'This is John Connor. We've been fighting for a long time. It was bad enough when we were fighting the Terminators, but then the Transformers came. Now we just call them the Transforminators.'
If only the movie above really existed. Sadly, we'll just need to make do with Terminator Salvation, Hollywood' latest sci-fi reboot, out on Wednesday. Our critic Alistair Harkness offers his thoughts on the film's time-twisting plot conundrums (and its numerous plot holes) in the Critique magazine section of today's Scotsman.
Also in today's edition of our seven-day culture magazine: French photographer Yann Arthus Bertrand on Home, his new film about climate change; find out what Adele, Duffy, Kylie Minogue and Will Young all have in common; how the West End Festival and the Leith Festival measure up; and the return of the Scotsman Book Club.
In today's Scotsman, read Alistair Harkness's reviews of the latest movie releases, from horror blockbuster Drag Me To Hell to low-key gem Sleep Furiously, above, a dreamy and heartbreaking portrait of a Welsh farming community edging into decline, with a soundtrack by Aphex Twin.
Peer Gynt begins a new tour of Scotland in Dundee tonight. The Scotsman's Susan Mansfield went behind the scenes of Dundee Rep and the National Theatre of Scotland's acclaimed production of Ibsen's play; you can read her feature for the Scotsman's Critique magazine here.
Duncan of Jordanstone art school in Dundee has set a high standard for this year's Scottish degree shows. Find out why by reading Susan Mansfield's review in today's paper - or online here.
The Bank of Scotland Imaginate Festival begins today in Edinburgh and Musselburgh. The children's theatre festival's 20th anniversary programme includes performances by Scotland's TAG, Visible Fictions and Catherine Wheels, alongside work from across Europe, including Speeltheater Holland's Pero, above. Read our reviews from the festival in the Scotsman throughout the week. The festival is also touring to Easterhouse, Hawick, Dunfermline, Glasgow, Shetland, Falkirk and Hamilton.
Meanwhile, in today's newspaper, you can read Olaf Furniss and Derick Mackinnon's monthly Under The Rader column and the latest CD reviews, including the new album by Simple Minds.
Forget Night at the Museum 2, go see Girl Cut in Two, says our film critic Alistair Harkness. Read his verdict on this weekend's cinema releases in the Scotsman today, or online here.
Also in today's newspaper, read Stephen Applebaum's latest report from the Cannes Film Festival.
And, as the stage production of His Dark Materials continues its run at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, author Philip Pullman talks to James Rampton about inspiring children to read poetry.
Remember this? Yep, it's Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, and it'll be shown outdoors on Edinburgh's Grassmarket next month as part of the EIFF's Film Festival Under The Stars programme, announced today. Also showing will be The Chronicles of Narnia, Charlotte's Web and Stone of Destiny.
The choices, the Festival says, are a tribute to the efforts of its patrons, Sir Sean Connery, Tilda Swinton, Seamus McGarvey and Robert Carlyle, in helping to lure movie stars to Edinburgh this year - the Year of Homecoming, lest we forget. Why they chose to thank Carlyle by screening probably the worst film he's ever made is a mystery, but there you go.
The patrons have been busy, it seems, because as of today the list of big names expected to attend this year's Film Festival includes (deep breath): Alan Cumming, Guy Pearce, Paddy Considine, Claire Danes, Robin Wright Penn, Kate Winslet, Sam Mendes, Rose Byrne, William H Macy, Brenda Blethyn, Gael Garcia Bernal, Jaime Winstone, Meera Syal, Emily Blunt, Peter Saarsgard, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Shane Meadows, Roger Corman, Darren Aronofsky, Joe Dante, Kathryn Bigelow, Ewen Bremner, Ian Hart, Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Miller... you get the picture. Autograph books at the ready...
The new stage version of Quadrophenia begins its Scottish tour next week. You can read Susan Mansfield's preview of the show in today's Scotsman, and online here.
Also in today's Scotsman, read our theatre critic Joyce McMillan's verdict on Chicago at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, and Ghosts at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.
Just in time for Morrissey's 50th birthday, an academic at the University of St Andrews, Dr Gavin Hopps, is publishing the first academic study of his work. Dr Hopps's book, Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart, is being claimed as the first academic study of Morrissey and his work. It argues that the former Smiths frontman is the greatest lyricist in the history of British popular music, and compares him to Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and Oscar Wilde, as well as Frankie Howerd and George Formby.
'Most existing commentaries on Morrissey retell a gossipy story of the circumstances around his songs or else fashion a biographical portrait out of his lyrics,' says Dr Hopps. 'Either way, his artistry tends to disappear in the process.’
Hopps has been championing Morrissey's literary credentials for some time now. In 2002, he spoke at an academic conference on the subject of The Smiths, at the University of Manchester. He's also one of the founding trustees of the Scottish Byron Society.
Is Morrissey really up there with Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett? Our pop critic Fiona Shepherd's so-so verdict on his latest album suggests otherwise, but let us know what you think.
The Dance Film 09 festival begins in Edinburgh tomorrow, featuring dance-inspired films from Swing Time, above, to Flashdance. You can read Kelly Apter's preview in the Scotsman today, and online here.
The Critics Awards For Theatre in Scotland have announced their 2009 shortlist. Leading the field are David Leddy's Sub Rosa, at the Citizens' Theatre, and David Greig's Midsummer, at the Traverse, with four nominations each. Dundee Rep's production of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, above, and Vanishing Point's Interiors have also done well, with three nominations each. Click on the links above to read our critic Joyce McMillan's reviews of each play.
The winners will be revealed at the awards ceremony at Edinburgh Festival Theatre on 14 June, at 5:30pm.
BEST MALE PERFORMANCE: Andy Clark, Darren, The Ching Room, A Play, a Pie and a Pint
Billy Mack, Morris Magellan, The Sound of My Voice, Citizens' Theatre
Billy Seymour, schoolboy, Pornography, Traverse Theatre/Birmingham Rep
Matthew Zajac, The Tailor of Inverness, Dogstar Theatre
BEST FEMALE PERFORMANCE: Cora Bissett, Helena, Midsummer, Traverse Theatre
Irene Macdougall, Martha, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dundee Rep
Gabriel Quigley, Oracle and Mae, Bliss/Mud, Tron Theatre
Gerda Stevenson, The Lasses, O, Rowan Tree Theatre
BEST DIRECTOR: James Brining, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dundee Rep
David Leddy, Sub Rosa, Fire Exit/Citizens' Theatre
Matthew Lenton, Interiors, Vanishing Point/Napoli Teatro Festival Italia/Mercadante Teatro Stabile di Napoli/Traverse Theatre in association with Lyric Hammersmith and Tron Theatre
Jemima Levick, Beauty and the Beast, Dundee Rep
BEST ENSEMBLE: Architecting, The TEAM/National Theatre of Scotland
Cockroach, Traverse Theatre/National Theatre of Scotland
The Drawer Boy, Tron Theatre
Interiors, Vanishing Point/Napoli Teatro Festival Italia/Mercadante Teatro Stabile di Napoli/Traverse Theatre in association with Lyric Hammersmith and Tron Theatre
BEST NEW PLAY: David Greig/Gordon McIntyre, Midsummer, Traverse Theatre
Sam Holcroft, Cockroach, Traverse Theatre/National Theatre of Scotland
David Leddy, Sub Rosa, Fire Exit/Citizens' Theatre
Simon Stephens, Pornography, Traverse Theatre/Birmingham Rep
BEST PRODUCTION FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE: Beauty and the Beast, Dundee Rep
Liar, TAG/Sounds of Progress
Peter Pan, Visible Fictions/Children's Theatre Company, Minneapolis
Rudolph, Andy Manley/MacRobert
BEST DESIGN: Jamie Harrison and Candice Edmunds (design), Simon Wilkinson (lighting), Anna Scatola (puppet maker), Slick, Vox Motus/Tron Theatre
Stewart Laing, Les Parents Terribles, Dundee Rep
Alex Lowde (set) and Chris Davey (lighting), Beauty and the Beast, Dundee Rep
Jason Southgate (set) and Graham Sutherland (lighting), The Sound of My Voice, Citizens' Theatre
BEST USE OF MUSIC AND SOUND: Seylan Baxter, Lillias Kinsman-Blake and Rachel Newton, The Lasses, O, Rowan Tree Theatre
Paddy Cunneen, Waltz of the Cold Wind, A Play, a Pie and a Pint
David Paul Jones and Zoey Van Goey, Dolls, Hush Productions/National Theatre of Scotland
Gordon McIntyre, Midsummer, Traverse Theatre
BEST TECHNICAL PRESENTATION: 4.48 Psychosis, Sweetscar/Cumbernauld Theatre/Tramway
Peeping at Bosch, Mischief La Bas/National Theatre of Scotland
Slick, Vox Motus/Tron Theatre
Sub Rosa, Fire Exit/Citizens' Theatre
BEST PRODUCTION: Beauty and the Beast, Dundee Rep
Interiors, Vanishing Point/Napoli Teatro Festival Italia/Mercadante Teatro Stabile di Napoli/Traverse Theatre in association with Lyric Hammersmith and Tron Theatre
Today is visual art day. Click here for Susan Mansfield's review of work by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan, above, James Furneaux and Hugh Buchanan. Click here for Duncan Macmillan's verdict on the Scottish Gallery's John Houston Memorial Exhibition.
In today's Scotsman, our man in Moscow David Elder goes behind the scenes at Eurovision, and explains why Norway's Alexander Rybak (you can watch his performance above) is the favourite to win.
You can also read our critic Joyce McMillan's theatre round-up and Tim Cornwell's weekly arts diary.
Up, the much-anticipated new film from Pixar, opens the Cannes Film Festival tonight. Stephen Applebaum is covering the festival for the Scotsman; you can read his verdict on Up in tomorrow's newspaper. Meanwhile, you'll find Stephen's first report from the festival in the Scotsman today, and online here.
An early contender for 'soundtrack to the summer' landed on The Scotsman arts desk today. All Balloons is the new album by London four-piece One eskimO, produced by Faithless mastermind Rollo. It isn't due to be released until 29 June (roughly when Scotland's summer usually comes to en end) but in the meantime you can listen to a selection of the tracks here.
See what I mean? Just the sort of thing you want to have playing in the background while sitting under an old oak tree, sipping a pint of scrumpy on the warmest evening of the year.
Not content simply to put out a beautiful, mellow record, One eskimO are also blazing a trail in the world of music animation. Working with Passion Pictures, the team behind Damon Albarn's make-believe band Gorillaz, they have come up with a series of cartoons to go with this new batch of songs. All of which makes you wonder: can All Balloons properly be called an album? Isn't it more like a series of short films all soundtracked by the same people? Does that make it a brand new art form? And if so, shouldn't somebody come up with a name for it?
Suggestions on the back of an amusing postcard please - the best one gets a bottle of expensive foriegn cider. Oh, and One eskimO are scheduled to play Cabaret Voltaire in Edinburgh on 23 May and King Tut's in Glasgow on 24 May.
In today's newspaper you'll find Duncan Macmillan's in-depth verdict on Willie Doherty's new show at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. Click here to read the online version.
The Fruitmarket has made a short film about Doherty, which includes footage of his work, an interview with the artist and an introduction from gallery director Fiona Bradley. Click on the image above to watch it.
Why spend a lot of money making a pop video when your fans will make one for you and then post it all over the internet on your behalf? Before the Manic Street Preachers' new album is even in the shops - click here for our critic Fiona Shepherd's review - fans of the band have posted several home-made promos on YouTube. We particularly like this one for the song All is Vanity, which uses edited footage from the preposterous sci-fi movie Equilibrium (if you've ever wondered what Nineteen Eighty-Four would have been like if it had been made by a kung-fu fanatic who had spent several solid days eating sherbet, this is the film for you).
Those of you with more arthouse leanings might prefer this one - a video for the catchily titled Manics song Jackie Collins Existential Question Time, using footage from the film Mysterious Skin. Copyright schmopyright!
Also reviewed in today's Scotsman - new albums by Graham Coxon and Steve Earle, plus the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and jazz guitarist Julian Lage.
Welcome to a new page on the Scotsman's website. The Scotsman Arts Blog is your first port of call for all of the newspaper's cultural coverage. Think of us as a helpful, friendly doorman (or doorwoman). Film reviews? This way sir! Visual art? Certainly, madam, just over to your right!
The doorman/doorwoman is not only friendly and helpful, but chatty too. Before you go wherever you're going, we might want to blether for a few minutes about whatever happens to be on our mind just now. Maybe there's a particularly interesting article that we'd like to bring to your attention. Maybe a new season, or concert, or festival, has just been announced that we'd like to tell you about straight away. Maybe we're annoyed about something. Maybe we've just been told a good joke. Who knows? We're making this up as we go along.
Today is Friday. In the print edition of the Scotsman that means it's film reviews day. Click on our film critic Alistair Harkness, on your right, for his verdict on this week's movie releases, including Star Trek.
And feel free to tell us what you think by emailing the arts editor on aeaton@scotsman.com
Things are looking good for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. With the uncertainty that accompanied last year’s inaugural move to June no longer an issue (ticket sales were up, apparently), this year’s full line-up, unveiled yesterday, already seems significantly stronger and more confident than its immediate predecessor. Put that down to artistic director Hannah McGill bolstering the festival’s noble efforts to discover new talent with a raft of genuinely exciting talking-point films and guests destined to sate the most ardent of cinephiles.
New work from the likes of Steven Soderbergh, Andrea Arnold (who follows up Red Road with Fish Tank), Sam Mendes (whose new film Away We Go opens proceedings) and festival regular Shane Meadows are the most obvious cinematic highlights – although as someone who longs for the day when all action movies are as good as Point Break, I have to confess that the British premiere of Kathryn Bigelow’s hard-rocking Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker (her first film in seven years) currently tops my can’t-wait-to-see list.
Of course new filmmakers will doubtless emerge from the event, but what’s heartening about the presence of such already-established directors is that their new movies seem to have been included as much for their artistic merit as for the cache of their creators’ names (not always the case at film festivals). Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, for instance, is another of his low-budget experimental dramas and was shot in just 15 days during last October’s US presidential election race – something that will doubtless give plenty of immediacy to its story about a sex industry worker trying to diversify her assets at the onset of the current financial crisis.
Outstripping even this rapid turn around, however, is the latest from Meadows, a semi-improvised faux rockumentary called Le Donk that he shot in less than a week. Meadows will be on hand to explain how he did it in a special event entitled Five Day Features in which he promises to outline his strategy for "low-budget world domination."
That sentiment certainly sums up the ethos of the festival’s retrospective choice this year. Roger Corman wrote the book on low-budget filmmaking (literally: his autobiography was entitled How I Made 100 Films in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime) and he’ll be in attendance to discuss his highly influential career as a director of trash art and a producer responsible for giving early career breaks to the likes of Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, and another of this year’s EIFF special guests: Joe Dante. Dante, director of beloved 1980s fare such as The Howling, Gremlins and The ‘Burbs will be in Edinburgh to participate in one of the festival’s normally excellent In Person events, so expect his undervalued status as Hollywood’s most anarchic filmmaker in the early days of the blockbuster era to be pored over.
If you wanted to, you could probably also trace an evolutionary line from Corman to Darren Aronofsky, another of this year’s In Person attendees. Aronofsky reinvigorated the flagging 1990s US independent film scene with his astonishing micro-budget black-and-white mathematical thriller Pi. Since that film made its British debut at the EIFF in 1998, it seems appropriate that this most singular of American directors should take time out to return to Edinburgh to reflect on his career while poised between the recent success of The Wrestler and his proposed big budget Hollywood reboot of RoboCop.
There’s a bit of a Scottish homecoming feel as well, with a rare on-stage interview with Local Hero’s notoriously publicity-shy writer/director Bill Forsyth, a special screening of Bill Douglas’s final film, Comrades, an anniversary screening of Shallow Grave (it’s been 15 years!) and the UK premiere of Spread, Hallam Foe director David Mackenzie’s Hollywood debut, which stars Ashton Kutcher as a young hustler who gets through life by seducing needy older women (Demi Moore doesn’t feature).
Also worth looking out for are: Superbad director Greg Mottola’s Adventureland; blaxsploitation spoof (and Sundance hit) Black Dynamite; stop-motion adult animation film Max and Mary; Dario Argento’s Adrien Brody-starring serial killer thriller Giallo, and Moon, a Solaris-esque descent into lunar madness by first-time Brit director Duncan Jones, whose interest in space oddity seems strangely fitting. His dad is David Bowie.
