Noticeboard NewsGossipOpinion in g
B r i
e f
Th e
Leftfield announce new tour dates
A R O U N D T O W N The capital enjoys a hearty pat on the back this month following news that it’s been voted Favourite UK City in the Conde Nast Readers’ Travel Awards 2010. Edinburgh scored particularly highly and architecture and user-friendliness. aesthetics
on
BOO K S Harry Potter scribe JK Rowling has given £10m towards setting up a multiple sclerosis research clinic in Scotland, in honour of her late mother, who died aged 45 of the disease. The Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic will be based within the grounds of Edinburgh University, and will use patient-based studies to find treatments that could alleviate multiple sclerosis, as well as carrying out research on a number of other degenerative conditions.
FILM Hannah McGill is stepping down as artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. McGill took up the role in 2006, having previously been a programme consultant for the Festival. There is no word yet on who will replace her. Further up the road from EIFF HQ, Holly Golightly look-a-like, Kirsty Robertson is supporting the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning at the Dominion cinema. The Macmillan Cancer Support are putting on a special screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s complete with coffee and cake. Check out the screening on 14 Sep at 6pm, with all proceeds going towards helping people affected by cancer.
MUSIC It’s new albums ahoy in musicland this fortnight. Orange Juice reveal they are to release a definitive box set on 8 Nov, complete with 16 8 THE LIST 9–23 Sep 2010
Visit www.list.co.uk for daily arts & entertainment news
ARTS AND CULTURE NEWS COVERED IN TWO MINUTES
and previously unreleased tracks and another 23 tracks previously unavailable digitally. The set will also include a DVD showing the band’s two promotional clips for ‘Rip It Up’ and ‘What Presence?!’, their four performances on The Old Grey Whistle Test the posthumous concert video Dada With (The) Juice. Belle & Sebastian are also to release a new album of material, Write About Love. Check it out from 11 Oct, and keep ‘em peeled for their upcoming gigs this December at Glasgow’s Barrowland. In other muso news, Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos is to be appointed as an official ambassador for Glasgow’s UNESCO City of Music status, while elsewhere the mighty Chemikal Underground have released an audiobook version of The Year Of Open Doors, a short story collection, featuring Aidan Moffat, Alan Bissett and many, many more. And so to all things gig, where Leftfield have announced their biggest UK Tour in over a decade. Check them out this autumn in Glasgow with more gig dates still to be announced.
THEATRE And finally, things seem a little off kilter at the Citz in Glasgow where it’s been announced that Jeremy Raison and Guy Hollands will stand down as Joint Artistic Directors of the Company. The board will also have a shake up, as the theatre announces a ‘new era’, following increased speculation about its funding, vision and future. Raison will still direct A Clockwork Orange, as part of the Citz autumn 2010 programme and Hollands will also continue to direct The Monster in the Hall and Beauty and the Beast. Watch this space for more as we have it.
Channel Hopper
Dispatches from the sofa, with Brian Donaldson
■ With England’s footballing lemmings about to be slapped away in Mexico by the Hand of God, back home the fist of Thatcher is coming down hard on the everyday dreams of her nation’s common people. Three years on from the point where This Is England made its bloody exit, Shane Meadows has updated the tale of his non-Nazi skinheads with the four-part This is England ‘86 (Channel 4, Tue, 10pm). Here, Meadows shifts the focus away from Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), the impressionable soul sucked into an intolerant world he barely understood, using him mainly as a symbol for transition. His disastrous final exam day marks the shift from relative innocence to a world of adult responsibility in which Milky, Lol, Woody and co are now reluctant participants.
Acceptable in the 80s?
While there are enough baddies on show (a couple of abusive fathers to Flip the comically twisted scooterboy who enlivened episode one with his channelling of Paddy Considine), the real spectre of dread looms just off- screen. The first two episodes feature no physical sign of the 1986 version of Combo (Stephen Graham) but his malevolent presence lurks in the shadows, no doubt waiting til the majority of his former cohorts are happy before pouncing to destroy the aura of positivity. Until that terrible inevitability arrives, best just take in the gritty-beautiful vision of Shane Meadows and be thankful that his likes can still be drawn to making TV drama.