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, my 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...
Books »
- Fire Still Burning
INTERVIEW: IT'S HARD NOT to approach an interview with John Irving with some trepidation having read his latest novel,Last Night in Twisted River . The book's protagonist, Danny Angel, is a writer, like Irving, born in the early 1940s, like Irving, who studies at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, like Irving did, and who hates journalists, believing "most of them lacked the imagination to believe that anything credible in a novel had been wholly imagined".
Banville vows to avoid sexHaving been shortlisted once again for the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award, John Banville jokes that he’ll avoid the subject altogether in the future, writesFIONA McCANN
Film »
A very pleasant vampireINTERVIEW: IF YOU’RE GOING to be stuck with the same face for 350 years then it might as well be the one attached to Peter Facinelli. The American actor, now an unblemished 35, has worked hard over the past decade and a half. He was in the action seriesFastlane . He had decent roles in the movieScorpion King and the much-lovedSix Feet Under . But, right now, he is indelibly, irrevocably associated with the jaw-droppingly successfulTwilight franchise. A year ago, the first film adaption of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga emerged and, to the surprise of perplexed adults unaware of the books’ enormous cult following, chewed the world’s box-offices into bloody pulp.
"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
Comment & Media »
As a new focus of Irish ire, Henry is the main manPRESENT TENSE: GRRR. AARGH. What an angry week it was. On Sunday night, Yusuf Islam irked a room full of people. But on Wednesday, Thierry Henry provoked an entire nation. We had been cheated out of a World Cup place. Or, though it wasn’t admitted, we had been robbed of our chance to lose it for ourselves.
- From Chandler and the 'Playboy' to the contemporary crime wave
CULTURE SHOCK: MOST POTTED BIOGRAPHIES of Raymond Chandler will tell you that, in 1895, after his parents divorced, his mother took him from Chicago, where he was born, to London, where he grew up. In fact, the boy and his mother went originally to her own place of birth – Waterford, where they lived uncomfortably on the fringes of respectable Protestant society. It was from there that Chandler went to London, where he was supported through his English public-school education by his uncle, the Waterford solicitor Ernest Thornton, writesFINTAN O’TOOLE
Music »
Hit and mythIN JULY of this year, President Obama was to speak to the American people on prime-time television to announce details of important changes to the healthcare system in the US. He requested the usual 9pm slot from the NBC network. NBC replied by saying that they would be delighted to offer the president the 8pm slot. The president said thanks, but 9pm is the traditional time for addressing the nation. NBC said the 8pm slot is great – you’ll love it, Mr President. Obama asked whether there was a problem. NBC said there was indeed a problem, Mr President. And its name was Susan Boyle, writesBRIAN BOYD
RTÉCO/Brogli-Sacher: Wagner’s Das RheingoldGaiety Theatre, Dublin
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.
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
