Scotland
Harvest review - blood, barley and adaptationFriday, 18 July 2025
Lovers of a particular novel, when it’s adapted as a movie, often want book and movie to fit together as a hand in a glove. You want it to be like sheet music transfigured into the sound of an orchestra. Too often, though, the resulting film can... Read more... |
Tornado review - samurai swordswoman takes Scotland by stormSaturday, 14 June 2025
The opening images of Tornado are striking. A wild-haired young woman in Japanese peasant garb runs for her life through a barren forest and across burnt-orange fields. As her pursuers, a rough-looking band of thieves, draw nearer, she seeks refuge... Read more... |
Blu-ray: EclipseMonday, 02 June 2025
What constitutes a “lost classic”? I guess we can’t say it’s an oxymoron, since we readily accept the concept of “instant classic”? Either way, the “classic” aspect may be in the eye of the beholder, but “lost" is more easily quantified. Simon Perry... Read more... |
Bogancloch review - every frame a work of artSaturday, 31 May 2025
Director Ben Rivers is primarily an artist, and it shows. Every frame of Bogancloch is treated as a work of art and the viewer is given ample time to relish the beauty of the framing, lighting and composition. Many of the shots fall into traditional... Read more... |
The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone, BBC Two - boom and bust in the lingerie tradeThursday, 29 May 2025
As this two-part documentary vividly illustrates, it has been a wild ride for Baroness Mone of Mayfair, the self-made businesswoman who emerged from Dennistoun in Glasgow’s East End in the Nineties and created the Ultimo Bra. This revolutionary... Read more... |
Dennis, RSNO, Dunedin Consort, Søndergård, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - potted Ring and deep dive into historyMonday, 26 May 2025
"How long is Wagner’s Ring Cycle?" That’s not the opening to a joke, it’s a genuine question asked by a friend who I’d met up with before heading to Edinburgh’s Usher Hall to hear the Royal Scottish National Orchestra perform "Wagner’s Ring Symphony... Read more... |
The Fifth Step, Soho Place review - wickedly funny two-hander about defeating alcoholismTuesday, 20 May 2025
The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter. The Fifth Step, though, is a gentler beast whose humour ends with a simple visual gag. Maybe because this is more... Read more... |
Supergrass, Barrowland, Glasgow review - nostalgia played with youthful energySaturday, 10 May 2025
It is a family affair at Supergrass shows these days. There were plenty of parents and offspring filing onto the Barrowland’s famous old dancefloor, and during the encore a pair of excitable, bouncing teenagers turned around and started bellowing... Read more... |
Manic Street Preachers, Barrowland, Glasgow review - elder statesmen deliver melody and sing-a-longsTuesday, 15 April 2025
As you might expect from a Manic Street Preachers gig, literary influences were never far away. A DH Lawrence quote was prominently displayed on the video wall before the group took the stage, and band lyrics would randomly flash up throughout the... Read more... |
Album: The Waterboys - Life, Death and Dennis HopperSaturday, 05 April 2025
Mike Scott is The Waterboys. Launched by wide-eyed 1980s folk-rock, and “The Whole of the Moon”, he’s long since roamed into whatever stylistic gumbo he fancies. The latest album – the band’s 16th – is a concept piece, a 25-track sonic biography of... Read more... |
On Falling review - human cogs in a merciless machineFriday, 07 March 2025
Alienation, isolation, and instability are the fruits of working as a “picker” in the chilling labour drama On Falling. The first feature written and directed by the Porto-born, Edinburgh-based filmmaker Laura Carreira presents post-industrial gig... Read more... |
Mary, Queen of Scots, English National Opera review - heroic effort for an overcooked history lessonMonday, 17 February 2025
Genius doesn't always tally with equal opportunities, to paraphrase Doris Lessing. Opera houses have a duty to put on new works by women composers; sometimes an instant classic emerges. But to revive a music drama that hardly made waves back in 1977... Read more... |
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