Sponsored by
Features
Cannes: Gatsby takes lead at opulent film festival
BRITAIN is out of the running for the Palme D’Or at Cannes, but there’s a strong showing elsewhere, and the prominence of the opulent Great Gatsby seems somehow apposite, writes Stephen Applebaum
1 comment
Film reviews: Fast & Furious 6 | A Hijacking | The Liability
ALISTAIR Harkness reviews the week’s cinema releases.
Art review: Frederic Church, Edinburgh
WE aren’t too familiar with early American painting, and the tradition of touring huge canvases has died out, but this collection brings both together, showing how the emerging nation was learning to describe and define itself
Epic new kids’ film packs big ideas into small tale
AS an online petition objecting to Disney’s misguided revamp of Brave’s Princess Merida picks up signatures by the thousand (if you haven’t seen it, Merida is now slimmer, she’s wearing make-up, her neck-line is lowered and instead of a bow and arrow she has sparkles on her dress), I confess I feel heartened at the first images of the heroine of the new animated feature, Epic.
Bringing Commonwealth Gaelic diaspora home for 2014
SAIL a westbound ferry boldly beyond its habitual port of call, tramp the age-old cattle route of a drove road past its market destination then keep going, and you have emigration.
Alistair Harkness
Film review: The Great Gatsby
COMPOSED like a fashion shoot, Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby is so full of spectacle that it risks missing the point of Fitzgerald’s story.
JJ Abrams on controlling Star Wars and Star Trek
AS Star Trek Into Darkness beams into cinemas, director JJ Abrams - also the man helming Star Wars VII – tells Alistair Harkness what it’s like to be master of two universes
1 comment
Film review: Mud
BARELY a month seems to go by at the moment without Matthew McConaughey delivering a brilliant and surprising performance.
Arts blog: Hannibal taking bite out of cinema | Twitter plays
ALISTAIR Harkness finds further evidence that American TV is outperforming the US film industry, while Andrew Eaton-Lewis discusses the art of creating a drama in 140 characters.
Film review: I’m so excited
PEDRO Almodóvar’s latest begins with a disclaimer that what we’re about to see is a fantasy and bears no relation to reality.
Fiona Shepherd
Pastels making anxious return to Glasgow spotlight
IT has been 16 years since The Pastels last released an album of their own. This seems hard to credit, even for a man who talks as slowly and carefully as frontman Stephen McRobbie, aka Stephen Pastel, aka the benevolent godfather of Glasgow’s still-thriving independent music scene (a title he will certainly not thank me for bestowing).
1 comment
Album review: Iggy & the Stooges: Ready to Die
THE way The Stooges carried on in the late 1960s and early 70s, living and performing on the edge, it’s a wonder there weren’t more premature fatalities.
Joyce McMillan
Theatre review: Ghost, Edinburgh
IT’S probably no concidence that the story of Ghost – a smash-hit film, and now a mighty blockbuster musical – dates from the same period as Tony Kushner’s great millennial fantasy, Angels In America.
Theatre reviews: As It Is | Marco Pantani: The Pirate
THIS week the Tron offers two memorable personal journeys set against the background of war. In Edinburgh, meanwhile, don’t miss Lee Hall’s powerful tale of working class artists.
Theatre reviews: Mise - Story of a Girl | The Intergalactic Nemesis
SOME CALL it “post-human” theatre, the shift towards making objects and images stand where human beings once did.
Theatre review: The Sash
SECTARIANISM in Scotland: it’s a long story, not over yet. And if theatre is an artform made to allow communities to act out their deepest conflicts and tensions in a safe space, then there is no richer subject for Scottish drama than the nexus of half-remembered history, fading faith and fierce tribal identity that hangs around the old division between Catholics and Protestants.
5 comments
Theatre reviews: Secrets | Poke | Wuthering Heights
NOT many people know this, least of all in Scotland itself; but nonetheless, there are probably now few countries on earth where the quest for the new, in the next generation of theatre, is pursued more intensely or in a wider range of ways than in Edinburgh, Glasgow and beyond.
Duncan Macmillan
Art reviews: David Batchelor | Garry Fabian Miller
MANY years ago the American abstract expressionist painter, Robert Motherwell told me an amusing anecdote about Mondrian. When the Dutch painter first arrived in New York in 1940, Motherwell and another young painter, William Baziotes, were delegated to show him around.
Art review: Migration Stories: Valentina Bonizzi, Scottish National Portrait Gallery
A MASSIVE bronze hand, foot and ankle and some scattered stones sit in front of St Mary’s Cathedral at the top of Leith Walk in Edinburgh. Thousands of people walk past them every day, but I suspect not many feel much curiosity.
Art reviews: James Cowie | Stuart Franklin
TO ADAPT a famous headline about a small earthquake in Chile: “2013, obscure artist’s bicentenary, few celebrate.”
Jim Gilchrist
TradFest conclusion looks at state of folk arts
THE final day of what appears to have been a successful debut for Edinburgh’s 12-day TradFest saw some intriguingly disparate elements – from Robert Burns to Patrick Geddes – invoked in a conference assessing the place of the traditional arts in 21st century Scotland.
Wham, bam, thank you Vamm: Fiddlers and mandolin star get together
YOU MAY regard it as a benign reversal of those bad old Viking incursions or, more accurately, a sign of Scotland’s ever expanding musical interests, but there has been a marked migration of notable fiddlers from these shores to Norway in recent years.
Gurtu/Fresu/Sosa: Music that vibrates
PILGRIMS HAVE been tramping to Santiago de Compostela, in Spain’s north-west fastness of Galicia, for many centuries.
Susan Mansfield
Director Lu Kemp on The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish
AS REHEARSAL rooms go, this one has a few interesting quirks.
Art reviews: Mariana Castillo Deball | Nicolas Party | Ella Kruglyanskaya
BRITISH explorer Alfred Maudslay was one of the first Europeans to study Mayan sites in Mexico and Guatemala in the late 19th century.
Arts Blog
Arts blog: ‘Uhura is not far off being Bridget Jones in space’
SEXISM lets down the new Star Trek movie according to trekkie Andrea Mullaney, while David Pollock previews a Cuillins psychogeography project.
Arts blog: Hannibal taking bite out of cinema | Twitter plays
ALISTAIR Harkness finds further evidence that American TV is outperforming the US film industry, while Andrew Eaton-Lewis discusses the art of creating a drama in 140 characters.
Arts blog: Musicians on independence | Edinburgh Fringe
NOW that it’s fewer than 500 days until the referendum that will change Scotland forever, or not, you’ll be hearing lots more well-known names explaining why they’re voting one way or the other.
Arts blog: Boards of Canada | Bonfest
AT time of writing, two of the most inventively staged viral music marketing campaigns of the year are reaching their endgame.
Arts blog: Lyceumgate | Calmangate | Gatefold Sleeves
FOR a while now, the website 100percentmen.tumblr.com has been naming and shaming institutions across the world which consist entirely of men, from boards of major companies to the line-up of the New York Comedy Festival.
3 comments
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Edinburgh
Wednesday 22 May 2013
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 3 C to 13 C
Wind Speed: 23 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 5 C to 11 C
Wind Speed: 23 mph
Wind direction: North west
