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AROUND TOWN Edinburgh Castle has had its best August for four years. 190,266 visitors passed through the doors, a 6.1% increase on this time last year. The Castle also enjoyed one of its busiest days for seven years. 7,911 visitors were recorded on the first Tuesday of this year’s festival. There’s further happy news for the capital following a report suggesting the National Museums of Scotland will contribute nearly £10m extra a year to the nation’s economy following its £46m revamp. While elsewhere, downtown from the Castle, on Niddry Street, the Banshee Labyrinth, reputably one of Scotland’s most haunted pubs is to hold speed-dating nights. It is £3 a session but the first one is free. Check out www.thebanshee labyrinth.com
CLUBS Clubbers should keep ’em peeled for new initiative the Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange to be unveilved outside Glasgow’s iconic Sub Club on Sat 9 Oct. Party animals are invited to share with the Smirnoff team what they consider best represents Scottish nightlife, from certain genres of music and cocktail recipes to fashion, style, venue decor, entertainment and food. 2000 wristbands will be up for grabs on a first-come, first-served basis offering locals complimentary access to events happening around the city.
FILM The First Movie, nominated for awards by the Royal Television Society, One World Media and submitted for an International Emmy, is opening in October throughout the UK, charting the journey made by film critic Mark Cousins to a village in Northern Iraq. Cousins gave each of the village 8 THE LIST 7–21 Oct 2010
Mark Cousins' The First Movie will be in cinemas this month
children Flip cameras, with which they recorded a range of scenes from everyday life, as part of the documentary. M U S I C Calling all musos! The SXSW music festival in Austin is accepting applications from bands and artists for 2011. Creative Scotland is funding select artists to appear at the event, for application information see: tinyurl.com/38bseq7. In other music news alt.rockers Biffy Clyro have been confirmed as the main act for this year’s Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh. The Ayrshire trio will headline the annual Concert in the Gardens with a full supporting line-up to be announced.
VISUAL ART Visual art and film lovers enjoy a double whammy this month with news that Film Lounge, a permanent screening room based in Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, has launched and is dedicated to showing artist-made and experimental films. The project was announced earlier this year as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. And finally, local boy Jack Vettriano is back on track with his first exhibition in London in over four years, at new gallery space Heartbreak, a six-storey townhouse in Marylebone. Fans can check him out until the end of October. Vettriano said of his return to the scene: ‘In my mind, I’m still just a middle-aged guy from Fife who just got really lucky, and so to have had the opportunities that I have had in recent years, which included painting Zara Philips and Sir Jackie Stewart and working on collaborations in Milan and Monaco, is nothing short of a dream. Each of these projects has been very special to me and, in one way or another [and] has contributed to the paintings that feature in Days of Wine & Roses.’
Visit www.list.co.uk for daily arts & entertainment news ARTS AND CULTURE NEWS COVERED IN TWO MINUTES
Channel Hopper
Dispatches from the sofa, with Brian Donaldson
■ A recent poll by the BBC found that one in five people felt ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘very uncomfortable’ with gay people having their stories told on television. A mere 16 years after the ‘Brookside kiss’, such a stat can either be read as slow progress or history finally catching up on the dinosaurs. The latter lot, then, will be apoplectic with impotent rage over the Glasgow-set Lip Service (BBC3, Tue 12 Oct, 10.30pm), as an everyday bunch of architects, rock photographers, daytime TV presenters, police officers and unemployed actors scroll through gaymate websites, trawl the bars and break into an ex-lover’s flat to retrieve a red dress. Within the cast are Laura Fraser, Ruta Gedmintas (The Tudors) and Roxanne McKee (Hollyoaks) with the pre-publicity machine having been artificially cranked up with a BBC ‘insider’ telling the News of the World about the ‘fury’ that has been unleashed within the corridors of power. So, is it The L Word with rain? Or
Mistresses with tattoos? Maybe Queer as Folk with Weegies instead of Mancs? Certainly, Gedmintas’ struttingly selfish, sexually ravenous Frankie brings Aidan Gillen’s Stuart immediately to mind, as she grieves for her dead aunt by pummelling the funeral parlour receptionist to orgasm yards away from a recently embalmed corpse (how terribly Six Feet Under). The opening episode has some equally stiff acting and dialogue but time will tell whether we can be bothered to care about this group of smug irritants. But it better do it quicksharp or it won’t just be the swathe of homophobes that will be turning off.
Born lippy