Totally Dublin 63

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GJSTU UIJOHT GJSTU In an auspicious trawl through my grandfather’s dusty hordes of memorabilia and beermats this month my fingers found a familiar green cardboard cylinder. I popped open the top, and sure enough, there was the waxy evidence of the passage of time: the governmentissued Millenium Candles. Like those awesome in-case-of-nuclear-attack tablets we all got through our letterbox (I fed mine to a neighbourhood cat to see if it would mutate), the Millenium Candles were the sort of sweeping ‘we really do care about you’ gesture government could do with as we come to the close of the noughties. Perhaps we could cut back public sector pay in exchange for a free copy of the first Jedward single for every household (plus, it’s an alternative to illegal downloading). The 90s seemed easily bookended by the new millenium – the decade a more decisive marker of time less arbitrary than it does in 2009. 2010 does not have the same responsibility to excite astrologers and futurist utopians as the millenium did – we don’t have to light green cylindrical candles, for one. Total personal assertion here, but the 00s have completely trumped the 90s in terms of cultural and our social progression. Rave brought the youth of the early 90s together in a rush of empathogen – but the sea change of the internet from a cauldron of information and dodgy forums to fully-blown social phenomenon has affected our culture with dramatic profundity. It’s easy to piss on hipster and vintage culture, but the artistic waterline has risen no end. The 90s in a TV show? Friends. The noughties? The Sopranos, The Wire & Six Feet Under (and, for HBO haters, the Weather with Martin King). As Battles’ Ian William points out on page 15 – the accessibility of once-esoteric technology for the masses has raised standards rather than over-saturate the market with soggy crap. So 2010 is no biggie. If that Mayan calendar I’ve been using instead of iCal is anything to go by, it’s 2012 we’re all banjaxed for. Daniel Gray

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8 Roadmap Hipper than a six star hotel

25 Listings Including interviews with the Antlers, Conor MacPherson, and the Mighty Boosh’s Paul King

12 Threads In case Nan doesn’t knit your jumper this year

42 When In Rome... Roam as the Romans roam

14 People Won’t Be People You’d ride them into Battles

48 Barfly Prep vs. Hep

18 When Under Ether Featuring the year’s best portmanteau: Michelleton

56 Colm Meaney He’ll piss on your leg. 58 Cinema This month written entirely topless, in celebration of New Moon 62 Audio Album of the year: The Soldiers, Coming Home

50 Gastronaut Pad thai: hurry!

JU T XIBU T JOTJEF UIBU DPVOUT DSFEJUT XIFSF DSFEJU T EVF Totally Dublin

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Sheep’s Clothing :: Early adopters of digital DJing, New York imprint Wolf + Lamb is one of the more idiosyncratic record labels on the go. Gaze through the hip ethereal aesthetics and the depth of mad decent records, remixes and podcasts put out by the technoites is enough to swoon over – oh, and they have their own 6 Star Hotel. Seriously. Characterized by murky, nocturnal productions (think early Italians Do It Better minus Moroder, multiplied by 70s soul), a healthy dose of the label’s output is available free on their website (www.wolflambmusic.com, since you asked). Why do you care? Because they’re playing as part of Pygmalion’s rather busy December line-up, is why (other highlights include a free BATS gig, and a Mediterranean DJ battle between Marco Carola and Paco Osuna – we’re sure you can find a reliable listings magazine with all the details nearby). Don your finest low-cut V-neck and catch the Wolf and Lamb night on the 17th of December at the Pyg.

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Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies :: Londoners have it easy. While we’ve got the tatty old Ticket to tell us what films to avoid on any given week, they get Little White Lies – a bi-monthly independent film magazine that ranks as the second most prettily-designed tome on our bookshelves (it’s actually the prettiest, but don’t tell our designer that). Tackling film from all sorts of unhitherto-explored angles, it explores the most significant releases of the period in their cultural context, offering at least ten times as much insight for your pound Sterling than your average movie mag. Sigh. If only we could get our mitts on it. But wait. Aha! That most old school of stocking-filler options is available to us all – the annual subscription. For a neat little £18 (xe.com tells us this translates as €19.96 right now) your favourite film buff can receive an exhaustive LWL issue every two months right in their letterbox. Do it. www.littlewhitelies.co.uk

Adbusters :: Possibly the most sinister viral movement this year outside of swine flu is This Man. Yes. This Man right here. What’s so creepy about him, besides his eerily-benovelent, unibrowed mug? The apparent backstory propagated by website Ever Dream This Man goes a little like this: “In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of a man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. Within a few months, four patients recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. No living man has ever been recognized as resembling the man of the portrait by the people who have seen this man in their dreams.” Before you start frantically searching your back catalogue of dreams to ascertain whether or not it was him or George Clooney who bought you an ice cream at your grandparent’s childhood beach house last night, though, you should know it’s all part of a sinister hoax. Italian culture jammers are using This Man to enter your head through this clandestine internet campaign. Still, won’t stop him popping up on your brain’s projector screen next time you nod off, will it? www.thisman.org

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Happy Knitmas :: Christmas is a time for embarrassing jumpers. The cherished tradition is now a seasonal industry, with high street shops offering a diverse and scratchy range of festive knitwear. But without offending any well-meaning relatives, Threads would advise a more subtle approach than the usual icicle prints and deranged snowmen. Emma Cook’s Names jumper for Topshop has the necessary quirk factor, but the tongue-in-cheek font gives it style value that’ll last long past December. The print also begs the question, who do all these names belong to? Friends of the designer? A Tracey Eminstyle roll call of ex-lovers? Either way, it certainly beats Rudolf knit by your great aunt Mabel.

… And A Moleskine New Year :: A diary seems like that most impersonal of presents, but then not all notebooks are created equal. There’s something about a brand new Moleskine journal, with its acid-free paper promise, that can’t help but set the new year off to a good start. Each year the iconic stationary company commissions an artist to design special edition diaries, with Catalonian designer Martí Guixé selected for 2010. The result is an endearing take on the streamlined journal, with a leather cover dotted with Guixe’s signature scratchings resembling blades of grass. Inside there’s even a sheet of special edition stickers; a definite pick for design obsessives and stationary snobs. www.simplymoleskine.com

Tie a Yellow Ribbon :: Do you feel the urge to buy a pair of flashing Christmas tree earrings? Or are you hearing the call of musical novelty socks? While it’s excusable once a year to give free reign to tacky accessories, the resulting photos might make you want to burn that mistletoe headband once and for all. Far better to deck your head with one of these oversized hairbands by Friis and Company, featuring a black leather bow shaped like the metallic gift ribbons you find on Christmas chocolate boxes. Sold at BT2 for €35, they’re the perfect ironic take on seasonal novelty dressing, and would make an ideal present for any aspiring Blair Waldorfs you might know. www.bt2.ie

K/A A/W :: The banking apocalypse might have put paid to overblown corporate parties, but there’s always New Year’s Eve as an occasion to dress up and see the year out in style. Irish designers Kate and Ava sent out an Autumn/Winter line of flattering and subtly grown-up party clothes, ideal for 2009’s more restrained approach to festive madness. All feminine 40s-style tailoring and jewel-toned satin, their pencil skirts and sculpted, wasp-waist dresses have the kind of timeless chic that never goes out of fashion, meaning they can be worn and re-worn to all tomorrow’s Christmas parties. Stocked at Anastasia boutique, Ranelagh, and at Divine in Malahide www.kateandava.ie

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< When it came to choosing the potential cover stars of our last issue of the decade we had a list as long as Lapland’s most bearded. With our Thierry Henry interview mysteriously cancelled, and Uffie’s cachet at an all time low, we plumped for the band that make our office tick-tock towards print each month. When our limbs sag and our eyes bulge with Mac-induced cataracts, when not even triple espressos delivered to our tired veins via syringe can perk us up, when resentment rides high but emotions won’t grow we invoke the bottomless energy source that is Battles. Aside from that, there’s a good case for the post-math-rock-or-something quartet being one of the most important bands to release an album this decade. When it comes to End-OfNoughties lists, their impeccably innovative debut album deserves at least top five status – it was a barrier-shattering release that managed to make the alienating accessible, and posit a new template for the much-maligned crossover territory between electronic and rock music (better than Fischerspooner did, anyway). Theirs was the most forward-thinking release to gain mass popularity in 2000s – a claim those other listtoppers cannot conceivably make. This was a decade where many facets of culture focussed on reduce-reuse-recycle retrofuturism, and tried to reinvigorate the old with a can of polish and a dustcloth – vintage chic permeated all spheres. Look at the more conservative choices for the defining album of the decade: Radiohead’s Kid A took 90’s electronica and made it rockist, The Strokes were Television with better haircuts,

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and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot only makes sense to those over the age of 35. Mirrored, following on from the magnificent, though highly math-rock influenced EPs C and B, cannot be said to have defined the arbitrary category of time it was released in. One suspects though, that come December 2019 that taking up the glove that this most multi-faceted of albums throws down will be one of the chief agendas of the Best of ‘10s. Of course, that’s the very challenge the band themselves are preparing themselves to step to. With a far-reaching fanbase (and hyperbolic journoheads like myself) to sate, and their own ambitious project unravelling in front of them, Battles are brewing up album two in their laptopstrewn laboratory. We lucky ducks will get a taste of their newest songs in primitive forms this month at the U:Mack 15th Birthday party. I gave finger-tappin’-good guitarist Ian Williams a buzz in a far-off hotel room to find out what they’ve got up their wizard sleeves.

Hello? こんにちは。これ東京、 中央ホテルはいかに助けても よい私あるか。 Oh, um... Could I connect to room 11709 please? Hello! Who is the guest you would like to speak to? Ian Williams? Ivan Williams?

Ian. I have only Ivan Williams.

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OK, he’ll do. Please hold for a short while. ...Hello? Hey man. So you’re in Japan... I love Japan. Battles are received so well over here. Besides that, it’s always fun to come for the weekend. We feel at home here, even though I don’t speak any Japanese. And everybody thinks you’re called Ivan. Yeah, exactly. I feel completely at peace with that. So the main reason we’re doing a Battles interview in December 2009 is that I want to gush over how I think Mirrored is potentially the most important album of the decade. Am I completely deluded, or would you agree? Well, I don’t want to stop a guy who thinks that. Keep going right on. I guess, in all humbleness, we’ve been writing this new record every day in our practise space beside this little cafe in New York. We got to know the barman and... it’s embarrassing... but every time we come into the bar now he plays Mirrored. I think he thinks we like that. I suppose it’s affirming. I haven’t listened to that album in a long time, none of us have, but eating with it in the background, it still feels pretty good when I hear it now. What’s the competition, do you think? This decade? There’s been a lot of great records due to how feasible home-recording is now. I mean with the punk revolution in the 70s it became accessible to make an amateur record. A few guys get together a couple of hundred dollars and get it out there while Bruce Springsteen spends six months in the studio – but it would come out sounding quite amateurish. Now though, you’ve got the same accessibility, but the quality of what dabblers in music make is much greater thanks to the changed economics of... making music. I guess that affects Battles too – a lot of your stuff is produced by the band itself, right? Sort of. The EPs were home recorded. Our friend Emery [Dobyns] did engineer and mix it, but we did a lot of overdub-

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bing and so on at home. Mirrored was made completely in the studio. I think the new record is going to be a lot more rough – home-recording mixed in a real studio. So the tour you’re on now is a testing ground for said new material? Yeah, we have an applauseometer. If we don’t get enough claps we’ll go back to the drawing board. Tomorrow night we’re playing here in Tokyo... It’s a harrowing way to play new songs. It’d be nice if we were playing to like, 50 people, but these last shows have been huge. There was a relatively big leap from the EPs to Mirrored – is the new material going to expand the template again? Literally ten minutes ago I was listening to the practise recordings on headphones, and our Japanese friend, who was standing five feet beside me can hear the highhats coming through the headphones and says ‘Oh! Sounds like Battles...’, so maybe it’ll be all the same again. I dunno. We’re getting much better at what we do, and used to the process but maybe that means it sucks? Sometimes people think they get better and better all the time, when they’re actually getting more and more boring, because it’s easier for them. You settle on a formula. But I think we’re conscious of the effect. I suppose that was one of the biggest appeals about Battles though – it’s four quite musically-accomplished guys doing something quite different. You’re playing one of the last Warp anniversary shows of the year – have you felt part of that whole celebration, or because you’re newcomers to the label is it still not really home yet? I feel lucky to be able to be in the context of the Warp thing, and we totally appreciate being part of it, but on the other hand we do sort of feel like JohnnyCome-Latelies to the whole thing, almost like we’re more fans of the Warp lineage. In some ways I feel like we don’t deserve

the pat on the back, we all want to pat Warp’s back. Tyondai [Braxton, frontman]’s newest solo album came out through Warp recently. With all of you guys having backgrounds in other projects, have you been working on anything else while Battles was in hibernation? I’m always a little torn because I always want to focus on one thing and do it well. In the 90s I had two bands – Don Caballero, and Storm & Stress – and coming out of that I appreciate wanting to just do the one band right. That said, after we toured with Mirrored I came up with a lot of songs that I don’t think I could force Battles to play. So I have ideas, myself, but at this point we’re all in for Battles. As a seasoned professional, I have to ask you – are all post-rock and instrumental bands’ song titles bullshit? Yeah. Uh. We all have different rules. Don Cab’s were pretty silly, and in hindsight probably too silly, because it restricted it a little. At the beginning Battles was like a reaction to Don Caballero’s long song titles for me, being really abbreviated and coded letters [SZ2, Ipt2, Bttls]. Then, funnily, we ended up on Warp which shined another light on it – electronic obscurity and computer codes. So now I think we’re set on the legitimacy of the words. Here are some cheesy sentences for the Christmas issue. Finish them off for us... All I want for Christmas is... My two front toes. The best thing about 2009 was Summer. The best thing 2010 will be Winter. [Battles’ sophomore album has the tentative release of Winter 2010] And the upcoming Battles gig in Dublin will be... Totally fantastic. Battles play some of their new material as part of U:Mack’s 15th Birthday Party in Tripod on the 10th December. Tickets are a wholesome €35.

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Channel 6’s existence was somewhat baffling – apart from a pretty logo and some 90s American TV repeats for those whose Megavideo allowance for the day was spent up, the only vindication for its place on the NTL digibox was its ever-present Night Shift. Hosted by a new face for indie boys to fall asleep to – the really-quitecharming Michelle Doherty – it provided a hitherto elusive platform for upcoming Irish bands who’d scobbled together enough spare change to glue a promo video together - MT-USA for the Irish hipster generation, if you will. Its abrupt cancellation upon the sale of Channel 6 to TV3 to pave the way for yet more Exposé airtime created a vacuum for an alternative Irish music show. Thanks to the fortuitous cutbacks and cancellations in RTE, Night Shift’s team have a second shot at creating that alternative with the commission of a 6-episode season of When Under Ether – essentially Night Shift, plus a second presenter (the previously behind-camera Elton Mulally),

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multiplied by a new show structure. With a ream of last-minute guests, live sessions, and videos both Irish and international, the show has almost certainly warranted a second season and a skipful of acclaim. Its presentable presenters popped into the office for a cup of Twinings’ finest.

night, and such a scope to give everyone a chance. It catered to a lot of tastes, we never had to push anything on viewers. E: It’s a no-brainer as far as we’re concerned. Everybody involved in Irish music in any way knows there’s an audience for this show – it was just the economics that went wrong.

When you were running down the list of PJ Harvey songs to name the show after, was ‘Wang Dang Doodle’ ever a possibilty? E: I didn’t even know there was a PJ Harvey song called that! When Under Ether was a working title for the show initially, and then it stuck. When we went to RTE they wanted to change the name of it to something a lot more generic and obvious, but by that time we’d grown to like it, and it suited the vibe of the show, and they let us keep it.

Something like a nomination for the Entertainment.ie awards must be a vindication you’re doing something right. M: For me that’s fabulous. E: The reaction so far has been positive all round. You’ve got a bottomless budget and the biggest address book in the world – who do you put on the show? M: I know who I’d have on first. Them Crooked Vultures. It’d be cool to have the three of them [Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, and John Paul Jones] in a studio together.

That’d be special. E: Mine would be Tom Waits. And your all time favourite video? M: Battles ‘Atlas’. You’ll love this issue, then. M: I adore Battles. That Chequerboard video was beautiful too, I used to love showing that on Night Shift. E: The one that made the biggest impact on me was Smells Like Teen Spirit. That made me want to be in a band. I’m trying to think about something newer… M: OK Go? E: Yes! Perfect. When Under Ether airs on Tuesdays at the sociable hour of 11.50pm on RTE2, and is available from the RTE Player at www.rte. ie/player. The show is up for public vote in the Entertainment.ie Annual Awards. Help it beat Exposé, yeah?

Have you come up against any other walls in RTE? E: They’ve been really good, and supportive, actually. M: We were dropped in the deep end a bit. We thought the show wouldn’t start until the New Year, but then all of a sudden we found out it was all going out before Christmas and had to be finished by the middle of December. It’s good though, you don’t have too much time to think about it and just get on with it. Starting from scratch, videos-wise was tough. E: We thought we’d have 4-5 weeks to prepare, but ended up having to film it all in about a week and a half before airing. It was a scramble. After the first show went up and the reaction was good, we could relax a little bit. The alternative Irish music scene lacks a national platform outside of radio – I remember discovering bands like The Immediate through Night Shift – the chances of work like that getting shown on UK, or international TV are next to none. M: It was horrible when the Night Shift finished, because bands really did appreciate that opportunity. We had two hours a

20

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Oscar win this year is a reflection of people’s appreciation for what’s happening within the Japanese film industry. There is more variety in Japanese film now. Our films aren’t falling into certain stereotypical categories. The new generation of film-makers are quite keen to explore the outside market and are taking an international audience into consideration when making their films. In that respect it’s a very different kind of filmmaking to what we had in the 1950s. It certainly is an interesting and encouraging time for Japanese cinema.

words // AOIFE O’REGAN Henry and Sunny, Dublin-based writer/director together twenty years after their original setting Fergal Rock’s ‘melancholic tale of true love against and they meet for the first time in a cafĂŠ in Moscow all odds’, is a unique vision quite beautifully realwhere they discuss each other’s lives. ized. Shot in high-contrast black and white, Henry and Sunny imagines a complicated relationship These plays are not related though are they? They between an unemployed clown and his high-profile aren’t sequels? love interest who inhabit very different worlds that No, they are both completely different characters tragically threaten to keep them apart, despite their from completely different plays. The only link is that best efforts. they both share an author and a location. The play This latest short from Rock assembles an acstands on its own feet however, so audiences wouldn’t complished team that has undoubtedly contributed have to be familiar with Chekhov to enjoy to the film’s positive reception on the festival necessarily circuit. Here he discusses the film’s depiction of a love less the play. ordinary, and how they stumbled across lead actor Paulo Braganca. Have you worked with Brian Friel’s plays in the past?

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Can you tell us about the programme and why you have chosen these particular films? We try to promote a deeper understanding of Japanese society and culture. A lot of the films’ themes this year compliment that aim. We have five films for Dublin and I hope that I have selected a good combination that people will enjoy. The press responses to all of them have been very positive. We have Ponyo, the latest animation from Miyazaki who is quite well known from Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. Ponyo was a huge hit in Japan. It is quite a deceptive film as it Yes, my first Brian Friel play was in 1966, as a kid in appears to be aimed at a younger audience but we can work to doofwith costumes andHowever, props so our choice cast it. Two Portuguese plumbers up at The concept of clowns as the latest casualtiesthe of the Abbey - The Loves Cass McGuire. always expect turned Miyazaki to our deliver a deeper message

to shoot in black and white simplified things on that producer Orla’s door onethe daysurface to re-fit her bathrecession is a unique one. What made you settle on than suggests. A Stranger of Mine is a very one of the greatest acting experiences I have ever In response to the level of interest shown in last year’s level. I also think it looks much more atmospheric. room. She texted meinteresting saying onefilm of them that idea as the basis for your film? from awould youngbedirector named Kenji had was playing Casimir in another Friel play called event the Japanese Film Festival has broadened its the part of Henry and It all goes back to that almost Farside-like idea of perfect for asked he’don a low budget and I actually wrote the script while I was doing a Uchida. It is his first him film,ifshot Arguably Ireland’s greatest living playwright, Brian Aristocrats. We took that play to London and then horizons, now taking in three locations across the robbing the clowns of their color and distinctive be interested. He was really surprised because he’d masters in DIT. At one stage I was working in a call uses no famous actors. The brilliance of this film is its Friel turned 80 last January, celebrate his New York, which of awards. This a welcome returnactually country before making to Dublin traits.earned it all sorts made a feature film in Portugal a fewstructure. years centre and a and lot oftothe people working there with clever script and unusual It has a great twist milestone birthday the Gate Theatre are presentin the latter half of November. Festival programmer isn’t my first time playing Andrey however, we took to be interpreted. Afterplay is a bit of a gem, and earlier. He had a great career as a want relatively famous me were involved in the arts and looked like they which I don’t to say too much about. It’s the kind Shinji Yamada has compiled a schedule reflective of the ing three of his greatest works in succession: Faith Afterplay to Australia early this year with Francesca Were you being satirical about the entertainmentalthough itfado has singer been preformed awas few times inDavid Ireland, over there, signed were better suited to other jobs. My writing often of film you willtowant to Byrne’s see twice! Kamikaze Girls is a and forward thinking that has made JapaHealer, Afterplay involves and Thetaking Yaltasomething Game. Best known Annis I’m doing it withimagination Frances Barber. industry? record label and toured around America. Hestory wentabout teenage friendship familiar and putting it in and now many Friel fans will still not be overly familiar with it. beautiful coming-of-age neseWe’re cinema an institution, affording Irish audiences for the classic Philadelphia Here I context. Come and DancI think it’s gentle satire. not taking pot-shots to London to pursue a music career but it didn’t a slightly different I think that’s where the

the opportunity to appreciate the unique cinematic and Japanese fashion subcultures. Shall We Dance, at anybody. I think fact that surrounded out so he came toto Ireland to doorbathroom idea also of having clownsa working jobs where ing at Lunasa he has translated numbermenial of And how different is it doing thethesame partthey’re with two Have fans work of Chekhov warmed theconfused play dis- the Hollywood re-make, has to be with outputwho of one the world’s largest andinstallation oldest film with hisnot by over-the-top characters areof motivated bycredited brother.aThe moment he in walked they English, stand-outgiving visuallythem cameafrom. The clowns Chekhov’s plays into new lease different actors? it? become modern classic Japan. Departures is a fasindustries. fameitand money clownsboth more sympaI knew that Paulocinating was perfect for theJapanese He death rites. It has become are symbolic of esteemed artists in aactor way. When of life. Totally Dublin spoke to Niall we started It’s great because keeps one makes fresh. the They’re film about Well I haveinonly ever done it in Australia whererole. there thetic. Their natural instinct is to entertain and completely empathized with Henry as he was also shooting the film last year the whole global financial Buggy about his role in Afterplay, and his history wonderful actors and both of them are friends, it’s widely because wasthe a very warm tomore it. Friel hasavailable translated a of its Oscar win so we The real 1950s is often regarded golden age to ofresponse generosity involved as in trying resurrect his So we signed him up to secure it for the festimeltdown had just started so it seemed silly not with Friel’s works. very importantprovide to get humour. on withThere’s your co-stars because arecareer. delighted we managed number of selected Chekhov’s plays so he knows that the material Japanese cinema but the films you have show what they do, which is in direct opposition to other and as soon as we posted aboutall him onfilms our are blog we representations of the to comment on it but it was a love story we were I think fiverespect good naturally you have to spend a lotsuch of time together. and characters inside andval. knew how to imagination and innovation. Do you think thatoutcomments characters’ more selfish values. started getting from hiscapabilities Portugueseoffans. making and that’s what we decided to concentrate diversity and Japanese cinema. Can you tell us a bit of the background of the play? them. modern Japanese cinema may have entered intoaahuge following over there. We’ve been very He has on in the end. Well the play has borrowed two characters taken Afterplay wasYou written in 2002, why do you think the period to rival that decade? Is it meeting the standards had an interesting, diverse group of people lucky all the way through. Hopefully next few The Japanese Filmthe Festival takes place in Cineworld from two different Chekhov Andrey color scheme? Gate chose such a modern Friel celebrate his set bytothe likes and Ozu? is playing Healer and Yalta onboard for the film.play How did they of allKurosawa become Afterplay will be the alongside same! onFaith Why did youplays. chose aI play monochrome November 20-22 I think that we have entered into a new phase and that from Two Sisters,We and the other character Sonya style so life’s work? involved? Game in The Gate Theatre, from the 9th - 19th wanted the film to haveisa unified For more, see www.accesscinema.ie the people value ofdidn’t Japanese has changed. More Departures’ from Uncle Vanya. Friel hashad brought characters Writers alwaysThe likeidea to have their most recent work of auditioning reallyfilm appeal information on the film is to be found at everything to havethese the same palette throughout. September to me so we weren’t sure how we were going to http://henryandsunny.blogspot.com/ If we had shot in color we would have had a lot of

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words // KARL MACDONALD If you want to make a concept album in the 21st century, you need to get your concept right. The Antlers picked the big one: death. Or dying, and how it’s done in the modern world, in a bed, attached to alien machines in an unfamiliar place. Over ten beautifully sad, atmospheric songs, Hospice traces out stories that will hit close to home with very many people. It’s a work of astonishing ambition, almost reminiscent of a great novel in scope. But just like Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea before it, dizzying lyrical weight doesn’t make it any less eminently listenable. And, for all that, songwriter Peter Silberman’s a pretty friendly guy too. Can you explain a little bit about what Hospice is about? Well, it’s basically the story of a hospice worker and a dying cancer patient, or that’s the framework for it. It’s also about a relationship. The hospice is just the starting point for all these songs about this relationship, and its sort of slow decline into manipulation and guilt. The way it’s put together, each song as a different sketch or viewpoint, is very literary. How did you come to write it in the form that it’s in? The record started with the name, really. It documents a certain period of my life, which coincided with the end of a relationship. I wrote a lot of lyrics with the hospice as the centre-piece, and from there I was fitting them to melody lines, and instead of just taking one and using that, I decided to use them all. They have different contexts, like the melody that’s in Bear and also in Epilogue. The rest of the songs were designed around the story or plotline that started to emerge, as the characters started to emerge and their stories had to be respected. It was weird when we were writing it, because we recorded them all simultaneously, and it

5)& 3&*/%&&3 4&$5*0/ -0$,*/( "/5-&34 8*5) 1&5&3 4*-#&3."/ felt for a long time like we had huge plot holes that were unresolved. But I’m really happy with how it came out. It’s quite emotionally heavy, given the subject matter. Were you worried it’d be hard on the listener? Well, I think it’s an honest record, and we made a conscious effort not to dull it down or obscure too much of the personal detail. I didn’t want to make something dulled down, and for that reason it can be kind of uncomfortable. Like, especially when we tour, it’s something that has to be confronted, and I suppose confronted in different ways as you go on. But that’s what reality is. It’s like the scars from surgery. Yeah, I was wondering how the album plays live. I suppose we try to make it bigger, and put more focus on the sound rather than on what’s actually being said. Because,

from personal experience, you don’t really hear the lyrics that well anyway in a live show, or especially not the first time you see a band play. I feel like, if you know the words, you’ll follow them, but even then it’s not really the same. So we go for the mood and feeling of the record, rather than an exact live version. You must meet people who have quite a deep connection with the album when you’re touring. Do you ever feel pressure to be a sombre person all the time? Yeah, well not so much a pressure to be sombre, but I think people expect me to be a sad or a serious person, and I’m not like that really. I’m quite a positive person. I’m doing what I love and I try to remember that. The Antlers play the Academy on the 4th of December. For frontman Peter Silberman’s album pick of the year flick to our music reviews section.

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Words //AOIFE O’REGAN The wildly inventive Bunny and the Bull could only be the product of Paul King’s imagination, director of cult classics The Mighty Boosh and Garth Meringhi’s Dark Place. However his first feature is quite a different journey through time and space taken through the mind of a meticulously organised agoraphobic called Stephen. Comparisons to The Mighty Boosh are perhaps inevitable but Bunny and the Bull is very different. While it has some great humourous moments, it’s quite psychological, tragic even. Would you agree? It’s definitely a very different tone and world to the Boosh. It’s not as surreal, nothing odd happens really. Obviously it looks quite strange because it’s set inside a man’s head, but the Boosh is much more playfully surreal and Bunny and the Bull is about tackling some fairly serious mental problems. I kind of like that it goes to some funny places but has a serious soul to it. It’s an interesting story. Was there any particular inspiration behind it? I hear a nasty incident you had with a lobster as a

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child may be the inspiration behind Captain Crab’s restaurant. I did have a nasty incident! I don’t like seafood and my dislike of it does run through the film. I raided so much of my own life for material. A lot of Simon’s character is actually based on his Grandad. He was a bit of a family rogue, a drinker and gambler. He wasn’t allowed to drink at all at the end of his life because he was so ill but he always got pissed and nobody quite knew how. When he died they cleaned out his room and found he had built a secret tunnel in the back of his wardrobe that went through to the pub next door. Every day after lunch he’d sneak through. He was always losing strange bets too. He once bet the family’s entire fortune on the weight of a brick and lost. The slightly nerdy holiday stuff came from me and my family. We took guidebook orientated holidays around Europe. I loved the strange museums we visited. Like the German Museum of Cutlery and the National Shoe Museum of Poland? Yeah! Germany has a lot of boring museums. It has two different asparagus museums. One is simply not enough, they have to have two! The Cookbook Museum is worth a visit. What’s amazing is that you can’t even read the cookbooks because they’re all in glass cases. The X-ray Museum is a good one too. There are a lot of familiar faces in the film. What was it like to re-unite the cast of the Mighty Boosh on this? They were there at different times but it was really nice. Richard who I worked with on Garth Meringhi was there on the first day‌

He’s probably the dullest tour guide of all time! Yeah it’s funny because I hadn’t asked him to be in it but I showed him the script and he said ‘I see you’ve written me a part’. I never even had to ask, he just volunteered himself! I was slightly hoping he would do it. Noel [Fielding] and Julian [Barrett] came up and it was pretty nerve-racking for me to show them my jokes and ideas. I really wanted them to find it funny but they really did it for the love. They’re so great and supportive. It’s something I really admire about them. It was a bit of a love-in. We all slept in the same bed, like The Beatles! Were there any memorable moments on set? I hear Edward had some trouble with one scene, embracing a very naked Bunny. The funniest thing happened with Ed. He’s so shy. We based a lot of his character on him. There was one scene that we eventually cut because there was too much nudity as it was. He had to be totally naked. It was like a little fantasy of him getting together with Eloise. He was trying to preserve his dignity. He didn’t want his penis too close to his co-star’s face, which is fair enough. So he parcel taped a sock to himself! She was just falling around laughing. She was like ‘Oh my God, what is that thing? You look like you have a disease’. That was quite funny, poor old Ed, and yeah he had to give Simon a naked cuddle, poor guy! Bunny and the Bull is on general release now

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24/09/2009 16:16

Two years shy of his fortieth birthday and Conor McPherson is certainly living up to his reputation for helping relight the torch sparked by Synge, Shaw and O’Casey. With his plays preformed globally, he’s also dripped his ink across the the nation’s silver-screens with a trio of movies (I Went Down, The Actors, The Eclipse) that may not have hit the mark, precisely, but at least don’t stench out the provincial box office like Wide Open Spaces. Having caught the writing bug in UCD’s Drama Soc he spread the virus through his love of monologued drama, casting the most noticeable stylistic shadow over Celtic Tiger-era theater. He may have fallen into it as a way to meet the meager means of the small theatre company he set up after college, Fly By Night, but soon every new Bic that hoped to leap from page to stage was scrawling out their own soliloquies on the contents of the kitty’s litter. “It seemed to happen that within a couple of years of me doing it, a lot of monologue theatre started to appear. And part of the reason I didn’t want to go back there [he hasn’t written a monologue piece since 2001] was because it had become bit much. I was glad to move on. It was a phase I went through more than anything I was consciously trying to achieve.” But the dye was set and McPherson’s brand of theatre was as distinct to the Irish stage of the time as the tacky café lattés, brown envelopes and grind school educations that popped up elsewhere. What does McPherson think of its legacy? “I think that what we realize now is that all the shit that was going on in the State at the time was an illusion. And these smaller plays were small because they needed to protect what was real. Because what was going on around us was not real. Somehow the darkness could only be addressed in a very private, personal way.” This darkness appears to be the calling card of the Irish writer. “There is a lot of darkness in our society. An awful lot of addiction and violence. Throw in the heady mix of Catholicism and I don’t know what else we could have written about. “ But what is it that international audiences have latched onto in McPherson’s work, given that his plays

are usually set in a very localized environment and the people in them are as bound to one place as possible? “Perhaps it’s because there is a big supernatural element to a lot of my work. Those fears and questions we have about the afterlife - God, salvation - are things that preoccupy people in other cultures. It transcends borders.” There have been a few good days at the office of late, with his production of The Birds winning near universal acclaim and The Sea Farer about to return to the Abbey. I wonder if the chance to write a play primarily populated with female characters was part of the appeal for the author whose other plays are male-centric. “I’m always looking to go into the new and for me, not having written that many women’s roles, I found The Birds challenging and rewarding. It was unchartered territory for me, so I’m very pleased that it has turned out well.” It’s back to the men for now though with The Seafarer, very much a male-dominated drama, bringing us an alternative to the groundhog plays on offer elsewhere this, and every, yuletide. Does McPherson believe, as The New York Times does, that it is a Christmas play? “It’s set on Christmas Eve and it’s a drama. It’s funny and it’s dark and I think it’s also very redemptive. It’s about the part of us that yearns to be delivered into the light again. It accepts the Christian story and works within that so in that sense it’s very much a Christian play. But it is also a pagan play, a universal spirituality rather than a play about Jesus Christ.”

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Live gigs Monday 30 Nov

€28, 8.30pm Hear how Sea Sew fares live

■ Federico Aubele Academy 2 €17.50 Acoustic set by Buenos Airesbred, Afro-Sporting Aubele

■ Simon Fagan, Crawdaddy, €12, 8pm Pat Kenny Favourites.

■ Hefty Horse Club Whelan’s Free, 8pm With Bellajane ■ Keith Mullins and Band The Sugar Club €10, 8pm Americana folk rock

Tuesday 1 December ■ Paolo Nutini Olympia Theatre €30, Sold Out ■ Oddsocks Revival Whelan’s 8pm, €Tbc Blues rock revivalists from Sligo ■ Dublin Underground

Presents Whelan’s €Tbc, 8pm Line Up TBC ■ Eamonn Keane Whelan’s €Tbc, 8pm Irish solo performer ■ Julian Plenti The Academy €33, 7.30pm Plugging Julian Plenti Is… Skyscraper release ■ Low Down Dogs JJ Smyths €8, 9pm Open blues jam ■ Clubland Live 3 The O2 €33.60, 8pm One for the Tallaght Massive

Wednesday 2 Dec ■ Snow Patrol Olympia Theatre €56.80/€62.70 Nondescript musings from insanely successful foursome ■ Spectrum JJ Smyths €10, 9pm Ensemble Jazz and Blues lineup featuring members of The Camembert Quartet ■ Kate Voegele Academy 2 €14.50, 7.30pm “Star” of teen drama one tree hill who wants to be Fiona Apple

■ Open Trad Session Hedigans Brian Boru 9pm Weekly free event hosted by local musicians IMRAMA.

Thursday 3 Dec ■ Lisa Hannigan Vicar Street

sissippi State Penitentiary ■ Horslips The O2 €49.5/59.50, 6.30pm Irish folk rock legends

■ Isotope JJ Smyths €10, 9pm Long-running blues collective

■ Blue Syndrome + Friends Crawdaddy €6, 8pm Violins, Cellos, Piano and Stuart Gray with Support TBA

■ Propagandhi The Village €18, 7.30pm Vegan Anarchists Anti-Everything

■ Electric Six The Academy €19.50, 7.30pm Fresh from the college gig circuit

■ Colin Devlin, The Sugar Club, €17.50, 7.30pm (Yet Another) Irish SingerSongwriter

■ Syllian Rayle The Village €10, 8pm Album Launch with Red Dancers Cometh

■ Van Cleef + The DLS Whelan’s €Tbc, 8pm Atypical Irish Indie Rock

■ W.A.S.P The Button Factory €24.50, 7pm Heavy Metal Joke

■ Marillion The Button Factory €35, 7.30pm Brit Rockers known for obsessive fanbase ■ Cass Mc Combs Whelan’s €15, 8pm Californian Lyricist with Goodtime John

Friday 4 December ■ The Tragically Hip Tripod €29.65, 7.30pm Record-breaking Canadian rockers ■ Gemma Hayes Crawdaddy €17, 8pm Acoustic Show with Special Guests ■ Nigel Mooney JJ Smyths €10, 9pm Blues guitarist and JJ’s regular ■ Early Day Miners Whelan’s €12, 8pm Alt-rockers with ever revolving personnel

Saturday 5 December ■ Hadouken Tripod €20, 7.30pm Dance-Rockers drawing lazy comparisons to The Prodigy

Sunday 6 December ■ Deer Tick & Megafaun Whelan’s €12, 8pm Grunge-infused double headliner

■ Sunday Session Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre 2.30pm, Free Weekly Trad session ■ JEZZ Whelan’s €Tbc, 8pm Funk From Monaghan, Ireland’s musical hotspot ■ Michael Jackson Tribute The Button Factory 8.00pm, €15 With Ben Jack’sons (Snigger) ■ All Access Academy €19.50, 11.00am Alcohol-Free Rock-Fest For The Kids With Elliott Minor, Home Star Runner, Fox Avenue, Jody Has A Hitlist, The Shower Scene ■ James Morrison The O2 €39.2/49.20, 6.30pm British Singer-Songwriter with Ray Lamontagne Ambitions ■ Sonic Youth Vicar St €48.5/42.50, 7.30pm Influential Noise-Merchants

The Academy €27, 7.30pm Sold Out ■ Florence And The Machine The Olympia €24.50, 7pm, Sold Out. This year’s Big Thing ■ Fil Campbell & Band –

Songbirds Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre €12, 8.30pm Irish Folk Songs from The Past

Tuesday 8 Dec ■ Lily Allen The O2 €33.60, 7.30pm Spokesperson for all things Mockney turned Chanel muse ■ Basement Jaxx The Olympia €49.20, 8pm House music as it should be

■ The Wandering Harrys JJ Smyths €8, 9pm Blues/jazz session

Wednesday 9 Dec ■ Pygmalion meets.. BATS Pygmalion, South William St, D2 8.30pm Free Entry ■ Simple Minds The O2 €49.20, 7pm Survivors of the Kensit curse ■ Har Mar Superstar Academy 2 €15, 7.30pm Music’s Ron Jeremy ■ Basement Jaxx The Olympia €49.20 ■ Open Trad Session Hedigans Brian Boru 9pm, Free Weekly free event hosted by local musicians IMRAMA. ■ Sanzkrit Upstairs At Whelan’s €Tbc, 8pm Monaghan upstarts with guests Planet Parade and Blind Pilots

■ Spectrum JJ Smyths €10, 9pm

Foy Vance

■ The Dirty Three Whelan’s €20, 8pm With Guest Josh T Pearson

■ The Pogues Olympia Theatre €27.50, 8.00pm Still making a living out of that Christmas number 1

The Academy €17, 7.30pm The “Irish Stevie Wonder”

Thursday 10 Dec

■ The Guggenheim Grotto Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre €16, 7.30pm Pop/Folk Duo

The Academy €25, 7.30pm Northern rock from the ashes of The Undertones

■ Feedback

■ Enter Shikari

That Petrol Emotion

■ Parchman Farm JJ Smyths €10, 9pm Blues band christened after Mis-

Monday 7 December ■ Modest Mouse

The Academy €23, 7pm One for your inner emo kid ■ Depeche Mode The O2 €65.70, 8.30pm Enjoy the Silence with Soulsavers as special guests

■ U:MACK’S 15th Birthday

Party Tripod €35, 8pm Birthday Bonanza with Battles, 65daysofstatic, Adebisi Shank and more

■ Secret Affair Whelan’s €27, 8pm Second ever Irish show by original Mods

■ The Mars Volta Olympia Theatre €35, 7.30pm El Paso’s finest prog-rock

■ Máirtín O’Connor, Cathal Hayden & Seamie O’dowd Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre €22, 7.30pm Featuring Ex members of De Danann and Dervish

■ Isotope JJ Smyths €10, 9pm

■ Damien Dempsey - Solo Axis Theatre €26, 8pm

■ Harlem Gospel Choir Vicar Street €33.50, 7.30pm Renowned Gospel Choir return to Dublin

■ Light Of Day The Village €22.50, 7.30pm With Marah, Jesse Malin and more TBA

■ The Beat Poets Upstairs At Whelan’s €10, 8pm Belfast rockers with Run Kid and The Dc Experiment

■ Hercules & Love Affair Tripod €20, 10pm If you Heart Disco this one’s for you

Friday 11 December

■ The Rumboogies JJ Smyths €10, 9pm Blues Collective featuring Salvo Urbano

■ Horse Feathers Academy 2 €11.80, 7.30pm Oregon-bred duo with session musicians ■ The Coronas Olympia Theatre €25, 7.30pm Sold out show with Londoners The Rileys as support

■ Damien Dempsey Draíocht €26, 8.30pm, Sold out Solo show part of Damo’s December tour

■ Goldblade, Blood Or

Whiskey And Paranoid Visions The Sugar Club, €10, 7.30pm Triple Headliner Punk Xmas Party ■ The Dead Flags Upstairs At Whelan’s €10, 8pm With The DLS ■ The Stone Roses

Experience The Academy €15, 11pm Go to Ian Brown instead ■ Japanese Popstars Tripod €12, 11pm Electronic trio from Derry ■ Nigel Mooney JJ Smyths €10, 9pm Blues guitarist and JJ’s regular

Saturday 12 Dec ■ The Answer The Academy €17, 7pm Old school hair metal

■ Paramore The O2 €37, 7pm Emooooooooo!

■ The Blizzards Olympia Theatre From €20, 7.30pm, Sold Out One of Ireland’s more bland offerings

■ The Very Most Upstairs At Whelan’s 8pm, €8 With The Ambience Affair & More TBA

Sunday 13 December ■ Johnny Foreigner Academy 2 €12.50, 8pm Brummy Indie rock trio

■ Bad Manners The Academy €25, 8pm Ska and Two Tone with Buster Bloodvessel

■ Declan O’Rourke Whelan’s €20, 8pm Folk rock

■ Piper In The Parlour Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre €5, 2.30pm Regular Trad event

■ Bell X1 Olympia Theatre, €29, 7.30pm Return of Paul Noonan and

■ Adam Klein & Noland

Folk Cobblestone €5, 9pm Georgia-Based Country Folk Songwriter

■ Slow Session Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre €5, 7.30pm Sunday evening Trad session

Upstairs At Whelan’s, €Tbc, 8pm Death Cab for Cutie style guitar-pop

Thursday 17 Dec ■ Joe Echo Academy 2 €13.20, 8pm Snow Patrol backing vocalist

The Academy €19.50 ■ Fionn Regan Whelan’s €21, 8.30pm Acclaimed singer-songwriter from Bob Dylan’s ilk ■ Junah Upstairs At Whelan’s €Tbc, 8pm Unexceptional guitar-based Irish Rock

Monday 14 Dec

■ Rubber Bandits The Academy €19.45, 8pm Get your Tesco bag at the ready

■ Julian Casablancas The Academy €25.50, Sold Out

■ Miley Cyrus The O2 7.30pm, sold out

Sunday 20 Dec

■ Christy Moore & Declan Sinnott Vicar Street From €39.50, 8.30pm Maybe they’ll play ‘Lisdoonvarna’

■ Christy Moore & Declan Sinnott Vicar Street From €39.50, 8pm

■ Damien Dempsey Whelan’s €14.45, 2.30pm All Ages matinee

■ Damien Dempsey - Solo Whelan’s 8.30pm, €31

■ Paul McCartney The O2 8pm, Sold Out

■ Alison Moyet Olympia Theatre 7.30pm, From €46.20 Dublin date for yet another 80s Throwback

Tuesday 15 Dec ■ The Swell Season Vicar Street €33.60, 8.30pm Another chance to see Mr Smug Hansard in the flesh ■ Ben Prevo Band JJ Smyths €8, 9pm Guitar-based roots music

Wednesday 16 Dec ■ Placebo Olympia Theatre €44.20, sold out Don’t forget your eyeliner lads ■ Miley Cyrus The O2 From €65.70, 7.30pm Semi-pornographic tween superstar ■ Christy Moore & Declan Sinnott Vicar Street From €39.50, 8pm ■ ANGEL Cobblestone €15, 8pm Flamenco Guitar Hero ■ James Vincent McMorrow The Sugar Club €13.50 ■ Open Trad Session Hedigans Brian Boru 9pm Weekly free event hosted by local musicians IMRAMA.

Friday 18 December ■ The Prodigy The O2 From €49.20, 6.30pm Extended Invaders Must Die comedown ■ Fight Like Apes The Academy €19.50, 7pm Wrestling gimmick by Topshop’s main soundtrack act

■ The Xx Tripod €14 , 7:30pm

■ Mary Coughlan Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre €20, 7.30pm World-weary singer-songwriter ■ Noellie McDonnell Cobblestone €10, 8pm Irish singer-songwriter ■ Sebastien Ledger Tripod €15 ,11pm Gallic Techno ■ The Orchids The Village €15.00, 8pm Four Bellydancers From Dublin (Shudder). ■ Lauren Guillery Upstairs At Whelan’s, €Tbc, 8pm French singer and rock guitarist

■ Pygmalion meets..

Hoarsebox Pygmalion, South William St, D2

■ Lisa Hannigan Vicar Street 8.30pm, €28.00 See how See Sew fares live ■ Damien Dempsey - Solo Whelan’s €31, 8.30pm, Sold Out ■ Charco Bernard Cobblestone €5, 9pm With Blue Soup

Sunday 27 Dec ■ Aslan Vicar Street 8.30pm, €33.60 It’s a Crazy World that they’re still gigging

Whelan’s €16.50, 8pm Dublin Natives “Making Waves” In NYC (Like They All Say)

■ Lumiere The Sugar Club 8.30pm, €15.00 Corrs-style female duo

■ Daniel Moran, Mick

Broderick, Alan Doherty & Simon Moran Cobblestone €12/€10, 9pm Mini folk-fest

Tuesday 22 Dec ■ Republic Of Loose The Academy €25, 7.30pm Proof that perpetual gigs don’t make some bands better

■ Madness The O2 8pm, €44.20 80s 2-Tone hitmakers ■ The Dubliners Vicar Street 8.30pm, €42.00 Special “A Time To Remember” Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew tribute

■ The Performance ‘09 Upstairs At Whelan’s & The Village €Tbc, 8pm Now in its fifth year

Tuesday 29 Dec ■ The Dubliners Vicar Street 8.30pm, €42.00

Wednesday 30 Dec Vicar Street 8.30pm, €42.00

Saturday 19 Dec

■ Aja JJ Smyths €10, 9pm Steely Dan devotees

■ David Gray The O2 From €33.60, 6.30pm Human bobblehead

■ Jewmongous Academy 2 €17, 8pm Music-comedy act from Sean Altman

■ Kíla Vicar Street €30, 8pm Ever-gigging Irish and world music fusions

■ Tidal District

■ Fight Like Apes

■...On Wild Waters Cobblestone €10, 9pm Folk, Jazz and Reggae set ■ Spring Break Vicar Street 8.30pm, Sold out 20th Anniversary show by everpopular 80s Cheesefest

Imelda May The O2 €37.50 standing/€42.50 Seated, 7.30pm We know she’s good but the O2, really?!!

2 3 4

■ Something Happens Whelan’s €Tbc, 8pm Tom Dunne-Fronted 80s Rock ■ Open Trad Session Hedigans Brian Boru 9pm, Free Weekly free event hosted by local musicians IMRAMA.

Thursday 31 Dec ■ SMASH HITS with DJ

■ Nigel Mooney JJ Smyths €10, 9pm

1

Friday 13th December Tripod €14, 7:30pm The year’s most hyped young ‘uns play the follow up show from their early afternoon Electric Picnic slot. We thought it was trouserwreckingly good, but others thought it was pants-wettingly bad. They’ve been touring to the point of literal exhaustion since then, so hopefully their Tripod show will be a little less contentious. And we just won’t wear trousers this time.

Feedback Festival

The Dubliners

Monday 21 Dec

The xx

Monday 28 Dec

Session Seamus Ennis Cultural Centre Free, 2.30pm Christmas sessions for the Trad-heads

GIGS

8.30pm Free Entry

MRNORTH

■ Clanntraí Christmas ■ The Flaws The Academy €13.60, 7.30pm Mini-Bell X1

Tuesday 22 Dec of the best

backing band

Aidan Kavanagh The Sugar Club €20, 9pm Ring in the New Year shamelessly

5

Saturday 5th December Whelan’s €10, 8pm 10 quid for 9 of the better Irish bands is probably the best deal we’ve been offered since the Camden Casket start selling barelyin-date Red Bull. With Cap Pas Cap, 202s, Paddy Kelleher, David Turpin, and Valarie Francis all on the bill, and said tenner going towards the Peter McVerry trust, we know where we’ll be snaking our cheapo taurine juice on the 5th December

Hercules & Love Affair Saturday 12th December Tripod €20, 10pm Regular Listings readers already know of our Love Affair with Herc – his last visit was a DJ set, but December sees the return of the ginger disco magician to the live sphere. With the potential of new material to tempt doubters, this should be an end of year winner.

Deer Tick & Megafaun Sunday 6th December Whelan’s €12, 8pm Deer Tick in a word? ‘Soused’. Or maybe ‘wrecked’. I suppose ‘pissed off their tits’, if you’d like to take the eloquent route. Their influences are the neat triumvirate of beer, music, and girls in cowboy boots - which might sound like the formula for the forthcoming Kings of Leon Greatest Hits package. Deer Tick’s is a far more greasier affair though. Frontman John McCauley sounds like he’s been drinking from ashtrays, and the band’s garage-crafted alt-country is a sweet reminder of a genre too glossed up by the Wilcos and My Morning Jackets of the world

Miley Cyrus Wednesday 16th December The O2 From €65.70, 7.30pm And now we’re standing in the rain But nothing’s ever gonna change Until you hear, my dear The seven things I hate about you.

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Weekly clubs Mondays ■ Upbeat Generation @

Think Tank Think Tank, Temple Bar, D2 Pop, Rock and Soul 11.00pm ■ Hugh Cooney Don’t Like

Mondays Pygmalion, South William St, D2 8pm Free Entry ■ Weedway & Guests The Turk’s Head, Parliament St & Essex Gate, Temple Bar, D1 Live Reggae music until late. 10pm, Free ■ Island Culture South William, 52 Sth William St, D2 Caribbean cocktail party Free

■ Lounge Lizards Solas Bar, 31 Wexford St., D2 Soul music 8pm, Free ■ Past, Presents and Future

Funk The Village, Wexford St., D2 11pm, Free

Tuesdays ■ Tuesdays @ The Dragon The Dragon Bar, 7 Poolbeg St, D1 Pre-Glitz party. €5 cocktails. 8pm, Free ■ Beauty Breaks Solas Bar, 31 Wexford St., D2 American hip-Hop with Mo Kelly. 8pm, Free ■ DJ Shirena, DJ Rich Bea

DJ Andy Preston (FM104) 11pm, €5 ■ Hed-Dandi Dandelion, St. Stephens Green West, D2 DJs Dave McGuire & Steve O ■ Takeover Twentyone Club, D’Olier St, D2 Electro, Techno 11pm, €5 ■ Taste Solas Bar, 31 Wexford St., D1 DJs Mo Kelly and Alex Donald 8pm, Free

Wednesdays

The Purty Kitchen, 34/35 East Essex St, Temple Bar, D2 Live acoustic set with Gavin Edwards. 7pm, Free before 11pm

Spy, Powerscourt Centre, Sth William St, D2 Unarocks and Sarah J Fox play indie rock ‘n’ roll 7pm – 11pm

■ Space ‘N’ Veda The George, Sth Gt Georges St, D2 Performance and dance. Retro 50s, 60s, 70s. 9pm, Free before 10pm, after 10pm €8/€4 with student ID

■ Le Cirque Wax, Powerscourt Centre, Sth William St, D2 DJ Lady Jane and Guests 11pm, €5

■ DJ Alan Healy Buskers, Temple Bar, D2 Chart Pop, Current Indie and Rock Music 10pm

■ DJ Steve Battle The Turks Head, Parliament St & Essex Gate, Temple Bar, D1 11pm, Free

■ Sexy Salsa Dandelion Café Bar Club, St. Stephens Green West, D2 Latin, Salsa 8pm, Free

& Guests ■ Fionn Davenport Sin, Sycamore St, Temple Bar, D2 No cheese eclectic mix 9pm, €5

The Turks Head, Parliament St & Essex Gate, Temple Bar, D2 Latin House, Afro Latin, Brazilian & Reggae beats.

■ A Twisted Disco Night Ri Ra, Dame Crt, D1 80s, Indie, and Electro 11pm, Free

■ Noize ALT, Andrews Lane, D2 Student night 8pm

■ The Hep Cat Club 4 Dame Lane, Dame Lane, D2 Swing, Jazz and Lounge with classes. 8pm, Free

■ Ready Steady Go-Go! South William, 52 Sth William St, D2 Femmepop, Motown, 60s Soul 8pm

■ Shaker The Academy, Middle Abbey St Indie, electro, hip-hop and pop 11pm, €6/€8

■ The Song Room The Globe, Georges St., D2 Live original music from invited guests 8.30pm, Free

■ Dice Sessions The Dice Bar, Queen St, Smithfield, D7 DJ Alley Free ■ King Kong Club The Village, 26 Wexford St, D2 Musical game show 11pm, Free ■ Dolly Does Dragon The Dragon, Sth. Great Georges St, D2 Cocktails, Candy & Classic Tunes 10pm, Free ■ Soap Marathon Monday/

Mashed Up Monday The George, Sth Gt Georges St, D2 Chill out with a bowl of mash and catch up with all the soaps. 6.30pm, Free ■ The Industry Night Break for the Border, 2 Johnstons Place, Lr Stephens Street, D2. Pool competition, Karaoke & DJ 8pm

■ Ruby Tuesdays Ri-Ra, Dame Court, D2 Classic and Alternative Rock 11pm, Free til 11.30 €5 after ■ Le Nouveau Wasteland The Dice Bar, Queen St, Smithfield, D7 Laid back French Hip Hop and Groove Free ■ Star DJs Sin, Sycamore St, Temple Bar, D2 Disco, House, R’n’B 9pm ■ Jelly Donut The Village, 26 Wexford St, D2 Minimal Techno 10.30pm, Free ■ Give a Dog a Bone Panti Bar, 7-8 Capel St, D1 Penny’s in the bar! ■ Jezabelle The Purty Kitchen, 34/35 East Essex St, Temple Bar, D2 Live Classic Rock 7pm, Free before 11pm

■ Make and Do-Do with

Panti Panti Bar, 7-8 Capel Street, D1 Gay arts and crafts night. 10pm ■ DJ Ken Halford Buskers, Temple Bar, D2 Chart Pop, Indie, Rock 10pm ■ Euro Saver Mondays Twentyone Club and Lounge, D’Olier St, D2 DJ Al Redmond 11pm, €1 (with flyer) ■ Recess Ruaille Buaille, South King St, D2 Student night 11pm, €8/6 ■ The Recession Sessions Club M, Blooms Hotel, D2. Funky House, R‘n’B 11pm, €5

■ The DRAG Inn The Dragon, Sth Great Georges St, D2 Davina Devine presents open mic night with prizes, naked twister, go-go boys and makeovers. 8pm, Free ■ Glitz Break for the Boarder, Lwr Stephens Street, D2 Gay club night. 11pm ■ Trashed ALT, Andrews Lane, D2 Indie and Electro 10.30pm, €5

■ Spincycle Solas Bar, 31 Wexford St, D2 Soul & Funky bogey tunes 8pm, Free ■ Antics POD, Old Harcourt Station, Harcourt St, D2 Indie Rock ‘n’ Roll student night with live music slots. 11pm, €5 ■ Dean Sherry Sin, Sycamore St, Temple Bar, D2 Underground House, Techno, Funk 9pm ■ 1957 The Dice Bar, Queen St, Smithfield, D7 Blues, Ska Free ■ The Mighty Stef’s Acoustic

Nightmares The Village, 26 Wexford St, D2 Acoustic night with The Mighty Stef.

Thursdays ■ Jam Think Tank, Temple Bar, D1 Student night 10:30pm, Free ■ Real DJs presents Soul @

Solas Solas Bar, 31 Wexford St, D2 Resident DJ Mr Razor delivers a mix of funk, jazz hip-hop and Latin beats. ■ Tea-Time Thursdays Howl at the Moon, 7 Lower Mount St., D2 Complimentary Captain Morgan’s and BBQ. Karaoke with Cormac and Stevo from 9pm. DJs until late.

and Ross (The Chapters)

■ Soup Bitchin’ Panti Bar, 7-8 Capel St, D1 Gay student night ■ Gaff Party Spy, Powerscourt Centre, Sth William St, D2 Electro, Electro Tech, Tech House Party 10pm

■ Funky Sourz Club M, Temple Bar, D2

■ Fridays @ Café En Seine Café En Seine, 39 Dawson St, D2 DJS and dancing until 3am. Cocktail promotions. 8pm, Free

■ Control/Delete ALT, Andrews Lane, D2 Indie and Electro 11pm, €3/4

■ Nightflight The Button Factory, Curved St, Temple Bar, D2 11pm, €5

■ Annie’s Family Fortunes The George, Sth Gt Georges St, D2 Game show followed by 80s and 90s music. 9pm, Free before 10pm, after 10pm €8/€4 with student ID

■ DJ Rob M Club M, Anglesea St, Temple Bar, D1 Chart, Dance, R&B. 10pm, Free before 11pm

■ Thursday night DJ The Globe, 11 Sth Great Georges St, D2 Indie 11pm, Free ■ After Work Party The Purty Kitchen, 34/35 East Essex St, Temple Bar, D2 Live Rock with Totally Wired. 6pm, Free before 11pm ■ Moog 69s Thomas Reads, Parliament St, D2 Live covers band + DJ. Funk, Soul, Pop. 9.30pm, Free

■ Thursdays @ Café En Seine Café En Seine, 39 Dawson St, D2 DJs and dancing until 2.30am. Cocktail promotions. 8pm, Free

■ The Panti Show Panti Bar, 7-8 Capel St, D1 Gay cabaret. 10pm

The Song Room The Globe, 11 Sth Great Georges St, D2 Live music 8.30pm, Free

■ Mr. Jones The Twisted Pepper, 54 Middle Abbey Street, D2 House, Electro, Bassline 11pm, €8/5 ■ Alternative Grunge Night Peader Kearney’s, 64 Dame St, D2 Alternative grunge 11pm, €5/3

the Kitchen Sink Ri-Ra, Dame Court, D2 Soul and Funk 11pm, Free before 11.30, €5 after

■ Ubangi Stomp Club Odessa Club, 14 Dame Ct., D2 10.30pm, Free Primitive rocking music on the top floor of Odessa

■ Unplugged @ The Purty

■ Soundcheck

■ InsideOut Solas Bar, 31 Wexford St, D2 Soulful Disco

■ Fromage The Dice Bar, Queen St, Smithfield, D7 Motown Soul, Rock Free

■ Big Time! The Bernard Shaw, 11 - 12 Sth Richmond St, Portobello, D2 You Tube nights, hat partys... make and do for grown ups! With a DJ.

■ The Little Big Party Ri Ra, Dame Crt, D1 Indie music night 11pm, Free

■ Drop Dead Gorgeous Ri Ra, Dame Crt, D2 €5 before 11:30pm, €10 after

■ Jason Mackay Sin, Sycamore St, Temple Bar, D2 Dance, R’n’B, House 9pm

■ Rattle Records with Simon Pygmalion, South William St, D2 8pm Free Entry

■ Fridays@Tripod, Old Harcourt Street Train Station, D2 11pm

■ Friday Tea-Time Club Break for the Border, Johnston’s Place, Lower Stephens St, D2 Karaoke with Cormac and Stevo from 6pm. Budweiser promotions. DJs until late.

■ Muzik The Button Factory, Curved St, Temple Bar, D2 Up-Beat Indie, New Wave, Bouncy Electro 11pm

■ We got Soul, the Funk, and ■ DJ Stephen James Buskers, Temple Bar, D2 Chart Pop, Indie 10pm

■ Mash South William, 52 Sth William St, D2 Mash-ups, Bootlegs, Covers 9pm, Free

Eamon Clarke 11pm, Free

■ Sonsoro 4 Dame Lane, D2 Meshing cultures, music and art with Spanish DJs, local DJs, bongos and Latin bands 11pm, €5

Fridays ■ Jam Hot 4 Dame Lane, D2 Funky Disco, House & Electro with Rob Linnane. Free ■ Disco Not Disco Shine Bar, 40 Wexford St., D2 Disco, house, funk & soul 9.30pm ■ Fridays @ The Turks Head The Turks Head, Parliament St & Essex Gate, Temple Bar, D1 Live Indie music followed by DJ

■ Mud The Twisted Pepper, 54 Middle Abbey St, D2 Bass, Dubstep, Dancehall 11pm, €10 (varies if guest) ■ Babalonia Tropical

Soundclash South William, 52 Sth William St, D2 Dub, Ska, Afrobeat 8.30pm, Free ■ Thank Noo its Friday Noobar, 2 Duke Lane, D2 Live entertainment, DJs until late 8pm ■ NoDisko The Academy, Middle Abbey St, D2 Indie Rock with regular guest DJs €5 after 11pm ■ Hells Kitchen The Dice Bar, Queen St, Smithfield, D7 Funk and Soul classics Free ■ Friday Night Globe DJ The Globe, 11 Sth Great Georges St, D2 DJ Eamonn Barrett plays an eclectic mix. 11pm, Free ■ DJ Eamonn Barrett Ri-Ra, Dame Court, D2 Rock, indie, electro, house 11pm, Free ■ Strictly Handbag The Sugar Club, 8 Lwr Leeson St, D2 11pm, €10 (2 for 1 before midnight) ■ WAR Spy, Powerscourt Centre, Sth William St, D2 Indie, Pop 11pm, €5

■ Al Redmond Sin, Sycamore St, Temple Bar, D2 R’n’B, House, Chart 9pm ■ Fridays @ V1 The Vaults, Harbourmaster Place, IFSC, D1 Progressive Tribal, Techno and Trance ■ The Friday Night Project The Purty Kitchen, 34/35 East Essex St, Temple Bar, D2 DJ Austin Carter 10pm, Free before 11pm ■ Sub Zero Transformer (below The Oak), Parliment St, D2 Indie, Rock, Mod. 11pm, Free ■ Stephens Street Social Club Bia Bar, 28/30 Lwr Stephens St, D2 Funk, Soul, Timeless Classics 8pm, Free ■ Let’s Make Party The Village, 26 Wexford St, D2 DJ Mikki Dee 11pm ■ DJ Fluffy in the Box The George, Sth Gt Georges St, D2 Camp, Commercial, Dance 9pm, Free before 10pm €9 after ■ Karaoke Friday Break for the Boarder, Johnstons Place, Lwr Stephens St, D2. Karaoke night. 10pm ■ Panticlub Panti Bar, 7-8 Capel St, D1 DJ Paddy Scahill ■ Music with Words Pravda, Lwr. Liffey St, D1 Indie, Ska, Soul, Electro 9.30pm, Free ■ Processed Beats Searsons, 42-44 Baggot St Upr, D4 Indie, Rock, Electro 9pm, Free ■ Go! Bodega Club, Pavilion Centre, Marine Rd, Dun Laoghaire Soul, Indie, Disco, Rock 11pm, €10 (ladies free before midnight) ■ Scribble The Bernard Shaw, 11 - 12 Sth Richmond St, Portobello, D2 Funk, House, Dubstep, Hip Hop 8pm ■ Room Service Feile, Wexford St., D2 Latin, Funk, Disco, uplifting Choons and Classics 9pm, Free ■ Live Music The Harbor Bar & Grill, 6-7 Marine Rd, Dun Laoghaire New bands play live 9pm, Free

Saturdays ■ Solar The Bull and Castle, 5 lord Edward St., D2 Soul, Funk, Disco 11pm, ■ Squeeze Solas Bar, 31 Wexford St., D2 DJ Aideen Kelly until 3am

■ Happy Families Aidan Kelly Funk, break beats and electronic ■ Saturdays @ The Turks

Head The Turks Head, Parliament St & Essex Gate, Temple Bar, D1 DJ Padraig, Deco, Annie, Richard & guests 11pm, free ■ Saturday Night Out Noobar, 2 Duke Lane, D2 Live DJs playing the latest club hits 8pm ■ Saturdays @ Café En Seine Café En Seine, 39 Dawson St, D2 DJs and dancing until 2.30pm. Cocktail promotions. 10pm, Free ■ Dizzy Disko, Andrews Lane Theatre, D2 11pm, €10 ■ Live Music The Harbor Bar & Grill, 6-7 Marine Rd., Dun Laoghaire New bands play live 9pm, Free ■ Party Night Saturdays @ Howl at the Moon 7 Lower Mount St., D2 Chart music from 8pm. Free before 11.30pm. €10 after. ■ Saturdays @ Break for the

Border Lower Stephen’s St., D2 Current chart favourites from DJ Eric Dunne and resident club DJ Mark McGreer. From 1pm, Free ■ Transmission The Button Factory Mix of Indie and dance 11pm, €10 ■ Pogo The Twisted Pepper, 54 Middle Abbey St, D2 House, Soul, Funk 11pm, €10 (varies if guest) ■ Download + Tripod

Soul, Funk, Disco, Electro 11pm, €10 after 11.30 ■ Irish Reggae Dance Peader Kearney’s, 64 Dame St, D2 Reggae 10pm, €5 ■ The Promised Land The Dice Bar, Queen St, Smithfield, D7 Soul, Funk, Disco Free ■ Saturdays @ V1 The Vaults, Harbourmaster Place, IFSC, D1 R ‘n’ B, Soul and Hip Hop with regular guest DJs. ■ Wes Darcy Sin, Sycamore St, Temple Bar, D2 R’n’B 9pm ■ Basement Traxx Transformer (below The Oak), Parliment St, D2 Indie, Rock 11pm, Free ■ Downtown Searsons, 42-44 Baggot St. Upper, D4 Indie, Soul, Chart 10pm, Free ■ Saturdazed Bodega Club, Pavilion Centre, Marine Rd, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin Chart, Dance, R ‘n’ B 11pm, €10 ■ Toejam The Bernard Shaw, 11 - 12 Sth Richmond St, Portobello, D2 Afternoon: Car boot sales, film clubs, music lectures, t-shirt making etc. Later on: Resident DJs playing Soul, Funk, House, Electro ■ Sidesteppin’ Bia Bar, 28 Lwr Stephens St, D2 Old School Hip Hop, Funk 45s, Reggae 8pm, Free

Saturdays POD, Old Harcourt Station, Harcourt St, D2 Access all areas at the Pod complex with local residents and special guest dj slots over five rooms. 11pm, €12 ■ Gossip Spy, Powerscourt Centre, Sth William St, D2 80s, Disco, Hip Hop, House Free before 11pm, €10 after ■ Sugar Club Saturdays The Sugar Club, 8 Lwr. Leeson St, D2 Salsa, Swing, Ska, Latin 11pm, €15 ■ Freaks Come Out The Academy, Middle Abbey St, D2 Dirty Electro and House with regular guest DJs. €15 ■ Saturday Night Globe DJ The Globe, 11 Sth Great Georges St, D2 DJ Dave Cleary plays an eclectic mix. 11pm, Free ■ Space... The Vinyl Frontier Ri-Ra, Dame Court, D2

■ Saturday @ The Village The Village, 26 Wexford St, D2 DJs Pete Pamf, Morgan, Dave Redsetta & Special Guests 11pm ■ DJ Karen @ The Dragon The Dragon, Sth Great Georges St, D2 House music. 10pm ■ Beauty Spot Karaoke The George, Sth Gt Georges St, D2 Karaoke followed by DJs playing camp commercial pop. 9pm, Free til 10pm, €10 after ■ Panticlub Panti Bar, 7-8 Capel St, D1 DJ Philth & Guests

Jim Break, Larry David, and Al Killian play smooth grooves, yacht rock, and beyond. 8pm ‘til late. Free Entry ■ Sunday Service Odessa Club, 13 Dame Court, D2 Album tracks, old and new, and funky disco classics 9pm, Free ■ Grazing Solas Bar, 31 Wexford St., D2 Aideen Kelly until 1am ■ Jam The Button Factory, Curved St., Temple Bar, D2 International dance hall style ■ Oldies but goodies Ri-Ra, Dame Crt., D2 Golden Oldies by Dj Steve 11pm, Free ■ Worries Outernational The Button Factory, Curved St, Temple Bar, D2 Dancehall Styles, Roots Reggae 11pm, Free B4 11.30 / €5 after ■ The Workers Party Sin, Sycamore St, Temple Bar, D2 With DJ Ilk 9pm ■ Jazz @ The Globe The Globe, 11 Sth Great Georges St, D2 Sunday evening jazz 5.30 – 7.30pm ■ Hang the DJ The Globe, 11 Sth Great Georges St, D2 Rock, Indie, Funk, Soul 9pm, Free ■ Gay Cabaret The Purty Kitchen, 34/35 East Essex St, Temple Bar, D2 Gay cabaret shows. 9pm, Free before 11pm ■ 12 Sundays The Bernard Shaw, 11 - 12 Sth Richmond St, Portobello, D2 Funk, Disco, House 12pm – 12am, Free ■ Songs of Praise The Village, 26 Wexford St, D2 Rock ‘n’ Roll Karaoke 10pm, Free ■ Zrazy Jazz The George, Sth Gt Georges St, D2 Lazy Jazz Sunday 4pm – 7pm, Free ■ Shirley’s Bingo Sundays The George, Sth Gt Georges St, D2 Bingo & Cabaret with Shirley Temple Bar 8.30pm, Free ■ The Sunday Roast The Globe, Georges St., D2 Live music, games, roast potatoes. 9pm, Free

Venue

■ The Burning Effigies Turks Head, Parliament St., Temple Bar, D2 Soul and funk All night, Free

The Wright Venue, South Quarter, Airside Business Park, Swords, Co Dublin Rock, Pop, Hip-hop, Dance 10pm

■ Elbow Room South William, 52 Sth William St, D2 Jazz, Soul, Disc

■ Saturday @ The Wright

Sundays ■ Smooth Sailing Pygmalion, South William St, D2

Once-off clubbing

Friday December 4th ■ Afrobass Southwilliam Basement 10pm, free Leroy Culture, Lex Woo, & MC Little Tree spinnin: dubhouse, dancehall, jungle, dubstep, afro & brokenbeat

■ DJ Marky and Kormac’s

Bakesale The Twisted Pepper, Middle Abbey St., D1 €10/€15 Brazilian jungle and drum n’bass pioneer Marky, returns to the Twisted Pepper following his monstrous show there last February. Also on the night, Kormac’s last Bakesale of 2009 will be taking place which will be featuring a secret special guest. ■ HouseMusicWeekends Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Adrian Dunlea and Boochy 11pm Free Entry

Saturday 5 December ■ Whigfield Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Rubio (Realsound) v Lil Dave (Nightflight) 11pm, Free ■ The Nightslugs Party The Button Factory, Curved St., D2 €10/€12 Transmission presents L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok (of Mad Decent Records) playing in a back to back set; they are two residents from one of the biggest UK club nights Nightslugs. Expect seriously bass-heavy sets, influenced by some old British garage and grime.

■ Floating Points The Twisted Pepper, Middle Abbey St., D1 €5/€10 London’s much-hyped and super-talented Floating Points makes his Irish debut playing the Mezz with support from Donal Dineen. The Basement goes techno with Cork’s Jamie Behan following TP resident Barry Redsetta, while the Box Chicken Club take to the Stage.

Sunday 6 December ■ Cubed The Bernard Shaw, Richmond St., D2 Free In a Conor-tastic installment of 12 Sundays, Messrs Murphy (from Hystereo), L and Dunne will be playing a very special DJ and live set featuring all manner of synthesizers and MPCs.

Thursday 10 December ■ U;Mack’s 15th Birthday

Party with Battles Tripod, Harcourt St., D2 €35

U;Mack celebrate their 15th birthday in style with a stellar line-up featuring Battles, the Ex, 65DaysofStatic, !!!, DJs, Adebisi Shank and Skinny Wolves DJs.

Friday 11 December ■ HouseMusicWeekends Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Will Kinsella (Ceoltronic/RTE) & Michita Okuno. 11pm, Free ■ Mike Dehnert The Twisted Pepper, Middle Abbey St., D1 €10/€15 In a hectic Friday for Mud, Test present Berlin techno DJ and producer and Farchwerk Records founder Mike Dehnert. Meanwhile, Reach and Tribe drum n’bass collectives go head to head in the Basement, and the Stage plays host to the wonderful Wiggle band.

■ Japanese Popstars Tripod, Harcourt St., D2 €12 Though they are busy forging an international reputation as one of the best live electro acts around, the Japanese Popstars have still found the time to play a Dublin show just in time for Christmas. Support comes from Conor G, while Michael Kelly and the Inmates take to the stage in the Bar.

Sunday 13 December ■ Funktion The Bernard Saw, Richmond St., D2 Free The Bernard Shaw certainly knows how to make a Sunday sound appealing; it plays host to 9-piece funk band Funktion, preceeded by John Mahon.

■ Whigfield Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Sexshop (Microfunk/Pyg) v John The Mantis (Pyg) 11pm, Free

Thursday 19 Dec ■ Pygs Will Fly Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Wolf + Lamb (New York City), JC v Fratboy Babe-stealer 10pm €7 before 12, €10 after ■ Funk 45s Southwilliam, South William St, D2 8:45pm, free Funk soul jazz disco afrobeat latin hip-hop breaks

Friday 18 December ■ Nightflight Christmas Party Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Nightflight residents 11pm, Free ■ CLIMAXXX South William, South William St, D2 Chewy & friends electro-global grooves 8:30pm, Free

■ Psychonavigation Xmas

Party, Don Rosco & T-Woc, Tu-Ki The Twisted Pepper, Middle Abbey St., D1 €8/€12 Dubliner Keith Downey’s Psychonavigation record label takes over the Mezz, with performances from the likes of Adeyhawke, Sean Quinn and Mike Chillage. Down in the Basement, Wobble presents Don Rosco and T-Woc, with support in the form of Richie from the !Kaboogie DJs, Radikal Guru and MC Rungus, while Tu-Ki will take to the stage, with support from Handsome Paddy.

■ Sebastien Leger Tripod, Harcourt St., D2 €15 Legendary French techno producer Sebastien Leger returns to Dublin for what is sure to be an incredible show featuring a wonderful mix of house, funk and tropical minimal. Support comes from LRB, while Phuture Phunk and Senator will be playing in the Bar.

Saturday 19 Dec ■ Whigfield Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Larry David b2b Fratboy Babestealer 11pm, Free ■ Best Foot Forward South William Bar, South William St, D2 DJs: Rizm (Choice Cuts) & Colm K (Cork) hip-hop, funk, afrobeat, house 11pm, Free ■ Go 4 It! South William Basement, South William St, D2 DJs: Matjazz, Jazzbin & Handsome Paddy (Choice Cuts) hiphop, breakbeat, jungle & jazz 10pm, Free

Sunday 20 December ■ 12s Annual Christmas

Blowout The Bernard Shaw, Richmond St., D2 Free With a purpose built Christmas

Grotto for the occasion that’s in it, the Bernard Shaw presents John Mahon, Conor L, Tayor, Conor Dunne, Aaron Dempsey and Louis Scully to help you get your Christmas party off to a flying start.

Tuesday 22 Dec ■ Weeknight at Bernie’s Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Spring Break after-party 10.30pm, Free

Saturday 26 Dec ■ Pygs Will Fly Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Paco Osuna v Marco Carola. Sexshop & Fratboy Babe-stealer 8pm €22 inc. booking fee. Tickets.ie

Sunday 27 December ■ 12 Sundays The Bernard Shaw, Richmond St., D2 Free The ideal antidote for your post-Christmas blues, Aaron Dempsey and Mike Black will

be taking over musical duties at the Bernard Shaw. ■ Smooth Sleighing Pygmalion, South William St, D2 A special festive edition of the Sunday sailing with special ex-pat guests Mano Le Tough, Mark Le Tough, Romo 8pm Free Entry

Thursday 31 December ■ New Year’s Eve Pygmalion, South William St, D2 Ian Ziering-style! A night of celebrating the early ‘90s as the beginning of a new decade approaches 8pm Free Entry ■ NYE Party The Twisted Pepper, Middle Abbey St., D1 €8/€12 All four rooms will be in action for what is sure to be one of the best places you can spend your New Years Eve. The Stage will be headlined by Kormac’s

Big Band, with support coming from Scrible Soundsystem and Dazboy. The Basement will play host to Barry Redsetta, Eoin Cregan and Tayor, while Nightflight host their own Yaught Rock Party up in the Mezz and Silent Disco will be ongoing in the Café.

Friday 1 January ■ 12s 4th Annual New Years

Day Hoedown The Bernard Shaw, Richmond St., D2 Free Starting at 12pm, for those who can make it out of bed that early or are still going from the night before, there is a full day of fantastic music planned in the Bernard Shaw featuring TR-One, Barry Donovan, Handsome Paddy, Conor L, John Mahon, Louis Scully, Dazboy, Aaron Dempsey, Conor Dunne and even more if they can fit them in.

AGAIN! South William Bar, South William St, D2 DJs: Mark Kelly & Brian Cuddy in the main bar spinnin funk, soul & discowith Madlime & friends in the basement 9pm, free

Sunday 3 January ■ 12 Sundays The Bernard Shaw, Richmond St., D2 12 are on the go again, this time hosting Conor Dunne and John Mahon in the first installment of 12 Sundays of 2010.

Saturday 2 January ■ 2010 - PARTY TIME

comedy weekly Ha’penny Bridge Inn Wellington Quay, Temple Bar., D2.

■ Saturdays Stand Up @ The Bankers 9pm, €10/8

The Belvedere Great Denmark St., D1

■ Tuesday & Thursday Nights Battle of the Axe Dublin’s much loved open mic night. 9pm, €9

■ Sundays Sunday improv session hosted by Comedy Dublin. 8pm, €8/6. Students €5.

■ Wednesdays & Sundays Capital Comedy Club The club’s flagship night. 9:30pm, €7/5

9 Lwr Abbey St., D1

‘Laugh Out Loud’ Comedy Nights Anseo, Camden St, D2 Wednesdays With resident MC Aidan Killian. 8.30pm, €5/7

■ Fridays ‘The Comedy Gaff’ promises drinks specials and comedians from around the world. 9pm Door €10/Concession €8/ Students €5.

Sheehan’s Chatham St., D2 ■ Tuesdays Comedy Dublin: A night of improv and stand up. €8/6. Students €5.

The Bankers 16 Trinity St., D2 ■ Thursday & Friday Comedy improv with ‘The Craic Pack’. 9pm, €10/€8 with concession.

The Flowing Tide ■ Fridays Neptune Comedy Night 8.30pm, €8

The International 23 Wicklow St., D2 ■ Mondays Comedy Improv night. 8.30pm, €8/10 ■ Tuesdays Andrew Stanley’s Comedy Mish Mash (Brand new comedy showcase) 8.30pm, €8/10 ■ Wednesdays The Comedy Cellar with Andrew Stanley 9.30pm €8/10 ■ Thursdays & Fridays The International Comedy Club with resident MC Aidan Bishop 8.45pm, €8/10 ■ Saturdays The International Comedy Club. Early and late shows added due to popular demand. 8 & 10.30pm, €8/10 ■ Sunday Whats New @ The International

New material night. 8.45pm, €5

The Woolshed Comedy Club The Woolshed Baa & Grill, Parnell St., D1 ■ Mondays. Hosted by Australian import Damian Clarke.€5

once-offs ■ The Comedy Shed The Woolshed Baa & Grill, Parnell St., D1 Tonight’s edition of the weekly comedy club features performances by mime artist Reuben, Michael Downey, Alan Macelroy and resident MC Damo Clarke. November 30th 9:00pm, €5 ■ John Colleary & Guests The Laughter Lounge, Eden Quay, D1 The Sligo comedian is joined on stage by Joy in the Hood’s Willa White and So you think you’re funny? finalist Gar Murran. December 3rd 8:30pm, €26 ■ House of Fun: Dean

Scurry, Eric Lalor & Willa White

Axis Centre, Axis Main St., Ballymun, D9 Des Bishop’s Joy in the Hood kick-started their respective careers, now working as professional comedians the show’s three stars are reunited in their home-town. December 4th 8:30pm, €16:50 ■ Neil Delamare presents

‘Bookmarks’

Vicar Street, 58 Thomas St., D2 Since performing his debut show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004 Delamare has amassed an enviable following which has seen him perform on 5 continents and sell-out venues nationwide. December 4th & 12th 8:30pm, €28 ■ Console Comedy

Classics

Vicar Street, 58 Thomas St., D2 Ireland’s top comedians join forces for this one-off fund-raising night in support of suicide prevention and bereavement charity Console. Performances in aid of this very worthy cause come courtesy of Ed Byrne, Des Bishop, Andrew Maxwell, Johnny Candon, Andrew Stanley and Eleanor Tiernan. December 7th 8pm, €28 ■ David O’ Doherty Civic Theatre, Tallaght, D24 Armed with his Yamaha P60 keyboard If comedy awardwinner O Doherty returns to the stage to rock our world in ‘quite a gentle way’. December 7th 8pm, €20 ■ The Comedy Shed The Woolshed Baa & Grill, Parnell St., D1 James Goldsbury, Gearoid Farrelly, Darren McCabe perform alongside house host Damo Clarke. December 7th 9pm, €5 ■ Dublin Comedy Improv Civic Theatre, Tallaght, D24 Ireland’s longest-running comedy troupe presents a night of improvised gags and sketches provided by guest players Ian Coppinger, Paul Tylak, Joe

Rooney and Dermot Whelan. December 8th €20, 8pm

December 16th 8:30pm, €26

■ Damo Clarke & Guests The Laughter Lounge, Eden Quay, D1 The Aussie comic is supported by fomer lawyer turned comedian Keith Farnan and Dubliner John Lynn. December 9th 8:30pm, €26

■ The Rubber Bandits The Academy, 57 Middle Abbey St., D1 Following a sell-out run at the Bulmers International Comedy Festival, mysterious Limerick pranksters Blind Boy Boat Club and Mr. Chrome return to Dublin to host what promises to be a truly unique Christmas party. December 17th 8pm, €19.45

■ Katherine Lynch Vicar Street, 58 Thomas St., D2 Back by popular demand Lynch returns to the stage with a collection of her eccentric characters from the hit RTE series Wonderwomen and Working Girls. December 11th 8:30pm, €28 ■ Me Ma says I’m Funny

Competition Finale

The Twisted Pepper, 54 Middle Abbey St., D1 The deciding round in Comedy Ireland’s search for new comedic talent. December 12th 8pm, TBC ■ Eddie Izzard The O2, North Wall Quay, D1 The legendary British comedian embarks on the Irish leg of his critically acclaimed tour Stipped. December 14th 8pm, €40 ■ Eric Lalor & Guests The Laughter Lounge, Eden Quay, D1 Des Bishops protégé takes to the stage with fellow comics Robbie Bonham and Steve Cummins on hand to provide support.

■ PJ Gallagher Civic Theatre, Tallaght, D24 The popular Irish comedian came to prominence on RTE’s hidden camera show Naked Camera and has since proved his stand-up to be as hilarious as his ability to prey on the unsuspecting Irish public. December 28th 9pm, €20

e b j ADMISSION: €10

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Theatre ■ The Poor Mouth / An Béal Bocht Draíocht Studio, Blanchardstown. Welcome to the surreal world of Corkadoragha in Western Ireland and the home of Bonaparte O’Coonassa. Meet Charlie the horse, Ambrose the pig and the Auld Grey Fella, discover buried treasure, underwater homes and the perils of marathon Irish dancing! 8.15pm, €16/€12 5th December

■ The Wiz Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow Loreto and Presentation College transition years return this year with another show that guarantees to have you dancing in the aisles. The school’s musicals have become an annual fixture over the last few years and this is another opportunity to spot some of the stars of the future. 8th December – 12th December 8pm, €18

Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow The Magical Christmas tree grows deep in the enchanted forest and is protected by Logan the Woodcutter. Each Christmas Santa uses the tree’s magic to make his sleigh fly and to bring the spirit of Christmas to the world. Children – 17th December 9.30am/11am/12.30am, €8.50

■ Helter Skelter/Union Square The Mill Theatre, Dundrum Town Centre, Dundrum, D16 Starring Dermot Magennis, Les Martin and Olga Wehrly Directed by Stewart Roche In two stunning pieces, Neil LaBute charts the trajectories of three regular people in contemporary America, and their extreme responses to the sudden changes in their lives. 3rd December - 5th December 8pm, €12

■ ‘allo ‘allo ■ The Magical Christmas Tree

The Millbank Theatre, Chapel Green, Rush, Co. Dublin By Jeremy Lloyd & David Croft

Directed by Annmarie Wolohan Nov 18th - 12th Dec 2009

■ Scrooge’s Christmas Pavilion Theatre, Marine Road, Dun Laoghaire. Co.Dublin. Written and directed by Michael Poynor a Christmas Show for all the family! Producers of the best in seasonal entertainment in Ireland for over 20 years, the Ulster Theatre Company teams up with Pavilion for a celebration of all things Yule-ish, in a funpacked sing along version of the second most famous Christmas story of them all. 26th December – 17th January, 8pm, €10-63

■ Strandline Space Upstairs, Project Arts Centre Following the recent death of her husband, Máirín, an artist and an outsider living in a small coastal village in Northern Ireland, gathers three local women to her house. Each of the women gathered has a reason for being there and a bloody good reason not to be there. These women have secrets. This community has secrets. And,

as the evening passes, Máirín learns more than she bargained for about the man she had loved. 17th November – 5th December 8pm, €22/18

■ The Gift Riverbank Arts Centre, Kildare Early one Christmas morning, two young children eagerly sneak downstairs and discover a giant present waiting under the tree. Excitedly they tear open the paper and dive into the box only to discover that there is nothing inside… December 7th & 9th; 11.30am & 1.30pm, €8

9th December – 30th January, 7.30pm, €33/23

■ Terminus The Peacock, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin Terminus was a roaring hit when it received its world premiere at the Abbey Theatre in 2007. Now it makes a welcome return to the Peacock stage following a hugely successful run in New York’s Public Theater, and having picked up a prestigious Scotsman Fringe First Award at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 11th November – 5th December 8pm, €25/20

■ The Seafarer

■ The Snow Queen

The Abbey, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin It’s Christmas Eve and Sharky has returned to Dublin to look after his irascible, ageing brother who’s recently gone blind. Old drinking buddies Ivan and Nicky are holed up at the house too, hoping to play some cards. With the arrival of a stranger from the distant past, the stakes are raised ever higher. In fact, Sharky may be playing for his very soul…

The Civic Theatre In this specially commissioned retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s classic fairytale An Grianan have teamed up with aerial dance specialists Fidget Feet (A Fairy’s Tale), to present what is by far and away the most spectacular family show that we have seen to date at the Civic Theatre. 27th December –8th January 2010 5pm/2.30pm, €15 & €10,

■ Jack and the Beanstalk The Gaiety, South King St., D2 The much-loved traditional pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk returns to The Gaiety Theatre. Join Jack and his beanstalk on a giant adventure, where Jack must outwit and outrun the giant. This classic tale will capture children’s interest and spark their imagination. 29 November 2009 - 31 January 2010, 6:30 pm, €16.50- €35

■ Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol The Gate Theatre, Cavendish Row, D1 Adapted by John Mortimer Back by popular demand, Dickens’ timeless classic of the true spirit of Christmas at the Gate. The famous tale of Ebenezer Scrooge’s transformation from embittered skinflint to generous benefactor has delighted audiences for generations. 26th November – 23 January 8pm, €20/35

Visual art Alliance Francais 1 Kildare St, D2 ■ Mandy O Neill - Exhale Taken over a two year period at St Saviours Boxing Club, this photographic work explores the yearning for authenticity and a more stable, vital existence. 27 November until 6 February

Bad Art Gallery 79 Francis Street, D8 ■ John Kingerlee - What Lies Beneath Cork based painter who recently completed a 15 city US tour, comprising 120 pieces. This exhibition will be opened by Deirdre Purcell and Deputy Lord Mayor, Cllr John Gallagher. 12 November until 3 December ■ The Bad Art Christmas Show Every painting 10 inch x 8 inch, everything priced under 500 euro. 6 December until 25 January

Douglas Hyde Gallery Trinity College, D2 ■ James Castle No information at present 4 December until 20 January ■ Mike Nelson No information at present 4 December until 20 January

Draiocht The Blanchardstwon Centre, D15 ■ Colin Martin - Chalet Town New series of painitings, utilizing the vernacular environment of a dormitory holiday town to create a narrative context, in which the identity, values and states of mind that underpin and form communal space are

explored. 27 November until 23 January

Goethe Institut 37 Merrion Square, D2 ■ Wiebke Loeper - MOLL 31 Video projection which signifies Wiebke Loeper’s subjective involvement in places of her own biography in the former GDR, along with the search for traces in the present of the unified Germany. 24 October until 12 December The Green On Red Gallery 26-28 Lombard Street East, D2 ■ Alice Maher - The Music of Things Comprising four new ‘filmdrawings’, a new suite of limited edition prints called The Music of Things and two unique sculptural works, this exhibition develops from Maher’s 2007 RHA show Night Garden. Until 23 December

Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery Charlemont House, Parnell Square North, D1 ■ Corban Walker - The Golden Bough Walker’s installation of sheets of Perspex presents the viewer with an environment that challenges their relationship to their surroundings. His response to the Golden Bough theme is primarily related to a process of defining how he physically and metaphorically negotiates the Museum space. 30th September until 17th January 2010 ■ Francis Bacon - A Terrible Beauty

Major exhibition comprising paintings, drawings, photographs, unfinished works and slashed canvases, some previously unseen, offering the viewer an astonishing new look at Bacon, in this the centenary of his birth. From 28th October

IMMA Royal Hospital, Military Road, Kilmainham, D8 ■ Traces Celebrating the IMMA limited Edition Series, the exhibition includes a variety of print works by Irish and international artists, exploring examples of the experimental nature of creating an artwork as an edition, various printmaking and editioning processes are exhibited which include screen-prints, etchings, lithographs and cibachrome prints. 26th September until 3rd January ■ Phillippe Parreno An ambitious overview of Parreno’s work to date, the exhibition questions notions of time, reality and representation, as well as exhibition-making and performance. Comprising some 20 mixed-media works, it includes a number of works being shown in the Museum’s courtyard and grounds. 4th November until 24th January ■ Lynda Benglis American sculptor, best known for her pioneering and challenging works which question the rigours of Modernism and Minimalism by merging content and form. The exhibition spans forty years of her extraordinary and innovative creative output. 4th November until 24th January

Picturing New York: Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art Including photographs by such influential photographers as Berenice Abbot, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Lisette Model, Alfred Stieglitz and Cindy Sherman, these 150 masterworks capture the world’s most vibrant urban centre from the 1880s to the present day. 27th November until 7th February 2010

Kerlin Anne’s Lane, South Anne Street, Dublin 2 ■ Isabel Nolan - On a Perilous Margin Reflecting the artist’s multifarious practice, this exhibition will include sculpture, painting, drawing and needlework. Nolan’s recent work has been described as the perfect marriage of ‘an intuitive intellect with a disciplined hand, creating a unique and eclectic body of work’. 27 November until 24 December

Monster Truck Galleries and Studios 73 Francis St, D8 ■ Christmas Show You want a Christmas show make your own Christmas show asshole, Bah Humbug.. This exhibition will be mix bag of end of year art, new ideas and celebrations. 10 to the 22 December

The Mill Theatre Dundrum Town Centre, Dundrum, D16 ■ Diane Whyte - The Echo of a Silent City

This work deals with the effects of institutional enclosure on the person confined, the loss of innocence and identity associated with the institutionalisation of young offenders. 12 December until 14 January

National Gallery of Ireland Merrion Sq West, D2 ■ Edvard Munch: Prints On loan from the Munch Museum in Oslo, this exhibition features 40 of the artist’s prints, including some of his most famous compositions, woodcuts and portraits. 19th September until 6th December

Tony O’Malley HRHA, Veronica Bolay RHA, T.P. Flanagan RHA, Eithne Jordan RHA, Eric Patton RHA, Liam Belton RHA and a recent work donated to the collection by Maria Simonds-Gooding ARHA. 4th September until 20th December

Rubicon Gallery 10 St. Stephen’s Green, D2

3 Herbert Street, D2

■ Donald Teskey - Loops and Sidings Landscape painting from the train carriage window, this exhibition is based on rudimentary snapshots and snatches of film (which were actually taken on the artist’s mobile phone), rendered large scale in a limited number of oil on canvas paintings. 11 November to 5 December

■ Christmas Show 3rd to the 23rd December

The Science Gallery

Peppercanister Gallery

RHA Gallagher Gallery 15 Ely Place, D2 ■ Sonia Shiel Merging media, Shiel’s work exposes subjects associated with the world’s make-up and by revealing their own, assume the subject of creativity itself. 22nd October until 20th December ■ John Kindness – Night Canvas Exhibition of the 1987 painting, originally commissioned along with other Northern Irish artists whose work directly addressed the political situation in the province. 4th September – 20th December ■ Landscapes from the RHA Collection Featured selection of landscape painting, including work by

Trinity College, Pearse Street, D2 ■ The Evolvaphone This exotic booth, in all its Victorian comfort and splendour, invites you to sample the delights of the dangerous machine hidden within. From your initials and a sample of your voice, the Evolvaphone will generate a musical composition using Morse code rhythms based on your initials and the natural inflections of your voice, all strictly in compliance with the laws of natural selection. From 24th November

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1 Fownes Street Upper, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Cindy Sherman. American, born 1954. Untitled Film Still #21, 1978, Gelatin silver print, 7 1/2 x 9 1/2â€? ''2 (19.1 x 24.1 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through % / %! % /%# Robert B. Menschel.$ ) / ' 3 *' . 4. " Š 2009 Cindy Sherman

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GREATLY ENJOYABLE AMBULATION For humans, walking is the main form of transportation without a vehicle or riding an animal. Although walking speeds can vary greatly depending on factors such as height, weight, age, terrain, surface, load, culture and fitness, the average human walking speed is about three miles an hour. When carried out in shallow waters it is usually described as wading. Wading is most often quite unpleasant due to getting wet and something we avoid unless we feel a substantial urge in getting across a watercourse. The main Roman watercourse, today meandering right through the city in peace and quiet, minding its own business, was once called the Albula River. Legendary king, Tiberinus Silvius, tragically died when indulging in wading across the probably-not-as-shallow water as he first thought. So today he is a river God and has given the river its modern name - the Tiber. Romans, wise from Tiberinus destiny, soon became the world’s first major bridge builders. Today there are lots of bridges over the Tiber within central Rome and they are all perfectly suitable for walking. As is Rome itself. It’s made for being experienced on legs - at least from a tourist’s viewpoint. The Romans on the other hand drive tiny Fiats they double and triple park, fly past on scooters or, in rare cases, use the public transport system. Fellini got his inspiration riding the number three tram, one of the scarce tramlines still running. The underground only has two lines, Linea A and Linea B. Work on a Linea C has been taken out for the last 30 years but constantly has to be aborted because they run into unexcavated ruins round every bend. The Roman underground trains are all completely showered in tags and graffiti (Ninja Turtles being one theme), and are often well overcrowded with riders – most of whom, young or old makes no difference whatsoever, sporting dark sunglasses. Italians take an unparalleled pride in being cool, and as you all know the height of coolness is wearing shades - regardless of how deep underground you happen to find yourself. When ambulating the Roman streets, most visitors use a map to navigate. It does make it easier in finding the way, but it can still be tricky. The combination of small-scale maps and the maze of tiny streets are not as user-friendly as it possibly could be. Walking without aiming for a certain destination works just as well and is recommended if you are not in a rush to cross off a long list of sights.

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When walking between my base in the more modern district of Prati southbound towards Trastevere I pass through the small but delightful Regola area with its main artery Via Giulia. I don’t think many of you remember Julius II. Anyway, he was a Pope a long time ago and he had the idea of a straight road right through Rome leading towards the Vatican. He gave it the name Via Giulia and this street, a full kilometre in a straight line, is cutting through the smaller sidestreets and alleys leading in all directions but where you think they do. It might have been a majestic thoroughfare once, but today it’s quiet, not very grand at all - just homely, atmospheric and lined with antique shops and a couple of art galleries and funkier boutiques. It’s a part of Rome that you will enjoy if you want to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city centre and instead want to sample a slice of Rome. Wash it down with some, (supposedly perfectly drinkable) water from one of the many ubiquitous street fountains, for example Via Giulia’s Mascherone Fountain.

TRASTEVERE

Beyond the Tiber. That’s what the name means and that’s where you have to go. Trastevere, number XIII of Rome’s 22 Rioni’s, will do a lot to you. First the warren of narrow cobbled streets will suck you in like a girdle, it will make you question the days you spent hastening between the historic tourist sights, it will give you equal tastes of the real Italy and of times long past, and in the odd case you want out you will struggle to find the way. Not that I ever wanted to leave. I was dragged kicking and screaming after my unconditional capitulation to that Trastevere bug. It might have become the alternative way to do Rome for hordes of pseudo-adventurous visitors straying off the beaten track, or so they think, but its charm is undeniable. The streets, the old crooked houses - only standing because they lean up against each other, the amazing and utterly inviting courtyards you catch a glance of from the street and the homely, almost village-like atmosphere. At the same time, Trastevere seems dirtier, there’s an abundance of foreign visitors and at night time it can get so noisy that locals have staged protests by hanging white sheets out of the windows and have urged the mayor to act out. But the stark contrast to a place like, for example, Temple Bar, is that genuine feel. While strolling down Via della Scala or

Vicolo del Bologna in the daytime, taking in the enchanting ambience, you’ll overhear an argument between two neighbours, you’ll see the elderly woman on the third floor hoisting a basket full of shaped bread along the rough facade. The joy of the everyday life of the Trasteverini – the locals try not to be labelled Romans – is personified by the very loud wife of the greengrocer. Temperamental, but with the widest smile this side of the river. I suppose Trastevere is just like the rest of Rome, only more concentrated. The small streets are even smaller, the gelato ice cream even more delicious, a rugged front facade is ten time worse and littered with graffiti. Then again, chances are you won’t see it, because the buildings are covered in clinging vines and various plants with big red flowers. But long before you get that far you have just crossed the river and you find yourself at Piazza Trilussa. The myriad of winding streets will instantly lure you in and it won’t take long until you see inviting little restaurants with vacant tables in the sunshine. From then on, the next several hours will be spent sitting down. We did half a day at one of the little Osterias at the calm little oasis that is Piazza Di San Giovanni Della Malva. We ordered a bottle of house red. It’s just that a bottle of house red isn’t exactly a bottle of house red. It’s a carafe of house red, twice the size. By the time you’ve finished it you have become hungry twice. Not that we were complaining. Tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella was the idea as a snack to compliment our wine but the plan soon included Bucatini Matriciana and the Fettuccelle Papalina. It might sound somewhat peculiar but Trastevere is also an excellent idea of a destination to find some peace and quiet. Rome’s parks are not as fabulous as the buildings are old. A little climb up The Gianicolo Hill you’ll find a setting worlds away from the city chaos below. It’s also an historic site, the hill is where the Italians defeated the French in the 19th century to gain their independence. On the slopes you find the botanic gardens, the nicest park and one of the best places in Rome if you want to escape.

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TRY SELLING SAND TO AN ARAB There are two things you will never see in Rome. One is Starbucks, the other is Pizza Hut. Romans drink their coffee standing up, in delightful little coffee bars owned by a long line of members of the same family. For an avid non-coffee drinker the only logic in what they do is that they sometime throw it down in one or two goes. But for the many visiting coffee lovers, seemingly safe in the thought their experience in ordering macchiato at Coffee Society will prove valuable, standing before the assortment of various options at a Roman coffee bar still makes the selection progress quite confusing. Espressos are ristretto (less water, more coffee), ristrettissimo, lungo (more water), macchiato caldo (with a dash of hot milk) and macchiato freddo (with cold milk). Or you can get it corretto - spiked with a dollop of whisky or grappa (this seems the best option to me) and al vetro (in a little glass). The cappuccino is, in contrast to these shores, never drunk at the end of a meal and never in the evening, it’s more common in the morning when Romans have cappuccino e cornetto which is a cappuccino and a croissant. You can get your cup senza schiuma (no foam), poco schiuma (little foam), tiepido (lukewarm), bollente (hot), scuro (less milk) or chiaro (more milk). A caffe latte is normally a breakfast drink reserved for older kids. Instead you can try and ask for the northern Italian speciality, the marocchino – a macchiato with a base of thick hot chocolate. But save it for a trendy inner city coffee bar as the older Romans in a traditional café won’t have a clue. What you can always count on is that the baristas

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take great pride in making you the perfect coffee. As for Pizza Hut, if they want a challenge they know where to go. In Rome there are more pizzerias than restaurants. They roll the perfect pizzas very thin and flat, add traditional toppings and bake them in a wood-burning stove. It’s best suitable for a long night out with friends and good wine, although they do a fast food version of pizza too. If you get hungry late at night you can buy them “a taglio”, thicker slices sold by weight.

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Primo piatti: I

Pantheon

II

Rooftop Terraces

The historic sights have been mentioned so many times, but they have to be seen on the first visit (and second, there’s not enough time on the first). If you encounter The Pantheon for the first times during the darker hours it looks amazingly spooky, and having a 2000-year-old majestic building like that just in the middle of a labyrinth of streets really takes you back when all of a sudden you stand before it.

HISTORY MAY WELL BE FICTION STRUGGLING TO BE TRUTH As far as I know he’s never been to Rome. Christopher Moukarbel graduated from Yale with a Master of Fine Arts degree. Famous for re-creating a 12 minute scene from Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center script and posting the short film on the Internet before the blockbuster had hit the screens. He was later sued by Paramount and prohibited from distributing his movie. Christopher had been thinking about how we memorize collective traumas and said that back in the day, when re-creating history, people built a sculpture, today we adapt it for the screen. Nowadays you will for example hear more people refer to Schindler’s List than the Holocaust Memorial in Washington DC. Roman history can be recollected through both sources. There are statues aplenty, on every piazza, in every fountain (and Caesar knows there’s quite a few) as well as on countless number of buildings. But to us modern-type metrosexuals the adaptations might strike a more powerful chord. There’s have been numerous, a recent example is the BBC/HBO-series Rome that for a brief spell humanized people we before only knew as marble busts. Standing on the second tier of Colosseum, I realised there was only one DVD-box I wanted for Christmas. Although the finest moments of Rome on film might not be the filmed versions of ancient history but from the postwar era. Famous titles like Rome, Open City by Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thiefs through to Fellini’s work. “We discovered our own country, and its reality was so extraordinary we couldn’t resist photographing it.” Thank you Federico, it’s about time they built you a statue.

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THE ETERNAL WAIT FOR THE LILLIES TO BLOSSOM An evolutionist could be described as someone with the conviction that man always will better himself. Ray Kurzweil, American inventor, scientist and author, asserts in his book The Singularity is Near that the progress rate of humanity is exponential, that we are always becoming twice as good as human beings. During long periods progress seem negligible but just like water lilies on a lake, whose number rise every day, progress eventually reach a critical point where the increase gets notable. From the point where ten percent of a lake is covered in lilies there is actually only four days remaining before the whole lake is filled. So the question you ask yourself when you stand amazed seeing Rome’s ancient buildings for the first time is “just where in that line of progress are we in this very moment?” Personally I am not very much in the know of what’s going on in the building industry but in terms of grandeur and durability we must be hovering along somewhere in that long negligible progress period. http://romephotoblog.blogspot.com/

The Romans have always loved their rooftop terraces. It might be the climate, maybe lack of space down below on the crammed and narrow streets. The terrace functions as an extension of their living room with the exception that interaction with neighbours could be possible. And al fresco dining. What to do as a tourist is to either book a hotel with a rooftop restaurant (there are quite a few), rent an apartment with a terrace, or simply just visit a restaurant or bar with rooftop access. One good choice would be Angelina a Testaccio (Via Galvani 24) where you can first enjoy the Italian cuisine before you dance the night away under the stars.

Secondi Piatti: III

Campo de Fiori

IV

Orto Botanico

Daytime the square is an absolute hub of activity. The market stalls selling fruit, pasta and olive oils etc. are doing a roaring trade and the people, Romans and tourists alike, are a tourist attraction in themselves. At night time the restaurants along the southern side of the piazza are a good start to an evening out and popular hangouts with a much younger and hipper crowd than frequent the area in daylight.

With 7000 different plants on display, a scented garden for the blind and several fountains, the Botanic Gardens is one of Rome’s nicest hideaways. And if you add the spectacular view from the Gianicolo Hill it’s a recommended inclusion in a visit to Rome.

Dolce: V

EUR

VI

Testaccio

If you’re into architecture, a good suggestion could be to hop on the Metro and go southbound on Linea B to the EUR district. Nowadays a residential neighbourhood, but originally built by Mussolini in Fascist style for the Universal Exhibition of Rome, supposed to have been held 1942 - but a war got in the way.

In the southern part of the city centre, on the opposite side of the river from Trastevere you find the working class area of Testaccio which is a magnet to Rome’s clubbers and the cultivated heads in the city. Ever since the area’s old slaughterhouses were in use the area has had a strong connection to food. Today, it’s the base of Rome’s premier food store Volpetti, many popular restaurants and, as previously mentioned, the main spot for a long night of action.

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words // DANIEL GRAY picture // HUGH COONEY Nobody likes Mondays. Even on the night of a public sector strike (wahey, no work tomorrow!) this town is coming like a ghost town. All the clubs, as the man said, have been closed down. Dublin’s most warped video artist 2.0 Hugh Cooney, the boundary-crossing cross-dresser with a Handycam and a heart of pure evil, is clever enough to spot a gap in the market. The city is as silent as a gagged lamb, but South William Street’s Pygmalion sounds more like a slaughterhouse – a small, but dedicated troupe of Dublin’s bravest have trucked their way up for an hour in the company of the incomparable Mr. Cooney. For the uninitiated and undernourished: Cooney makes postmodern oneman black comedy videos not unlike Chris Morris’ erstwhile Jam TV series. His videos are dizzying and disorientating, bewilderingly hilarious and hilariously bewildering. He relies on absurdism and repetition almost to breaking point

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– see his infamous ‘Accessorise’ Youtube clip for the formula. Hugh, in lipstick and tousled hair, sits with another lipsticked, tousled Hugh in a café, discussing, ad infinitum, the importance of accessorisation – before one of the lady-Hughs starts coughing up water, and, bizarrely, beans. Constantly chanting ‘acccessssorrrriiiise’ all the while. On a lower budget than Brian Lenihan, Cooney ekes all the lopsided charm out of lo-fi video-trickery that he can. So how does a weekly live show work, when his sickest moments are available at the click of a bookmark? Don’t Like Mondays takes the post-modernity to a new level, with real-life Cooney interacting with projector-fed Cooney from his DJ box – ad libbing, rap-like, over the earlier recorded ‘samples’. He croons his uproarious cabaret song Pigs On Wheels, live-reports for ‘Cool Newz’ (which, keeping in the Chris Morris vein, is like Brass Eye, but with the word ‘mickey’), and

yelps his bizarro catchphrases (‘gimme me hoover! gimme me hoover!’ is the night’s finest), all segued with electro intervals. His gathered audience which, though small in number fills out his quarter of the otherwise-empty Pygmalion, are rapturous, disciple-like. Some mouth along with classic lines, everybody else bruises their ribs with bent-over uproar. The sweetest part of the deal is that the night is entirely free. Combined with its status as pretty much the only enjoyable thing worth doing in town on a Monday at 9pm other than chase rickshaw drivers with a fire extinguisher, and the sense that Cooney’s star is very much in the ascendance, Don’t Like Mondays is as essential as accessorisation.

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With the 78’’-spinning Gramophone Disco on the evening’s bill of entertainment, and the distinctly bourgeois second-storey room of a Stephen’s Green Georgian townhouse the setting, I’ve decided to get Great Gatsbyed up for the night. With the finest cigars €6 can buy stuffed in the pocket of a cream cardigan, I arrive at the Aviator’s Lounge, upstairs from the sumptuous Bentley’s (so called because only owners of this particular type of car can afford to eat in it, I suspect). This post-World Cup (un)qualifier evening is billed as the Clipper Club, a night for the Daisy Buchanans and Nick Carraways of Dublin. It quickly arises that while I’ve got the preppy schtick right, my get-up is a little anachronistically out of step. The Lounge’s attendees are more the Ralph Lauren-shirted, status-handbag-wielding side of stiff-upper-lipped. The barmen, dressed to the nines in lily-white blazers, make my Fitzgeraldian allusions that bit more realistic – however, when my Jordan Baker for the evening orders a hot whiskey to flush the Dublin winter out of her bones we’re informed that, sadly, the bar doesn’t DO hot drinks. I needn’t ask about the Red Bull so. Let’s pretend we plumped for the Hennessey rather than two Cokes, for the sake of atmosphere. Ambience, incidentally, is the Lounge’s most handsome success. From the Wright Brothers models swooping down from the ceiling to the Imperial Airways posters framed and nailed to the 300-year-old walls, carefully-themed sophistication seeps through the room like Cristal through a sponge. The well-cultivated members-only vibe remains intact despite the lack of cover charge (and minimal fuss kicked up over my distinct lack of deck shoes). Minor incidental flourishes like the wrought-iron balcony smoking area and the tack-free chandeliers casting pumpkin-toned light across the Lounge make it as cosy as a cat in an oven. Furthering the sepia tint of the night is the billing of the aforementioned Gramophone Disco – an experience usually confined to an addled discovery when slopping around the Electric Picnic arena. Possibly the only DJs you could describe as ‘romantic’, they blast out classic swing, be bop, doo wop, and woah-ho-lookat-her-hop 78 inches through wind-up gramophones. It’s music to wear top hats to, and the array of (clearly absinthe-ridden) dancers on the Lounge’s makeshift dancefloor are a reminder of how much more watchable dancing is when sexuality is subjugated to sly hints in popped hip movements – the Disco’s usual offer of projected classic videos is on the blink tonight, but the swings and shimmies are spectacle enough.

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'-: #: /*()5 5)& "7*"503 4 -06/(& words // DANIEL GRAY picture // EMMA BRERETON

Demographics: the gathering is 80% women, 20% men, and 98% over the age of 30 – but the inherent romance of the night might make a nice break from, well, getting fucked in a dubstep dungeon and waking up with the taste of burnt flesh in your mouth, wondering how best to get bloodstains out of your top. Practise your bunnyhop, iron your best polo shirt and press your plus fours for its next incarnation - it’s time for sophistication’s reincarnation. The Aviator’s Lounge Above Bentley’s Restaurant 22 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 4

'2/'!.3 7HERE TIME STANDS STILL (OST TO A CONTINUOUS CHANGING ART EXHIBITION

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TOTALLY DUBLIN

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5)"* .& 61 %*&1 -& 4)",&3 words // KATIE GILROY picture // EMMA BRERETON

While Trapattoni is talking last-minute tactics with his lads in a testosterone-fogged French locker room, I realise there’s not even enough of the man-hormone in me to smear the lid of a petri-dish never mind make me want to watch the game. Unpatriotic perhaps, but I’d rather dabble in a little Thai cuisine and nurse a glass of Grenache in a soothing setting than be a target for sloppy pints and a buffer to rants by over-zealous supporters who in a few hours will be ferociously forwarding irate petitions to their entire contact lists with ‘Re-match’ in the subject box. There’s a reason why Diep Le Shaker’s tagline is ‘Royal Thai Cuisine’. You won’t find an Asian restaurant in this town more suited to royalty, or to the Brian O’Driscolls and Amy Hubermans where a Monarch is lacking. The generous banquet hall is split into two levels, with the mezzanine space above leaving plenty of head room below. Throne-like chairs upholstered in regal red are a nod to imperialism, and a swarm of

high tables and stools positioned around the dazzling bar are prime spots to enjoy a sour apple Martini. The Rat Pack strike a pose on the wall behind, and Marilyn Monroe clutches the flying furbelows of her windswept white dress in that famous photograph captured decades ago. With all its swanky charm, Diep seems like it could have been a regular haunt for Sinatra and his cohorts had they not passed away and disintegrated into the black and white components of this nostalgic shrine. The evening value menu is available at Diep Le Shaker from 5pm Tuesday to Friday; once you’re willing to vacate the table within two hours should it be required. On the night of our visit however, the crowds were Trapattoni’s and we more or less had the place to ourselves. A whopper of a starter, the Diep mix - a pastiche of pint-sized appetisers, included a crispy vegetable spring roll, a mini kebab of chicken satay, a pastry-wrapped prawn roll, a sumptuous slither of pork belly and what we thought the weakest link of the lot, a flavourless fish cake. The Larb Ped, our other starter, promised punch on paper with a pair of chilli icons beside its description on the menu (to ward off the weak), and my, did it deliver! Three leaves of iceberg lettuce loaded with shredded duck and crushed rice packed heavyweight hits in the form of lemongrass, chilli, coriander and mint with mind-blowing results. From two chillies to three, the red prawn curry or Gaeng Pet Goong, induced a lingering sensation as the spices rushed through our blood. Once the jumbo prawns had been safely loaded onto the tongue, their fleshy composition was a pleasure to tear apart with the teeth. Bamboo shoots, Thai aubergine and basil reacted in the mouth to produce an awesome aftermath of aromas. Likewise, the Nua Phad King was a saporous dish of wok-fried strip loin beef, peppers, Shitake mushrooms and ginger that we lapped up ravenously. My aforementioned Grenache from the Cote du Rhone region coupled the beef dish well, and my companion’s medium to full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon was a good match for the cold, wintery night. Only two choices of dessert so we went for both. Who can but relish in the simplicity of banana fritters and vanilla ice-cream? And no fault could be found with the other rudimentary offering, a selection of ices. Our bill which included a €1 donation to Movember, came to €65.90. Out on Pembroke Lane, the nearby streets vibrate with a sudden eruptive roar and car horns sound off in unison. A goal for Ireland we deduce, but soon something will be simmering in my inbox. 55 Pembroke Lane Dublin 2 t: 01 6611829

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'-08&3 108&3 #-00. #3"44&3*& words // KATIE GILROY picture // EMMA BRERETON Every cloud has a silver lining. The upside of our sorry situation is that despite the constant reminders of unemployment stats, bickering about NAMA and omnipresent gaping black holes in our lives since all our mates have fled Down Unda where they may not find work but at least they’ll get a tan and possibly meet Harold from Neighbours, we can still afford to eat out. We may not be getting bonuses again this year, or pay rises for the foreseeable future, but we are certainly getting great bargains when it comes to restaurant dining.

Scarcity breeds creativity and creativity is present in abundance at Bloom Brasserie, Baggot Street’s latest culinary addition. Former head chef at Dax, Pól Ó hÉannraich has got edible decadence down to a fine art here, and his cellar-like venue boasting rugged stone walls and almond coloured wooden flooring is the perfect setting to showcase his gastronomic talents. When we visit on a gusty Monday night and descend the stairs at street level, we are greeted by a host of friendly, smiling staff and Pól himself who checks on us often throughout the course of our meal. The long basement room is far from being a cold, hostile environment but exudes warmth and welcome and offers refuge from the brewing storm outside. The humming clatter of chefs at work escapes through a rectangular slot in the wall that separates the kitchen and dining room and provides a buzzy atmosphere despite the unusually quiet evening. While perusing the menu, we are treated to a Bloom Brasserie cocktail of Champagne with a dash of Frangelico hazelnut liqueur – a slightly nuts but delightful combination. From the Early Bird menu (₏25 for three courses, ₏20 for two) we start off with the chicken liver on toast in a pear reduction and the marinated white bean, shallot and sundried tomato salad. Buttery in texture, the gamine chicken livers are like strips of lush velvet on the crunchy bread and the tongue has no choice but to embrace the pear as it is just deliciously sweet. Al dente and with a sheen hinting at magical properties, the white beans are full of garlic and reek of

success. A semi-course of lemon sorbet with basil refreshes our palettes before our mains arrive to immerse them once more in a world of flavour. A modest fish, the sea trout with melted leeks Ă la buerre blanc is a subtle but pleasant dish. The two pieces of trout, delicately sautĂŠed and sprawled atop the saucy leeks with their metallic skins facing upward, shimmer in their candlelit surrounds. The accompanied parsleysprinkled potatoes with crisped edges are well-seasoned and tasty. Laid out like a big grin on a mountain of creamy mash is our other dish of chargrilled apple and sage sausage with onion jus; comfort food at its best. Steaming hot, this sausage has spunk and the herb-infused mash is hearty, wholesome and a joy to devour. The Carpaccio of spiced pineapple consisting of a wafer-thin sheet of the tropical fruit with suspicions of cinnamon and other fragrant spices, whole raspberries and a dollop of vanilla ice-cream concentrically positioned is a light but lovely dessert as is the custardy crème brulĂŠe. Bloom boasts a substantial selection of wines, all available by the carafe and at exceptional value. Our choice – a carafe of light-bodied Chianti Classico with hints of dark fruit was â‚Ź11 providing us with a small glass each. Including a bottle of still water our bill came to â‚Ź64.70. A decadent meal for a song. And therein lies the silver lining. 11 Upper Baggot Street Dublin 4 t: 01 6687170

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Sandwich platters, pastries, fruit, drinks teas & coffee, soup & salads

CAFE

Low call 1890 843 726 orders@tiesan.com www.tiesan.com

*offer available for limited period only

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Multi award-winning Aspall Suffolk Cyder is available on draught in Ireland for the first time, thanks to County Louth-based premium drinks importer Noreast who have installed the cyder at carefully selected outlets across Ireland including The Globe on George’s Street and Orchard Bar in Stillorgan. Made from a complex blend of both bitter-sweet and culinary apples and fermented from 100% apple juice, Aspall Cyder has a unique taste and has been available in bottle form in Ireland since 2007. The recipes have been handed down through eight generations of the Chevallier family since 1728 and to this day, the family still sign off every single batch of cyder before it is bottled, to ensure that quality remains first and foremost. So why not leave a bottle of Aspall Cyder instead of the usual glass of milk for Santa this year, or at least point him in the direction of a cold one, straight from the tap.

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Now in its fifth year, the 12 Days of Christmas market at George’s Dock in the IFSC with over 100 stalls selling a range of Christmas gifts, seasonal food and stocking fillers, is just the thing to get you in the festive spirit. From 12-23 December the market will feature a vast variety of traders serving up a bevy of mouth-watering treats, and there will be carol singers and yuletide bands on hand to spread the cheer as you shop. At this year’s event will be Sheridan’s Cheesemongers with a host of artisan products from Ireland and abroad. Eat Fat Pig will be there to tempt you with their delicious spit-roasted pork rolls with stuffing and cinnamon infused apple sauce, and Barracuda BBQ will be serving up traditional German Bratwurst sausages, roasted herb potatoes and a variety of food platters. Purveyors of Italian goodies, Italian Fields, will be touting their selection of Parmesan and Padano cheeses, salami, prosciutto, Parma ham and pancetta, as well as their handcrafted wooden hamper boxes and wine racks, and warm, fluffy treats in the form of Dandeez Donuts will certainly keep the kids quiet! If there wasn’t already an excuse to indulge at Christmas, there definitely is now…

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There’s turkey on the menu no matter where you turn this Christmas. Real Ballsbridge are offering two courses for €14.50 or three for €19.50 (including tea and coffee) from their special seasonal menu which features the Christmas Burger – chargrilled escalope of turkey with crispy pancetta and cranberry relish, fish and chips and bangers and mash. Starters include pate on toast and Caesar salad, and there’s crumble or chocolate nut brownie for dessert. On Exchequer Street, Boulevard Café’s three course Christmas dinner is €40 with lots of starters to choose from such as pork belly and Atlantic fishcake, main courses of traditional turkey and ham, roast Barbary duck and rib-eye steak and a seasonal symphony of desserts to finish. While a lunchtime festive feast at Fire Restaurant, Dawson Street, costs €32 and boasts dishes of wood fired fresh figs with Cashel blue cheese, tender loin of turkey Fire style and traditional apple pie. Real Ballsbridge t: 01 6670040 Boulevard Café t: 01 6792131 Fire Restaurant t: 01 6767200

See www.ddda.ie for more details.

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SALSA SATURDAY NIGHTS FREE ADMISSION!

10.30pm until late! Salsa classes every 45minutes Contact: obsessionsalsa@live.com or call 085 833 8558 For details on upcoming Salsa gigs: www.obsessionsalsa.com

Pacino’s Restaurant & Cellar Bar 18 Suffolk St. Dublin 2 T. 01 677 5651 / info@pacinos.ie www.pacinos.ie in association with

Y L L A T O T

FOOD

Restaurant Guide

Brasserie Sixty6 66-67 South Great Georges St, Dublin 2 Stylish, buzzy restaurant, right in the heart of Dublin’s shopping and entertainment district. Great food and drink, fantastic surroundings, exciting atmosphere, reasonable prices. Whether it's a lazy brunch at the weekend or a business lunch, or simply a romantic dinner, at brasserie sixty6 is always our pleasure. Finger-licking desserts, a full vegetarian menu, carefully selected wine list chosen with accessibility, value and good taste, delicious cocktails to start your evening… you will not be disappointed.

Odessa

Cafe Irie

Odessa is Dublin’s original dining lounge, a mesh of style and substance. Thanks to its newly-popular Fivers menu, its defining quality has become offering affordable sophistication. The restaurant offers a mouth-watering menu renowned for its tapas-style offerings and an unparalleled cocktail menu, all in a chilled-out atmosphere.

A Buddha-balanced haven from the helter-skelter lunchtime of the rest of Dublin 2. With a more-thancomprehensive range of coffees, teas, and juices, and a meaty menu comprising paninis, ciabattas, sandwiches, and some rustic pizzas, Irie’s Zen-attuned environment offers the food to match. Its car-bootsale approach to decor and smiling staff makes it impossible not to eat, drink, and be Irie.

t: 01 670 7634 www.odessa.ie

t: 01 672 5090

14 Dame Court, Dublin 2

11 Fownes Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Open: Mon-Fri at 11am, Sat-Sun 10am, Until: Sun-Wed til 10.30pm, Wed-Sat til 11pm

t: 01 400 5878 www.brasseriesixty6.com

La Paloma

Café Novo

La Paloma is a casual family run bar/restaurant in the very heart of Temple Bar serving Spanish influenced dishes since 1990.The warm colourful decor with Spanish football on TV and a small bar serving beer, sangria, wines including Riojas by the glass completes a laid back feeling.The menu includes Calamares, Gambas Ajillo, Albondigas, Paellas including Vegetarian, Many Fish dishes, Pinchitos con Gambas and more including a Tapas menu. A Two course Early Bird is available with Seafood or Chicken Paella as main course from 6pm to 7pm at 13.95.

Café Novo, a chic new international bar and brasserie opened it doors in October 2008. This fun and flirty eatery will woo diners with a carefully selected menu that offers traditional favourites with a twist - making it the perfect brunch stop for peckish shoppers or evening dinner and drinks spot for city slickers. Conveniently located on Harry Street, just a few steps from Grafton Street, Café Novo offers informal-style drop-in dining, whether you want to grab a modern take on a club sandwich or to simply sip on a cocktail. Mon-Sun 10am-10pm, bar open to 12.30am

Asdills Row, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Harry St, Dublin 2

Tues-Sun 6pm-11.30pm

t: (01) 6463353 dine@cafenovo.ie

t: 01 677 7392 www.lapalomadublin.com

Sinners

Café Carlo

12 Parliament Street, Dublin 2

63 - 64 O’Connell Street, Dublin 1

Belly dancing and Baba Ganoush, Sinner’s is a traditional Lebanese restaurant in the heart of Dublin City, which combines good food with a vibrant atmosphere. Sinners Lebanese Restaurant is a former recipient of a “Best Ethnic Cuisine” Temple Bar award and continues to serve patrons a wide variety of tantalising Lebanese fare. Guests at Sinners will find a welcoming staff, who provide an excellent service to ensure you have an authentic, fun night out.

The relaxed and intimate setting of Café Carlo, coupled with its high-quality, reasonably priced food and friendly, attentive staff has made this restaurant a huge favourite with Dublin diners. Not only is it a popular choice with visitors to our fair city, it's also found a place in the hearts of the discerning locals, who return time and again to soak up the Cafe Carlo atmosphere and enjoy some genuinely delicious food. Free glass of wine with every main course when mentioning this ad!

Open 5pm til late

t: (01 888 0856 www.cafecarlo.net

t: 01 675 0050

Eden

Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 The acclaimed, award-winning Eden restaurant serves contemporary food with a distinctive Irish flavour, overlooking the vibrant Meeting House Square in Temple Bar. With a set of mouthwatering dishes available for mains, from mushroom tarts to duck confit, and a stunning location, Eden is one of Dublin’s must-eat experiences.

t: 01 670 5372 www.edenrestaurant.ie

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Venu

Punjab Balti

Anne’s Lane, off South Anne St, Dublin 2

15 Ranelagh Village, Dublin 6

Venu has enjoyed a loyal following since it opened in 2006 and it has been renowned for its well-executed, varied food menu and for its award-winning cocktail bar. If you are looking for a vibrant place that serves great cocktails and quality ‘home-made’ dishes at reasonable prices it is hard to look much further than Venu Brasserie. Tues - Sat: Dinner 5.30 til late Saturday Brunch: 12pm til 4pm

Old favourite Punjab Balti retains its popularity and success after 13 years by consistently serving authentic Punjabi cuisine, prepared in the same traditional manner as in the Indian subcontinent's Punjab region for centuries. Over the years this famous Ranelagh restaurant has won major recognition for it's top quality food, intimate ambience, excellent value and service. You can bring your own beer or wine and there are also takeaway and delivery services available that are perfect for a Balti night in. For current special offers check out www. punjabbalti.ie

t: 01 67 06755 www.venu.ie charles@venubrasserie.com

t: 01 496 0808 /01 491 2222 info@punjabbalti.ie

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SoHo

South William

La Mere Zou

Harbor Bar & Grill

Unpretentious cooking, laid back surroundings, nice sounds, reasonable prices, easy dining and a friendly welcome. Bang in the middle of Dublin city centre - right where you want to be. One all day menu, whether for a quick bite, or a shared platter, or lunch, or casual dinner with friends or colleagues. We offer simple classics and staples prepared using the best ingredients, and executed with style..What you want, how you want it. Laid back eating at SoHo.

With 8 different types of specialist pies (at just €9 each) and a varied menu of soups, salads and sandwiches, the South William bar transcends regular pub grub. Open 7 from midday, this is a bar you’ll find almost impossible to leave, and food you’ll keep coming back to.

A solidly French restauramt offering bistro classics with a moden touch, La Mere Zou opened in 1994 and specialises in Classic French cuisine. They also offer a large selection of seafood directly from the local fishmarket. At La Mere Zou you can relax in a warm, familial atmosphere while enjoying the very best in cuisine and service.

One of Dun Laoghaire’s newest dining experiences, the Harbor Bar & Grill offers elegant surroundings and a faultless menu. From pork belly to open smoked salmon, HB&G’s spread is diverse but complex. Average prices per meal is €12, with a wine list ranging from €20 upwards. The bar and grill boasts a perfect coastal location, with a stunning view of the eponymous harbour from the beer garden.

17 South Great Georges Street, Dublin 2

Open: Mon-Fri 12pm, Sat & Sun 10.30am Last Orders: Sun- Wed 10.30pm, Thurs-Sat 11pm

52 South William St, Dublin 2

Food served from 12am to 10pm

t: 01 672 5946 www.southwilliam.ie

22 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2

Lunch: Monday - Friday 12 -3pm Dinner: Monday - Sat 6 - 11pm

t: 01 61 6669 www.lamerezou.ie

6 - 7 Marine Rd., Dun Laoghaire

t: 01 214 5772 www.harborbarandgrill.com

t: 01 707 9596 www.sohodublin.com

Diep Le Shaker

Gotham Café

Diep Noodle Bar

Prices dropped... Standard still very high. To ensure absolute authenticity in Thai cuisine Diep fly all essential ingredients in fresh from Bangkok. Diep Le Shaker make no adjustments in the chilli content of their fare. This stunningly designed restaurant is the recipient of the prestigious Thailand Brand Award awarded by the Government of Thailand and the Thai Select Award awarded by the Ministry of Commerce, Thailand for authentic cuisine.

Open since 1993 asone of the first casual restaurants in Dublin, Gotham still has a reputation for serving consistently great food at reasonable prices. Most famous for the Gourmet Pizzas, they also offer a full range of light breakfast, lunch and dinner options to suit any time of the day or night.

Thai and Vietnamese food experts, Diep, offer a great value noodle-based menu with an exciting and exotic range of dishes including soups, salads and stir-fries. Diep Noodle Bar’s Bangkok Street Food menu is a steal and includes three courses of soup, appetiser and main course for €16 available Monday to Sunday until 7pm. With it’s fresh and genuine approach to cooking alongside it’s popular cocktail bar, warm hospitality and it’s releaxed but vibrant atmosphere. Diep Noodle Bar is a firm local favourite.

55 Pembroke Lane, Dublin 2

t: 01 661 1829 www.diep.net

8 South Anne St, Dublin 2

Ranelagh Village, Dublin 6

Sun to Thurs 10.30am-11pm Fri & Sat 10.30am-12 Sunday Brunch 11.30-4pm

t: 01 679 5266 www.gothamcafe.ie

t: 01 497 6550 www.diep.net

DAX

Brasserie de Verres en Vers

Coppinger Row

A welcoming bar area offers a post-work winddown or light evening meal, perfect for you and your colleagues to enjoy with hot and cold tapas, available Tuesday to Saturday. Ideal for business and perfect for pleasure, or to dine privately for groups of between 10 and 14 people, Dax Restaurant is only a stones throw away from you and your business so why not take the time to visit a restaurant of refreshment, rejuvenation and reinvigoration.

Brasserie de Verres en Vers is a new, modern interpretation of the French brasserie. Quietly glamorous and sedately cool, design is an integral part, with clean lines, dark wood finishes and an elegant contemporary floral detail. With an all-day menu, the emphasis at Brasserie de Verres en Vers is on classic French bistro fare, with ever-changing plats du jour, staple and signature dishes and a focus on fresh quality produce. The menu at Brasserie de Verres en Vers is complemented by a carefully chosen list of French wines and champagne and a great selection of aperitifs and digestifs.

The Bereen brothers from South William Urban Lounge have created an exciting new option for dining out in Dublin: fresh simple mediterranean dishes, perfect for diving in and sharing with friends, family and work colleagues alike, in the funky laid-back atmosphere of Coppinger Row, slap-bang in the middle of coolest quarter of south city Dublin.

Tuesday to Friday from 12.30pm to 2pm Tuesday to Saturday from 6pm to 10pm

Breakfast:

23 Pembroke Street Upper

t: 01 676 1494 olivier@dax.ie www.dax.ie

at the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel Dublin

Dinner: Sunday Brunch:

Off South William St, Dublin 2

Tues - Sat 12noon - 11pm Sunday 1pm - 8pm Closed Monday

06.30-10.30 Mon-Fri 07.00-11.00 Sat-Sun 17.00-22.00 Mon-Sun 13.00-4pm

t: 01 672 9884 www.coppingerrow.com

www.radissonblu.ie

Pacino’s

Ukiyo Bar

The Farm

Chai Yo

For over 15 years Pacino’s has been a family-run restaurant known for its delicious ‘Classic & Gourmet’ pizzas and pastas, steaks and salads. It serves traditional, fresh, quality Italian cuisine. Its beef is 100% Irish, and sourced from reputable suppliers, and its pizza dough made fresh, inhouse, daily. Pacino’s offers a modern dining experience, with an old world vibe – stylish brickwork, wooden floors and soft lighting all combine to create a relaxed, rustic, informal atmosphere.

Ukiyo Bar is Dublin’s premier late night bar, restaurant and entertainment venue. Open from 12pm till late 7 days a week, especially on Thursday, Friday and Saturday when we keep our kitchen open past midnight. At Ukiyo we strive to provide our customers with a unique dining and entertainment experience - from the best value lunches to great sushi and sake in the evening, attentive and knowledgeable service, top shelf cocktails and some of the best club nights in Dublin at the weekend. Not to mention our private karaoke booths, making Ukiyo the immediate choice for a first date, a birthday party or a corporate bash.

The Farm is about tasty homemade locally sourced free range, organic and fresh food. Healthy vegetables and fresh herbs. All their food is freshly prepared and cooked to order.

Famed for their Teppenyaki tables creating a unique and interactive eating experience, as well as meals made from the freshest, highest quality ingredients and a great party opportunity, Chai Yo perfects the balance between fun and food. For the less party-inclined of visitors, there is a quieter downstairs section. Something for everyone!

18 Suffolk St., Dublin 2

t: 01 677 5651 www.pacinos.ie

7-9 Exchequer Street, Dublin 2

t: 01 633 4071 www.ukiyobar.com

www.totallydublin.ie

3 Dawson St, Dublin 2

11 am to 11 pm 7 days a week

t: 01 671 8654 hello@thefarmfood.ie

100 Lower Baggot St, Dublin 2

Mon-Fri:12.30-3pm, 6pm-11.30pm Sat: 5.30pm-midnight Sun: 3pm-10pm

t: 01 676 7652 www.chaiyo.ie TOTALLY DUBLIN

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COLM MEANEY BIRRA CELTIC MYSTICISM words // CHARLENE LYDON

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One of Ireland’s national treasures, a man who has starred in the vast majority of high-class Irish films such as The Commitments, The Snapper and Intermission, along with a string of topnotch Hollywood fare including Con Air, Die Hard 2, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. The latest notch in his career’s bedpost is the upcoming Law Abiding Citizen. The film stars Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx alongside Colm and a wonderful ensemble cast. Colm spoke to us recently from L.A. about his career, his new film and his thoughts on Hollywood. What’s interesting about Law Abiding Citizen is its moral ambiguity. Is this an aspect of the film that interested you? We all feel that capital punishment is wrong, an eye for an eye and all that but you do sort of think what would you do if something dreadful happened to your family? I think that’s what we’re touching on here. It’s an interesting dilemma for me. I don’t think there’s any approval of what Gerard’s character does from the audience’s point of view. I mean, I can understand there’s a certain amount of rooting for him at the start but for me once he starts really slaughtering people you think wait a minute, wait a minute. So do you think the point is that we see that the legal system is actually responsible for this man having gone insane? You do reach a point quite quickly where you think he’s lost it. The legal system is trying to cope with a lot of stuff so it finds shortcuts and this was one of the people suffering as a result of these shortcuts. So yeah the legal system let him down but is that a condemnation of the legal system as a whole? I’m not sure. But it’s good that people talk about these questions. There’s a magnificent cast and crew on this project. Was this important to you when you decided to work on the film? I was delighted to see the people who were involved. The original script was fantastic and it kept changing as we were shooting. In the beginning it was more of a character movie and then it evolved into more of an action movie and there was more of the violence and the crazy stuff that he pulled off with the electronic wizardry and all that became more and more fantastical as we went on. It felt like an ensemble cast, did you feel like this when you were shooting? Yeah, yeah it did. And when I first read the script it felt like an ensemble piece. As we were shooting it kind of felt that way too but it slowly started shifting towards a kind of “mano y mano” story with the two boys, you know. There were things changed that emphasised that more. So it became a thing where it was the two boys and then the rest of us. Leslie Bibb is amazing, Bruce McGill I’ve been friends with for years, everywhere you looked there was a good actor playing someone. You’ve maintained an admirable balance between Hollywood and Irish film. Do

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you make a conscious effort to do this? Yeah I love to work in Ireland. I don’t think I’ve worked with enough Irish directors, I’ve worked with very few even though I’ve made a number of films in Ireland, they were directed by either English or European directors. I’m about to do a film in December in Dublin with an Irish director. That’s kind of nice. Obviously, Irish cinema is very important to me. I’d love to see more of the feeling I got doing the Barrystown trilogy for example. It was wonderful writing and we had a terrific cast and crew and just a wonderful feeling during that period and the industry was really moving forward. But I think it seems to have stalled a bit in the past few years. We haven’t had a second wave of great directors. We seem to have lost our way a little bit. But hopefully it’s just a temporary thing and we’ll find our way back. Do you try to keep an eye on things in the Irish film industry when you’re working abroad? Yeah I watch all the Irish films I can get hold of. I was on the jury for the IFTAs last year so I got to see a whole bunch of films there, some terrific, some not so good. I try to keep in touch. Do you think that being a genuine Irish actor in Hollywood has worked in your favour at all? Not really. There’s a danger of having that Irish tag on you. It’s certainly true in England, being an Irish actor you don’t get to play English parts. One of the reasons I was so glad to do The Damned United was because Don Revie is such an iconic English character and, y’know, Brendan Gleeson recently playing Churchill. It’s great to see that. It has worked against me in the past. To be always referred to as an “Irish actor” as opposed to an actor can be limiting.

You’ve been working since you were 14... did you ever anticipate this level of success when you started out? When I was growing up I trained in the Abbey Theatre. We had a school of acting in The Abbey in those days. We don’t anymore, which I think is a pity. My ambition was to be an actor, to work in theatre. I didn’t even think about film and television to be honest with you. It was to get to the point where you could earn a living as a theatre actor in Dublin. I noticed you starred as Gene Hunt in an unused pilot for the US version of Life on Mars? Would you care to comment on that project? Yes. That was the most bizarre thing we’ve ever gone through. We shot a pilot, David Kelley was the producer and writer and we had what we thought was a good show and then feuding broke out between David Kelley and NBC and the network decided to scrap the whole thing and move it from LA to New York. The show we made was set in LA and they decided to transpose it, make it set in New York, re-shooting the whole episode with different locations and all that and then they went with an all New York cast. I had no interest in relocating to New York anyway. It was the most bizarre process. They eventually got the show on the air which, having shot two pilots must have cost a lot of money and I think it lasted about six episodes. So you’re never pleased to see anything fail but I truly wasn’t losing any sleep over it because the way they had behaved and the way they had destroyed the first pilot we had shot was just despicable. It was like a playbook on how to make something fail. Law Abiding Citizen is in cinemas now. Those Ulster Bank ads are on your telly right now too.

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A Christmas Carol Director: Robert Zemeckis Talent: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Robin Wright Penn, Cary Elwes, Colin Firth Released: Out Now

The White Ribbon Director: Michael Haneke Talent: Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesch Released: Out now Michael Haneke, some critics would have us believe, is a hard-line, self-hating, bourgeois cine-fascist, forcing his self-flagellating, antagonistic, leftist, agit-prop films onto an unwitting public. Of course, they’re wrong, and probably too far gone down the Nespresso highway to spare a moment’s consideration for the implications of their own blithe, often destructive actions - commercial, spectatorial or interpersonal, as the case may be. The White Ribbon, for those willing amongst us, is a work of unmitigated genius. Haneke, as one of the world’s most unflinchingly moral of auteurs, casts his eye on a nameless north German town, pre-WWI, and burrows beneath its rather unremarkable semblance to explore a cycle of guilt, cruelty and violence which causes its society (microcosmic of, perhaps, pre-War Germany as a whole) to both function and, on a personal level, rupture. As a refinement of his distinctive style, and a more calculated approach to themes he has often dealt with, one might describe it as his masterpiece. By defying narrow allegory and refusing the “easy” answers often provided for filmgoers, Haneke forces us to engage, morally and critically, with the narrative. His careful manipulation of sound (a common feature in his films) is unsettling, and, at times, monstrous. There is no respite from the spectre of violence and anger, and the inevitability of some disastrous conclusion to the story (manifested historically in the approaching WWI) lingers in the back of one’s mind while watching, giving meaning to, and complicating, the film’s internal world. Haneke’s films have often dealt with the destructive, callous actions and attitudes of the bourgeoisie, alienating as many viewers as he has delighted. With the temporal alienation that comes with setting The White Ribbon at the beginning of the 20th century, he may have won transcendent appeal across the middle-classes (as evidenced by its awarding of the Palme d’Or at Cannes), though fortunately without compromising his unique, visceral style. Oisin Murphy

Disney’s sixth 3D release this year alone re-imagines Charles Dickens’ period tale and literature’s most notorious penny-pincher. The embittered old miser is certainly given a new lease of life here with a spiteful, icy glower to accompany his weathered features and seasonal loathing. Zemeckis’ version indulges heavily in the story’s gothic potential, sticking quite closely to Dickens’ original prose - perhaps unwisely so. The overall effect, steeped as it is in atmosphere, is more adult-orientated and decidedly lacking in child-friendly humour. It seems unlikely that the younger audience will not be fazed by the increasingly frightening ghostly apparitions that soon have Scrooge whole-heartedly embracing the Christmas spirit, especially in a 3-dimensional capacity. While imaginative sound-effects and an impressive original score, beautifully composed by Andrea Bocelli, infuse this classic but familiar story with enough charisma to justify yet another adaptation, it still struggles to strike the balance necessary to entertain two different age groups. - AR

Paranormal Activity Director: Oren Peli Talent: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs, Ashley Palmer Released: November 25 Composed entirely from documentary-style footage of a couple’s investigations into the strange occurrences that disturb their sleep, Paranormal Activity, currently the most lucrative independent horror film ever made, bears a striking resemblance to previous record-holder The Blair Witch Project. While certain elements do impress, such as the acting (apparently improvised by the cast with just a brief outline of the story for guidance) there are few other positives to be derived from directorial novice Peli’s first effort which is so deliberately prolonged in its build-up that the eventual pay-off, or lackthereof, inevitably disappoints. The ending, apparently one of several versions that exist, is so incredibly tame it seems a puzzling decision to have settled on this one. A testament to what can be achieved on a virtually non-existent budget without resorting to gore and clichéd shock-tactics it may be but Paranormal Activity otherwise fails to live up to the hype generated by its clever marketing.- AR

A Serious Man

Bunny and the Bull

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen Talent: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick Released: 20 November

Director: Paul King Talent: Edward Hogg, Simon Farnaby, Veronica Echegui Released: 27 November

Devoid of their usual wit and satire the Coen’s latest curiosity, a parable about an ordinary man’s spiritual crisis, is a serious one indeed. Familial dysfunction may be marked Wes Anderson territory but the brothers handle it here with their trademark odd, irreverent style to the point that the gradual dissolution of our protagonist Larry’s life is painful to watch. A professor of Physics awaiting the offer of tenure when his wife suggests they divorce, Larry consults three Rabbis each of whom offers more cryptic advice then the last. As a man who believes certainty exists only in the maths he teaches, Larry becomes increasingly frustrated by his community’s reliance on religion despite its inability to provide any insights into life’s mysteries. Existential angst is a topic oft explored by the Coens’ and while this may be their most mature depiction of a troubled soul it is certainly not their most sympathetic. - AR

Mighty Boosh director Paul King has conjured up another unconventional tale of ill-fitting friends with many of the familiar faces in British comedy and staple Boosh contributors along for the ride as extreme agoraphobic Stephen recalls the disastrous trip taken with sex-obsessed, selfish former-friend Bunny that has left him in his present state, despairing of the hand that life has dealt him. While Bunny’s quirky humour has its moments it is with its stunning visuals that the film makes an indelible impression. Grounded firmly in the surreal, Bunny was no doubt a dream project for the creative team behind it, who were evidently given unrestricted artistic freedom. Casting a wide net in terms of thematic scope Bunny does digress occasionally by refusing to narrow its focus in favour of comedy or tragedy; however King doesn’t forget to add depth to his story, effectively evoking Stephen’s grief, loneliness and insecurity as he confronts his many issues. - AR

Just don’t get into another one of your rants on the demise of the semi-colon; girls don’t like grammar talk, you know that - Bunny, Bunny and the Bull

For more album reviews, videos, mp3s, single reviews, live previews, interviews, music news and comprehensive gig listings throughout the month, visit our new website www.totallydublin.ie 58

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■ Hoodwinked Shebeen Chic

Olympia Theatre €29

Olympia Theatre €30, Sold Out

www.harborbarandgrill.com

9pm Weekly free event hosted by

■ Electric Six

97 Ranelagh Road, Ranelagh Village, Dublin 6 Tel: 01 4977821

www.gourmetburgercompany.ie

Box Office 01 679 3477 www.ifi.ie

December 3-13

f

l a v i t es

Situations Vacant

The Box

Directed By: Lisa Mulcahy Talent: Diarmuid Noyes, Sam Corry, Shaun Dunne Released: 4 December

Director: Richard Kelly Talent: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella Released: 4 December

Situations Vacant follows the exploits of Dave, Tom and Vinny as they struggle with love and careers in contemporary Dublin. Dave is a layabout who is desperate for a job but has delusions of grandeur standing in his way. Tom is an unhappily married man who is bullied by his boss and wife in equal measure. Vinny finds the only way to a good job is to lie, but this proves to be difficult to maintain. The film starts off as an inoffensive, if a little run-of-themill, comedy but as it progresses it becomes clear that it is little more than a very long student film. Set design and cinematography were careless, making the digital camerawork look all the more unappealing. The lead actors are all strong and it’s a shame that the film never gives their performances the integrity they deserve. - CL

Borrowing a promising premise from Richard Matheson’s short story Button Button, itself adapted into an early episode of The Twilight Zone, Donnie Darko creator Richard Kelly manages to establish an unsettling atmosphere (complete with an eerie original score by The Arcade Fire) befitting of both Matheson’s moral dilemma and the legendary series it aims to emulate. The titular box, presented to a young couple by a mysterious, disfigured caller, represents an age-old ethical conundrum. Unable to resist the urge to push the button within, which promises a permanent solution to their financial troubles at the expense of a stranger’s life, the inevitable consequences ensue. Despite reasonably credible performances from both leads in their respective roles and an intriguing scenario with more then enough material to inspire philosophic debate, Kelly squanders the story’s potential by descending into increasingly absurd sciencefiction territory, as a result of which all of The Box’s initial intrigue is lost. - AR

Cracks Director: Jordan Scott Talent: Eva Green, Juno Temple, Maria Valverde Released: 4 December Evidently following in the footsteps of her famous father, there is little fault to be found with Jordan Scott’s treatment of Shelia Kohler’s novel, set at an isolated all-girls boarding school fraught with the tension of teenage envy and awakening sexuality. The fact that these girls ‘can’t stay pure forever’ is a sentiment shared only by their glamorous teacher Miss G, who stresses the importance of desire in achieving their goals. The arrival of Spanish aristocrat Fiamma however threatens their strange relationship with the faculty member they idolize. Though the motivation behind her predatory behaviour is never fully explained Green’s performance perfectly captures the precarious mentality of her character, a fantasist who develops an unhealthy obsession with Fiamma. Her efforts combined with those of rising star Juno Temple ensure that Cracks is nothing short of enthralling as it makes its journey from a sinister Dead Poet’s Society to something resembling Lord of the Flies. - AR

Me and Orson Welles Directed: Richard Linklater Talent: Zac Efron, Christian McKay Released: 4 December Me and Orson Welles is one of the most odious, tepid and derivative affairs I have had the misfortune to be present in a cinema to witness. There is very little that can be said, critically speaking, about the film, other than that its passionate desire for inoffensiveness and familiarity strangle any enjoyment one might have from watching what is, all things considered, a very capable impersonation of Orson Welles by Christian McKay. The only possible reason I can imagine for someone actually liking this film is if they had never in their entire life seen a film before, so riddled with cinematic cowardice and cliché is the text. My sole piece of advice for anybody who wants film, as an art, to remain remotely progressive or challenging, even in its mainstream outings, is to avoid this abomination like the plague. Equally, anybody who watches it just because Zac Efron is in it (thinking that it’s okay to do so if they laughingly admit as much) should consider drowning themselves. -OM

CK - Caomhan Keane AR - Aoife O’Regan OMcS - Olivia McSweeney

New Moon Directed by: Chris Weitz Talent: Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson Released: Out now The fact is, it doesn’t matter what this review says, the Twilight Saga transcends good taste or even common sense and despite most film critics best efforts there’s nothing that can stop the force of nature that is New Moon. I could sit here and list cinematic clichés and discuss how incredibly dull this film is but it would do nothing to hamper the fact that it has broken all pre-sale records. For those of you unfamiliar with the first film, it follows mopey teenager Bella as she becomes embroiled in a romance with fellow mopey teenager, Edward, who looks like a corpse for a reason: he’s a vampire. But not only is this vampire surprisingly chaste for a vamp, he’s also a “vegetarian”. This immediately makes one ponder the question, “what is a vampire film if there’s no sex and blood?”. New Moon sees Edward and Bella torn apart for her own protection. She falls into a depressed slump for months and months and is slowly cheered up by shirtless Native American best friend Jacob who, it transpires, also happens to be a werewolf. What’s the antidote for losing a skinny pale vampire? Pick up with a brawny, tanned werewolf... of course! The theme of Romeo and Juliet was foreshadowed with about as much delicacy as Benny Hill, so the film culminates in a chain of events through which Edward believes Bella to be dead so he goes to the Volturi (vampire council) to ask them to grant him death. Bella finds out in the nick of time and must go to Italy to save him. But what will this mean for her relationship with Jacob? Well, you’ll just have to see it to find out. If you liked the first film and have any emotional attachment to Edward and Bella, you’ll most likely enjoy this, but if you prefer your vampires dripping with blood and women then New Moon will get more groans from you than swoons! Charlene Lydon

RK - Roisin Kiberd

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WLTM GSOH ...WTF? TOTALLYDUBLIN.IE WE WON’T SORT OUT YOUR LOVELIFE BUT WE WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED ON LISTINGS, CINEMA, GIGS, CLUBS, CULTURE, COMEDY, EVENTS, FESTIVALS, MUSIC, AND FASHION. WE LOVE YOU.

BLAME SANTA FOR END-OF-YEAR LISTS. EACH DECEMBER BLOOD BOILS OVER COURTESY OF GOOD BOY AND BAD BOY LISTS. WE LIKE PISSING PEOPLE OFF, USUALLY, BUT BECAUSE WE’RE FEELING FESTIVE WE DECIDED TO AVOID CONTENTION AND PICK THE YEAR’S MOST SIGNIFICANT RELEASES AND REFLECT ON THEM WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS.

FEVER RAY

DIRTY PROJECTORS

Fever Ray was my favourite new album - and band - this year. The songs hang in the air, yearning lyrics and all. There’s still that glowering, haunted backdrop that illuminates all of her music with shimmering darkness. Much has been said about Fever Ray’s live show. The aesthetic of the performance is demanded by the music; it’s all about the glow at the edge of a curtain, or a coruscating recollection in the dark. What I find most exciting about it is that it’s a stepping stone between The Knife, the opera, and Karin and Olof’s next project, which will inevitably be superb. Silent Shout, a solid-gold masterpiece, was menacing and euphoric – Fever Ray is both sophisticated and pitch-black. There’s a space and unhurried pace to this record borne of total conviction and clarity of vision. What’s unusual about it is its obliqueness; even though the vocals are laid bare, the lyrics are as ambiguous as ever. I understood Silent Shout to be a concept album about an abusive relationship. Maybe this one is a reflection on motherhood. Regardless, it’s magnificent. I regard Karin Dreijer-Andersson as – dare I say it? – a genius. There’s nobody like her and there was nothing like this released this year. As for where she goes next, another Knife album would be very nice indeed. Hunter-Gatherer

I remember the first and only time I saw Dirty Projectors. It was in the spring of 2007 in New York at my university, a place I generally avoided with the exception of the shows put on by the program board. I knew of Dirty Projectors (who, on that evening, were there to support Battles). I wasn’t really there to see either band, in fact I’m not sure why I was there at all, but I distinctly remember being blown away by everything Dirty Projectors did that night. It was before either of their breakout albums had been released, before any of us had any idea what they were capable of, before I knew just how much I was going to fall in love with Bitte Orca years later. Bitte Orca manages to accomplish the nearly impossible - superhuman musical ability without arrogance or showing-off. The record has a certain force to it, something that manages to ease people in to unusual time signatures and unthinkable vocal acrobatics without sounding intimidating. It’s rhythmically comfortable, yet surprising, with a sense of melody so perfect it’s bewildering as to how the hooks sound so completely unheard of before (with the exception of Angel Deradoorian’s beautiful and momentary foray into Nico’s These Days in Two Doves). The passion in Dave Longstreth’s vocal delivery stands on the edge of totally losing control, a tension that drives the record forward with its ability to become completely satisfying when resolved. There ought to be more records like Bitte Orca, but I doubt anyone else could make something as cohesive and unique. Pete Silberman (The Antlers)

Fever Ray

Bitte Orca

singles of 2009 JOY ORBISON - Hyph Mngo: Doo! Waadoo! A retrograde answer to what will fill the post-Justice electro void, Joy Orb’s garage banger is straight-up enough to never get old, but never seem young. GRIZZLY BEAR - Two Weeks: Ohhh Ohh Ohhhh! We were a teeny bit underwhelmed by Veckatimest, but Two Weeks is their best

since Knife. Plus, old people like it.

HEALTH - Die Slow: Din Din Din Din Din Din Din Din Din Din Din Din. Probably the best overdriven single since You Made Me Realise, but with better dance moves.

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THE ANTLERS

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Merriweather Post Pavillion

The Fame/The Fame Monster

Before I heard the ‘back story’ to this album I was already leaning closer to the speakers of my stereo. It was the song Kettering that I first heard and then I saw a beautiful video made entirely with still photography of people in various states of pensive reflection. I wanted to learn more about where this album came from, about this mysterious band. There is something life-affirming about imagining someone quietly and discreetly shutting themselves off from the world through their own volition to create something so complete as this. There’s an atmosphere to Hospice from the word go. It sweeps along with mechanical whirrs and clicks, hums and sweeps, building up to temple-trembling crescendos, distant voices clambering skyward. It’s hard not to connect some of the sounds with hospital machinery and long reverberant corridors. Especially when the imagery is spelt out so explicitly in the album artwork. Then you learn that the songwriter Peter Silberman was inspired by an infirm child with not long to live. Silberman’s falsetto and wavering delivery is perfect, the hazy but powerful vocals flickering through with some truly harrowing lyrics. What I love about this album is the balance of ambience, words, melodies and perfectly placed moments - like for instance midway through the album when we hear the ethereal voice of Sharon Van Etten, appearing just for a moment like a morphine angel, before disappearing again. I can’t help thinking about For Emma Forever Ago by Bon Iver and how the story behind the record and the record itself were mutually instrumental in so many people making the discovery for themselves. Certain albums come along at the right time as if there is a place created for them in the world by virtue of the existence of a legion of opposites. Adrian Crowley

The internet hype machine has grown from tipster’s tool into the music biz’s modus operandi this decade – and its effects have permeated into not just the career spans of its lauded acts, but also the music they produce. The ever-growing disposability of music can barely be debated anymore – indeed why would any self-respecting homespun musician spend more time expanding their art beyond idea-sketches than you’ll spend exploring them? From the dominance of minimal techno to the indefatigable currency of lo-fi garage pop (that Wavves somehow usurp the Datsuns for brainlessness underlines the devolvement of the demands we make of our musicians) the death of the record labels’ R&D departments makes ultimate sense – development is no longer a primary concern. For all the forward-thinking elements of Animal Collective’s final (and finest) album of the noughties, Merriweather Post Pavillion is at its core their most traditionalist. Its roots from their previous work are clearly-drawn in the family tree – and the album feels like a genetic culmination of all their most favourable family traits. For the band’s trajectory from alienating noise rock, through freak folk, electropop, and tribalist jams to end up with a summation of their admirable body of research so bewitching and majestic stands as an antithesis to the decade’s smash-and-grab tendancy – yet the product itself reaps the benefits of those same volatile trends it rails against. Animal Collective are entirely trendsetting. Each successive album acts like a Twitter trending topics column which followers can offer their own echoes of. As it stands, Merriweather may be the most influential album released this year – as Is This It? lay down the common law for the 00’s, so MPP will probably act as a decree for the ‘10s batch of new bands. Let’s not forget the practical beneath all this theory – MPP’s songs are as charming and doe-eyed as a litter of newborn Labradors, with a canine loyalty to pop and rock essentials. That a wish list so oblique as Panda Bear’s four walls and adobe slabs can so easily be transcribed onto the tongues of thousands is testament to the basic craft of My Girls. Bluish, Summertime Clothes and Guys Eyes are intensely personal moments – their warm, experiential familiarity is communal. If Merriweather’s popularity is to indicate a wind change for this generation’s flight path, then the vane points towards a newfound sentimentality and spirituality – how can something so fucking square be this year’s zenith of hipness? Daniel Gray

She was proclaiming herself a star long before she actually was one of course, but whether it was clairvoyantism or sheer bloody-mindedness, Lady Gaga rose to become – by a mile - 2009’s biggest popstar. In a year when girls with synths set the agenda, Lady Gaga was the spectacular focal point. The Fame was just a part of the Lady Gaga machine; she’s not a particularly great vocalist but she’s a class-A pop star. Apart from the music itself (because pop isn’t “just about the music, maaaan!”), there was the startling, eye-catching performance at the MTV video awards, and the matter of her always being ready with a priceless quote, putting the effort into videos, dressing brilliantly, doing the Brits with the Pet Shop Boys, being the new Madonna, Britney and Kylie all rolled into one, collaborating with RedOne and Akon and Beyonce… I’m exhausted just typing that, it takes some stamina to actually do it. The Fame itself was cracking and boasted some of the year’s best singles, the pick of them being Poker Face – the greatest single of 2009: an utterly ridiculous, but witty and clever record (the phrase “bluffin’ with my muffin” was one of the year’s most subtly funny and memorable lyrics). Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say), a near perfect pop song, softer than Paparazzi and Lovegame, was released as a single in some territories. Indeed, seven or eight singles could have been taken from The Fame but instead towards the end of the year the album was reissued as The Fame Monster, an amazing two disc expanded edition which far exceeds the expectations one might reasonably have of such a cash-in excercise. The Fame Monster exudes confidence, is the mark of a pop act of rare imagination and bursting with enough creativity to match the ambition. It also provides ample evidence that Lady Gaga has got what it takes to stick around. Pop music doesn’t get much better than this. Ciarán Gaynor

Hospice

LADY GAGA

CALVIN HARRIS/DIZZEE RASCAL – Dance Wiv Me: Hold yer jar. Catchy in the way that only a man with a pineapple on his

head can be catchy, the year’s brainless triumph.

MINI VIVA – Left My Heart In Tokyo: Seventeen and dumb. Xenomania must sleepwrite this shit. While Cheryl Cole’s off fighting for love, Mini Viva have gone and nicked Girls Aloud’s best single yet. FOUR TET/BURIAL - Moth: Dum dah dum dah dum dah dum dum dum dum... dah dah dah. Darker and deeper than a coalmine, the depressed dancer’s choice of the year.

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