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TV review: The Fall | Frankie | Rock’n’Roll Britannia

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:12:12 GMT

WHEN I found out the new drama The Fall wasn’t, after all, the story of a chaotic rock band with almost 50 ex-members and one constant – incorrigible, irascible Mark E Smith – I was disappointed. But the feeling didn’t last, because this is a psychological thriller and a good one, maybe the best since The Shadow Line.

Album review: Daft Punk, Random Access Memories

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:25:16 GMT

Like the ubiquitous single Get Lucky, Daft Punk’s new album is a distillation of pop’s better moments of the last four decades.

Album reviews: Delta Mainline | Texas | Barrule

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:22:24 GMT

Our roundup of the latest releases

Film review: The Great Gatsby

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:13:35 GMT

IT HAS been suggested that there’s something of the Gatsby about Baz Luhrmann, since both men are predisposed to throwing extravagantly spectacular parties, with just a hint of hollowness.

Film reviews: Fast & Furious 6 | Something In The Air | Epic

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:10:08 GMT

DO YOU like cars? Or do you prefer movies where bulging, baldy action heroes like Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel glower at each other like homoerotic new potatoes?

Film review: Beware Of Mr Baker

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:03:42 GMT

THERE are probably more foolhardy enterprises than interviewing the aggressively venomous rock drummer Ginger Baker for a documentary, but it’s hard to think of many.

Art review: Scotland + Venice 2013, Venice

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:00:12 GMT

I MEET the artist Hayley Tompkins in a Glasgow coffee shop during a brief sunny interlude in a week of rain.

Book review: Inferno by Dan Brown

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:47:54 GMT

ONE of the first characters to appear in Inferno is a spiky-haired, malevolent biker chick dressed in black leather.

Book review: All That Is by James Salter

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:45:02 GMT

IF AN aged, once-eminent author, close to the end, ekes out one almost-certainly-last novel, and it’s of an indifferent standard, or worse, should it be published out of respect for his or her more glorious past?

Book review: The Devonshires by Roy Hattersley

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:43:10 GMT

A PUNCH cartoon, two dukes at a party, one whispering into the other’s ear: “Don’t you think it must be just terrible being an earl?”

Book review: Grace And Mary by Melvyn Bragg

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:41:35 GMT

OVER the years, Melvyn Bragg’s writing has attracted a degree of (jealous?) teasing, but the dissenting voices compete with a louder chorus of praise in which he is favourably compared with DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy.

Saoirse Ronan on playing a vampire in Byzantium

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:39:41 GMT

WHO is afraid of Saoirse Ronan? In the bowels of a Glasgow hotel, she looks innocent enough, sitting demurely in the manner of a 1950s model, legs crossed at the ankle and chatting about how best to drain a body of blood.

Andrew Eaton-Lewis: Yes vote is a leap of imagination

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:16:49 GMT

HOW important are the voices of artists in the independence referendum?

Flowers of Scotland at the Chelsea Flower Show

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:13:07 GMT

THERE are nine of them. Nine Chelsea girls, or Chelsea ladies to be precise, down from Scotland, from Kelso, Keith, Castle Douglas, Dalgety Bay, North Berwick, East Lothian, from all over, and poised, secateurs in hand, to take Britain’s most prestigious gardening show by storm.

Fordyce Maxwell: Fifteen minutes ago I knew what a pediment was. Now I was damned if I did

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:01:45 GMT

IT WAS some years since I’d been in an exam room.

Claire Black: Young women face the same problems as men

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:52:12 GMT

DIANE Abbott MP, is a woman I have some trouble taking seriously since my retinas were scarred watching as she and Michael Portillo writhed together, OK sat, on the This Week sofa, and also that time she said private schools were bad before promptly sending her son to one.

Angelina Jolie brings home a frightening dilemma

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:41:32 GMT

AS WENDY Helliwell came downstairs on Wednesday morning, the name Jolie flashed on the TV screen. She caught the words “double mastectomy”.

TV review: Apprentice | The Politician’s Husband | Life of Crime

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:53:43 GMT

‘CLICHES, cliches... I’m sick and tired of all that bloody rubbish, to be honest with you.” Is this a) Lord Sugar when confronted with another bunch of braggards spouting business-speak on The Apprentice? Or b) your correspondent on having to listen to yet more soundbites, headlines and clunky phrases passing for dialogue in The Politician’s Husband? Both, actually. Let’s deal with The Apprentice first.

Album review: Primal Scream - More Light

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:21:45 GMT

THERE’S more light but much less of an Exile On Main Street parody here than on much of the band’s recent work, as Bobby Gillespie submerges us in his wonderful world of psychedelic paranoia.

Album reviews: Rod Stewart | Eagleowl

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:15:50 GMT

OUR critics review the rest of the week’s album releases