• Noble

    Noble, the biopic of Irish humanitarian Christina Noble starring comedian Deidre O’Kane, feels a lot like a TV movie. First there’s the on-the-nose title, which reminds me of those movies you sometimes see on satellite channels, the ones that rip off blockbuster plots and give them over-literal titles like Space Danger or Future Saviour. The film may as well be called Saint Christina or The Pluck of the Irish. And second, there’s the intensely by-the-numbers approach it takes to Noble’s life story, as cribbed from memoirs like Bridge Across My Sorrows and Mama Tina. The film shifts chronologically between two stories: the ‘mis-lit’ material of her growing up in post-war Dublin squalor and ‘present day’…

  • A Guide to Culture Night Belfast 2014

    The annual cornucopia of happening that is Culture Night Belfast is upon us once more and we are positively agog – nay, foaming at the proverbial – with sheer sweaty-palmed anticipation. As with every other year, the schedule is a suitably spectacular and brilliantly eclectic proposition; a kaleidoscopic patchwork of pop-up performance, exhibition and all-embracing artistic expression. Having sifted through everything happening throughout this year’s dizzyingly impressive schedule, here’s our top must-see/attend/observe/enjoy events happening throughout the evening. Go forth! Culture Night Radio – IMPRINT Sort Design (46 Hill Street) 15.00 – 22.00 The boundlessly tasteful guys behind the ImprintThisOnYourMind podcast will be delivering a live…

  • First Aid Kit @ Mandela Hall, Belfast

    First Aid Kit have dressed for the occasion. They arrive onstage in shimmering outfits, faintly resembling the lost children of ABBA and take their places before a wall of gold lamé and glittering abstract alpine mountains. Their drummer wears a suit and bow tie. They are soon bathed in a warm golden hue and open their debut Belfast show with the rather fittingly titled, ‘Stay Gold’. First Aid Kit are Klara and Johanna Söderberg, who hail from Stockholm. The sisters have been writing songs together since 2007 and owe their international attention to the popularity of a YouTube video featuring the pair…

  • Folk Horror on Telly

    Telly used to be odd. Often that oddness was on purpose. I’m not talking about the “Alan Partridge pitching on nothing” oddness of shows like Splash or Who’s Doing the Dishes? – Through the Keyhole meets Come Dine With Me presented by the fat one from Westlife. Those shows are obviously just a disgusting waste of time from the ground up. No, I’m talking about the flavoursome, nutritious, umami weirdness of older shows, made by hippies who were trying to communicate something and allowing all manner of folksy freakishness to seep in. Robin of Sherwood, Richard Carpenter’s hour long Silvikrin commercial was tea time television…