One of the few people who might be happier at the end of the year than the beginning is Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf who was the Iraqi regime’s spin-doctor and publicist during the war.
Most of us have, at certain times, been guilty of doing The Saw Doctors a great disservice, airbrushing them out of the Irish musical family portrait. In the meantime they’ve continued to sell more records and play to bigger audiences around the world than most of their cooler countemporaries.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hanrahan is prepared to go beyond the limits of cosy love songs to confront other issues, including the environment, loneliness and abuse.
A tetchy-as-ever John Lydon deigns to speak to us mere mortals on the occasion of the announcement of a London live date in June - wherein The Sex Pistols will be reminding people, he says, "what being British is really about"
Evidently not scripted with Oscar glory in mind, Full Throttle is a frivolous, harmless and profoundly lightweight piece of work chiefly recommended to horny 15-year-old boys
The three leading ladies, display acceptable comic timing and gymnastic prowess, and while the film is undeniably dumb and nonsensical, it clearly has no pretensions otherwise.
If narrative sophistication and decent dialogue were prerequisites for a good movie, Twin Dragons wouldn't have a hope in hell of passing the test - its simplistic action scenarios are so straightforward they could have been lifted from a Captain Marvel comic, and the dialogue is diligently studious in its avoidance of anything even faintly intellectually taxing (sample line: "Run! Get him").
From Nikki Blonsky’s bravura opening number, the delightfully subversive ‘Good Morning, Baltimore’, Adam Shankman’s musical extravaganza simply never lets up.
A home-grown, low-budget offering about a Dublin-based dope-dealer and his struggles against the forces of law and order, Flick is by no means as bad as the recent glut of gangster Britflicks - but for a movie with such a promising and praiseworthy agenda, it suffers from a curious lack of heart and charm.
This is not “the Indiana movie that you were dreading.” Though it’s not nearly as good as the trilogy that went before, Crystal Skull is, undeniably, quite good fun.
Having previously worked with directors of the stature of Danny Boyle and Anthony Minghella, and with a role as the main villain in the next Batman movie in the offing, Cillian Murphy is one of the hottest young actors around. Joe Jackson caught up with murphy to discuss his central role in Garry Hynes’ version of Synge’s famous play, the Playboy of the Western World.
In the past five years, Garageland has helped numerous unheard bands and artists find a more permanent spot in the music biz. With a series of upcoming shows that will spotlight the most successful of the bunch, Marissa Connelly speaks to some of the highlight acts about life after their Garage Gig debuts.
See him after midnight in the trailer-park: beside his fire with its strange aromas, the withered man with the parched voice and the piercing eyes with even stranger talismans on his jacket.
While An Taoiseach insists that being presented with thousands of pounds in a suitcase by shady businessmen is completely ‘normal’, the rest of us have our doubts.
The word ‘luck’ turns up in the Snow Patrol story with set-your-watch regularity, and it’s commonly accepted that the period when the band cashed in theirs was around the release of their biggest selling single. I’m not sure I agree. The care and detail lavished on Eyes Open seems symptomatic of people who, finally rewarded with a budget to match their ambition, are determined to enjoy this opportunity for all it’s worth.
Notorious criminal lawyer GIOVANNI DI STEFANO – whose high-profile clients include John Gilligan – wants the law changed so that male prisoners receive the same early release privileges as their female equivalent. And he’s planning to take his case all the way to Europe if necessary
The big time looms for Ed Zealous, but they're not fazed by the prospect of playing one of the world's most prestigious rock festivals. In fact, they can't wait to crash the mainstream.
"I've made another great movie, and the critics have already said it's a great summer hit," Arnold Schwarzenegger declared at Cannes recently, promoting his latest bid for world domination, "The Last Action Hero".
TRUE ROMANCE (Directed by Tony Scott. Starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken)
A water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union might seem an unlikely springboard for a moving meditation on freedom and oppression, but Children Of Glory director Krisztina Goda has pulled it off.
Compositional genius, musical visionary, tormented genius – Brian Wilson is many things, but a garrulous interviewee is not one of them. Peter Murphy undergoes strenuous discourse with one of the true icons of ‘60s culture.
With the last broadcast up for a Mercury and Slane just around the corner, Jimi Goodwin of Doves is happy to enthuse about Planxty, U2, The Streets and Sean O'Hagan. Just don't call his band "the new Radiohead"
You may think of her as a much-loved veteran of sit-com television, but with a role in Roman Polanski’s powerful new holocaust movie to her credit, Maureen Lipman offers passionate and often controversial views on history, the hounding of Matthew Kelly and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There is no doubting that politics is a dirty game. Everywhere. People here may sniff their superiority over the sleazebags in England and America, and how we don’t dump on a cabinet minister for bonking five secretaries and getting caught. But in truth it’s just as dirty on this island as anywhere else.
In a year that saw events which will forever change the world in which we live, selected hotpress contributors offer some personal recollections of the past twelve months. We begin by listing the critics’ choice of 2001’s single and album releases
When Ryan Adams gave his record company an album called 'Love Is Hell', they declined to release this “fucking dark, twisted sad and morose” record. so Adams decided instead to record a loud, punky, uptempo album called 'Rock N Roll'. and guess what? now we get to hear both.
Music journalist-turned-publicist KEITH ALTHAM has spent more than 35 years behind the scenes with the likes of The Who, Rolling Stones, Small Faces and Van Morrison. His new book reveals (almost) all. Interview: GEORGE BYRNE.
The master of the historical psychological thriller,
CALEB CARR's own life has not been short of drama.
Here, he talks to OLAF TYARANSEN about growing up with the Beats and the shock of discovering that his father was a convicted murderer. Pics: Mick Quinn
The master of the historical psychological thriller,
CALEB CARR's own life has not been short of drama.
Here, he talks to OLAF TYARANSEN about growing up with the Beats and the shock of discovering that his father was a convicted murderer. Pics: Mick Quinn
The master of the historical psychological thriller,
CALEB CARR's own life has not been short of drama.
Here, he talks to OLAF TYARANSEN about growing up with the Beats and the shock of discovering that his father was a convicted murderer. Pics: Mick Quinn
He may have two Oscars, two Golden Globes and a string of hit movies to his name, but Denzel Washington remains as down to earth as it’s possible for a member of Hollywood royalty to be.
They may be named after the cute and cuddly creature from Gremlins, but the noisefest Mogwai inflict on the eardrums is more like the after effects of nuclear fallout. John Walshe met them.
It was a Jubilee ago that The Sex Pistols exploded onto the world stage and changed music forever. Except little has changed, according to John Lydon and that's why he's back
Can you see the Forrest for the Gump? Can you explain the cultural phenomenon of Steven Seagal in English plain enough for Seagal himself to understand? Did you recognise any of the actors hiding beneath moustaches in Wyatt Earp, Tombstone and Gettysburg? Are you ready for the fourth annual X-mas rated Blow Up Movie Quiz?
Oh, well, give it a go anyway. Now we separate the movie buffs from the people who have got something more interesting to do than spend all day hanging around cinemas and reading Hot Press. Answers can be found on page 99 but anyone caught peeking will have to live with the knowledge that they are a dirty, rotten, good for nothing, low down cheat. Good luck. And remember, this quiz is just like a box of chocolates . . . you’ll feel sick when you’ve finished.
Computer games have been one of the remarkable growth areas of recent years in home entertainment. Colm O'Hare looks at developments in this intensely competitive field and predicts that – with so much mazooma at stake – it could become a veritable battle zone over the coming twelve months.
In the first of a new Hot Press series, in which we ll be asking well-known Irish people to step onto a national podium, author and
publisher dermot bolger delivers his state of the nation address.
JAMES HANRATTY, the son of Irish parents, was hanged for a notorious murder in England in 1961. Following the recent release of the Bridgewater Three, another miscarriage of justice now looks set to be overturned, posthumously clearing the name of a 25-year-old who was wrongfully sent to the gallows. Report: RICHARD BALLS.
MARILYN MANSON may be the epitome of Middle America's worst nightmare but, as STUART CLARK discovers, he's not that bad, really. On the agenda: Bono, Eminem, Moby, George W. Bush and the Columbine shootings
You know you re doing something right if your book disturbs both Cat Stevens and Snoop Doggy Dogg. But Sligo-born eamonn sweeney s debut novel, Waiting For The Healer, with its explosive mix of booze, blood, manic comedy and rock n roll, is also winning rave reviews for its uncompromisingly forthright author. Interview: liam fay.
It's been ten years that's shaken a fair bit of the world and now, suddenly, OASIS are back. what better time for a reflective, confessional, candid and scandalous one-on-one with a man who always gives great quote, NOEL GALLAGHER. Interview: STUART CLARK
pat mcCABE is on a roll. Neil Jordan s film adaptation of his acclaimed novel The Butcher Boy has been rapturously received. His latest meisterwerk Breakfast On Pluto about a border county transvestite is about to be published. He s going on the road with Jack L. And what s more he was recently named Monaghan Man of the Year! Interview: liam fay.
Pics: Mick Quinn
Why ARE Veggies on a demographic roll? Who says THAT by the middle of the next century we could all be Veggie? Who are the radical outer fringes of the Paramilitary Provisional Wing of the Vegetarian Society? And what is the hideous secret behind . . . Jelly Babies ???
Andrew Darlington, who gave up eating meat five years ago, HAS THE ANSWERs.
For close to twenty years, MARTIN CAHILL led the forces of law and order a merry dance. Known as the General, he was suspected of masterminding virtually every major crime committed in Ireland – but for as long as matters, the Gardai had been unable to pin anything on him. And when he was brought to court on petty charges, he posed outside for press photographers, dropping his trousers to reveal a pair of Mickey Mouse boxer shorts. Last week, however, the game was cut brutally short when Cahill was blown away within 100 yards of his South Dublin home by an IRA hit squad. Report: NEIL McCORMICK.
An ex-con, a foe of The Krays and a man capable of such acts of violence that he once sliced off a prison guard s ear, Mad Frankie Fraser now makes quite a nice living for himself spinning yarns about his gangster years. Stuart Clark interrogates him about prison, drugs, the IRA, Arsenal and a novel theory on Veronica Guerin s murder which, Fraser insists, the Irish media haven t had the bottle to print. Mugshots: Cathal Dawson
Journalist, essayist, atheist, author and, above all, agent provocateur, Christopher Hitchens has not shied away from controversy over the last 30 years. But in his new book, the writer takes on his biggest adversary to date – God.
