US TV boxsets: DVD round-up

Bored to Death, The Killing, Weeds and In Treatment reviewed

If you thought that Ted Danson had delivered career-remoulding performances as ‘himself’ in Curb Your Enthusiasm, you should check out the dazzle he brings to the first series of Bored to Death (Warner Home Video ●●●●). Jonathan Ames’ Brooklyn-set…

The Governor, Being Human and Traffik among DVD highlghts

The old school fares well against newbies in TV drama releases

The Governor ●●●● features a curious performance from Janet McTeer, just four years before her 1999 Oscar nomination for Tumbleweeds. In the first season of Lynda La Plante’s excellent prison drama, she switches between giggling schoolgirl and feisty…

DVD review - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

Uncompromising, awkward and confrontational style and content cements reputation

(2entertain) The second series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle will do very little to alter the entrenched opinions on both sides of his critical fence. Those detractors will switch off in their droves at the uncompromising, awkward and…

Interview - EIFF 2011 curator Alan Warner on the films of Jerzy Skolimowski

Deep End, The Shout and The Adventures of Gerard to screen at EIFF

People started throwing around that name ‘curator’, which gave the impression that Isabella Rossellini and I were ensconced together in a hotel in the south of France devising programmes. Of course, the truth was that I met Mark Cousins in an Edinburgh…

Celebrity memoirs: Rob Lowe, Barbara Sinatra, Stacey Solomon, Judy Golding and Bear Grylls to publish books

While Charlie Sheen implodes in front of the world’s eyes, he could take comfort in the salutary tale of his old Brat Pack boozing buddy Rob Lowe. In 1988, grainy video footage of him having a wild time with two women became the first commercially…

Ken Loach's Route Irish doesn't shy away from asking some tough questions

Mark Womack and John Bishop in Paul Laverty-penned Iraq drama

(15) 104min You can almost feel Ken Loach and Paul Laverty bracing themselves for another critical onslaught by the establishment. It happened to the director/screenwriter duo with their Irish civil war drama The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and it’s…

The search for truth: Paul Laverty on Route Irish

The screenwriter discusss his latest Ken Loach-directed project, an Iraq-based drama

Waterboarding. A barbaric act of intolerable cruelty that should have stayed in the middle ages or a justifiable military tool in extricating information from the sworn enemy? Given what we now know of western forces’ sometimes inhumane tactics in Iraq…

Series 1 of Gary Tank Commander released on DVD

Greg McHugh' slightly dim, highly camp Edinburgher

(15) 180min (2entertain) The idea of a slightly dim, highly camp Edinburgher in the armed services sounds like it has the potential to be either massively offensive or a spot-on critique of military politics. The ultimately affectionate Gary Tank…

The Hot 100 2010 - Mark Millar, Kevin Bridges and Alasdair Gray take top 3 spots

Our annual chart of the people from Scotland being interesting, successful and creative

The Hot 100 is a list of Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010. It includes musicians, artists, writers, actors, fashion designers, technological innovators, shop owners, festival directors, record label heads and one mad cyclist.

Limmy's Show

The series which brought credibility to BBC Scotland comedy roster

(15) 180min (2entertain) A stoned loner notices peculiar inconsistencies on TV adverts at 4am. A bushy-eyebrowed executive plots his excuses before the local constabulary show up at his office. A paranoid ex-junkie takes offence at the most…

Army of the Dead

Character clichés wheeled out in this torpid affair

(18) 89min (Kaleidoscope) Of all the legions of scary monsters and super creeps, walking skeletons have to be the most rubbish. Ray Harryhausen managed to make them pretty threatening in Jason and the Argonauts and the bony ghouls from Pirates of…

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…

31 North 62 East

Ham-fisted and unwise affair

(15) 99min (Kaleidoscope) Would you trust a Prime Minister who is a cross between John Prescott and Boris Yeltsin? This and several other lumpen creations are offered up in a ham-fisted attempt to point the finger at government agencies who…

Jaguar Lives!

(12) 87min (Arrow) Some movies are deemed so bad as to be actually good. Others are simply plain old bad bad. Jaguar Lives! bends the rules, rewrites the book and creates its very own category of god-awful. The Jaguar (Joe Lewis) is a globetrotting…

The Perfect Sleep

(15) 101min (Icon) Had the makers of this movie concentrated more on the main product and less on an amusing viral campaign, The Perfect Sleep might not have wound up such a yawnsome affair. Gary Oldman and Bono were both filmed advising people, in…

Newsmakers

Siege thriller keeps action and outrage flowing

(18) 105min (Showbox) Based on Johnnie To’s 2004 Hong Kong action thriller, this Russian remake (from Swedish director Anders Banke) is an admirable effort. As a bunch of ruthless gangsters go on the rampage across the country, Russian law…

Life on Mars

(12) 710min (Fox) Transplanting a classic British show into a US setting has more often than not borne rotten fruit. The Office and Queer as Folk are two that never quite lived up to the UK original. Remaking Life on Mars proved so tough that the…

American: The Bill Hicks Story

(15) 106min When Bill Hicks died of pancreatic cancer in February 1994, he left a void which the American stand-up world has found impossible to fill. The son of Southern Baptists, this comedy preacher succumbed to his addictions at the age of 32…

The Level

(18) 87min (Brightspark) Quentin Tarantino might have an awful lot to answer for, but perhaps even he can’t be blamed for the appalling effort that is The Level. ‘Written’ and ‘directed’ by the Crook Brothers (Josh and Jeff), it contains some of the…

My Father My Lord

(12) 76min (Artificial Eye) From the opening frame of an Orthodox Haredic Rabbi in torment about some as yet unknown personal and spiritual agony, you know you’re in for a tough ride. The painful finale questions everything that this tunnel-visioned…

Attack On Leningrad

(15) 116min With Mora Sorvino donning a milky English accent and Gabriel Byrne sleepwalking through his role as a veteran war reporter, this turgid retelling of a tragic chapter in European history actually puts you off finding out more rather than…

Bernard and Doris

(15) 103min (HBO) During the DVD extra in which director Bob Balaban discusses the vastly wealthy life of socialite heiress Doris Duke, he reveals that she was investigated for a fatal accident on her property and had a couple of camels living at…

Taking Chance

(PG) 78min (HBO) There’s something to be said about a movie which doesn’t take the knee-jerk sensationalist route to making its point. And with a sensitive subject, such as the war in Iraq, you can see why Taking Chance would opt not to ramp up the…

StAnza 2010 Poetry Festival Programme Launch

Ahead of the five-day event in March, StAnza’s poet-in-residence Kei Miller (pictured) hosts the launch of the 2010 St Andrews programme. Among those appearing this year are Seamus Heaney, John Burnside, Jen Hadfield, Ben Okri and Linton Kwesi Johnson…

Glorious 39 - Stephen Poliakoff interview

Shooting the past

Stephen Poliakoff wanted to take the subject of Nazi appeasement and turn it into a thriller for the big screen. Brian Donaldson hears how he succeeded