Paul Dale

St Andrew's Day - The best film from Scotland

Our editors pick highlights from Scottish film through history

25 Nov 2011

Scotland shares Saint Andrew with areas of Russia, Romania, Greece and Malta, though this list is closed to the corruption of arthouse favourites like Theo Angelopoulos and Sergei Bondarchuk with their long names and even longer films. We’re assuming St…

Film books round-up

The Man in the Seventh Row, Cinema: The Whole Story, Hitchcock’s Magic and more reviewed

16 Nov 2011

Brian Pendreigh must surely be the hardest working movie-mad journalist and writer in Scotland. The Man in the Seventh Row (Blasted Heath ●●●) is his seventh book following biographies of Ewan McGregor and Mel Gibson, as well as Scottish cinema and…

Blood In The Mobile

Documentary explores mineral extraction in Eastern DR Congo for use in phone handsets

9 Nov 2011

(12A) 85min The mobile phone, that universal symbol of convenience and progress, comes at quite a price. We are not talking fiscal here, we are talking of a price above rubies, a cost measured in blood, sweat and tears. All mobile phones contain…

The Help

Oscar-bait portayal of the civil rights struggle in the Deep South

17 Oct 2011

(12A) 146min As Lee Hazlewood wrote in his musical paean to the nihilistic life: ‘Honey, I’m gonna snowball Jackson. See if I care.’ He needn’t have bothered, someone already had. A white American baby boom in the Deep South in the 1950s had taken…

Document 9 film festival highlights

The documentary film fest celebrates a 'year of protest' theme

12 Oct 2011

Boasting one of their best film line ups in years, the Document 9 human rights festival takes the theme of protest as its mascot this year. The festival opens with Andrea Roggon's Soy Libre (I am Free) about life and hope in modern day Havana. The next…

Interview: Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey at 2011 Document 9 film festival

Director Leila Doolan's doc on radical Irish politican Bernadette Devlin

11 Oct 2011

Leila Doolan's remarkable documentary Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey is one of the absolute highlights in Glasgow-based human rights film festival Document 9's very strong line up this year. The film follows the ideological and political…

Melancholia

Lars von Trier's sci-fi drama features star turns from Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg

21 Sep 2011

(15) 135min Melancholia is like the inversion of TS Elliot’s much quoted dictum. Is this how the world will end? With a bang not a whimper. Lars Von Trier’s curious, enigmatic and deterministic film seeks to equate the black dog of depression with an…

Tyrannosaur - Paddy Considine interview

The star of Dead Man's Shoes discusses his directorial debut

21 Sep 2011

There was a time when if a British actor got a bit of movie money, he (they were invariably male) would direct Henry V, A Bridge Too Far or The Night of the Hunter. But since Gary Oldman made Nil By Mouth in 1997, a very different generation of largely…

Tyrannosaur

Paddy Considine's directorial debut features strong performances from Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman

21 Sep 2011

(18) 92min Unemployed widower, drunk and all-round angry old man Joseph (Peter Mullan) stumbles into the council estate charity shop minded by good Samaritan volunteer Hannah (Olivia Colman), and friendship follows initial hostility. Despite her…

Red, White and Blue

Grimly progressive horror/thriller strips away cliché that surrounds the genres

19 Sep 2011

(18) 103min Erica (Amanda Fuller) is not a good girl. She’s promiscuous but dispassionate, nihilistic but emotionless. The girl’s clearly got some issues. The only person who manages to make any kind of non-sexual connection is weirdy beardy Nate…

Drive

16 Sep 2011

(18) 100min You should never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly. If only Ryan Gosling’s Hollywood stuntman/ getaway driver had heeded this advice he might not have got mixed up with beautiful mum Irene (Carey Mullighan), her jailbird beau…

Nick Sargent: A Scottish Land

Bold and charming celebration of the Scottish landscape

16 Sep 2011

With A Scottish Land, one-time set and costume designer and Edinburgh resident Nick Sargent returns to Oliver Chapman Architects in-house gallery space for the first time since their inaugural exhibition. Inspired by a photograph of a generic…

Crazy, Stupid, Love

Interesting observational comedy smothered by rom-com farce and sentimentality

16 Sep 2011

(12A) 118min Suburbia, modern day. Emily (Julianne Moore) tells husband Cal (Steve Carell) that she wants a divorce. Cal agrees to move and hits the local bar. After a period of drunken self-pity, local lothario Jacob (Ryan Gosling) takes him under…

Smile

Feeble collection riffing off ill-conceived ideas

24 Aug 2011

Between the Spangles wrapper psychedelia of its poster to the feeble collection of art in the gallery, Smile does nothing to live up to its name. Riffing off ill-conceived ideas honed from (a misunderstanding of) the Fluxus movement and the writings of…

Craig Collins & Iain Laurie - Roachwell

A dark, funny and disturbing achievement in self-published comics

24 Aug 2011

(roachwell.blogspot.com) Published online between 2009 and 2010, Roachwell is a fevered and messy collection of obtuse, amusing strips by Scottish writer/artists Craig Collins and Iain Laurie. Cremation and regeneration, house-hunting in the freak…

Post Mortem

Powerful sophomore feature based on 1970s Chilean politics

23 Aug 2011

(15) 97min It’s 1973 and work on President Salvador Allende’s ‘Chilean Path to Socialism’ is about to be brought to an abrupt halt by a Chilean military coup. Mario (Alfredo Castro) works for the Santiago morgue as a typist. Quiet, efficient, Mario…

Bette and Joan - The Final Curtain

Witty other-worldly ode to Hollywood starlets

23 Aug 2011

It’s 1989 and Bette Davis, betrayed by kith and kin, lies alone and dying. Her nemesis Joan Crawford arrives to guide her to the other side, and then the fireworks begin. Foursight Theatre’s witty and inventive deconstruction of the relationship between…

The Hedgehog (Le Herisson)

Smart and faithful adaptation of Muriel Barbery's best-selling book

23 Aug 2011

(12A) 99min There’s no demographic quite like the French bourgeoisie. Their revolution may as well not have happened, Gustav Flaubert pretty much summed things up when he wrote: ‘The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level…

Ruby Wax: Losing It

A fevered and empowering comic monologue

19 Aug 2011

According to a 2009 report, one in ten people in Scotland take daily medication for depression. This demographic are Ruby Wax’s kind of people. Broadened out from a community project that Wax and best friend/musician Judith Owen toured around NHS mental…

Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys

An art world friendship under a Scottish sky

17 Aug 2011

A single rose can make a garden; a single friend can make a world. Writer, artist and philosopher Richard Demarco’s friendship with the humanistic artist Joseph Beuys was something special. These two passionate, occasionally obtuse men were drawn to…

Paul Foot: Still Life

Childish ingenuity and some laughs but feels like going through the motions

16 Aug 2011

Like Frankie Howerd before him, procrastination and performance deconstruction filtered through a mesh of silliness are Foot’s stock in trade. Despite previous Fringe prowess, Still Life has him going through the motions. There’s childish ingenuity and…

The Qatsi trilogy at the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

Godfrey Reggio's film trilogy with Philip Glass Ensemble live score is a masterpiece

15 Aug 2011

It’s been twenty-eight years since I saw Koyaanisqatsi, twenty-odd since I saw Powaqqatsi, and almost a decade since Naqoyqatsi. The first two I saw in empty art house cinemas on wet afternoons, I watched the third in a somnambulistic state from my sofa…

Danny Bevins

Muscular comedy from the former soldier, jailbird and redneck

15 Aug 2011

Former soldier, jailbird and dysfunctionally raised red neck, Bevins is a gifted and dyspeptic stand-up, stringing together material on the ancient theme that all humanity is excrement. Like a mildly less political Bill Hicks, Bevins likes to confound…

Carey Marx

The thinking man’s shock jock

12 Aug 2011

Middle-aged and feeling decrepit and pointless, Carey Marx believes in speaking his sordid little mind. Opinions on clitoral stimuli, fat people who stop suddenly in the street, feminists and circumcision-revenge-rabbi-rape spill easily from his…

Stephen Sutcliffe: Runaway, Success

Biography-obsessed artist hides behind his heroes

11 Aug 2011

It’s been a while since Yorkshire-born Glasgow resident Sutcliffe has trotted out his curious wares in Scotland, and it’s not difficult to see why. His work is moody and peppered with arch cultural references to complex arty prima donnas Joe Orton…

Chris Drury - Land, Water and Language

A man, his boat and some nice scenery

11 Aug 2011

Life’s a journey not a destination and other such homilies. God preserve us from the travelogue artists. Chris Drury is one such artist. This exhibition, which was initially created for Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre in North Uist, takes its…

Elite Squad 2 - The Enemy Within (Tropa de Elite: O Inimigo Agora e Outro)

Returns to Rio's criminal world with pace, plot and violent set pieces

9 Aug 2011

(18) 114min Returning to the favela killing fields of his reactionary 2008 thriller, the schizophrenically talented writer/director Jose Padilha (Bus 174, Garapa) resurrects Captain Nascimento, but this time the right wing, law and order sympathies…

Doctor Brown

Silent and vulgar tedium

8 Aug 2011

Surrealism and silent comedy have a long and healthy relationship. Ask Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. You’d have to dig them up first, but that may be preferable to spending time with the hirsute Doctor Brown. In his silk dressing gown…

Colin Hoult

Talented and energetic performer targets UK provinces

8 Aug 2011

Somewhere between Angry Boys and The League of Gentlemen lies Colin Hoult. A clearly talented and energetic performer, Hoult’s bag is the grotesquery of the provinces. Crap Welsh poets, crime stoppers from East Midlands, gleeful northern dogs and…

Ingrid Calame

Water water everywhere with only a doodle to drink

5 Aug 2011

A river runs through Ingrid Calame’s work. But this river has been drained and all that remains are detritus and old stains. Somewhere between Google Earth screen grabs, weighty childhood nature books with their own illustrative key codes and fey…

Anton Henning: Interieur No. 493

Curious and bemusing conceptual art salon at 2011 Edinburgh Art Festival

5 Aug 2011

If, as critic and writer Cyril Connolly once noted, ‘vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life’ German artist Anton Henning might just have halitosis. Henning’s first solo show in Scotland is just about as curious and bemusing an exhibition as you…

Interview: Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan

Artists talk about The Indirect Exchange of Uncertain Value exhibition

3 Aug 2011

It sounds like the (thankfully unpublished) wheezy plotlines to one of Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings... adventures. Posh Edinburgh private school – one time cradle to dastardly turncoat bullies – gets taken over by bohemian artists with a hidden agenda.

Tony Cragg

Stunning showcase of sculptor’s poetic, monolithic output

3 Aug 2011

From Scouse lab technician to director of Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, Cragg’s prolific artistic journey has been one of inspiration and rejection, absorption and a will to move beyond. While the works of Max Ernst, Richard Long, Joseph Beuys and Henry…

Elizabeth Blackadder

Brilliant retrospective of work by one of Scotland’s major artists

3 Aug 2011

Elizabeth Blackadder is a Dame, a Royal Academician and arguably Scotland’s most popular female painter and printmaker. A major retrospective of her work at Scotland’s biggest gallery space was only ever going to draw sighs of resignation from art snobs…

Leroy Jones Band - Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

The trumpeter visits Edinburgh after appearances in TV drama Treme

21 Jul 2011

‘I was in an episode two weeks ago with my local quintet. I was performing one of my original compositions for about a minute and twenty seconds.’ Bandleader and trumpeter Leroy Jones is bubbling with pride over his recent appearance in an episode of…

A Better Life

Chris Weitz's immigration drama is admirable but predictable

21 Jul 2011

(12A) 97min There’s no denying American comedian Pat Paulsen’s dictum that the problems the United States faces today can be traced to the American Indian’s slack immigration policy. A Better Life is the mainstream cinemagoing public’s worst…

Precious Light - David Mach interview

Artist's first major Scottish exhibition in years at Edinburgh Art Festival 2011

6 Jul 2011

It’s just after 9am in Forest Hill in South London. The denizens of this leafy area have walked their children to school and boarded their commuter trains. In David Mach’s messy but unfussy two-floored studio, two handfuls of assistants and technicians…

Review - Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, Tue 28 Jun

Beninese Afrobeat with brass, percussion, guitar, bass and drums

1 Jul 2011

Nine good men and true fill the stage of Glasgow’s most beautiful (internally) venues in a Django like return to European conscience. Presumed missing or dead, or both, in their home country of Benin, West Africa, the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo were hunted…

War correspondent Martin Bell to give Oliver Stone another chance

Martin Bell will be introducing Oliver Stone's Salvador at the EIFF

24 Jun 2011

‘I tend to walk out of films about wars that I reported on. I walked out of Oliver Stone’s Salvador when I first saw it in 1986 that’s why it will be interesting to present it and revisit it in Edinburgh. I remember he satirised a female reporter I know…

DVD Box sets of work by Terence Rattigan, Andrei Tarkovsky and Danny Boyle

Abbas Kiarostami and David Leland collections also released in June

21 Jun 2011

If you are still buying DVDs in these straightened, downloaded times then you are going to want a bit of bang for your buck. Box sets are the way forward and late June and July are surprisingly full of intriguing new releases. The Terence Rattigan…

The Guard

Regrettable, cliché-ridden tale is entirely forgettable

21 Jun 2011

(15) 96min Don’t you just love the Irish? They’re cultured, funny, nihilistic and big-hearted. They can be naughty, but they love their mammies and they are always up for the craic. OK let’s not beat about the Gaelic bush here, The Guard, written…

Bobby Fischer Against The World

Lovingly realised documentary on American chess master

21 Jun 2011

(12A) 93min Bobby Fischer was the greatest of all past chess masters, and certainly the best America has ever had. Like most geniuses, however, Fischer’s life was a bizarre trajectory of success, fame, delusion and ultimately (possibly) madness.

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011 opens with an Oirish whimper (not a bang)

65th festival gets underway despite disappointing opener The Guard

16 Jun 2011

So the 65th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival is now open. It opened last night, a balmy, spitty Wednesday evening, with a screening of John Michael McDonagh’s decidedly patchy Irish comedy policier The Guard starring Brendan Gleeson.

Narcissus Reflected

The David Lomas-curated Fruitmarket exhibition is an effective reflection of the nature of vanity

27 May 2011

Don McLean got it right in his 1972 song ‘Narcisissima’: ‘Narcissima, Narcisissma is the pride of Pomona/Pomona, Pomona says she looks like me/But she will look like you when I’m set free.’ Narcissus of Greek myth and his Freudian descendant have long…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Outside The Box

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Duncan Speakman: Our Broken Voice Speakman’s project is a ‘subtlemob’ – ‘A film that’s happening in a public space where you’re both a performer and an audience member,’ he says. Still baffled? Imagine arriving at a designated public location, with an…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Conflict and Reportage

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Conflict and Reportage Frontline Club: Martin Bell presents Salvador Broadcasting and politics’ ‘man in the white suit’ says of this event: ‘I tend to walk out of films about wars that I reported on. I walked out of Oliver Stone’s Salvador when I…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Nokia Shorts Weekender

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Vice TV Greatest Hits! The great global magazine’s four-year-old spin-off youth internet TV channel celebrates the story so far. Having enjoyed early endorsement from Spike Jonze it now has a global network of correspondents who report on all that is…

Books on cinema - round-up

How the Movie Brats Took Over Edinburgh, Tough Without A Gun, The Faber Book of French Cinema

23 May 2011

As is always the way in Scotland, summer is kind of here, and now is the time to lie in the grass with that growing pile of tosh novels. But let’s face it, you are going to win a lot more kudos from your film-obsessed mates if you create a tower of…

The Pipe

Risteard O’Domhnaill's stirring documentary shows a community's fight against big business

23 May 2011

(12A) 83min In 1996 natural gas was discovered off the west coast of Ireland. Shortly afterwards, Shell UK announced plans to run a pipe through the waters and land of Rossport in County Mayo to an inland refinery. Risteard O’Domhnaill’s remarkable…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011 - James Mullighan interview

With just under a month to go, the new EIFF director tell us his plans

26 Apr 2011

With just over a month and a half to go until the big event, James Mullighan the new Director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival tells Paul Dale about his plans So how’s it going James? Great – it’s been a busy time for us and we are…