Blogs »
- Free is, like. so over… apparentlyHugh Linehan | Mechanical Turk »A bit more light has been shed on News International's plans to charge for online content. James...
- Top of the plugsJim Carroll | On The Record »In The Ticket today, the Coen brothers talk about their new film A Serious Man, The XX mark the...
- Elementary, dear Trailerspotting.Donald Clarke | Screenwriter »Insofar as anything so grand as "controversy" can attach attach itself to the trailer-junkie...
- McCann wins National Book AwardFiona | Pursued by a Bear »I always wanted to be able to say that, and now I can, thanks to Colum McCann, who won the...
Stage »
- Union Square/Helter Skelter
Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, Dublin
Lines in the strandPlaywright Abby Spallen writes complex, interesting roles for women, not for ideological reasons, but simply because she wants to do goood work, writesSARA KEATING
Film »
"Nostalgia is a powerful thing"It’s 25 years since Joel and Ethan Coen made their debut feature,Blood Simple , and the former cult film-makers are now Hollywood players with Academy Awards on the mantelpiece. Their new film,A Serious Man , has been described as “the picture you get to make after you’ve won an Oscar” and is set among the Minnesota Jewish community the brothers grew up in. But the awards change nothing, and this isn’t an autobiography, they tellDONALD CLARKE
Homemade horrorProduced for $15,000. Filmed in the director’s own home. Championed by the people.Paranormal Activity has become the the most profitable film ever at the world box-office. The movie’s quietly-scary director Oren Peli tellsDONALD CLARKE how public screaming at a public screening convinced DreamWorks to give it a major release
Music »
Once more with feelingSome bands won’t do them. Others insist you endure two or three. But very few musicians still deliver encores as a spontaneous response to audience demands.CIAN TRAYNOR asks what they’re really for
The xx factorNow that they have emerged bleary-eyed from their garage bunker, The xx are stealing the show with their blend of emotional, somnambulant rock. Singer Oliver Sim tellsJIM CARROLL how a bunch of teenagers from south London became the talk of the town
Treibh »
- Fiche bliain
CROBHINGNE: NÍ DÓICHÍ aon ní ná an bhréag a séanadh. Comóradh tá á dhéanamh, más comóradh é, ar thurnamh an chumannachais in oirthear na hEorpa tá 20 bliain ó shin ann.
- 'Bagraíonn an forthéamh domhanda an tsibhialtacht'
IS ANNAMH a chuireann údar ar bith a leabhar i láthair an phobail agus "brón" air as. Ach sin mar a mhothaíonn an t-eolaí, an tOllamh Matt Hussey, atá i ndiaidhAn Forthéamh Domhanda (Coiscéim, €7.50) a scríobh; b'fhearr leis nach mbeadh cúis ar bith aige leabhar ar an ábhar tromchúiseach a scríobh ar chor ar bith.
Books »
- Myths of global warming skilfully debunked
HENRY KELLY reviewsThe Real Global Warming Disaster By Christopher Booker Continuum, 368pp, €20.50
- Absorbing account of how a 16th-century cartographer put America on the map
BOOK OF THE DAY: The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest Map By Toby Lester Profile, 464pp, £25
Art & Design »
Negotiating images of home and awayVISUAL ART: JOHN NOEL SMITH’s abstract paintings in hisPandect series, at Hillsboro Fine Art, are beautiful things. Visually they’re not at all complicated. Central panels, inscribed with networks of cross-hatched linear marks of a single colour on a paler ground, are flanked by two flat-painted, monochrome panels. There are some variations and elaborations on this basic scheme, but not many. It might sound quite minimal and uninvolving, not something likely to offer much in the way of visual goodies.
Putting the art into artisanINTERIORS: Small spaces can be home to big ideas – and even medium-sized families, as artists Madeleine Moore and Oliver Comerford proved when they renovated a tiny Dublin cottage and made it their own, writesGEMMA TIPTON
Comment & Media »
How Rupert Murdoch plans to save the newspaper industryPRESENT TENSE : FOR THE PAST week, we have been treated to the ignominious sight of an elderly man, his power on the wane, taking on forces he can neither fully comprehend nor control, desperate to stave off defeat one last time.
Discord over opera policy and Cork artsARTSCAPE : THE CURTAILED season that Opera Ireland opens tonight will bring to an end anannus horribilis for opera in Ireland,writes Michael Dervan . The contraction of operatic output in Ireland has been extreme. Opera Ireland’s winter season will feature just one full production, of Verdi’sMacbeth , plus two concert performances of Wagner’sRheingold .
