A weekly miscellany
Davin O'Dwyer in Tuesday's Irish Times
Cream’s temporary shift from its usual home in the RDS to Duff Tisdall’s Malthouse at Distillery Court, Dublin, made us feel like we were arriving at a Berlin art show. Our favourites from the beautiful work made by Irish hands? Sasha Syke’s rosebud lamp, the Dunleavy bespoke cherrywood coat stand and Garvan De Bruir’s Parachuter 1 luggage (right).
Super villains battle it out in the animated Despicable Me. It isn’t aimed at adults but has them laughing the loudest anyway.
The classic movie fairy tale The Princess Bride. It just gets better with every generation. Warning: will lead your children to sword-fight their way down the stairs.
The All Ireland Poetry Slam. Eight poets from across the country gathered in the International Bar in Dublin last weekend to perform their work, and in the process confirmed spoken-word poetry is thriving in this country. Highlights included Tipperarys Fergus Costelloe, who delivered some hilarious comedy monologues, and seeing Derry’s Abby Oliveira still the audience with her passionate poetry. But the crown went to Dubliner Colm Keegan, whose heartfelt, beautifully crafted work is impressive on the page but stunning in performance.
The new album, I'm Having Fun Now, by real-life loving couple Jenny (Lewis) Johnny (Rice) – west-coast vibes well and truly alive.
Rip It Upby Orange Juice, because Domino is about to release Coals to Newcastle,a definitive seven-CD box-set history of the seminal Scottish band. It's on a few Christmas lists.
Buying McSweeney’s iPhone app for €4.99. Will be it as innovative but inconsistent as the print edition?
“The Temper Trap’s sound recalls U2 in their pomp, or the heartfelt epics of Coldplay. More performances of this standard and you can be sure they will be following those bands into arenas and stadiums
Praise be: Paul Auster has (mostly) ditched writing about wounded old men to focus on a bunch of Bush-era Brooklyn squatters in Sunset Park – and it’s a return to form.
Atlantic by Simon Winchester is a colourful history of the ocean and mankind’s relationship with it. It’s particularly good on Ireland’s ocean-faring pioneers.
The newly restored edition of the fascinating 1973 documentary series The World at War. You're constantly taken aback by contemporaneous interviews with historical figures from, you half-imagine, earlier centuries: Admiral Karl Dönitz, JB Priestley, Albert Speer.
The propensity of its narrator, Laurence Olivier, for doing accents is a bit wearing, but this will always be the definitive TV history of the second World War.
The Event(RTÉ2, Fridays) is a hotchpotch of Lost, Flash Forward, Fringe, X-Filesand a million B-movies. It had better improve soon.
