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James, by Percival Everett. A novel of supreme elegance.

I’m new to this writer, although I watched the movie that was based on his novel, Erasure, which became the Oscar-script-winning movie American Fiction (I will revisit this movie as I was ambivalent at the time). He’s an academic and describes himself as pathologically ironic. I think that’s a good starting point to deconstruct this massively engaging novel. It’s a simple construct. It’s a…

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Blinded By the Light at The Barony Theatre Bo'ness, and touring.

I was privileged to attend a preview of this fabulous new play that has been under development for nearly 15 years. Presented by Sylvian Productions in association with The Barony Players I saw it in a fabulous new theatre, to me, The Barony, on the outskirts of Bo’ness. Bo’ness punches by the way. It has a great Steam Railway, Kenneil House and The Hippodrome Cinema and now, new to me, a fab…

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Warfare: Movie Review

My love of A24 movies is poorly disguised on these pages and every year a bunch of their movies reach our screens. Every time I approach the cinema with great anticipation. Two of my favourite A24’s are by Alex Garland; Ex-Machina and Civil War (although it has a bit of a daft ending). So the fact that Garland had directed and co-written this from the memories of a troop of Navy Seals that had…

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Donald Trump. The Great American Idiot.

Listening to the always astute Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics today I was interested in his (and Alastair Campbell’s) take on what Trump is up to. For a start, Stewart repositioned, Trump’s tariffs as “sanctions” because that’s what we do to our enemies to try to break their resolve. But these are not America’s enemies, they are its allies. Its enemies could include Russia and Belarus but…

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Recent Reading: The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe

I’m a Jonathan Coe fan having now read eight of his mostly hilarious novels. This is a middle table read for Coe, but enjoyable nonetheless. It’s a study in meta-writing because it becomes apparent that he’s writing a novel about a novel being written and indeed Coe himself pops up at the end in a rather odd conclusion. Not all of this works because the plot creaks in places and seems to be…

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The Moneypennies and Co. A night of brilliant barbershop in Gorgie.

I read this interesting article last week on The Edinburgh Inquirer page where it talked about amateur theatre being a pejorative description of the quality of fare that is served up to us by non-professional theatre groups and that instead it should be described as unpaid because often amateur is a better experience than professional. I can agree with that. Well, tonight I spend my evening in…

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Adolescence: TV review

It is no exaggeration to say this is the greatest filmed ‘entertainment’ of the year and I fully expect that to remain the case come December 31st. Let’s start with its technical merit. The cinematography by Matthew Lewis is absolutely extraordinary (he has ‘previous’ in Boiling Point and if you saw that you will know what I am talking about). The concept of single take episodes might seem…

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Wild Rose at The Lyceum Theatre: Review

I enjoyed the quite complex Confessions of a Shinagawa monkey at Dundee Rep on Saturday night, but that was the first really good professional theatre I’d seen in several months. And generally speaking I’ve been a bit underwhelmed with recent fare (notable amateur exception was 9 to 5 by the Falkirk Bohemians). So, I approached this with caution. I adore Jessie Buckley and her performance as…

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Anora: Movie Review

Mikey Madison smashes it out of the park in this very fine and fun movie as the stripper who falls for a Russian oligarchs son with too munch money and too many hormones to satisfy. He falls hard over heels for the New York stripper and it’s not long before they are married in Vegas, news of which displeases those at hime in Putinland. Written and directed by Sean Baker (iIadored his The…

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Recent Reading: Lessons by Ian McEwan

This is my favourite author’s 20th publication (it includes two books of short stories and a young adult novel). I’ve read pretty much all of them. He had a 100% strike rate up to and including On Chesil Beach, but out of the last seven He’s had two duffers (Solar and Sweet Tooth) – so, overall, pretty good in my opinion. His last three, Machines Like Me, the novella, Cockroach, and this, are…

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A Real Pain: Movie Review

All the talk is about Kieran Culkin in this movie and his Oscar credentials but spare a thought for Jesse Eisenberg who wrote and co-stars in this truly original movie. It’s not what I expected in some ways. The movie chatter was that Culkin was playing a similar vibe to his excruciatingly awesome Roman Roy character from Succession (but with a little less money and power), and indeed there are…

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The Brutalist: Movie Review

I was transfixed by the typography when I first saw the trailer and the movie kicks off with a title sequence (by Sebastian Pardo) that is so beautifully crafted that you know something special lies in wait. It stands alongside movies like Se7en, Zodiac, Catch Me If You Can and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher is totally invested in this art form) or even the Saul Bass credits of…

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We Live in Time: Movie Review.

I thought I was going to see a romcom, it’s sort of promoted that way, but this is no romcom. Yes it has some laughs, and yes it is romantic. Very, but in a kind of real world way. Director, John Crowley (Brooklyn) pulls off a tremendous feat here. But that’s with the help of an outstanding naturalistic script from Nick Payne and two truly lovely central performances from the inimitable…

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Brutalism is brilliant.

No, not the film, well, I hope it is but that treat is still to come. No, actual brutalism. I have had no architectural training but I love Brutalism as much as I love contemporary dance (another medium I am entirely untrained in). They share a commonality. Simplicity, elegance and a certain degree of unadorned nakedness. Where Rococo might be balletic Brutalism is Wayne McGregor or NDT. It…

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An appreciation of David Lynch.

It was Eraserhead that alerted me to the gargantuan talent of David Lynch. I saw it as a 19 year old at one of Stirling University’s Film Society movie nights and I was poleaxed. This was the most terrifying non-horror film my young eyes had witnessed. Avant garden in the extreme, relatively plotless and black and white, not a big thing in the 70’s. Jack Nance with his shock of hair was a…

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The Secret Hours by Mick Herron: Recent Reading

I’ve enjoyed Slow Horses on Apple TV as much as the next person, so when I stumbled upon this novel in the Ferry Fair Bookshop I thought I’d give the Slow Horses author a whizz. In fact those novels are part of a series called Slough House and this stand alone novel, it transpires, is a “companion piece” sharing, as it does, characters from The Park like First Desk (female, as per Slow Horses…

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Nickel Boys: Movie Review.

I wonder if Colson Whitehead’s complete absence from the credits of this lamentable movie is deliberate. He’s not a co-writer or an executive producer and I hope he feels he has made the right decision. The critics love this movie, but I have to say I think this is the greatest directorial destruction of a modern classic in my lifetime. It sucks beyond belief. RaMell Ross has created a movie…