Coffee-Table Notes

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh  Three stars An actor’s life can go in many ways. Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer’s co-written vehicle for themselves makes this abundantly clear in their portrayal of a couple of old luvs who left Rada at the same time and end up reluctantly reunited in Iceland on the set of the latest instalment of the hokey sci-fi franchise that gives the play its title. The difference is that where Planer’s Hugh Delavois is a cast regular and impeccably bland example of a very English form of thespian, Edmondson’s Gary Savage is a hard-drinking loose cannon who once flew high with the Hollywood bad boys. Now, alas, Savage has crashed back down to earth with a bump and a one-line bit-part as an unlikely alien monster with an outfit that makes 1970s Dr Who appear sophisticated. Out of this comes a bittersweet comedy of late-life ennui among the creative classes seen through a trailer darkly even as things take a real-life seismic turn that puts both men on t

When a TV ad for Honda’s luxury Acura range of vehicles was somewhat incongruously sound-tracked by Where Were You?, a first-generation post-punk single by The Mekons released on Edinburgh’s Fast Product label almost forty years ago, old lags might have cried sell-out. For Jon Langford, Tom Greenhalgh and the rest of the original Mekons line-up, however, it prompted a regrouping which has seen the Leeds University sired band record an album of brand new material. Their ongoing reunion also sees them play three dates in Scotland over the next couple of weeks. “We’ve been waiting to sell out for years,” jokes Langford, the band’s original drummer who would later move onto guitar and vocals. “It was really strange, because someone contacted me to ask if they could use Where Were you? on this Honda commercial, and I had to contact everyone in the band to see if we could do it or not. I thought everyone would think we were selling out, but in the end no-one really cared. As Tom put it,

Rachel Maclean is sat in Film City to talk about Make Me Up, the Glasgow-based artist’s feature-length subversion of prime-time TV that’s about to be shown on BBC 4 prior to screenings in cinemas around the country. Holding court to a parade of journalists in the boardroom of what used to be Govan Town Hall seems fitting somehow for a film about women and, if not in, power. Following Spite Your Face, Maclean’s dark look at the corrupting power of money that formed Scotland’s official contribution to the 2017 Venice Biennale, Make Me Up dissects popular media clichés of female beauty in a deceptively prettified world. Here the wide-eyed and tellingly named Siri is put through a blender of choreographed conformity alongside a troupe of similarly well-turned-out would-be mannequins forced to compete in an extreme take on trash-TV talent shows where survival of the fittest is what counts. All this is overseen by a candyfloss-coifed ringmistress with a wig pink enough to resemble R