- Cleared ex-corporal tells of relief
- Lifeboat in 100-mile yacht rescue
- Four arrested over football trouble
- NHS Lothian chief retires from post
- SNP hail city businessman backing
- Bypass appeal due at Supreme Court
- Property scheme to help veterans
- Sturgeon denial on News Corps talks
- Accused 'told friend wife was dead'
- Celtic boss bomb plot pair jailed
- Airport workers' strike postponed
- Salmond accused over Murdoch links
- Wife-murder accused 'had ill will'
Features
All in hand: Scottish composer Anna Meredith heads to the Proms – but without instruments
If you find yourself suddenly surrounded by scores of young people clapping, slapping and beatboxing, don’t panic… you’re in a free performance of the latest work by composer Anna Meredith for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.
Film review: Avengers Assemble (12A)
Thanks to the skills of Joss Whedon – and a fantastic Hulk – Marvel’s ensemble superhero caper is witty, exciting and fun
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Film reviews: Damsels in Distress | Albert Nobbs | Outside Bet | The Monk | African Cats
Alistair Harkness on the rest of this week’s new releases...
Interview: Mia Hansen-Løve on Goodbye First Love
Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest film is her most autobiographical to date. But how does she feel about interviewers probing her most intimate relationships? Alistair Harkness finds out
Theatre reviews: The Lieutenant of Inishmore | Thatcher’s Children | Beats | Demos
The death of a cat sounds like an unlikely premise for a ferociously amusing play about republicanism, but playwright Martin McDonagh manages to provoke as well as entertain
Alistair Harkness
Film review: Marley (15)
Concentrating on the man more than his music, this authorised and comprehensive biopic gets to the root of the reggae legend, finds Alistair Harkness
Interview: Joss Whedon, screenwriter
How do you bring some of the world’s greatest comic-book superheroes together in one film? If anyone can do it, Joss Whedon can, writes Alistair Harkness
Film reviews: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen | Ecstasy | Elles | Blackthorn | Lockout
Alistair Harkness and Mike McCahill offer their views on the films now screening in the cinemas
DVD reviews: The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo | Freud
The Scotsman’s film critic Alistair Harkness offers us his take on the recent DVD releases
Film review: The Cabin in the Woods (15)
FORMULAIC storytelling and the cyclical nature of creativity ensure there’s an insatiable appetite for deconstruction among filmmakers.
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Fiona Shepherd
CD of the Week: Jack White, Blunderbuss
FOR his first solo album, Jack White comes out all guns blazing against the savagery of love – but it’s clear we shouldn’t take any of it too seriously
Album reviews: Loudon Wainwright: Older than my old man | Rufus Wainwright: Out of the Game
While Rufus Wainwright mourns his mother, his father ponders his own mortality. But it’s not all sombre - there’s jolly music hall and bagpipes too
Interview: Jack White, guitarist and singer
He’s made records that are tri-coloured, glow in the dark or scented – and even released them tied to helium balloons. So, what’s next from the mercurial Jack White, asks Fiona Shepherd
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Album review: Nicki Minaj, Pink Friday
In trying to muscle in on the tween market, Nicki Minaj has neglected the most important part of her otherwise engaging act – writing songs
Gig review: Van Morrison, Edinburgh Playhouse
Van Morrison was packing sax on Saturday, sauntering on-stage to strike up a version of Brown Eyed Girl that set the tone for much of the rest of his set, being as it was a gentle tussle between subtle jazz flavours and loungey tendencies.
Joyce McMillan
Theatre review: King Lear, Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre
A SENSE of occasion hardly begins to describe the tingling mood of anticipation at the Citizens’ Theatre, on the opening night of the show that marks David Hayman’s return to classical theatre on the Citizens’ stage, after an absence of more than three decades.
1 commentTheatre review: Dear Glasgow, Glasgow Oran Mor
THERE will never be two identical performances of this second show in the Play, Pie and Pint Arab Spring season.
Theatre reviews: Could You Please Look into the Camera | Write Here
With a vivid play exploring the impact of state repression on individuals, Mohammed Al Attar has set a high standard at the start of Oran Mor’s Arab Spring season
Theatre review: Silence of Bees, Glasgow Lush
FROM the old circus arena at the Kelvin Hall to the natural soap shop in Sauchiehall Street, the Arches Behaviour Festival certainly gets around, exploring how behaviour changes in different contexts.
Theatre reviews: Girls Night | Forfeit | The Cycling Gymkhana
Joyce McMillan provides a roundup of the past week’s Scottish theatre
Duncan Macmillan
Art review: Glasgow International
The annual Glasgow International art festival features a host of fêted prizewinners, but few have real star quality
Art reviews: Damien Hurst | Turner Inspired: In the light of Claude | Titian’s First Masterpiece
Damien Hirst’s work still has the power to shock, revolt and fascinate, but for someone so financially successful he’s spent a long time resting on his diamond-encrusted laurels
Art review: Edvard Munch’s Graphic Works from the Gundersen Collection
The angst and isolation distilled by his best-known work pervades all Edvard Munch’s art, and experiments with printing allowed him to make some fascinating and subtle variations on those themes, discovers Duncan Macmillan
Visual art review: Treasures From The Queen’s Palaces, Queen’s Gallery, Edinburgh
QUEENS in fairy stories have treasures. Usually in the illustrations these look like golden chocolate coins and boiled sweets and there is a gold belt in Treasures from the Queen’s Palaces, the latest show at the Queen’s Gallery, with enormous emeralds along its length which looks just a bit like that, the jewels are so over the top.
Kenneth Walton
Classical: Ilan Volkov on his return to the BBC SSO
Ilan Volkov’s visit to Scotland as part of the Plug Festival promises some striking performances that are sure to shock
Interview: Jennifer Pike, violinist
Many students might dabble in small concerts, but violinist Jennifer Pike has had a decade in the limelight already – and she’s only 22
Classical review: SCO, Edinburgh Queen’s Hall
Lest we forget there was much more to the German Baroque than JS Bach and his prodigious family, last night’s lengthy programme by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra threw in two equally major names of the day, Telemann and the now lesser-known Johann David Heinichen.
Interview: Jonathan Morton, artistic director of the Scottish Ensemble
Given free rein by Glasgow Concert Halls, the artistic director of the Scottish Ensemble has assembled a formidable variety of performers this weekend
Classical review: Hebrides Ensemble, St Andrews in the Square, Glasgow
When faced with such an unconventional ensemble as Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time – the combination of piano, violin, clarinet and cello purely the outcome of it having being written in a prisoner of war camp where these were the only instrumentalists available – the most complete way to programme it is with specially commissioned works.
Jim Gilchrist
Folk, jazz, etc: Tinfoil takeoff for Bancroft’s mission to scout the limits of home
SPACESUITS, sofas and saxophones, not to mention “live” solos from musicians who aren’t actually there… prepare to be entertained, provoked and occasionally bemused as Phil Bancroft takes his multimedia extravaganza Home, Small as the World on the road.
Folk, Jazz etc.: Making Tracs the big story to grow grassroots interest in traditional arts
DONALD Smith, director of that crucible of creativity at the foot of Edinburgh’s High Street, the Scottish Storytelling Centre, recently had cause to evoke the shade of the Netherbow Port, the grim old fortified gate in the city walls which once stood beside where the Centre now is.
Jim Gilchrist: Alasdair Roberts collaboration strikes right note
THE last time I spoke to Alasdair Roberts, towards the end of last year, he had just compiled a selection from the wealth of Lowland Scots song recorded by the industrious American folk music collector Alan Lomax, to mark the 60th anniversary of Lomax’s first sally into Scotland.
Jim Gilchrist: Harpists sharpen their technique for annual gathering
IT ISN’T every harpist who launches their latest album at one of the world’s most famous jazz clubs, but that was how Colombian harp virtuoso Edmar Castaneda unveiled his latest recording, Double Portion, earlier this month with a double gig at the renowned Blue Note in New York’s Greenwich Village.
Susan Mansfield
Hack Watch: The play uncovering the crisis facing the newspaper industry
A new play – in the style of Black Watch – uses 60 hours of interviews with editors, journalists and owners to give a fascinating insight into the crisis facing the newspaper industry
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Power to the people: The artist relying on the public’s help
Artist Jeremy Deller does not make ‘things’ that can be put in a gallery, and relies on the public to help, so he hopes his interactive piece for the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art will bring out the best in the city. By Susan Mansfield
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Other highlights of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art
Susan Mansfield suggests three other must-see events at the festival
Visual art review: Alan Dimmick: Photography From The Last 15 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland, GoMA, Glasgow
A GREAT photograph is often to do with being in the right place at the right time. Furthermore, significant moments don’t always announce themselves. There are no banners which say: “History is being made here, go on, click that shutter”. So then it becomes about perseverance: capture every moment you possibly can, and the important ones are likely to be in there somewhere.
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Arts Blog
The man who turned around Marvel
If ONE were to think of superhero giant Marvel in terms of its latest movie Avengers Assemble, then Kevin Feige would be the company’s real-life Nick Fury – the secret-agent played by Samuel L Jackson who brings together Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and The Incredible Hulk to defend the Earth under the auspices of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Why I love the Black Seeds
I FIRST came into contact with Kiwi legends The Black Seeds in 2007, when they approached Trouble (the club-night-come-promotional-organisation I started with fellow DJ Erik d’Viking in 2002) about us providing DJ support for them at a trio of Edinburgh festival shows.
Titanic anniversary: The best (and worst) of the films about the disaster
Odd and macabre as it might sound, I’ve been a Titanic “fan” since childhood. I can’t pinpoint the moment my fascination began, or what triggered it, but equally, I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t massively curious about the amazingly opulent ship and its terrible fate.
1 commentTim Cornwell: Scot who plays to the gallery on Australia’s artistic scene
THE Power Index, a website that aims to reveal “who really runs Australia,” typically tracks the doings of the high and mighty, from James Murdoch to Cate Blanchett. This week’s “one to watch”: Dundee-born, Orkney-raised Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, after the opening of the new $53 million (£34m) wing at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
Pets allowed - Snarky Puppy bring funk and fur to the Central Belt
IF BROOKLYN-BASED groove-dogs Snarky Puppy were a pooch they’d probably be something akin to Charlie Brown’s pet Beagle, Snoopy: funky, perennially cool, and in a league of their own.
- Rangers administration: Craig Whyte banned for life as club fined
- Rangers administration: Fans hit out at SFA
- Rangers administration: ‘We would welcome application from Rangers to rejoin the SFL’
- Scots take more pride in Billy Connolly than the Queen, says survey
- Arlene Fraser murder trial: Estranged husband called to testify
- Scots take more pride in Billy Connolly than the Queen, says survey
- Yes, I agreed to lobby for News International, admits Alex Salmond
- FMQs: Rupert Murdoch played Alex Salmond like a fool, opponents say
- Scottish council elections: Holyrood favours east coast, insists west
- The Rumour Mill: Wednesday’s football news and gossip
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Weather for Edinburgh
Friday 27 April 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 2 C to 11 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
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Temperature: 1 C to 9 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
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