Dining Out 28.07.17 Edinburgh is well into pre-festival mode, and I have already attended its film festivals (one quite good film for £10), its jazz and blues festival (one quite good band, also £10) and its food one (one burger for £5, a single-scoop ice-cream for about £3 and a bit of free cake). You may say: Gina, you're really splashing the cas...

Summer in London is a play written and directed by celebrated playwright Rikki Beadle-Blair, and is currently being performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London (8-29 July). It features an all-trans cast, including up-and-coming star Ash Palmisciano, who has kindly agreed to be interviewed by me for Edinburgh Trance. Ash, first of all, c...

My Love of Ozzy Osbourne 23.07.17 That's of, not for, in that the object of my passion is a band whose 1980s heavy rock I still feel something for. As for the man called Ozzy Osbourne who fronted and sang, and whose charisma and status gave the band its stardom, I have mixed feelings. Why write about him, about them, the band? Perhaps simply, I've ...

War for the Planet of the Apes 22.07.17 Another slick, exciting offering from the Planet of the Apes franchise, War for the Planet of the Apes (WFTPOTA) is as tense a piece of story-telling as it is emotionally uninvolving afterwards. I left wondering not what happens next in this franchise, but why I felt so detached beyond the screening room door...

David Lynch: The Art Life 16.07.17 I had a choice, to go and watch the latest Planet of the Apes blockbuster, or a documentary about a director whose art deeply disturbs me. Well, there's always next week for the apes, or next year for the sequel. I don't think there will be a sequel for David Lynch: The Art Life , simply because his storytelling i...

Friendships in Edinburgh 15.07.17 Saturday evening, and outside a band is playing. It's July and the festivals are coming back to Edinburgh; already, the park at the centre of George Square has been taken over with fences and security and people in red coats whose purpose is mysterious. Just over two weeks from now, this city will become the larges...

What's On? 15.07.17 I remember the disturbing nature of Planet of the Apes when I was young. Not so much the first one with its iconic, Statue-of-Liberty ending (1968), but subsequent ones including the creepy Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) with its scarred, surviving ancestors of humanity's nuclear victims. Then Escape (1971), imbibed with ...

Song To Song 14.07.17 Wendy Ide of The Guardian says of this film that 'it all adds up to a beautiful nothing.' But is 'beautiful' ever only nothing? Do I now sound like a character in a Terence Malick film by voicing such a question? Malick's Song to Song is the kind of movie I would watch in multiple, accidental viewings in my previous life, as t...

Finding Work as a Trans Person 08.07.17 A second week of part-time teaching work passed on Friday, and already, it's not about being trans. I enter the classroom, the lesson begins, and I am from planet teacher. The students are nice, and everything is about them, not me. I always wondered how it would be as a trans-female teacher. Last year I...

Spiderman: Homecoming 08.07.17 Hardly anyone was there in the theatre auditorium and I was surprised, at the first Friday night showing of this third iteration of Spiderman at the Cameo cinema. Perhaps people are going to Cineworld , Vue and Odeon for the super-technology experience. I had the intimate cinema screening room almost to myself. I'm gl...

What's On? 06.07.17 The international football competitions are over, I have no TV or Internet (at home), it's time to re-focus on what's important. And that means Spiderman . The third iteration of Spiderman. Why can't we have Spiderwoman? I remember the animated series of Spiderwoman back in the eighties, she was able to fly and looked pretty coo...

Escapist Thoughts: On Germany 02.07.17 To watch them is to be seduced by their hypnotic passing rhythms, Kroos to Ozil, Ozil to Kimmich, Kimmich to Ozil, Ozil back to Kroos. They usually win, and when they don't, it's controversial, or at the very least, surprising. I'm talking about a cycle of individuals who I've watched with growing passion, eve...

Baby Driver 01.07.17 The reviews have been effusive (97% on Rotten Tomatoes), yet what to make of a film whose ending seems to have been directed by Roland Emmerich? But I'm getting ahead of myself, especially when there's the beginning to discuss, with its similarity to Spiderman 3 . Baby Driver has, let's be clear, received five-star reviews from...

What's On? 29.06.17 Everyone's talking about the five-star movie Baby Driver and it's out this weekend at the Cameo . It has ingredients I'm not partial to, including the presence of Jamie Foxx and a story line about a teenager(ish) boy. With nothing else of interest out there, though, this is one of those times to watch a film that doesn't seem 'y...

On the Issue of Accommodation 24.06.17   I have a place to stay,that's not the issue. My friend and I, though, are looking for somewhere toshare, to reduce our rent. Edinburgh rent; I'd like to talk about this. For acold and basic flat some 40 minutes' walk from the centre, I'm paying £7200 peryear, or if you prefer, £600 per month, as a mostl...

Dalida 24.06.17 The Edinburgh Film Festival, at the Odeon . My first impression: I don't care for the Odeon . As a cinema, there's nowhere to sit and wait, at least the Cineworld complex has a couple of rows of airport seating and then upstairs, a Starbucks. I milled around after getting my Odeon ticket, the weather too windy outside to return to, ...

What's On? 23.06.17 The Edinburgh Film Festival has started, I have seen the queues outside Cineworld cinema on Fountainbridge. I admit there's nothing that leaps out at me in the schedule, but perhaps that's the thing with these festivals, and with life in general. Get outside your comfort zone and test yourself, you might be gently surprised. Cam...

The Mummy 19.06.17 I can't say I wasn't warned. The reviews had been middling to terrible, not least Mark Kermode's, of The Mummy being made up of lots of bits of other movies that made you wish you were watching those instead. I will be honest from the start, I'm going to include spoilers to this review with the justification that The Mummy is suc...

Acid for Blood 18.06.17 The bitterness flooded briefly on Thursday, having burst its banks. The Funded Ones in my PhD world had returned from glamorous research trips abroad or from conferences, while I had done nothing, sat inert for weeks at my desk with books about Lacan, trying to refocus after a stop-start May. In July I will teach foreign stu...

What's On? 15.06.17 I could refer to The Mummy at Cineworld or Churchill at Cameo but there's a brightly coloured elephant in the room and its name is Gay Pride, coming to you, Edinburgh, this Saturday. But first, some honesty. I really, really don't want to go to Pride. Shall I count the ways it will discomfort me? Here's three: contrived fun, lou...