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AROUND TOWN Budding poets, get your applications ready; the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition is back. Now in its fifth year, the competition is accepting entries in both Scots and English, and carries a prize fund of £6,600. See edwinmorganpoetrycompetition .co.uk for more. Elsewhere, Cargo Publishing continue to show their mettle with the news that heavyweights Stephen Fry, Philip Pullman, Alan Bissett and Jenny Brown will judge the Dundee International Book Prize, which they co-run. See cargopublishing.com.
FILM Under its new directorship, the EIFF will reinstate three awards dropped last year. Best International Feature Film by an Emerging Director, Best Performance in a British Feature Film and The Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature will all be available for this year’s festival. See edfilmfest.org.uk. MUSIC Congratulations to former Beta Band-er John MacLean who has won a BAFTA for Best Short Film for Pitch Black Heist, starring Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham. Now if someone could just FedEx Mr Fassbender to the List offices that would be better still.
book Delete This At Your Peril in 2007. The TV spin-off will follow the character’s attempts to become MP for Broughty Ferry, in what Cox has said will showcase the character’s ‘unique east coast humour’ and ‘comic writing skills of fellow Dundonian Forsyth’. See what Servant has to say for himself, this issue, on page 2. THEATRE Just as the theatre season starts to take
flight, one very important bird is flying the nest. James Brining is to leave his role as chief executive and artistic director of Dundee Rep to join West Yorkshire Playhouse as artistic director. We wish him well. Elsewhere, look out for the National Theatre of Scotland’s Five Minute Theatre project. In 2011, over 1000 people from around the world created a truly unique theatre experience over 24 hours – and now you have your turn to get in on the action. Look out for a series of short, themed events throughout 2012 affording you the chance to create, direct, produce and perform your own five-minute piece of theatre for an online audience. The first streaming will take place on Tue 1 May under the banner of ‘Protest’. The deadline for all submissions is 5pm on Fri 16 Mar. See nationaltheatrescotland.com.
TV Actor Brian Cox is to bring The List’s very own Bob Servant to BBC4 in a small screen incarnation. The popular Radio 4 character was created by Neil Forsyth and first appeared in the And finally, fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy rejoice, for some of the original cast from TV and radio are to reunite for a series of live shows. Check it out at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow on the 8 & 9 Jun.
The Five Minute Theatre project will feature mobility scooters and sci-fi in The Garabaldi Paradox
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DISPATCHES FROM THE SOFA, WITH BRIAN DONALDSON
■ Damian Lewis seems to be the go-to guy for US dramas about tortured souls with a secret past. In Life he played Charlie Crews, a detective released from prison after 12 years for a crime he didn’t commit, and in Homeland (Channel 4, Sun, 9.30pm), he’s Nicholas Brody, a US marine presumed dead in Iraq after eight years MIA.
Arriving home to a hero’s
welcome (except from the wife who started fooling around with his best buddy), CIA operative Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), still haunted by an oversight she made on 9/11, puts surveillance on Brody’s home after being tipped off that an unnamed American soldier may have been turned against his country. It won’t come as too much of a
surprise to discover that the show is partly created by a 24 executive producer and after waves of paranoia and suspicion have been laid on thick atop the opening couple of episodes, the first ‘didn’t see that coming’ shock arrives. Except you can tell it’s on the cards for at least half an hour beforehand. This is the curse of 24, with shows such as Homeland having the watcher constantly on the look-out for red herrings and leftfield revelations. Though it’s unlikely that anyone would have second-guessed Brody indulging in a ‘Bad Lieutenant moment’.
Mind games
1–29 Mar 2012 THE LIST 11