Tarantino's indulgent love letter to Sixties Hollywood

Thu, Aug 22, 2019

ONCE UPON A time in Hollywood is the ninth film from Quentin Tarantino, and if he is to be believed, it is his penultimate movie. He maintains that no director has directed a good film after his tenth. To that I say, what about Claire Denis, Akira Kursowa, or Stephen Spielberg?

Loughrea residents join project to 'reimagine' their town

Thu, Aug 22, 2019

Loughrea has been announced as one of six towns participating in a community-led architecture and design programme, ‘Reimagine’.

Organised by the Irish Architecture Foundation, Reimagine aims to bring together local communities, architects, designers and planners to develop projects to enhance their environments.

Artists return for Clifden festival

Thu, Aug 22, 2019

The 2019 programme for the 42nd Clifden Arts Festival (September 18 to 29 ) has been launched with a strong line-up of national talent.

Katherine Noone's nostalgia with a sting

Thu, Aug 15, 2019

KATHERINE NOONE came late to poetry. Born near Gort, she spent decades working as a nurse in New York before retiring to Galway where, as people do, she began writing poetry.

The Current War - not exactly electrifying

Thu, Aug 01, 2019

THIS IS the story of Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and their competition to bring electricity to America. Westinghouse working with Alternating Current and Edison working with Direct Current.

Week two festival reviews

Thu, Aug 01, 2019

MOONFISH'S REDEMPTION Falls was one of the most eagerly anticipated shows in this year’s GIAF and its staging of Joseph O’Connor’s novel abounded in musical and visual invention.

GIAF Reviews: Dead Dog in a Suitcase, Epiphany

Thu, Jul 25, 2019

KNEEHIGH THEATRE Company's Dead Dog In A Suitcase was one of the hottest tickets at this year's Galway International Arts Festival. Adapted by Carl Grose and composer Charles Hazlewood, it was a raucous adaptation of John Gay’s 18th century classic, The Beggar’s Opera.

Album review: Ada Lea

Thu, Jul 25, 2019

THE BREAK-UP album - Blood On The Tracks, The Bride Stripped Bare, Rumours, Songs For Only The Lonely, Blue, Currents... - rarely do catharsis and creativity go so well and productively together.

The Lion King - a film that feels like a cover song

Thu, Jul 25, 2019

THE LION King is the latest Disney movie to get the live action treatment, but it is not live action. No lions were filmed for this. It is entirely computer generated. So it is animation?

Discover the soothing qualities of Dead Sea salt with Francis Soap Shop.

Thu, Jul 25, 2019

There is only one place on earth where carnallite salt crystals forms on beaches - the Dead Sea.

Galway made westerns continue with Never Grow Old

Thu, Jul 18, 2019

IT HAS become almost a tradition now that the Galway Film Fleadh closes with a western. Being one of my favourite genres I have no problem with that, but Never Grow Old has a lot to live up to after last year's Black 47 and 2017's An Klondike.

Album review: Kyle Craft

Thu, Jul 11, 2019

IN SOME corner of a foreign field - Portland, Oregon, to be precise - it is forever 1972. David Bowie is always Ziggy Stardust and T.Rex's glitterburst boogie is the soundtrack to everyone's teenage years.

Peter Parker grapples with a post Endgame world

Thu, Jul 11, 2019

IN A post-Avengers: Endgame world we catch up with Peter Parker who is back in school and who is trying to come to terms with the death of his mentor, Tony Stark.

Album review: Jesca Hoop

Thu, Jul 04, 2019

IT WAS often said of The Cure's 1982 album Pornography, that after beginning with the words, "It doesn't matter if we all die", it proceeded to get bleaker from there.

Yesterday - imagine if Black Mirror was upbeat and fun

Thu, Jul 04, 2019

YESTERDAY IS a kind of a positive feature length episode of Black Mirror - a pretty basic surreal concept but some pretty exciting talent behind the camera in director Danny Boyle, and writer Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Notting Hill).

Toy Story 4 proves a worthy entry in the series

Thu, Jun 27, 2019

I WAS pretty nervous about this. It is tough to follow an almost perfect trilogy and it felt completely unnecessary to make a fourth Toy Story. However, Pixar recently fired it's studio head John Lasseter after sexual harassment claims, so right now, the company really needs a win.

The adventures of Jack and Adam

Thu, Jun 20, 2019

Three years ago a new children’s book, Wanted - The Adventures of Jack & Adam, was published. This was followed in 2017 by second and third instalments of the series, The Widow and The Blaze, in 2018 by The Old Town, and more recently with Mischa’s Secret.

Scarface: The World is Yours

Thu, Jun 20, 2019

Nowadays movies being reinterpreted as games is commonplace. You only have to think of the likes of Spiderman, Batman: Arkham, and Star Wars: Battlefront II as examples that went from the big screen to our personal monitors in recent years. However, during the 1990s and early 2000s, it was the opposite that was true with mega games such as the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil series going from pixelated images on non HD TVs to cinema screens. So when Scarface: The World is Yours came out for the PS2 in July 2006, it may not have been one of the first efforts of taking a movie and making it into a game but arguably one the finest.

Album review: Morrissey

Thu, Jun 13, 2019

SUPPORTING BREXIT and UKIP, and making sympathetic comments about far-right figures have left Morrissey fans disgusted, in despair, and in denial - often, with long term fans like myself, feeling all three at once.

Thunder Road - pathos and power on a shoestring

Thu, Jun 13, 2019

THUNDER ROAD opens at Jim's mother's funeral. He is the only one of her three children to attend and he is very emotional. He suffers though an ill prepared eulogy, and begins to look deranged when going off on tangents about himself.