids and adults. To mark the event, Scot John Chalmers…

The Art of Joe Kubert

The Art of Joe Kubert

Wonderful collection of comics art from one of the legends of the medium

(4 stars)21 Nov 2011

Edited by Bill Schelly (Fantagraphics) Alongside the ongoing and consistently groundbreaking efforts of Fantagraphics Books Inc to publish the work of new and cutting edge cartoonists (beginning with Los Bros Hernandez's Love & Rockets in the late…

Black Pond

Black Pond

Smartly observed and cleverly constructed British comedy drama is something special

(4 stars)15 Nov 2011

(15) 83min This low budget British comedy drama is something special. Smartly observed and cleverly constructed, it’s at once funny and tragic and lyrical, and the deadpan humour is perfectly pitched with nicely underplayed performances from the…

You’ve Been Trumped

You’ve Been Trumped

Controversial doc on Donald Trump's Scottish golf course plan a triumph

(4 stars)22 Sep 2011

(12) 95min Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand for the past few years, you’ll no doubt be aware of American tycoon Donald Trump’s controversial plans to build a golf course and hotel complex in an area of outstanding natural beauty and…

Life and Debt

Life and Debt

Heartbreaking and pertinent documentary about Jamaica's economic misfortunes

(4 stars)22 Sep 2011

(12) 80min Made the year after the launch of the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel third world debt at the beginning of the new millennium, Stephanie Black’s agitprop documentary looks at the case of Jamaica. In 1977, fifteen years after achieving…

You've Been Trumped - Anthony Baxter interview

You've Been Trumped - Anthony Baxter interview

Director of Donald Trump doc on being shunned by Scottish film bodies

22 Sep 2011

‘I live in Montrose and it’s 40 miles south of the Menie Estate, where Donald Trump was planning to build his golf course resort. I read the newspapers every day and I was surprised that the coverage was so one-sided. The other side of the story, as I…

Wilko Johnson The Caves, Edinburgh, Thu 15 Sep

Wilko Johnson - The Caves, Edinburgh, Thu 15 Sep 2011

A winner set from the ex Blockheads guitarist turned bluesman

(4 stars)22 Sep 2011

Canvey Island rocking bluesman Wilko Johnson kicked off his nationwide tour from the other end of the UK with a stonking set that compared favourably to the Essex man’s glory days as lead guitarist for Dr Feelgood in the 1970s and Ian Dury and the…

Perfect Sense

Perfect Sense

Dark yet sentimental romance set in an apocalyptic world

(4 stars)14 Sep 2011

(15) 92min David Mackenzie’s seventh feature is, superficially, his most disturbing yet. That’s saying something given the Scottish filmmaker introduced himself and his penchant for dark psychosexual drama with his grim and gritty adaptation of…

Interview: David Mackenzie on Perfect Sense and You Instead

Interview: David Mackenzie on Perfect Sense and You Instead

Director returns from Hollywood to Glasgow to make two films back-to-back

24 Aug 2011

Having made his Hollywood debut with his last film, Spread, a gorgeously sun-drenched but beguilingly bleak sex romp-cum-romance starring Ashton Kutcher that comes across like a modern-day American Gigolo, Scottish filmmaker David Mackenzie was set to…

Will Self

Will Self

The author on his upcoming reading of Fleck with Alasdair Gray

19 Aug 2011

I’ve known Alasdair Gray for a long time now, nearly 20 years. We had the same publisher in England and he came to one of my events in Glasgow, probably in about 1982 or ‘83. We did some other events together around that time and struck up a…

Chuck Palahniuk - Damned

Chuck Palahniuk - Damned

Religion-targetting novel fresh and funny yet also more of the same

(3 stars)19 Aug 2011

(Jonathan Cape) Like the preceding 11, Chuck Palahniuk’s latest novel is a black comedy that satirises a taboo subject, features a protagonist with a malleable identity who is indoctrinated into a bizarre cult and is structured around repetition…

Jus’ Like That!

Jus’ Like That!

Recreates Tommy Cooper's final performance

(4 stars)16 Aug 2011

Eschewing a biographical narrative, this show about stage magician and comedian Tommy Cooper simply recreates his final performance in all its balmy, cheeky glory. It’s a crowd-pleasing celebration of the utterly unique variety show talent, and Clive…

The Wright Brothers

The Wright Brothers

Conquest of flight given lively treatment

(3 stars)16 Aug 2011

An interesting subject is given lively treatment in this show about American bicycle manufacturers-turned-amateur aviators Wilbur and Orville Wright’s conquest of the skies. The story of their protracted attempts to construct a powered flying machine…

Danny Pensive’s Map of Britain

Danny Pensive’s Map of Britain

Wonderfully odd character comedy

(4 stars)15 Aug 2011

This character comedy is so assured, odd and sweet, that you can easily see the self-styled Sunderland simpleton becoming the next score keeper on Shooting Stars. During his whistle-stop recollection of a three-year trip around Britain, Pensive…

Chris Coxen’s Space Clone Audition

Chris Coxen’s Space Clone Audition

Accomplished character-based comedy show

(3 stars)14 Aug 2011

Framing his sketch show as a competition in which the audience decides which of Coxen’s four characters will be cloned to populate outer space seems unnecessary. This US comic’s creations - sleazy lounge lizard, deluded motivational speaker, shy weather…

You Once Said Yes

You Once Said Yes

Exhilarating interactive experience

(4 stars)12 Aug 2011

This one-on-one interactive show is initially – and purposefully – disconcerting, but it swiftly becomes utterly thrilling, mysterious, funny and finally really quite sweet. It begins at Underbelly Cowgate, where single audience members are equipped for…

Jenny Erpenbeck set for 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival

Jenny Erpenbeck set for 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival

Revisiting Germany’s troubled past

9 Aug 2011

‘An extraordinarily strong book by a major German author, ingeniously translated, produced with love by an idealistic publisher intent on doing something about the shamefully small proportion of foreign literature whose existence our country…

2401 Objects

2401 Objects

Remarkable neuroscience story

(3 stars)8 Aug 2011

This piece of devised theatre tells the story of the man with the most famous brain in the world, Henry Molaison, or patient HM as he became known to the international medical community that studied him for decades before he died. Molaison was born in…

Wondrous Flitting

Wondrous Flitting

Absurdist parable that doesn’t quite work

(2 stars)8 Aug 2011

Inspired by Edinburgh College of Art teacher Ed Hollis’ book The Secret Lives of Buildings, Lyceum artistic director Mark Thomson’s first play for the Fringe since his much lauded Moving Objects is an absurdist-realist parable that doesn’t quite work.

One Night Stan

One Night Stan

Excellent one-man show based on life of Stan Laurel

(4 stars)8 Aug 2011

This excellent one-man show written and performed by Miles Gallant dramatises the life of Stanley Jefferson aka Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame. With his partner taken ill on the penultimate week of their 1954 UK tour, Stan looks back on his…

One Under

One Under

Energetic piece of devised theatre based on London Underground

(3 stars)8 Aug 2011

Inspired by interviews conducted on the London Underground, this energetic piece of devised theatre looks beneath the sweat and stress of the cramped carriages to unearth the inner lives of people travelling on the tube. Their stories are variously…

Hal Sparks - Evolution Overdrive

Hal Sparks - Evolution Overdrive

Impressive delivery with theme of humankind’s ongoing evolution

(3 stars)8 Aug 2011

Humankind’s ongoing evolution from apes is the buff American stand-up’s central thesis. En route to his conclusion that only the reintroduction of dinosaurs into the food chain will save us, Sparks blasts the crowd with a string of more commonplace…

Pete Firman: Jiggery Pokery

Pete Firman: Jiggery Pokery

Magic routines with an enjoyable line in potty-mouthed sarcasm

(3 stars)8 Aug 2011

This comic magician takes his tricks seriously. From the opening escape out of a locked box through various sleight-of-hand illusions to the climactic guillotining of an audience member, Firman proves himself to be a very capable conjurer. But he also…

Bridget Christie

Bridget Christie

Slapdash slapstick sloppy stand-up

(3 stars)7 Aug 2011

The wife, mum and stand-up is back at the Fringe with a new show based on her Catholic upbringing. The fact that Bridget Christie is not at all sure doing an hour about religion is a good idea is completely in keeping with her happily shambolic…

Captain America: The First Avenger

Captain America: The First Avenger

Despite a clumsy second half, the Cap sets the stage well for 2012's Avengers

(3 stars)4 Aug 2011

(12A) 124 min Captain America might be subtitled The First Avenger, but he is, in fact, the last of the Marvel Comics superheroes to receive blockbuster movie treatment before he assembles alongside Hulk, Iron Man and Thor in next year’s superhero…

Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century – 1969

Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century – 1969

Groovy, psychedelic second entry into the League's Century series

(4 stars)3 Aug 2011

(Top Shelf/Knockabout) Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill take their science fiction and fantasy literature homage/parody into previously uncharted realms with their most contemporaneous jaunt yet. Part two of the Century trilogy takes the heroes into…

Adrian Howells bring May I Have the Pleasure and The Pleasure of Being to 2011 Edinburgh Festival

Adrian Howells bring May I Have the Pleasure to 2011 Edinburgh Festival

Adrian Howells creates exchange between performer and audience

27 Jul 2011

Glasgow-based performer and the Arches artist-in-residence Adrian Howells has two shows debuting at the Fringe this year: May I Have the Pleasure...? and The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding. In the first, Howells muses upon the irony of…

Edinburgh show Snails and Ketchup keeps focus on storytelling

Edinburgh show Snails and Ketchup keeps focus on storytelling

Darkly comic story told through aerial choreography

27 Jul 2011

‘For me the narrative and the characters are crucial,’ says Glasgow-based Singaporean physical theatre performer Ramesh Meyyappan. ‘I’ve got to be able to see how their journeys would work in a theatrical setting.’ Meyyappan’s set himself quite a…

Joe Simon: My Life in Comics

Joe Simon: My Life in Comics

Interesting autobiography from one of the pioneers of superhero comics

(3 stars)21 Jul 2011

(Titan) This autobiography written by one of the founding fathers of the American comic books hits the bookshelves a fortnight ahead of the release of the latest Hollywood blockbuster adaptation of a superhero strip, Captain America, which…

Jason and Fabien Vehlmann - Isle of 100,000 Graves

Jason and Fabien Vehlmann - Isle of 100,000 Graves

Daft and deadpan humour make for hilarious read

(4 stars)20 Jul 2011

(Fantagraphics) Norway-born, South of France-based cartoonist Jason’s absurdist mix of daft and deadpan humour (a Nordic speciality perhaps) once again makes for hilarious reading in this tale of skulduggery in the South Seas. The discovery of a…

Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden & Ben Stenbeck - Baltimore: The Plague Ships

Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden & Ben Stenbeck - Baltimore: The Plague Ships

Disappointing supernatural horror from Hellboy creator Mike Mignola

(2 stars)20 Jul 2011

(Dark Horse) Hellboy creator Mike Mignola continues to expand his universe of supernatural horror inspired by 19th and 20th century pulp fictions with this his latest creation, Lord Henry Baltimore, vampire hunter. This first story arc, the first…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

The boy-wizard franchise goes out on a high

(4 stars)18 Jul 2011

(12A) 130min It gives this critic great pleasure to confirm that the final film in the franchise adapted from JK Rowling’s boy wizard publishing phenomenon is among the top three of the eight-part series. Since the series hit the ground running ten…

Jazz Festival - Trombone Shorty profile

Trombone Shorty profile - Edinburgh Jazz Festival 2011

Youthful jazz pioneer and composer set for Edinburgh date

8 Jul 2011

'Oooooh! Trombone Shorty! My man!' This is how the 25-year-old jazz musician from New Orleans is greeted by fellow (and fictitious) horn player Antoine Batiste in David Simon's new HBO television show, Treme. Simon's follow-up to his hard-hitting cop…

Green Lantern

Green Lantern

Intergalactic special effects spectacle

(3 stars)1 Jul 2011

(12A) 114min So many adaptations of superhero comic books have received the blockbuster treatment it’s now safe to say we have seen the best of them. And its questionable what more or different there is that can be done with the super-powered…

Julia's Eyes

Julia's Eyes

A very well made chiller in the stalk ‘n’ slash tradition

(3 stars)1 Jul 2011

(15) 112min In addition to directing visionary adult horror-fantasies (The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth) and outstanding Hollywood blockbusters (Hellboy and its sequel), Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is also carving a second career for…

X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class

Latest in franchise makes clever use of Cold War-era setting

(4 stars)30 Jun 2011

(12A) 132min The novelty of the Hollywood franchise reboot has worn thin, but this re-launch of the initially excellent adaptations of the Marvel comic book benefits from a canny central concept that takes the mutant superhero team back to their…

554 articles.

Sorted by date / most viewed. Showing 25, 50, 100 per page.

RSS feed