Monthly Archives: September 2010

Competition Closed: Nostalgia Week Day 1: Eilish’s Memories

  By Éilish Burke | September 27, 2010 - 12:22 pm | Nostalgia Week, The Culch
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In the first of our Nostalgia Week posts, here’s are some childhood memories extracted from the spluttering neurons shooting blanks in Eilish’s mind. - Sinead TELLY Pajo’s Junkbox It’s Saturday morning and you’re jacked up on Cornflakes with 15 spoons of Siucra. There’s a punk, anarchist rat with a pink mohawk presenting a childrens’ TV show on RTE 2. Alongside him is yer wan who played the nun in the ‘Lent’ edition of Fr. Ted (most recently seen as a cleaning lady in a Meteor ad. One time I saw this woman having coffee in Avoca and was almost starstruck). Pajo was bad-ass. He wore a leather jacket and (if I’m not making this up) may even have had a piercing or two. I can’t confirm this because THERE ARE NO PHOTOS OF HIM ANYWHERE ON THE INTERWEBS. Anyway, he was amazing and a reminder of the time RTE may … There’s more →

Nostalgia Week

  By Sinead Keogh | September 27, 2010 - 12:21 pm | Featured Post, Nostalgia Week, The Culch
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Happy Nostalgia Week! Is that a real thing? Well, if Guinness can have Arthur’s Day, Culch can have Nostalgia Week and while you probably can’t get off work for it, for the next five days we invite you to be retro with us. What does that involve exactly? Well, a certain announcement about 10 days ago made some of us (me) feel shockingly old. The Den…Dempsey’s Den, D’Arcy’s Den, Den TV or whatever it was to you…is no more. After 25 years it’s gone, cancelled, out with the old. If you remember The Den you are officially the holder of a memory of a thing past that will never be discovered by a new generation of kids…which is really very sad if you actually can’t remember a world before The Den. How’s that worth celebrating and being retro? Well here’s the thing. I was an 80s and 90s child and … There’s more →

Culchie Calling Cards - Gigs - September 27 - October 3 2010

  By Will | September 27, 2010 - 12:01 am | Gigs, Music, The Culch
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GIGS Guillemots Frontman Fyfe Dangerfield sounds like he escaped form a 1940′s adventure series rvaling Biggles but he performs. After his band’s “Red” album he started working on his solo debut release called Fly Yellow Moon. He is a fast worker and recorded the ten tracks in five days in the Urchin Studios, London. Anyway, with the album recorded, the promotion tour starts and he plays the Speakeasy, Belfast in Saturday October 2nd and The Academy, Dublin on Sunday 3rd. In support of their False Priest album of Montreal are playing Tripod, Dublin on Sunday October 3rd. Of Montreal is an odd bird of a group, with their frontman Kevin Barnes showing up on the children’s show Yo Gabba Gabba, in collaborations with Spike Jonze, on stage spanking pigs with Susan Sarandon, and even spontaneously performing six songs nude during a concert in Las Vegas. No guarantee of spankings or … There’s more →

Friday Morning Music with Joe Echo

  By Darren Byrne | September 24, 2010 - 9:16 am | Movies & TV, Music, The Culch
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Check out this new video for Joe Echo’s Sink Your Teeth In. It’s a great track to begin your day. At the very least the video, directed by Declan Keeney, will get you in the mood for Halloween. OK, maybe it’s a bit early for ghosts and ghouls, but watch this anyway. I particularly love it when the dancers come in. Have a gander at JoeEcho.com for more on the artist. He has written, recorded and co-produced all of the original songs for Killing Bono, a new movie based on Neil McCormick’s memoirs of his years at school with Bono and U2 and his rather less successful rival band as they went through the 1970’s. Described as an “Irish music-based comedy”, it’s written by Ian Le Frenais and Dick Clement the screenwriters of “The Commitments” and “Almost Famous” and stars Ben Barnes and Robert Sheehan. It will be released early next … There’s more →

Competition: Ross Noble, Rich Hall and Kevin Bridges at the Olympia

  By Sinead Keogh | September 23, 2010 - 5:43 pm | Comedy, Competitions, Events, wantsies
35 Comments

The comedy line-up around these parts has been somewhat stellar this year. Dara O’Briain’s had an epically long Vicar Street run, Eddie Izzard played a blinder in the O2 not 12 months ago, Flight of the Conchords sold out two nights at the Olympia and could have sold out a good many more and along with all of that the usual calendar staples of the Kilkenny Cat Laughs and the Comedy Carnival in the Iveagh Gardens had impressive line-ups to boot. The good news is, the comedy season isn’t over and the even better news is that Culch.ie, with thanks to our simply awesome friends at MCD, would like to send you along to not one and not two but three comedy shows at Dublin’s Olympia this October and November. To kick off the 3-night stand, we’ll send you to see Kevin Bridges on Saturday October 2nd. Kevin’s been knocking … There’s more →

Arthur’s Day Interview: The Script

  By seanear1ey | September 23, 2010 - 5:10 pm | The Culch
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Local lads The Script return to Dublin to play Arthur’s Day 2010. The lads were very excited to be here and Culch.ie got a chance to sit down with them and talk Guinness, touring and what it is to be Irish. Here’s how things went with Danny, Glen and Mark. So you’re playing Arthur’s day 2010 at Vicar St tonight, what does that mean to you? It’s our first time. We’re excited and nervous. It means a lot to us to be invited we’ve been a fan of it [Guinness] for a number of years. It really means a lot to us, we’ve been wondering when they were going to ask us and I think finally we built up enough points to get asked to do it. We’re delighted. I was wondering when they were gonna ask, throughout our career all we’ve ever done is talk about Guinness. Around the … There’s more →

Absolut Fringe Review: Lipstick Service

  By Sinead Keogh | September 23, 2010 - 12:00 pm | Events, Performance Art, The Arts, Theatre
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When the press release for Lipstick Service arrived it sounded like something a little bit different. “Prison is the setting for LIPSTICK SERVICE, a cutting edge production from La-Di-Da, which premieres in this year’s Absolut Fringe. The play centres on the experiences of three female prisoners, Natasha, Chrisso and Faith, and their ability to cope with life behind bars. In an engaging and gripping presentation, these women reveal the raw truth and harsh reality of living within a prison community.” Then again, press releases have a habit of using adjectives like ‘engaging’ and ‘gripping’ and ‘raw’ with wild abandon so we weren’t particularly worried about picking two seats in the front row until the lights came up on the opening scene of a girl being forced to go down on a prison officer. It’s intensely difficult to look away from something on stage the way you can on TV. There’s … There’s more →

Review: Made In Dagenham

  By Kitty Catastrophe | September 23, 2010 - 10:19 am | The Culch
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Made In Dagenham tells the rousing real-life tale of the female machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant who went on strike in 1968, paving the way towards the Equal Pay Act of 1970. It centres around Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins), the initially unwilling heroine who leads her fellow female workers all the way from the picket line to a meeting with the ferocious and downright fantastic secretary of state, Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson). When the machinists are classed as unskilled and as such paid considerably less than their male counterparts, it sparks a walk-out that brings the entire factory to a grinding halt. Tensions rise between the chauvinistic management and their outraged employees, while the press are fascinated by these no nonsense factory girls in their fight for equality.

Review: The Hole 3D

  By FoxeinSocks | September 23, 2010 - 10:15 am | The Culch
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The Hole 3D 15A out now! With, Haley Bennett, Chris Massoglia, Nathan Gamble and Bruce Dern (just about). Who? You say. It doesn’t matter. Director Joe Dante has been quietly beavering away since Piranha in 1978 with The Howling, Explorers, Innerspace among others and various episodes of popular series’ like Masters of Horror and CSI: NY to his credit, he’s even appeared with bit parts in most of these. But he’s probably best known for the zany comic horror Gremlins which prompted reform in the Motion picture association of America’s rating system due to some of it’s more violent sequences. The Hole 3D is a return to a more basic story, a young family fleeing their abusive father, settle in a small town to live happily ever after, alas it’s not to be as they have the misfortune to rent the only house in the village with a gateway to … There’s more →

Review - Johnny Flynn at Cyprus Avenue

  By Lisa McInerney | September 23, 2010 - 9:30 am | Gigs, Music
2 Comments

There was a moment at Johnny Flynn’s Cork show, just as the second support act was starting up, where gig companion and rock-brat-in-the-making, Agbonlahor’s Muireann, pulled from her bag … a punnet of strawberries. “Want one?” she asked, spinning 360, punnet held aloft. “Don’t mind if we do” said plenty. This is the kind of crowd you can expect at a Johnny Flynn gig: kooky sugar junkies in scruffy-chic. “Jesus,” said one of the lads*. “It’s like the cast of Skins in here.” Well yes. Johnny Flynn is a bit of a hero to stylish flakes, a nu-folk fella with a delicious wordiness and melodic flair that coaxes deep-thinkers into dreams of drunken singalongs; imagine Yeats standing tall in the snug and belting out rebel songs. Mr. Flynn’s music is an intoxicating mix of lament, quip, and foot-stomping tuneage, which is why the ultra-discerning me was hugging the stage at … There’s more →

Seán’s Movie Music Magorium: Alien3

  By Seanplaywrite | September 23, 2010 - 9:30 am | Movies & TV, Music, Soundtracks, The Culch
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This is the first of Seán Ferrick’s look at music scores from film and TV. In this series, Seán is going to look at his favourite soundtracks and scores from a range of different movie genres and television shows. Please make him feel welcome to the Culch.ie fold. - Darren Elliot Goldenthal’s score for Alien3 exists among controversy. The film itself suffered behind the scenes from day one and therefore the fact that a score so haunting, so powerful and so evocative belongs to a movie that really should never have been made is nothing short of amazing. Let me begin by saying – Alien3 is a great film. I use this term because it seemed to be a case that, where anything could go wrong, it did on this film. Featuring three directors, several heavily controlled script re-writes and a cast that all but deny the film’s existence, this … There’s more →

Athur’s Day – Choosing the Our Thursdays winner

  By Anto | September 22, 2010 - 2:06 pm | Gigs, Music, The Culch
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It’s undoubtedly been the biggest band competition in the country this year. 800 bands from around the country played over Thursdays throughout the summer in an effort to play alongside the biggest acts on Arthur’s Day 2010. It was with that in mind, that I travelled to Belfast to cover the final evening with 4 bands battling it out: Maud in Cahoots, Reko, Empire Saints and Dave Peyton. It’s hard to fault any band which has come this far in the competition and they all rocked Lavery’s with sizable support for all of the acts. The judging panel on the night included: Jonny Quinn and Tom Simpson from Snow Patrol, Matt Cooke from MTV as well as Niall Stokes from Hot Press. Maud in Cahoots emerged as deserving overall winners earning them a place in the St James’s Gate Brewery lineup. Maud Reardon from Maud In Cahoots, was delighted with … There’s more →

And Then There Was … Hoarsebox.

  By Lisa McInerney | September 22, 2010 - 12:00 pm | Gigs, Music
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… aaaaand we’re over the hump of the week. Happy Wednesday afternoon, everyone! How about something funky and uplifting and catchy and fun? How about something you can shake your arse and vocal chords to? How about something from Dublin? What? No, that’s not a typo. Oh ye of little faith … This is the sublimely gnarly Hoarsebox with something box-fresh for yis. This is Add It Up; it’s one of the new tracks from the lads’ debut album, which will be a ray of sunshine in the January 2011 gloom. No jobs, no leadership, no prospects … but a full Hoarsebox album! Huzzah! Pints! Hoarsebox have been working on the album with noses to the grindstone in Mississippi, of all places, so Add It Up is pretty redolent of deep-south gospel, if it were conceived by Willie Wonka during a skinny-dip in his chocolate lake. Love it? Yes I do! How … There’s more →

Ad Nauseam: Mad for Mad Men

  By Éilish Burke | September 22, 2010 - 9:30 am | Adverts, Movies & TV, The Culch
8 Comments

Mad Men is one of those TV shows that are adored by critics but generally ignored by the masses. Kinda like The Wire or Freaks and Geeks. People who love these kind of series will generally bend your ear endlessly about how amazing they are and how watching them will literally change your life (I’ve seen David O’Doherty add this to his Beef 2010 song once to great effect). I know, because I am one of those annoying people. I love, love, love Mad Men and have been watching it since it started about 3 years ago, when it was scheduled at some godawful hour on a Sunday night on BBC3. I did wonder if that was why the show has never garnered a mainstream audience, because it has always been banished to the farthest fringes of late prime time. But then I asked someone who works in TV about … There’s more →