Miles Fielder

Hamlet for Girls

A swift, nicely performed, play about juggling work and relationships

10 Aug 2010

Invoking the procrastinating Danish prince for this intimate drama about two couples juggling work and relationships is a neat conceit. It’s nicely performed, too, by a charismatic cast. The crosscutting between various combinations of characters…

Adam Riches

Riches’ latest show is supremely daft

10 Aug 2010

Even by this crazy character comic’s standards, Riches’ latest show is supremely daft. A theme park inspired by Pierce Brosnan’s turn as a centaur in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is the lame excuse for a bolt through several silly…

Clint’s Reality

A spirited performance but somewhat lacking script

9 Aug 2010

Here we have a Simon Cowell-alike suffering a meltdown after it emerges that his latest talent show was rigged. Things come to a head in his luxurious flat, from where Clint is sure he can manipulate the truth to his own ends. The performances are…

Pedal Pusher is a journey inside riders’ heads

Physical theatre show takes on the Tour de France

8 Aug 2010

This very, very physical theatre show does justice to the toughest sporting event in the world, the Tour de France, with a muscular production that’s quite exhausting, in a good way, to watch. It tells the story of the decade-long battle between top…

Lars Husum and his novel My Friend Jesus Christ

A wild and bizarre slapstick farce

6 Aug 2010

Given that My Friend Jesus Christ reads like a Dogme movie, you can’t help but feel Lars Husum’s time working as a dramaturge at Lars von Trier’s Copenhagen film production company Zentropa fed into his debut novel. ‘It’s not conscious, but I see your…

Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

Sibling rock ‘n’ rollers with retro leanings

3 Aug 2010

‘I’m really looking forward to it, because we haven’t done Scotland yet,’ 17-year-old Kitty Durham says about playing Edinburgh. Durham fronts the youthful retro three-piece, Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, with her brother and sister. The north London trio have…

Jeff Lemire - Sweet Tooth

29 Jul 2010

(Titan/Vertigo) It’s hardly surprising that Jeff Lemire’s current ongoing series (the first five issues of which are collected here) should be a bleak, post-apocalyptic yarn that recalls, among other precedents, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Lemire…

Caitlin Rose - Own Side Now

29 Jul 2010

(Names) Only a few short years out of her teens, this Nashville singer-songwriter belies her youth. Rose’s debut album proper (following the ‘Dead Flowers’ EP) is loaded with songs about heartbreak, delivered with a wry drawl reminiscent of Patsy…

The Shock Doctrine

Second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s capitalism analysis

23 Jul 2010

(E) 79min (Dogwoof) Not to be confused with Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s 2007 short, this second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s chilling book about the evils of modern capitalism is the full-length 2009 documentary co-directed by Michael…

Macbeth for kids aims to charm the Edinburgh crowds

Just Macbeth takes Shakespeare to children

16 Jul 2010

Macbeth for kids: you’ve got to be joking? How on earth do you make the Bard’s bloodiest play palatable for wee ones? The apparent inappropriateness of staging the infamous Scottish play for young audiences, however, perfectly suits the remit of…

Landfall

7 Jul 2010

(PG) 85min (Optimum) This watchable 1949 adaptation of a novel by Nevil Shute casts handsome Michael Denison (Angels One Five) as a cheeky chappy who takes his wartime commission as a coastal command pilot very much more seriously than he does his…

The Silent Invasion

7 Jul 2010

(U) 66min (Optimum) This British drama made in 1962 and set in an occupied French village during the early years of World War II feels like an episode of a television show – and well it might, given it was written by small screen legend Brian…

Hierro

24 Jun 2010

(12A) 88min Like the Spanish supernatural chiller The Orphanage, this psychological thriller directed by adman Gabe Ibáñez also revolves around a mother’s search for a missing child. And like its predecessor, Hierro also benefits from being…

Lars Husum - My Friend Jesus Christ

24 Jun 2010

(Portobello Books) Before authoring this, his first novel, Danish writer Lars Husum worked at filmmaker Lars von Trier’s Copenhagen production company Zentropa as a script doctor. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that My Friend Jesus Christ has…

Sammy Going South

21 Jun 2010

(PG) 118min (Optimum) A welcome DVD premiere for this lesser known, handsomely mounted and now digitally restored Alexander Mackendrick film from 1963, his first directorial credit after Sweet Smell of Success. Based on a novel by WH Canaway (who…

The Illusionist opens EIFF 2010 - Sylvain Chomet interview

9 Jun 2010

The year after French animator Sylvain Chomet knocked out cinema-goers at the 2003 Edinburgh International Film Festival with his wildly eccentric and utterly charming double-Oscar nominated debut feature, Belleville Rendez-vous (aka The Triplets of…

Susie Hug - Tucson Moonshine

1 Jun 2010

(Vacilando ‘68) Having collaborated on previous ‘solo’ projects with, variously, Fatima Mansions, The Blue Aeroplanes and Travis, the former Katydids frontwoman has now flown across the Atlantic to team up with south-western alt.country outfit…

Dan Sartain - Dan Sartain Lives!

20 May 2010

(One Little Indian) Following in the footsteps of fellow American retro-rockers Jack White and Jon Spencer, Birmingham, Alabama’s Dan Sartain decamps to London to record his latest long-player at Toerag Studios under the guidance of producer Liam…

Daniel Clowes - Wilson

19 May 2010

(Jonathan Cape) It’s heartening to know that Daniel Clowes isn’t turning his back on comics, despite writing movies in earnest since his Oscar nomination for adapting his own graphic novel, Ghost World. Clowes’ current movie projects include The…

Salvage

28 Apr 2010

(18) 81min (Revolver) This, the second of three films made under the micro-budget Digital Departures scheme initiated in 2008 during Liverpool’s year as City of Culture, couldn’t be more different from its predecessor, Terence Davies’ documentary…

The Kid

28 Apr 2010

(U) 60min (Park Circus) By the time he made The Kid, Charlie Chaplin was an international movie star whose films had begun to earn a million bucks apiece. And although he’d been behind the camera since 1914, writing, directing, producing, editing…

The High Command

15 Apr 2010

(PG) 84min (Optimum) This the first of the nine features made by the brilliant but undervalued British filmmaker Thorold Dickinson may not be a patch on his masterpieces, Gaslight and The Queen of Spades, but this 1936 drama set in colonial West…

The Clouded Yellow

15 Apr 2010

(PG) 90min (Optimum) This gripping, fast-paced British thriller from 1950 follows the man-and-woman-on-the-run formula popularised elsewhere by Alfred Hitchcock. Based on a witty screenplay by Janet Green (who later went on the write Victim), it…

Brendan Gleeson has roles in both Perrier’s Bounty and Green Zone

31 Mar 2010

Name Brendan Gleeson Born 29 March, 1955, Dublin, Ireland Background The lazy line to take on this scene-stealing character actor is he was a maths teacher for ten years before he decided to become and actor, and got his big break playing…

Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde

29 Mar 2010

(15) 94min (Optimum) By the turn of the sexploitastic 1970s Hammer Films were upping the erotic content of their already titillating takes on horror classics with this transgender spin on Stevenson’s evil alter-ego tale of terror. Released in 1971…