21st May-7th June Magnetic North and Dundee Rep Theatre. Co-produced by Magnetic North and Dundee Rep, the late Tom McGrath’s enchanting drama Kora is enjoying a two-week run in the recently refurbished Bonar Hall. Inspired by a real life Coralie whom the playwright met in Dundee in the 1980s, the fictional Kora is a single Read More
(Spain, 2013) 10 – 23 May; DCA. Much of the humour of Los amantes pasajeros (I’m So Excited) runs the risk of being lost in translation. To Spanish speakers the original title means “the fleeing lovers” or “the passenger lovers”. As always, director Pedro Almodóvar aims to shock. Fans and critics of his work will Read More
(Australia/ USA, 2013) 24 May- 6 June; DCA. You know that when you have the option to watch an adaptation of a classic Fitzgerald novel in 3D you will most certainly be confronted by excess grandeur. In his adaptation of The Great Gatsby, the film chosen to open this year’s Cannes Film Festival, director Baz Read More
(Israel, France, Germany and Belgium, 2012) 13 – 16 May; DCA. The Gatekeepers, by Director Dror Moreh, premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2012, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It is a short lesson on the futility of revenge. Six ex-leaders of Shin Bet, the less well-known wing of Read More
E.H. Gombrich. (Yale, 2008); pbk: £7.99. If I were a daring editor at Yale, living in a parallel universe where rights issues were no obstacle, I’d consider giving this incredible little book a new subtitle. I’d call it A Little History of the World: A Stunning Example of Some of the Many Things Wikipedia Cannot Read More
Sophie Hannah (Hodder & Stoughton, 2006); pbk £7.99. The overall premise of Little Face, one of Sophie Hannah’s first novels to feature her now well-known characters, Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer, is promising. New mother Alice Fancourt lets her daughter out of her sight for the first time in the three weeks since Florence’s birth. Read More
Andy McNab (Corgi, 2010); pbk £1.99. To say that Andy McNab’s book Last Night Another Soldier… is a quick read is to put it mildly. Short, sharp and to the point it most certainly is. If you are looking for literary or thought provoking prose, look elsewhere. If you are young, (probably) male and inspired Read More
What is it with teenage fiction these days that it seems not to shirk from addressing some the most pressing ethical problems of the day, and in highly imaginative ways? Their sheer thematic ambitiousness – the Holocaust, betrayal complicity and guilt, disability, violence, war, terrorism and even planetary consciousness – has led to crossover audiences; Read More
John Wagner, Alan Grant, Brian Bolland, Brent Ewins, Cliff Robinson, Robin Smith (Rebellion, 2012; pbk, £6.99) Judge Dredd: The Dark Judges, a collection of four stories featuring Judge Death and his “Lawmen of the Apocalypse” (Judges Fear, Fire and Mortis respectively), acts as the perfect sequel to 2012’s underrated (and unfortunately under viewed) DREDD 3D. Read More