Danny Boyle has turned his hand to the heist genre for his latest release Trance. After his success in the horror genre with 28 Days Later (2002) and with a successful children’s film under his belt with Millions(2004), it seems appropriate that Boyle should attempt something new. What he has produced, however, is a misguided attempt at a gritty Read More
The exhibition Synchronise our Eyebrows held at the Hannah Maclure Centre at the University of Abertay until the 26th April 2013 offers the rare opportunity for art lovers and those interested in Dundee and its culture to discover or re-engage with the work of Dundee-born artist Vincent Rattray. This is an important event for a number of Read More
As the director of Gummo (1997) and co-writer of Kids(1995), Harmony Korine is recognised for his indie approach to the documentation of youth culture. Korine’s latest film, Spring Breakers, sees the director scrutinise his adolescent subjects even more closely than he has done in the past. The story follows four college girls who rob a local chicken shack to Read More
The Secret Scripture comes from the pen of acclaimed Irish author, Sebastian Barry. In 2008, it was named the Costa Book of the Year. The novel tells the story of Roseanne McNulty, who has been a patient in a mental hospital for more years than anyone can remember. With the hospital about to close and Roseanne Read More
The Road Home, by Rose Tremain, concerns a Russian man who travels to Britain to find work so he can send money back home to his mother and five year old daughter, Maya. Tremain successfully portrays a man down on his luck, hopeful and thoughtful yet also weak and tired. Sceptical as I was when Read More
“’Your daughter is awful tanned. Is she that colour everyday?’ I imagine for a moment what the world might be like if people could change colour every day. ” Red Dust Road starts in Abuja, in an extraordinary and captivating opening chapter which packs the case for a journey which crosses countries, continents and hemispheres. The book begins with “Jonathan” , Read More
Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader met with much critical acclaim when it was published in his native Germany in 1995. Since then, it has won literary awards in Germany and France, been translated into thirty nine languages, and adapted for the big screen. The Reader also finds itself a staple on high school reading lists in Germany and beyond. So Read More
There are some startling and beautiful images from the much-exhibited photographer Hermann Rodrigues in Rags and Reels. Visual and Poetic Stories of Migration and Diaspora, his collaboration with poet Bashabi Fraser. There’s an elderly Sikh, bearded and turbaned in a bright blue tartan jacket, holding his ceremonial scabbard. A sitar player poses in her sari on an Read More
Moss Rich was a new name to me when I picked up his book, A Psalm of Consequences for Those Who Can’t Keep Up Monthly Payments, but the title promised originality and quirkiness, and the collection subsequently did not disappoint. With both serious and comic insights into the everyday, Rich seeks to turn the humdrum into poetry. Read More
Following a career defining role in Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011) and an underappreciated turn in George Clooney’s The Ides of March (2011), Ryan Gosling reunites with Blue Valentine (2010) director Derek Cianfrance for the pair’s, and indeed Cianfrance’s, second big screen venture. Given the resonance and popularity of their first collaboration, a gritty detailing of the evolution of a relationship, The Read More