- Roof section installed at new venue
- Heavy mud could block leaking well
- Gangland shooting accused goes free
- Trump opponent retains council seat
- Leishman becomes Labour councillor
- Labour wins biggest Scots council
- Residents rescued from flats blaze
- Clegg under fire after heavy losses
- Talks over council coalitions begin
Music
Interview: Glenn Close on Albert Nobbs
Glenn Close tells Bob Flynn how bringing the role of a 19th-century transgender Dubliner to the big screen finally fulfils a 30-year-old dream
The spy in the bag: Did MI6 agent’s kinky sex games lead to his death?
ON PAPER, Gareth Williams had all the makings of a perfect spy. Prodigiously intelligent (he gained a first-class maths degree at the age of 17), he was enough of a geek to be content to spend hours deciphering codes, but not so much that he stood out as a social misfit.
Claire Black: It made it look as though an alien invasion was taking place inside
THE first sunbed I ever saw was the one that was wheeled into my older sister’s bedroom. It was about six feet long, so there was a bit of swearing as it was manoeuvred round the bend in the stairs.
Men’s singles: Andy Murray’s cold feet symptomatic of men who avoid tying the knot
AS Andy Murray tries to shrug off disparaging comments about Kim Sears, Anna Burnside asks what makes men so averse to tying the knot
Ewan Morrison’s messages from the mall
EWAN Morrison has trawled shopping centres for anecdotes and confessions, and discovered some very Scottish traits shining through the uniform architecture and global brands
Fordyce Maxwell: They would learn that being smarter than you look is the best policy
I SPENT three hours in a bus with several dozen teenagers last week and thought: what’s modern youth coming to? No shouting, dubious chants, exaggerated laughter or bad language, and I couldn’t even get a sing-song under way.
Book review: The Red House
MARK Haddon hit it big with The Curious History Of The Dog In The Night-time, a sharp, funny, deeply moving book that most readers have read and a lot of writers have ripped off. His next novel, A Spot Of Bother, was a less cohesive work that blended steadfastly unpretentious bloke-lit with stranger shades of sadness and gore.
Book review: Resetting the moral compass
‘ON THE Offshore Lights,” writes ML Stedman near the beginning of her extraordinary debut novel The Light Between Oceans, “you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no-one will say you’re wrong”.
Book review: Jubilee Lines
THIS volume is extremely instructive in showing how Carol Ann Duffy has re-imagined the poet laureateship as a more ambassadorial role.
Andrew Eaton-Lewis: Is a Smiths reunion any less likely than the Beach Boys reforming?
‘SINCE we published this article earlier today, denial of this reformation has been rife.” This may be my favourite quote of the week. It was added, late on Thursday afternoon, to the end of Music-news.com’s story that the Smiths “are to throw their differences aside and return to the live stage this autumn”.
Film review: The Lucky One
JUST in case you wondered: women still gasp when Zac Efron appears on screen, and so they might.
Film review: Monsieur Lazhar
THERE are few genres to dread more than the teaching movie. More often than not, it’s a double period on Ways to Inspire that leaves you with fresh sympathy for Mr Gradgrind’s “just the facts” despotism in Dickens’ Hard Times.
Film review: Safe | Breathing | Goodbye First Love | Silent House | American Pie: Reunion
Siobhan Synnot reviews the rest of this week’s new film releases
DVD of the week: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
What is it? The fourth in Tom Cruise’s secret agent franchise, notable for a breathtaking climb up the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, and an expanded role for sidekick Simon Pegg.
Album reviews: Marilyn Manson | Norah Jones | Jazz | Folk | Classical
A roundup of this week’s forthcoming longplayer releases, featuring
TV reviews: Waterloo Road | Cold Chain Mission | The Kidnap Diaries
BLESS its claret socks with the gold trim, Waterloo Road is an attentive pupil. A new and sinister trend in playground bullying can be a newspaper headline one day and you can bet it’ll be a storyline in this show the next.
Peter Ross: Rite of spring video
TO farmer Bert Leitch, Mull’s lambing season is a matter of life and death – and pride, even after 40 years
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Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art: Encountering the sublime and the ridiculous video
STANDING in King Street looking into the Street Level Gallery, I am bombarded with stuff. Artist Pete Horobin kept and recorded everything he did, made and consumed for a decade, the 1980s, and stored it into his attic flat in Dundee.
Peter Ross: Car-boot sales are big business in hard times – and the banter is truly priceless video
GEORGE Thomson grins, shrugs and spreads his hands, palms outwards, silver earring flashing in the bright morning sun. “I’ve got OCD,” he confesses. “Obsessive Car-boot Disorder.”
Going out: What we’re looking forward to in arts and entertainment this week
Cultural highlights of the week...
Claire Black: The Middletons do not deserve a badge, even if it’s only one between two
I WONDER if you get a badge for making it on to Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list? Maybe a dainty little enamel number with “Under the Influence” written on it. Or “I am a compelling force”. Catchy, don’t you think?
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Simon Cowell: How King Midas lost his mojo
Can Simon Cowell learn from the kind of public drubbing he’s so often meted out to X Factor contestants, asks Anna Burnside
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Second sight: clock watcher who catches time by the tail
Claudia Hammond explains to Chitra Ramaswamy how our minds can turn an hour into an eternity
Interview: Alyson Hannigan on American Pie
She started as Buffy’s sleek but geeky sidekick, but couldn’t resist repeated helpings of Hollywood’s most enduring sex comedy. Alyson Hannigan tells Siobhan Synnot why she likes to make ’em laugh
1 commentFordyce Maxwell: We enjoyed almost every new vista in spite of some raw, cold days
LIZ took a photograph at Balmerino Abbey. “Ah,” she said, admiring the wonders of an instant digital check, “that’s a nice one of the old chestnut – and quite a good one of the tree you’re standing beside.”
Book review: How Soon Is Now? by Richard King
TO READERS of a certain vintage the phrase “indie music” summons up images of pasty, thin boys with jangly guitars.
Granta: When Albion fades to grey
In the quest for modern Britain, Granta’s writers are too often diverted by England’s cultural cringe, discovers Stuart Kelly
Book review: The End Of Money, by David Wolman
I WAS wondering how I will pay tradesmen when cheques are discontinued, but David Wolman is ahead of me with a much more serious problem. How will we pay when cash and notes are no longer available? The coming of the cashless society is, he says, no joke. It is happening all around us.
Andrew Eaton-Lewis: If the media is in crisis then so is theatre, and Enquirer is a case in point
ON THURSDAY the National Theatre of Scotland launches a new show, Enquirer, exploring “the crisis in the newspaper industry”.
Glasgow International plays to the gallery
Glasgow International is keeping it real in 2012 with a festival that embraces every corner of the city and welcomes the world
Film reviews: Being Elmo | The Monk | African Cats | Damsels In Distress
The rest of this week’s new releases reviewed by Siobhan Synnot
Film review: Albert Nobbs (15)
THIS is a wistful parable about identity, co-written by Glenn Close, Gabriella Prekop and the Irish novelist John Banville.
Film review: Avengers Assemble (12A)
IS THIS the calm before the storm or a homage to The Artist, I wondered when the first three minutes of Avengers Assemble played in absolute silence.
Album reviews: Rufus Wainwright | The Dandy Warhols | Andy Aitchison Quartet | Ludovico Einaudi | Brooks Williams and Boo Hewerdine
The rest of the week’s new releases reviewed...
Game review: Street Fighter X Tekken
Perhaps the world’s two best-loved beat ’em ups go head-to-head and fist-to-fist in this cross-company super brawl.
DVD review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
What is it? The US screen version of Stieg Larsson’s thriller, with odd couple Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig teaming up to solve a family mystery.
On the box: The Bridge | Lip Service | The 70s
I’VE got a great idea for a crime drama, one that would be perfect for the countdown to the independence referendum. There’s been a murder. Or, if you’re watching in Scotland, a muhr-duhr. The corpse is discovered slap-bang on the Scottish-English Border, requiring a joint investigation.
Does Donald Trump have a point on renewables?
Does Trump have a point in saying wind farms will destroy tourism? Or will his own interests actually destroy the campaign against renewables, asks Dani Garavelli
30 commentsBook review: Once You Break A Knuckle, by DW Wilson
GRRR! If DW Wilson’s prose was any more masculine it would start scratching its ass and growing its own stubble. The short stories in this collection are all set in and around the small town of Invermere, British Columbia – a tough, manly place, no doubt, but at times they are so testosterone-charged it’s almost comical.
Album review: Human Don’t Be Angry
Malcolm Middleton promised a complete shift away from the miserable mambo of his previous two solo works, and is as good as his word.
Claire Black: I am no fan of LMAO or LOLZ and L8R brings me out in a rash
‘MY SANDWICH was amazing!” “I am on the train.” “Can you pick up some toilet rolls?” A few gems from my own personal text message treasure trove.
BBC move from London to Salford in numbers
Our state broadcaster – funded by the licence payer – is moving some of its work from London to Manchester. Ruth Walker asks it if all adds up
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Interview: Clouds, the greatest Scottish band you’ve never heard of
Bowie lauded them and they entranced prog rock royalty. Now Clouds, the greatest Scottish band you’ve never heard of, reform for Aidan Smith and explain how they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory
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Peter Ross: ‘The Nose’ is not to be sniffed at
Whyte & Mackay’s master blender Richard Paterson has insured his snout for £1.5m but his passion for whisky is priceless
Interview: Kevin Macdonald on Bob Marley
Kevin Macdonald tells Stephen Applebaum about his determination to avoid the ‘celebrity bullshit’ in his search for the man behind the legend that is Bob Marley
José Saramago’s surreal deal
A collection of the Portuguese novelist’s early stories shows why he was a worthy Nobel prize winner, writes Stuart Kelly
Book review: Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain
HERE’S another thing you can blame on the Greeks: the gift of the gab. Our irrational assumption that smooth talkers always know what they’re talking about can be traced back to the oratory of classical Athens, argues Susan Cain in a book that puts the case for the less vocal among us to get a hearing.
Book review: Telling Stories, by Tim Burgess
TIM Burgess is a bit of a mumbler. That much I can remember from the few occasions I interviewed him in the early 90s when his band The Charlatans were first feted as part of the “Madchester” scene.
Andrew Eaton-Lewis: It’s a symbol of cultural confidence that the Scottish Album of The Year exists
SHORTLY before Christmas I stumbled across Happy Particles, a low-key gathering of Glasgow indie scenesters from other bands such as Remember Remember and Stapleton.
- Election 2012: Labour emerge as biggest party in Edinburgh Council
- Tom English: Badly beaten, cruelly goaded Ibrox men endure longest day
- Tram project in worse state than ever, claim engineers
- Top law firm Ross Harper shut down after client cash probe
- Teenager identifies herself as mother of baby found dead at recycling plant
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Weather for Edinburgh
Saturday 05 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 1 C to 9 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North
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Sunny spells
Temperature: 3 C to 10 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: North
