Reviews & features: Rock

Hit So Hard

Documentary about Hole drummer Patty Schemel

When you think of Hole, you most likely see in your mind’s eye Courtney Love, the blonde, foul-mouthed sometime powerhouse of a front woman and present day ‘celebrity for miscellaneous things’. Hit So Hard focuses on Hole’s second drummer Patty Schemel…

Crossfire Hurricane

Spirited documentary celebrating 50 years of The Rolling Stones

Marking the 50th anniversary of The Rolling Stones, this spirited documentary from Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture) is made up of vintage footage of the Stones during their prime and is brought bang up to date with new audio reflections from…

LCD Soundsystem: Shut Up And Play The Hits

Reflective documentary about LCD Soundsystem’s final gig

LCD Soundsystem’s momentous four hour farewell concert will go down in music history as perhaps the most epic conclusion to a band’s life, overdoses aside. Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern’s documentary, which follows frontman James Murphy over a 48…

Elle Fanning to star in film adaptation of Stuart Murdoch's God Help the Girl

Glasgow-set musical to commence filming in June

When Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch created God Help the Girl back in 2009, he knew that he was writing a 60s girl-group soundtrack for a film that didn't yet exist. Now, after years of fund-raising and producing, a film adaptation of the album…

Butcher Boy - Berkeley Suite, Glasgow, Fri 10 Feb, part of the Glasgow Short Film Festival

Profound and nostalgic home movie soundtrack session

The intimate basement bar that constitutes the Berkeley Suite, with its original 60s dancehall décor and faded ‘groovy’ vibes, mirrors the classy, nostalgic theme offered by this evening of film and music. Local eight-piece Butcher Boy frame a screen…

The music and film collaborations of Tindersticks and Claire Denis

The creative partnership between the French director and the UK band

Just as there are actors directors consistently work with, and where the French have a term called the acteur/actrice fétiche to define this affiliation, equally there are plenty filmmakers whose relationship with their composers seem equally…

Bikini Machine compose a 'cinéconcert' score for Desperado

Each year, the French Institute for Scotland takes part in the Edinburgh International Film Festival and strives to bring the media of music and film together to form one piece of intercontinental art. This year, the Institute have invited five…

Goblin - The Arches, Glasgow, Friday 25 February 2011

The Glasgow Music and Film Festival has scored a real coup with Goblin, arch-horror instrumentalists usually found supplying the music to Dario Argento’s giallo masterpieces through the 70s and 80s. Alongside Ennio Morricone they have provided some of…

GFF blog: You Instead premiere creates perfect T in the Park vibe

Featured musician Jo Mango talked to us at the after-party

Sigma Films – the Glasgow-based company behind the likes of Red Road, Hallam Foe and Young Adam – celebrated its 15th birthday with the premiere of You Instead on Friday night. The film tells the tale of two bickering rockstars – played by Luke…

GFF blog: Danny O’Connor on documentary Upside Down: The Creation Records Story

New film stars McGee, Noel Gallacher and other Creation alumni

When I talk to Danny O’Connor on the phone, he manages to answer my first question (‘Tell me a little bit about yourself’) with an extensive 16-minute history, covering his radio roots on the BBC’s Evening Sessions and Lamacq Live, to his television…

Shock rocker and horror film director Rob Zombie - full interview transcript

Musician and director's first UK tour for 12 years

HN:This is your first UK tour for 12 years. Why it’s taken so long? RZ: Basically it’s taken me a pretty long time to get back to anywhere, I haven’t been outside of the US for a long time, basically the thing that’s got in the way of my world wide…

Efterklang set for Glasgow show and screening of film An Island

Danish band screen Vincent Moon documentary on UK tour

Efterklang are back, as you’ve never seen them before. Although the delicate and atmospheric soundscapes of the Danish quartet will be familiar to Glasgow’s live concert-goers, this latest show will be enhanced by a pre-gig screening of An Island, their…

Lucky Dragons: No Boundaries, No Hierarchies

Participatory contribution to Glasgow Music and Film Festival

Fans of audience participation are in for a rare treat at Glasgow promoters Cry Parrot’s contribution to the Glasgow Music and Film Festival. Opening the show, Edinburgh’s Wounded Knee has invited audience members to take part in Tones of the Universe…

Goblin set for date at Glasgow Music and Film Festival 2011

Italian prog rock band best known for work on horror films of Dario Argento

The Italian prog rock band Goblin are most famous for their work on the horror films of Dario Argento. Here are five reasons why their appearance at the Glasgow Music and Film Festival will be unmissable 1: They come from another, better time…

Official Tron Legacy trailer, poster triptych and Daft Punk track 'Derezzed'

Compare the original 1982 Tron trailer with the 2010 Tron Legacy version

Tron Legacy is released in the UK on 26 December 2010. That's right, Boxing Day - meaning that the Christmas TV schedules are going to need to pull something pretty special out of the bag to compete with this, as frankly, The Emmerdale Omnibus followed…

Video Killed The Radio Star

Nostalgic documentary on pop promo world profiles Russell Mulcahy, David Mallet and Wayne Isha

(IND3D) Did you know that, with the dawn of MTV in the 1980s, the pop promo became almost as important to an artist’s career as their actual songs? Everyone who has studied that period or, worse, lived through it, won’t need telling twice. Well…

Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage

(12A) 106min Despite massive success during the Canadian trio’s 35-year career, ‘The world’s most popular cult band’ have always existed alongside the mainstream, never in it. It could be argued that the showy musicianship and lyrical subject matter…

Zombie Zombie perform the music of John Carpenter

Forming part of the Glasgow Film Festival’s Music and Film strand, the influence of one of American cinema’s most widely-respected cult auteurs hung over this event, so we shouldn’t be too picky that the band scrapped the idea of performing in front of…

Pere Ubu, Mogwai, Thomas Truax and Zombie Zombie set for The Glasgow Music and Film Festival

The Music and Film Festival is a strange beast, full of contradictions and tangents that threaten to pull apart its coherence, but ultimately make it the most exciting strand of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival. Co-curated by the Arches, and featuring…

Halloween Guide: M - S

Yet more spooky goings-on

M is for Movies Perhaps only rivalled by the upsurge in the plastic horn industry around 31 Oct, the annual economic boost for the horror film industry ensures that, every Halloween, there is a fresh crop of dismembered corpse-filled flicks to satisfy…

Profile - Stuart Staples (Tindersticks)

Born Stuart Ashton Staples, 14 November 1965. Background Staples is the lead singer of Tindersticks, an originally Nottingham-based band formed in late 1991. Initially called Asphalt Ribbons, the band changed their name after Staples found a box of…

The Art School Dance

(E) 120min Edinburgh College of Art releases this low-budget, yet charming limited edition DVD in celebration of famous city venue, the Wee Red Bar. Filmed in 2007, ECA’s centenary year, it intersperses live performances with interviews that…

Interview: Repo's Darren Lynn Bousman and Terrance Zdunich

Repo: The Genetic Opera is a truly unique film mixing rock opera with lashings of gore and dark sci-fi. Set in a world where transplanted organs are repossessed if you fail to meet your payments. Director Darren Lynn Bousman (who also directed Saw II…