It really does sound like a good idea. However, Saturday night is now the second time that it has not quite come off. Last year, Lou Reed brought his choral-, brass-, and wind-powered version of Berlinto the big tent near the banks of the Lee. This year, it was the turn of Josh Ritter to gild the lily (as the bloke from d’Times put it on Friday) with his 24-piece “Corkestra” (more on this pandering anon!), as well as his regular band of cohorts. However, with the additional benefit of knowing how good the Vicar Street equivalent of this show had been last year, it is pretty clear that this canvas-on-concrete venue is best suited to rocking the joint out, with the quality of anything more nuanced becoming lost somewhere within the cavernous headroom on offer.
I thought that I must like Josh Ritter quite a bit, having seen him play live four times alone since he last released any new music. However, there is clearly a whole other level of fandom out there when it comes to this perennially cheerful man and his toothsome smile. What I mean by this is that there was a notably dedicated following in the crowd who presumably would still go home contented if he sang with a mouth full of sand and was just twanging away tunelessly on a one-string guitar! Therefore, while the show may have struggled to get anywhere near the acoustic heights of the Vicar Street performance, not too many people at the front seemed to mind for a moment. Even when Ken Rice and his orchestra had a chance to shine, there always seemed to be a bunch of overexcited characters who thought that the best way to show their appreciation for what they were hearing was to clap and cheer loudly… as soon as the musicians started to play! Read more »
This is a film about maths boffins. Yet there is nary a sign to be had of a calculator, a square-lined jotter, or even a humble pair of thick-lens glasses held together by sticky tape. Instead, the opening scene introduces us to three simpering girls listening to some hip-looking bloke explain how he is about to unveil a proof to a problem that has defied mathematicians for centuries. He then tries to turn the girls on with an overacted demonstration of his calculating prowess. Yikes to that!
When the next scene confronts our numerate Lothario with the sight of his thrashed dorm room, the Dan Brown alarm bells are ringing loudly and your reviewer’s eyes are drawn immediately towards the nearest way out, just in case a swift, sharp exit is to be required. At the same time, the film had warned the audience from the outset that they needed to know what a prime number was in order to properly enjoy the film. Accordingly, I was already feeling honour-bound to stay with this number-cruncher and bone-crusher of a story! Read more »
We are particularly pleased that Ireland could secure substantial long term funding in the very competitive conditions which now prevail in the government bond markets.
The success of this bond issue is a clear signal of the confidence investors have in the Irish government bond market.
- Michael Somers, Chief Executive of the NTMA
While you could put a more cynical spin on the above quotation, it is meant as a bullish show of confidence by the National Treasury Management Agency (“NTMA”) in its ability to issue debt on behalf of the State. While getting €6 billion of a 10-year bond issuance away in troubled times is presumably an accomplishment of some description, the cost at which this so-called success was achieved is enormous.
According to The Sunday Business Post, the new issue has an interest cost that is just under 2.5% more than Germany’s equivalent issue. In other words, the Irish government has to pay €150 million per year more of interest than the German government would have to for an equivalent amount of debt of similar duration. Read more »
Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one.
- José Ortega y Gasset
When I think of the word “institution”, it suggests to me a sense of permanence, formality, and a dogmatic way of doing things. Changes to an institution are, therefore, unlikely to come easily or quickly to it. After all, it is part of the status quo in society. Indeed, in some instances, it has been an institution’s very existence that has given rise to the status quo, e.g., the Catholic Church and Irish society.
As a pertinent etymological aside, the term status quo originates from a slightly longer Latin phrase statu quo ante bellum, which means “in the same state as before the war”. It is a diplomatic term that referred to the withdrawal of military troops from an area of conflict and the restoration of power to those who had it before the fighting broke out. Its relevance to this article is that the roots of the term lie in both challenge and violence. Read more »
Hello, bonjour, and howya to the latest edition of this site’s new musical magazine!
Music @ Gigs
Meredith Godreau is the young multi-instrumentalist behind the Gregory & The Hawk moniker. Hailing from upstate New York, she has been quietly building up a respectful name for herself online. Blessed with an enchantingly sweet and deceptively fragile voice, her most recent record Moenie & Kitchi was one of those to be badly overlooked by many an alternative music fan last year.
Playing the upstairs venue at Whelan’s last Monday evening, Godreau was accompanied by two touring musicians. Unfortunately, she is most definitely a musician served best by an approach where less means more. Therefore, the cheap and loud sound of the keyboards threatened to ruin most of the songs where they were employed. At the same time, where it was a gentle guitar riff or where the flute was sparingly used, her backing band did manage to accentuate her own singing and guitar playing.
Undoubtedly the best sections of a well-attended show were when Godreau performed by herself. Here, her voice was allowed the chance to shine and the reasons why you wanted to be there in the first place came rushing back to you. In particular, her rendition of August Moon was lovely!
Should this film be indicative of reality, there would appear to be a shortage of virile youngsters of both sexes in Lyon. On the one hand, there are several middle-aged men with their tongues hanging out when it comes to the vapid Gabrielle Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier), as if she was Botticelli’s Venus come to life. Meanwhile, there seems to be no young man, brimming with wit, vim and vigour, on hand for long enough to dispatch all of these greasy-minded old codgers and wealthy screwballs for six.
While much respected filmmaker Claude Chabrol clearly has his tongue firmly in cheek with this story of intense and convoluted love affairs, there is still something rather tiresome and painfully predictable about yet another French movie that portrays high culture, upper class living, and casual chauvinism as if it the whole country spent their days indulging in all three at once. Accordingly, for this étranger at least, the film quickly becomes an uneasy hybrid between fairly entertaining parody and yet another shovel load or two of deluded French cinema. Read more »
Because political reform is one of those subjects that I would love to see far more widely debated in Ireland, this post is just to provide a resource that links to a series of relevant opinion pieces that The Irish Times has been publishing this week. Hence you may wish to bookmark it for future reference.
Political reform is a subject that I will return to frequently enough, but any thoughts on the articles below are most welcome.
The genesis of this series lies in a conference called Are Our Institutions Fit for Purpose? that was held in Trinity College last Monday. The slides from this conference can be found here.
It may be an overly facile remark, but you tend not to find households of immigrants living next door to well-to-do families. A whole variety of socioeconomic factors pretty much ensure this. Yet, some of the strongest advocates of a multicultural society are drawn from the ranks of those who are well educated, have travelled a fair bit abroad, and who now have professional occupations. Rather, most immigrants live alongside the people that they are typically competing with in general economic terms.
At the same time, for as long as jobs were plentiful enough in this country, the anecdotal evidence has suggested that these new arrivals were able to settle in pretty well, despite some low-level unpleasantness (e.g. name-calling) and some sporadic and generally isolated incidents of greater severity. However, with an economic downturn in progress, the concern will always be that social tensions between immigrants and the local people with whom they are competing with economically will start to rise. Equally, the more prolonged such a downturn proves to be, the worse that these tensions may then become. Read more »
I voted in favour of adopting the Lisbon Treaty last summer. I have no reason to change my mind when asked to vote on it again in October. Europe is good for Ireland, closer cooperation is to be welcomed and not feared, giving national legislatures time to debate and influence new laws as they are being drafted will be a positive development, and the need to overhaul the outmoded ways in which decisions get made is evident, with the current 27 Member States likely to be joined shortly by Iceland and Croatia (at least).
Déjà Vote All Over Again
I do not have a problem with the principle of being asked to vote again either. It would seem to me that a free society should and does allow decisions to be appealed. Equally, a second referendum on the same amendment does not diminish the sovereignty of the people. Rather it demonstrates it. For the Establishment must ask the people again and if the latter wish to reject its request for a second time, then that is their prerogative to do so. Indeed, the fallout from such a second rejection would be quite costly for the main political parties, so it is hardly something that they are seeking with carefree abandon. Read more »
As suggested by its title, the play has both a voyeuristic and an introspective quality to it. Voyeuristic insofar is it allows the audience to observe three young characters as they grapple with their racing and conflicting emotions in what should be the privacy of a studio apartment. Introspective insofar as it allows many in the audience to reminisce about that time when they too were this virile but awkward, hostile yet vulnerable, and enthusiastic, but given to sudden mood swings.
Despite being the tale of three young people from affluent backgrounds with unresolved personal issues, it would do a disservice to the play to bracket it alongside the hideous rich-kid dramas beloved of US television channels. To begin with, it is a far seedier story, dealing candidly with drugs, sex, and death. Secondly, it is a period piece set in New York City in 1982, just as Reaganomics are firmly taking root across the country. Obviously, this is pertinent to the story. Finally, whereas the former have been used as a vehicle by bland indie pop bands to make a name for themselves, this play is only ever concerned with referencing legendary artists such as Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart! Read more »
The album of the week wings its way here from Sydney, Australia. Angus & Julia Stone are a brother-and-sister duo. Truth be told, this album actually came out here in 2007, but I missed it at the time. However, with Like A Book only being released in North America this year, I got a second chance to form a first impression! Sister Stone has the sort of husky-harsh voice that should appeal to fans of Scandinavian singers such as Ane Brun or Lykke Li, while their warm acoustic sound is a further demonstration of why less is good. On a related note, Brother Stone has a solo album out this year. More on that anon, one might suppose!
Anyway, reflecting my varied tastes, also hugely recommended are Aun’s Motorsleep (described by the man behind the moniker Martin Dumais as “metal meets shoegaze”), Clues‘ very cool mélange of well-composed pop tunes on their eponymous debut album, and Yakiimo, the latest album from Simone White, a country singer-songwriter with a really lovely voice!
However, if you are looking for something that is funky yet mellow, that makes political themes sound sexy, and which occasionally reminds you of the theme music to Season Four of The Wire, then defintely check out DiggingRoots and their new album We Are.
Yup, it has been a brilliant week for new music and next week’s mixtape is going to be a must-listen as a result!
When filmgoers last saw the remarkably hard-to-kill John Connor, he was standing ashen-faced in an underground bunker offering succour by radio to anyone tuned to that frequency. Meanwhile, the self-aware defence network Skynet is raining nuclear missiles down upon cities across the planet. This fourth film in the series skips forward several years from that terrible day. Now we find Connor (Christian Bale) taking part in a commando-style raid on a Skynet communications outpost. Although the mission costs nearly all of the men their lives, critical information on how to defeat the machines is discovered.
Connor is also preoccupied with locating his father Kyle Reese, who is just a teenager at this point (you really do need to have seen the first film for that sentence to make sense). However, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a tough loner with an unconventional personal history, has already found the brave and idealistic Reese (Anton Yelchin) holed up in the crumbling ruins of Los Angeles. Together, they soon run into a whole heap of trouble as they try and evade the hunter-killer machines that are relentlessly pursuing them. Read more »
This is the other one-act play that has been specially commissioned for this year’s graduating class from the Gaiety School of Acting. It is a curious concoction of witchcraft, murder, revenge, and teenage awkwardness, infused with surreal black humour, and best served with live musical accompaniment. Another way to try and vaguely grasp it is to think of The Third Policeman, who is actually a postman, who is played by a woman, who walks in a peculiar manner, who…
Anyway, to the extent that the plot can be encapsulated, it involves a witch who is obsessively casting spells in an unsuccessful attempt to bring the mysterious Hunter back to live with her. Each time that she does so, though, she uses some form of life-force ingredient that then causes one of the men in the village to drop dead. Afterwards, she tries to offer the widow in question a peace offering of lasagne and cappuccino. However, these recently bereaved ladies prefer to plot their revenge instead, while their offspring seem to have bonded into an odd little self-help club. There is then the small matter of what exactly is an Apocalypse Bear… Read more »
This is one of two specially commissioned one-act plays being put on by the 2009 Gaiety School of Acting graduating class. Set in a foul-smelling and cramped hostel dorm room in a stiflingly hot Indian city, the play introduces us to a number of characters that will be broadly familiar to most backpackers. There is the carefree Australian on the perennial prowl for loose women and someone to get drunk with, the two college girlfriends whose patience with each other is wearing paper-thin, the bloke who has been travelling for years and who has therefore seen it all before, and, yes, but of course, the annoying American who whines a lot.
The humorous opening scenes neatly establish the petty preoccupations of this group, their unwarranted sense of world-weariness, and their remarkable capacity for juvenile self-centredness. Or, to put it another way, it could be described as the Big Brother show on tour! However, following two sudden dramatic twists, the group’s youthful sense of indestructibility is shattered and they find themselves in the middle of a terrifying cultural clash that forces them into making decisions well beyond the banal trifles that they had been obsessed with hitherto. Read more »
