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You Have Been Watching… Red Road
I’ve been having a few conversations recently about how Scotland’s current cultural reliance on grim and gritty urban (and increasingly rural) fiction has reached the point of overkill. That particular alcoholic and violent shark has been well and truly jumped. If Scotland’s cultural palette becomes brighter as well as broader then that is surely a positive thing, […]
March 25, 2011
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You Have Been Watching…Gregory’s Two Girls
This is a real oddity. Bill Forsyth is my favourite Scottish film-maker, a man who can do little wrong, and that little is Gregory’s 2 Girls. It’s not terrible, no matter what you may have heard, but even I can’t claim that it’s very good. It’s all over the place, as if Forsyth started to make […]
March 11, 2011
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Indelible Ink: Duncan McLean’s ‘Bunker Man’
There is a quote on the cover of my paperback of Duncan McLean’s ‘Bunker Man’ from Cosmopolitan Magazine that claims ‘Duncan McLean is Scotland’s answer to Roddy Doyle’. If a fan of Doyle were to pick up ‘Bunker Man’ on this recommendation they would be in for a shock, particularly if their knowledge of Doyle […]
March 7, 2011
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You Have Been Watching (Glasgow Film Festival Special)…You Instead
Movies and music can make for uncomfortable bedfellows when that relationship moves beyond soundtrack duties. For every This is Spinal Tap, Hedwig and the Angry Inch or La Bamba (hugely underrated) there’s a Hearts of Fire, a Breaking Glass, a Rock Star and a Fear of a Black Hat. David Mackenzie’s You Instead, which premièred at the Glasgow […]
March 4, 2011
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You Have Been Watching (Glasgow Film Festival Special)…Island
One of the many hidden gems at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival turned out to be Island, a film based on Jane Rogers’ novel of the same name, and directed by Brek Taylor and Elizabeth Mitchell. I had no idea of what I was about to see bar the brief blurb on the website. Set almost entirely on […]
February 25, 2011
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Indelible Ink: Special Edition ‘Stuart Adamson: In A Big Country’
It’s perhaps difficult to sufficiently express just how popular Big Country were for a few years in the mid-1980s. Albums went straight to number 1, there were regular Top of the Pops appearances, they were lauded in music publications from pop paper Smash Hits to the weekly NME and Melody Maker and were also well-liked and respected by many […]
February 18, 2011
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You Have Been Watching…Whisky Galore!
This is one of the very best. If you’ve never seen Whisky Galore!, and that surely can’t be many of you, then you have a real treat in front of you. Based on the real-life story of the sinking of the S.S. Politician, which went down near the Isle of Eriskay in 1941 along with it’s cargo […]
February 11, 2011
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Indelible Ink: Ron Butlin’s ‘The Sound of My Voice’
Ron Butlin seems to be one of Scottish writing’s best kept secrets and I don’t quite know why. Scotland is lucky to have the writers we do, and Butlin can show his medals with the best of them. He is perhaps best known as a poet, he is Edinburgh’s Makar after all, but even in […]
February 7, 2011
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You Have Been Watching…NEDS
Whatever your expectations of Peter Mullan’s latest film NEDS are, prepare to have them confounded. You look at the poster and the tagline ‘Everyone Need To Be Taught a Lesson’ and you’ll likely think; gangs, knives, fantastic amounts of swearing, hopefully some dark humour, and, if your lucky, the possibility of redemption. All of these are […]
February 4, 2011
