Totally Dublin

Great Lake Swimmers make music to swoon to. They even pick band names to dote over: “Fifty-five years ago, Marilyn Bell took a plunge and traversed Lake Ontario. Back then, being a Great Lake swimmer was a big deal; now, it’s an astonishing physical feat taken for granted. It’s a rapidly forgotten part of history, like a faded map or a tattered photograph. Or a lost channel.” - a fair approximation of their sepia-tinted folk, weaved with the sort of winsomeness they mass produce only in Canada. They have the unenviable task of playing next door to the sold-out Orbital tonight - ultimate chill-out alternative? More details here.

7UP Christmas On Ice Now in it’s 7th year, 7UP Christmas on Ice is the most popular temporary ice-skating opportunity for Dubliners who don’t want to risk the precarious frozen-over pond in their local park. With 1000 square metres of ice, three different rinks to seperate jelly-legged beginners from seasoned skaters, and its very own Skating Santa (how does he get any work done?), the RDS is the go-to family event for the Christmas months. Oh, and Liffey Valley for our more satellite subscribers. All your details, right here.

Backstreet Boys Ladies, lads, and art students. Join us for a moment of contemplation, a morsel of poetry, a brief respite from the bizzy Friday buzz.

Although loneliness has always been a friend of mine
I’m leaving my life in your hands
People say I’m crazy and that I am blind
Risking it all in a glance
And how you got me blind is still a mystery
I can’t get you out of my head
Don’t care what is written in your history
As long as you’re here with me

I don’t care who you are
Where you’re from
What you did
As long as you love me
Who you are
Where you’re from
Don’t care what you did
As long as you love me

Backstreet’s back, bitches. Right here.

The New Volta Cinema Club Cinephiles with short attention spans are in for a treat tonight, as the New Volta Film Club returns to the Bewley’s Café Theatre for their third installment. The monthly film sesh has been gathering fans and momentum since September, showcasing new and emerging talent in both film and animation. Among this month’s slew of up’n'comers, Finn Keenan takes his pile of arse drum-kit and ctrl-pastes it into something raucous, some muppets from Inchicore take the young Dublin social scene by storm, and Aaron O’ Reilly plays with the dark spaces created by sexual abuse and regret.

While there’s a definite student feel to some of the productions, that shouldn’t be taken as a by-word for a non-starter. The talent is self-evident, as is the imagination, energy and craftsmanship. Whatever these guys may lack in funding and its professional feel, they more than make up for it through their vibrant and reckless enthusiasm, both from the filmmakers themselves, and in the initiative of NewVolta’s organizers. The night is billed as a three hour event, so unless there’s 50+ films for your eyeball enjoyment, you can expect a chance to shoot the breeze with emerging film makers and fans alike, with the ever glamorous allure of a sneaky can of Dutch.

More details here.

Blk Jks During Apartheid rock was the music of the white, but without a distinct oppression or resistance, the boundaries have been erased. The Johannesburg quartet Blk Jks is the sound of a new South Africa and their brand of epic rock has been championed by characters as diverse as Bono and Diplo. Do your research for tonight’s Academy gig with our interview over here.

Grizzly Bear. More than a fantastic costume to scare away black-cat-wielding chissileurs, the year’s joint-biggest-indie-success-story clear the bonfire-smoke haze on Sunday with their first show since the glorious(-ly overhyped) Veckatimest. We do like the prep-pop of their latest album, though it’s not a patch on their previous opus Yellow House. ‘The Knife’ is our deadline-day soundtrack, and we once had a dream where Shakira put ‘On A Neck, On A Spit’ on a mixtape for us. A healthy mix of both albums from their Vicar Street set on Sunday night. More details here.

The Laser DVD Trash section. Like a black space vacuum sucking in all that pass it, Laser DVD’s ‘Trash’ shelf is the last refuge of the damned, desperate, and dirty. After you’ve seen slo-mo-filtered ninjas chop off Godzilla’s monster in badly-dubbed rage, or Christopher Lee morph into a gelatinous blob, Pet Sematary’ll seem like zombie Peppa Pig. Dig out such classics as FRANKENHOOKER [A Terrifying Tale of Sluts and Bolts] and THE WILLIES [You'll Laugh, You'll Cry, You'll Puke, You'll Die!], grab a portable DVD player, and go search out your local piss-and-cider fuelled bonfire for appropriate background noise. 

Handsome Furs: Last time Handsome Dan and Handsome Alexei Boeckner came over, on the back of 2006’s quite-underrated Plague Park I got so drenched in the Wolf Parade guitarist’s saliva I felt like I’d shown up at Dalymount Park in a Shamrock Rovers jersey. Passionate is the word to describe anything Boeckner sticks his guts and guitars into - the main source of his Springsteen comparisons. The Furs’ second album, Face Control, dropped momentum after an initial giddy rush, but it still remains a promising songbook of little beats and big guitars. The couple’s onstage charm makes it a should-go, and should you go you should go here first: gig details. Go!

The Ghost Bus Tour. We’re rather positively disposed towards Dublin Bus at the minute (despite the 128’s driver passing me by with a smirk almost every morning). Last week we took a spin on the Ghost Bus Tour, probably the only part of its Sightseeing options you’re likely to avail of if you’re not from Delaware. With the emphasis on entertainment and theatre rather than enlightenment, the Tour is a light-hearted look into the city’s spooked areas - taking in St. Kevin’s, St. Audeon’s and Dr. Clossy’s gaff. With a drooling monk in their employ, and onboard anecdotes brimming out of their ears (and even a spot quiz), it’s a Halloween mood setter that won’t get you arrested for possession of illegally imported goods.

What?

Oh yeah, and we’ve got a pair of tickets on the damned thing for you. All we want from you is to know what your costume this year is by close of business on Friday, and our team of lycantrophic adjudicators will pick the best. This is not a scam to steal costume ideas that we can’t think of ourselves. Comment below, or email us at editor @ totallydublin . ie.

All this gives us the perfect excuse for a ghost-themed Wolf Parade track:

Freefall is about a ‘normal’ middle-aged Irish man ‘from Limerick’ who suffers a stroke at the start of this newly written play. Throughout, we see updates of his progress in hospital coupled with flashbacks from his very early childhood, growing up in Cork with his adoptive family of Aunt, begrudging Uncle, and cousin, right up until the night before he suffers his stroke when the same cousin visits with his new girlfriend.

The most striking feature was how cinematic Freefall was; not just in its use of audio-visual technology, but in its structure. Flashback sequences are not a common feature in theatre, mostly due to the difficulty in executing them. Freefall cleverly used a number of devices to effectively bring about a sense of temporal change, notably a transparent curtain that divided the stage from side to side. Credit also has to be given to the five excellent actors, all incredibly adaptable and comfortable in any number of roles they played during the play.

The metaphors throughout the play, notably the dry rot man who in a dreamlike sequence shows how the foundations/the man’s subconsciousness are crumbling through fungus/past memories, are not subtle, but do not feel laboured nevertheless.

The play is in places aesthetically quite beautiful, but in a very quiet way; the lead’s tall shadow slowly shrinking; the nuanced live sounds used in lieu of props; the unobtrusive but excellent lighting.

Another fascinating feature of Freefall was the lead character’s obsession over his sister, whom he hasn’t seen since his early childhood when she was given up for adoption. This obsession mutates into sexual fantasies; his wife also being adopted, he imagines her to be his long lost sister. In fact, he gives the impression that he wants his wife to be his sister, so that, in his own words, he could know that she grew up loved. This male orientated obsession over a lost idealised female has strong echoes of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, adding more of a cinematic quality to the play.

The clever and constant humour that permeates this play makes it accessible to a wide audience, but it retains a real sense of purpose and style. It undoubtedly succeeds in its detailed portrayal of the supposedly normal life of a normal man.

Freefall runs until Saturday the 24th of October at the Project Arts Centre’s Space Upstairs.

Words: Alan Farrell

Mumblecore Season: The recent commercial glut of schmaltzy ‘indie’ films, as with its music genre counterpart, has its origins in an earlier purple patch of the discipline at start of the decade. Hipper than an American Apparel onesie (and even harder to pull off without looking like a try-hard diptwit), Mumblecore moviemaking is a low-budget, Cassavetes/Jarmusch-derived noted for its… mumbling. Typical Mumblecore dialogue might go a little something like this:

Marnie: Hey, if you could move anywhere, if you were moving out of here, just anywhere in the country, or anywhere I guess, where would you move? 

Alex: I dunno. I guess a better question is: if you were thirteen feet tall, would you rather be that or have eyes on the stalks on top of your head? 

Not a whole lot happens in a mumblecore movie, but the majority are charming and warm enough to warrant the hour and a half spent in their company. And hey, thanks to the Douglas Hyde Gallery’s season you can even do so for free. The season started on Monday (sorry for the late heads-up, we had a headache the size of Tipperary), but some of the genre’s peak moments are still up for grabs: catch Aaron Katz’s Dance Party USA, and the scene’s figurehead Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation. The uh… like, full programme is over here, or something.

Soap & Skin, Austria’s 18-year-old Anja Plaschg, is one of the most singular acts on this year’s rather-quite-large DEAF line-up. Makes sense then that she’ll cast the first stone of the festival, opening the festival at the Button Factory tomorrow night, then. She’ll be preceded by a small Filmbase shindig with Beautiful Unit, and followed by the looptastic Alexander Tucker. Think Antony and the Johnsons, except actually a girl, and you’ll get something near what to expect. Or just watch this instead:

IADT alumnus Sonia Shiel will open a new exhibition in the Royal Hibernian Academy tomorrow. A mix of video, painting, and sculpture, Shiel’s work is a humorous, multidisciplinary exploration of creativity itself. Have a look at some jpegs below, and then find out details right here.

Sonia Shiel, Do you think anyone will come?, 2009, Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm, Image courtesy of the artist

Sonia Shiel, My name in lights, 2009 Wood, card, tape & markers, (dimensions variable 290 x 180cm), Courtesy of the artist.

Hard Working Class Heroes festival too often resembles shooting fish in a barrel. A barrel with too many fish and not enough water where most of the fish are going to die anyway, because the barrel’s too small and nobody buys CDs in it anymore. The festival’s motive - to highlight upcoming Irish bands of all shapes and sizes and represent the FUTURE of Irish music - is an admirable one, but we all know the future of today is the past of tomorrow today (or something). Picking a winner from the line-up can be a difficult task, but it’s not impossible to find the most sparkling names in the sludge of this year’s line-up - if you’re nipping down to one of the festival’s six venues this weekend we’d recommend catching the newly-Domino-signed Villagers [Friday, 11pm, Andrew's Lane], the post-punk clunk and crunk of Not Squares [Friday, 10.10pm, Academy 2], our favourite Oz-quoting hardcore spazzers Adebisi Shank [Saturday, 11.15pm, Andrews Lane], the soon-to-be-featured-on-our-site Hunter-Gatherer [Saturday, 2am, Twisted Pepper], the Albini-bothering Jogging [Sunday, 8.50pm, Twisted Pepper], and sunny-side-up good eggs 202s [Sunday, 11.05pm, Andrews Lane]. The chap below is launching his new 7” in Road tomorrow with an instore at 2 if you fancy, too.

More here.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is the biggest draw to the picturehouse this weekend, as the morbid, the curious, and the curiously morbid gather for Heath Ledger’s last big-screen appearance. Terry Gillam’s work has been praised for its aesthetics (then again, even an ad for Cilit Bang with Lily Cole in it would be), and its magic-mirror premise is a winner. We’ve a full review here, and a big ol’ set of cinema listings here. Avoid Vince Vaughan at all costs.

Freefall - Receiving raver reviews than a Blobbyland rave party, the Corn Exchange’s contribution to this year’s Theatre Festival is this weekend’s must-see for theatre-tots. A work of breadth and sophistication, Freefall sets out to be ‘a sharp, humorous and exhilarating look at the fragility of a human life’, and winds up being a whole lot more.

More here.

And just because it’s Friday.

Katherine Lynch - So Padraig completely usurped my Irish female comedian spiel with his Maeve Higgins love-in below, but Katherine Lynch only reinforces his point - we might not have many funny women on the box, but the ones we do make up for numbers. After the success of Wonderwomen and Working Women, the schizophrenic cast of Katherine’s creation returns with round two of her stand-up tour, the delightfully-titled Diddy Diddy Dongo Tour at Vicar Street tonight. Worth it for Liz Hurley alone.

More here. 

Mia Funk - The iconoclastic Parisian artist’s work has been a draw for the Bad Art Gallery since it arrived last month, and the launch of her solo show today offers a last chance for a glimpse of her violent, unsettling work. You know. The stuff that looks like this:

More here.

Fela’s Birthday Bash - It’s our favourite African icon’s big day today, and the South William are throwing a party for the late king of polyrhythm and polygamy. DJs Matjazz and Lex Woo drop his finest moments from half 8. We’ll be there chanting ‘Zombie no go go! Zombie no go stop!’ over a sorghum Guinness.

More here.

Spandau Ballet - Apparently the very reason Billy Bragg took up the guitar, and the impetus behind a 30% increase in gold lamé sales in the 1980s clothing sector (this was before American Apparel was even born, remember) the New Romantic quintet are back for cash at the O2 tonight.

Details here

Laurina Paperina - Bad! Laurina Paperina’s work walks a thin line between being ironically playful and just being downright mental. Her 2007 collection (How to) Kill the Artists, comprised sketches and animations of famous artists being crushed, mauled, stabbed and generally slaughtered by their own creations, in glorious technicolor. As Frida Kahlo gets beheaded by her faithful monkey, Francis Bacon has his face reconstructed by one of his crucifixion figures, while Andy Warhol comes a cropper at the hands of a knife wielding and homicidal Marilyn Monroe. With this wicked sense of humour, Paperina rejects the hyper-intellectualism of much conceptual art, preferring to turn the artistic focus back in on itself, which an emphasis on fun, accessibility and mischief.  

Six videos from her Kill the Artists series have made it into Bad!, her current show running at the Rubicon Gallery, though they are by no means the focus. It is in fact the title piece, Bad - Post It that steals the show, by nature of its sheer size and surprising complexity. Composed of 297 arranged post-its, each bearing an individual sketch, the work bears endless re-reading, as it offers bite-sized artistic satire, that is both nutritious and hilarious. You’ll stare at this menu for hours my friend, like a vegan at a drive-thru. 

More here.

Up! - Everybody else has seen Up! 3D already (or at least enough people to make it the biggest opening weekend for an animated film this year), so we’re blowing up some balloons and floating over to Cineworld tonight to get our slice of the Pixar pie. Bring some microwave popcorn and Minstrels and we’ll see you down there.

More here.

An Evening of Reading, Music & Conversation with Nick Cave - By far the best company to spend the evening in tonight is grumpy Uncle Nick’s. To coincide with the release of his novel ‘The Death of Bunny Munro’ (which we haven’t read yet, but are informed by an English grad friend that it’s McCarthyesque) the first man of Australian rock noir is spending the night in Vicar Street, flouting the smoking ban and knocking back whiskeys. The problem? It’s long sold out. However, as the below video of skeletal Nick taking fellow antipodean Zane Lowe down ten notches should be enough to have you on the hunt for a nearby tout-on-crutches shouting “buyin’ or sellin’ tickets dere folks?”
Details here. 

Keith Farnan - Touted as a Dylan-Moran-In-The-Making (we’re not sure whether he shares the same penchant for swigging from bottles of wine), Keith Farnan’s stand-up takes the piss out of the death penalty tonight at the Project.

Details here.

Tales of Ballycumber - Despite having received something of a panning (the Guardian wrote that ‘ It is beautiful but strangely inert’), Sebastian Barry’s Wicklow mountainside-set Tales of Ballycumber is still the biggest theatre pull in town with noted performances from Stephen Rea and Aaron Monaghan.

Details here.