Paul Dale

Bette and Joan - The Final Curtain

Witty other-worldly ode to Hollywood starlets

23 Aug 2011

It’s 1989 and Bette Davis, betrayed by kith and kin, lies alone and dying. Her nemesis Joan Crawford arrives to guide her to the other side, and then the fireworks begin. Foursight Theatre’s witty and inventive deconstruction of the relationship between…

Ruby Wax: Losing It

A fevered and empowering comic monologue

19 Aug 2011

According to a 2009 report, one in ten people in Scotland take daily medication for depression. This demographic are Ruby Wax’s kind of people. Broadened out from a community project that Wax and best friend/musician Judith Owen toured around NHS mental…

Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys

An art world friendship under a Scottish sky

17 Aug 2011

A single rose can make a garden; a single friend can make a world. Writer, artist and philosopher Richard Demarco’s friendship with the humanistic artist Joseph Beuys was something special. These two passionate, occasionally obtuse men were drawn to…

Paul Foot: Still Life

Childish ingenuity and some laughs but feels like going through the motions

16 Aug 2011

Like Frankie Howerd before him, procrastination and performance deconstruction filtered through a mesh of silliness are Foot’s stock in trade. Despite previous Fringe prowess, Still Life has him going through the motions. There’s childish ingenuity and…

The Qatsi trilogy at the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

Godfrey Reggio's film trilogy with Philip Glass Ensemble live score is a masterpiece

15 Aug 2011

It’s been twenty-eight years since I saw Koyaanisqatsi, twenty-odd since I saw Powaqqatsi, and almost a decade since Naqoyqatsi. The first two I saw in empty art house cinemas on wet afternoons, I watched the third in a somnambulistic state from my sofa…

Danny Bevins

Muscular comedy from the former soldier, jailbird and redneck

15 Aug 2011

Former soldier, jailbird and dysfunctionally raised red neck, Bevins is a gifted and dyspeptic stand-up, stringing together material on the ancient theme that all humanity is excrement. Like a mildly less political Bill Hicks, Bevins likes to confound…

Carey Marx

The thinking man’s shock jock

12 Aug 2011

Middle-aged and feeling decrepit and pointless, Carey Marx believes in speaking his sordid little mind. Opinions on clitoral stimuli, fat people who stop suddenly in the street, feminists and circumcision-revenge-rabbi-rape spill easily from his…

Doctor Brown

Silent and vulgar tedium

8 Aug 2011

Surrealism and silent comedy have a long and healthy relationship. Ask Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. You’d have to dig them up first, but that may be preferable to spending time with the hirsute Doctor Brown. In his silk dressing gown…

Colin Hoult

Talented and energetic performer targets UK provinces

8 Aug 2011

Somewhere between Angry Boys and The League of Gentlemen lies Colin Hoult. A clearly talented and energetic performer, Hoult’s bag is the grotesquery of the provinces. Crap Welsh poets, crime stoppers from East Midlands, gleeful northern dogs and…

Ingrid Calame

Water water everywhere with only a doodle to drink

5 Aug 2011

A river runs through Ingrid Calame’s work. But this river has been drained and all that remains are detritus and old stains. Somewhere between Google Earth screen grabs, weighty childhood nature books with their own illustrative key codes and fey…

Anton Henning: Interieur No. 493

Curious and bemusing conceptual art salon at 2011 Edinburgh Art Festival

5 Aug 2011

If, as critic and writer Cyril Connolly once noted, ‘vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life’ German artist Anton Henning might just have halitosis. Henning’s first solo show in Scotland is just about as curious and bemusing an exhibition as you…

Tony Cragg

Stunning showcase of sculptor’s poetic, monolithic output

3 Aug 2011

From Scouse lab technician to director of Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, Cragg’s prolific artistic journey has been one of inspiration and rejection, absorption and a will to move beyond. While the works of Max Ernst, Richard Long, Joseph Beuys and Henry…

Elizabeth Blackadder

Brilliant retrospective of work by one of Scotland’s major artists

3 Aug 2011

Elizabeth Blackadder is a Dame, a Royal Academician and arguably Scotland’s most popular female painter and printmaker. A major retrospective of her work at Scotland’s biggest gallery space was only ever going to draw sighs of resignation from art snobs…

Leroy Jones Band - Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

The trumpeter visits Edinburgh after appearances in TV drama Treme

21 Jul 2011

‘I was in an episode two weeks ago with my local quintet. I was performing one of my original compositions for about a minute and twenty seconds.’ Bandleader and trumpeter Leroy Jones is bubbling with pride over his recent appearance in an episode of…

Precious Light - David Mach interview

Artist's first major Scottish exhibition in years at Edinburgh Art Festival 2011

6 Jul 2011

It’s just after 9am in Forest Hill in South London. The denizens of this leafy area have walked their children to school and boarded their commuter trains. In David Mach’s messy but unfussy two-floored studio, two handfuls of assistants and technicians…

War correspondent Martin Bell to give Oliver Stone another chance

Martin Bell will be introducing Oliver Stone's Salvador at the EIFF

24 Jun 2011

‘I tend to walk out of films about wars that I reported on. I walked out of Oliver Stone’s Salvador when I first saw it in 1986 that’s why it will be interesting to present it and revisit it in Edinburgh. I remember he satirised a female reporter I know…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011 opens with an Oirish whimper (not a bang)

65th festival gets underway despite disappointing opener The Guard

16 Jun 2011

So the 65th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival is now open. It opened last night, a balmy, spitty Wednesday evening, with a screening of John Michael McDonagh’s decidedly patchy Irish comedy policier The Guard starring Brendan Gleeson.

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Outside The Box

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Duncan Speakman: Our Broken Voice Speakman’s project is a ‘subtlemob’ – ‘A film that’s happening in a public space where you’re both a performer and an audience member,’ he says. Still baffled? Imagine arriving at a designated public location, with an…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Conflict and Reportage

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Conflict and Reportage Frontline Club: Martin Bell presents Salvador Broadcasting and politics’ ‘man in the white suit’ says of this event: ‘I tend to walk out of films about wars that I reported on. I walked out of Oliver Stone’s Salvador when I…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Nokia Shorts Weekender

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Vice TV Greatest Hits! The great global magazine’s four-year-old spin-off youth internet TV channel celebrates the story so far. Having enjoyed early endorsement from Spike Jonze it now has a global network of correspondents who report on all that is…

Books on cinema - round-up

How the Movie Brats Took Over Edinburgh, Tough Without A Gun, The Faber Book of French Cinema

23 May 2011

As is always the way in Scotland, summer is kind of here, and now is the time to lie in the grass with that growing pile of tosh novels. But let’s face it, you are going to win a lot more kudos from your film-obsessed mates if you create a tower of…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011 - James Mullighan interview

With just under a month to go, the new EIFF director tell us his plans

26 Apr 2011

With just over a month and a half to go until the big event, James Mullighan the new Director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival tells Paul Dale about his plans So how’s it going James? Great – it’s been a busy time for us and we are…

Edward Weston: Life Work and William Wegman: Family Combinations

A pair of fascinating photography exhibitions for the price of one

12 Aug 2010

These two fascinating exhibitions by two very different photographers challenge John Steinbeck’s belief that cameras should be disparaged because ‘they are so much more sure than I am about everything.’ Weston was the natural, a pioneer and a comrade…

Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth at Edinburgh Art Festival

Paul Dale finds out more about their Festival installation

15 Jul 2010

Following a rich tradition of surveillance art, Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth’s festival show aims to turn Edinburgh into a city under observation. Paul Dale peers through their lens

On Stage, On Screen brings Porgy & Me and Meredith Monk doc to Filmhouse

7 Jul 2010

Short season of films reflecting the diversity of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. Solid gold theatre-to-screen transitions Porgy & Me and A Streetcar Named Desire are showing alongside last year’s fascinating documentary Meredith Monk…