Maccabees Gig Gallery

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All photos taken by Brian Magennis

DJ Shadow – 02 Academy, 5th December

As the crowd thickens in O2’s ABC venue there is a buzz of excitement amongst the sea of caps and hoods edging towards the stage. Shadow enters with the stage flooded with lights and no back ground music to make a surprisingly formal speech-like introduction to his show. He disappears amongst a sudden burst of visuals flooding the stage and the sound of helicopters overhead. The intro to the first song of his set is tediously long with low, loud bass vibrating through the floor and harsh record scratching; it becomes monotonous and impossible to dance to.

Issue 93: Links

In this issue’s links we look at the shortcomings of blue hedgehogs, the alcoholism of owls, the headgear of hounds and a musical, booze-drenched finale.

* Twit Twoo My Head – When you’re feeling hungover after Cheesy, check this out.
- hungoverowls.tumblr.com

* PASS THE KIBBLE – While these pictures are adorable, the captions are dynamite. Big love for the vegan penguins.
- animalstalkinginallcaps.tumblr.com

* Ello Roadkill - Do you get sick of hearing the same joke again and again?
- dumbrunningsonic.tumblr.com

TV is Dead, Long Live TV

Like getting up before 4pm on a Saturday, emptying a bin or refusing a free drink when it’s offered, watching live television is something a lot of students don’t do anymore. While home students have parents who can waste money on things like regular meals or a TV license, as a future scrounging academic living on his own I can’t be wasting perfectly good beer money on such things as the ability to watch television whatsoever.

Except for online, that is. Thanks to the internet, we can watch a whole array of television programmes, films and radio shows on catch-up services for free at our convenience. It doesn’t matter whether it’s 3am or in the middle of a lecture you can catch up on everything from Downton Abbey to The Only Way Is Essex.

Happy Feet 2

The second instalment in the chronicles of the musical inhabitants of Emperor Land comes to cinema screens, and once again those inconsiderate human bastards are shitting on Antarctica. Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) and Gloria (P!nk replaces the late Brittany Murphy) now have a baby chick, Erik, who can’t dance, and so is made fun of by the rest of the tribe. Upset, Erik runs away from the tribe and comes across another group of penguins that worship Sven, a penguin (actually a puffin) who can fly. Erik becomes enchanted by Sven’s pseudo-religious rhetoric, and armed with the knowledge that it’s okay to be different, Erik returns home – just in time to witness a global warming-caused catastrophe befall his home and endanger the lives of his penguin nation.

Another Earth

When researching this film, I saw that it was shown at Sundance Film Festival, and won a prize of some sort. I was expecting big things from this, especially when considering the rather grandiose implications of the main plot point of the film.

An Earth-like planet is discovered in space, slowly approaching our own world. Upon the night of this discovery, a girl genius, just accepted at a prestigious university, drives home from a party, drunk. She hears the news on the radio, and looks up, seeing Another Earth in the night sky…then causes a car crash, killing the wife and son of a composer. As she is a minor, her identity is kept secret, but she still serves time in prison.

Child Poverty Problem

At the beginning of this month The Campaign to End Child Poverty published a startling report on the levels of child poverty throughout the UK. Most shocking for us is that the figures for Glasgow City indicate that 35% of children in Glasgow live in poverty, the highest in Scotland. As with all UK cities some areas have seen more disastrous figures than others, for Glasgow that’s in Springburn, with an estimate of 52% children living under the poverty line.

Scientology, officially a con?

Breaking from the traditional silence which is upheld by Scientologists on their religion, one disgruntled congressional member spoke out against the rising amount of money which members are expected to donate in order to be ‘spiritually enlightened’.

STaG – Much Ado About Nothing: 30th Nov 2011 – 3rd Dec 2011

The StaG production of Much Ado about Nothing transports the witty world of Courtly Love to a present day setting, in which every character is a thief. In an ingenious casting move (and a good way to counter the ye olde ‘not enough boys’ problem), brothers Don Pedro and Don Juan (the baddie of the piece) become no-nonsense crime boss Donna Pedro, and vulnerable bad girl, Josephine Pedro. The production was funny, alive and boasted a very good cast, however it was at times disjointed and unclear in terms of narrative.

New Year’s Eve

As basically an American Love Actually with a fraction of the acting talent, I knew it would be terrible. Afterwards, I was pleasantly surprised, but only a little. The film has no real storyline, instead taking the form of a series of vignettes showing the New Year’s Eve of several seemingly unrelated people around New York City.