• Andrew W.K. – You’re Not Alone

    March 7, 2018 - By 

    It’s fair to say that Andrew W.K. is more meme than man at this point. His nearly 20-year career has less been defined his output and more by a single facet of his character: a love of partying. With a back catalog which includes classics such as ‘Party Hard’, ‘Party Till You Puke’ and ‘We Want Fun’, his devotion is undeniable. Every song, quote or appearance relates in some way to partying and that’s nice. It’s comforting to know that the human embodiment of Slurms MacKenzie is out there. Our ADHD addled Batman partying for our right to party night…

  • Dublin Film Fest: The Breadwinner

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    Cartoon Saloon make stories about the value of making stories. In the first solo feature from the Kilkenny animation studio, The Secret of Kells (2009), the stories are those of myth and faith ferried by the Book of Kells, diligently reproduced by illuminators under siege from Nordic barbarians. In Song of the Sea (2014), the narratives are personal, a coastal family working through the loss of a wife and mother, using musical notes as form of memory preservation. Saloon’s third feature, The Breadwinner, due for release this May, blends the private and the public, shifting out of the studio’s Celtic…

  • Red Sparrow

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    Based upon the book of the same name by ex-CIA agent Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow is a modern-day spy thriller by director Francis Lawrence (Hunger Games: Catching Fire, I Am Legend) that harks back to the days of the cold war thrillers of the 70s/80s but fails to update it appropriately, coming across as a piece of vitriolic propaganda and little else. Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and the rest of the top-notch cast try their damndest to give it some credibility but the story and premise make for a predictably silly and gratuitous affair on many levels. Dominika Egorova (Lawrence)…

  • The Breeders – All Nerve

    March 3, 2018 - By 

    J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote that the compound noun cellar door was one of the most beautiful words in the English language. I’m not a linguist or etymologist by any stretch, but I’d like put forth a phrase which I think captures the same awe as Tolkien’s… Kim Deal has a new album. Those six little words when drawn together represent a powerful sentiment in the English language. This is the woman who made the Pixies what they were. One of our great songwriters, a person who can captivate, exhilarate and intoxicate with the most impossibly simple chord progressions, has returned.…

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    Superorganism – Superorganism

    March 3, 2018 - By 

    Superorganism are to music what memes are to art. In the space of just one year they’ve managed to capture a sound that is both easily digestible and instantly recognisable. One which is synonymous with the online age that we live in as they curate the sound of endless YouTube holes and trips to “the weird part of the Internet”. Their self titled debut comes in at just over 30 minutes, and is laden with short songs that cut straight to the point. High Definition synth and guitar hooks are grounded by the lo-fi voice of singer Orono Noguchi. Her lyrics…

  • Dublin Film Fest: Pre-Crime

    March 2, 2018 - By 

    Artificial intelligence, drones and self-driving cars have moved from science fiction stories into the real world. In The Minority Report, Philip K. Dick imagined a cop who used the pre-cognitive abilities of mutant siblings to solve serious crimes before they happened. Real cops predict crime too, except they turn to big data for help. Showing at the Dublin International Film Festival, Pre-Crime examines how police departments and private businesses use public and private information to work out who is likely to carry out illegal acts. The idea of proactive policing to stop crime isn’t new, but it has been transformed…

  • Dublin Film Fest: Yasuni Man

    March 1, 2018 - By 

    The Yasuni National Park and Biosphere Reserve in Ecuador is considered one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. Its Amazonian rainforest is home to amphibians, mammals, birds and plants. The frogs, tapirs, jaguars and monkeys alone would have provided ample material for a stunning wildlife documentary. But, film-maker Ryan Killackey sets out to do more with Yasuni Man by including an intimate study of a remote forest community under siege from big business. The rainforest may have been designated an UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve but that does not protect its lucrative natural resources from exploitation. Yasuni sits…

  • Dublin Film Fest: Marlina The Murderer in Four Acts

    March 1, 2018 - By 

    Lance Daly’s Black 47 opened the Dublin Film Festival with a revenge Western filtered through Irish historical grievance, bearded men with rifles chasing eachother across Connault mud and muck. Written and directed by Mouly Surya, Marlina The Murderer in Four Acts offers a kind of feminist counterweight, an Indonesian Western which appropriates classical genre scaffolding for a regionally specific tale of female rage and empowerment. The whiplash lettering and blaring brass notes from the school of Morricone introduce us to Part 1, “The Robbery” (the others are “The Journey”, “The Confession” and “The Birth”). Marlina (Marsha Timothy) lives in the…

  • Dublin Film Fest: Tower. A Bright Day

    February 28, 2018 - By 

    The ‘tower’ of the title, or ‘wieza’ in the original Polish of Jagoda Szelc’s debut feature Tower. A New Day, is represented by Mula (Anna Krotoska), a tightly wound, defensive mother and wife who lives in the countryside with her family. She has the pressure of looking after her sick mother, who exists in a borderline comatose state in a spare room, and her young niece Nina (Laila Hennessy), abandoned by her birth mother and raised by Mula as her own. On the eve of Nina’s First Holy Communion, the family is visited by her biological mother, Mula’s sister Kaja…

  • Dublin Film Fest: Good Favour

    February 28, 2018 - By 

    The big, bad Germanic woods spits out a wounded orphan in the opening of Rebecca Daly’s Good Favour, whose fairy tale clarity gives way to a woozy, slippery blend of crisp devotional realism and fanatical flights of fancy. The Irish director’s third feature, co-written with Glenn Montgomery, is a subtle, sturdily controlled parable about the power of shared myths, comparable to Robert Eggers’ The Witch if not in genre then in recreational detail and reality-breaking seriousness. Tom (Vincent Romeo) is the malnourished, skinny young man from the Black Forest, who stumbles on small markers of settlement: a hatchback truck, an empty classroom, a cabin…