This film begins with the obvious portents: Dr. Ryan Stone (her father wanted a boy), played by Sandra Bullock, is space sick; her ECG levels are off and she can’t adapt to the constant movement of anti-gravity. After only 6 months of intensive NASA training, the medical engineer embarks on her first mission aboard the Read More
John MacKenna writes prolifically, and to acclaim, across the full spectrum – playwriting, novels, short stories, biography, documentary, radio and poetry. He approaches all of these different forms from the tri-fold backdrop of writing, producing and acting. All of this lays the foundation for his third poetry collection, Where Sadness Begins. Collected in four parts, Read More
Short Term 12 is director Destin Cretton’s first feature length film but, if its success is anything to go by, it will not be his last. The film won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2013 SXSW Festival and, on the whole, brings a refreshing subtlety to Read More
In Arabic, Adéle’ means ‘justice’, and it’s wonderful to see that Abdellatif Kechiche’s masterpiece has rightfully received it’s ‘Adéle’ – not only in critical accolades but in global audience attention too. This film is overflowing with subjects to discuss: New Queer Cinema, physicality, use of colour, twenty-first century existentialism (which Adéle defines as “existence, essence; Read More
The Devil in the ocean, [how] it had cursed the town and all the children in it. Paul Wright’s first feature length film has been widely anticipated after his short Until the River Runs Red, a story of a little girl, God’s daughter, lost and wandering in the wilderness, won Best Short at the BAFTA Read More
Norman Jope’s Aphinar is not an easy read. It is a collection which requires full investment from the reader. It is ambitious. The diction is complex and the content rich – dense, even. As far as first impressions are concerned, Aphinar is, without doubt, intimidating. Yet, it is also immediately captivating – cohesive, intricate and Read More
Ovid wrote Heroides over 2000 years ago, and in the succeeding millennia attitudes towards this remarkable text have veered from reverence to disdain. Once his most celebrated work, recent critics have held it in less high regard. This series of letters from the women of Greek and Roman myth to their absent lovers has been Read More
“Every poet is ideally the deaf Beethoven”. This double-billing was both welcome and apt for Michael Hulse, the distinguished poet, editor, translator and educator. Born of a German mother and an English father, he probed an identity and a “complex legacy”, acknowledging that the post-colonial weight of the British Empire was no less difficult than Read More
One was immediately given some idea of Lesley Riddoch’s character when the audience was told that she arrived straight from a hospital visit some 40 miles away in Kirkcaldy. In fact, such was Riddoch’s warm humour and enthusiasm in the session that it was easy to forget that you were listening to one of the Read More
As we approached the final event of Dundee Literary Festival 2013, we charged our glasses and toasted 40 years of Canongate. Originally founded by Stephanie Wolf Murray, Canongate was brought back from the brink in 1994 by current publisher and managing director, Jamie Byng, who is now still at the helm of the company. At Read More