Dear Scotland

Peter Mullan is Scotland’s best living actor. Discuss. Certainly there are few Scottish actors whose name I’m as glad to see appear on a film’s credits. It means that even if the film isn’t great, there will be something worth seeing.

The term cult film is really overused. Some claim that Reservoir Dogs or The Usual Suspects are cult films when they are really just critically appreciated successful films with a cool cast and/or soundtrack. A cult is something that demands devotion, even blind faith, and, by its nature, is often a well kept secret.

Since I was a youngster men seemed to be split into two groups, big men and wee men. As everyone is a big man when you’re young this distinction seemed arbitrary, but as you grow up you realise that someone being labelled big man is about more than height or bulk, there was an aura. [...]

Sometimes a writer comes along who is difficult to categorise, who doesn’t fit easily into any genre. Iain Banks is one such writer. Of course as Iain M. Banks, his other writing title, he is an out and out sci-fi novelist, but even that isn’t as clear cut as it at first appears.

‘Novels are full of padding, they’re clearly objectionable’
Paul Reekie ‘Submission’
The above quote is one of my favourites and comes from the 1996 short story collection ‘Children of Albion Rovers’. It is the way I feel about many novels, and neatly sums up why I have such a love for the short story.

This week’s featured film is a bona fide classic, and, like Muriel Spark’s 1961 novel from which it is adapted, much more subversive and controversial than many would give it credit for. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a film about loyalty, betrayal, guilt, duty, responsibility and questions of nature versus nurture.

This week’s film is the wonderfully titled Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself. Set in present day Glasgow this 2002 movie is a real European affair, co-produced as it is by Scotland, France, Denmark and Sweden. This international feel stretches to a wonderfully eclectic cast which includes the always brilliant Shirley Henderson, Mads Mikkelsen (seen recently [...]

For some people, Scottish cinema consists of Trainspotting, Braveheart, Local Hero, Whisky Galore, whatever happens to be a particular favourite and little else. From early Powell and Pressburger and Ealing, through the madness of Brigadoon, the badness of the 1970s and the Forsyth dominated 1980s, to the renaissance of the last 20 years, this new [...]

There are many ways to start a novel, but surely one of the most arresting of recent times can be found in Alan Bissett’s ‘Boyracers’, which opens:
‘like rebel angels, bright, restless, sensually attuned to the flux and flow of mortal Falkirk, Belinda our chariot, our spirit guide, the wind rushing up and past her face [...]