Arts & Culture

THE second annual Ennis Fringe Festival takes place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday and will see artists of various disciplines bring their artwork to the public.The venue for the festival launch has been changed in the past week and will now be held at Café Aroma. There will be artists across a range of mediums present at the launch including Kevin Quinlan, Marie Connole, David O’Rourke, Dave Donnelly, Tommy Kelly and Patrick Ryan. In addition, there will be a five-minute segment of a theatre performance and Councillor Johnny Flynn will officially open the festival.This year, the festival has broadened the scope of the initial event and has more venues with new performers and art forms, including painting, photography, performance, theatre, animation and live music.Music events include Chris Nash, who will perform in the Diamond Bar on Friday night and The Buzzmonkeys, who will take to the stage in Tom Steeles the same night. Ska/rap/reggae band The Connectors will be in …

A YOUTH graffiti jam takes place in Scariff this coming weekend, where young people from across the country with an interest in graffiti art will be invited to put the writing on the wall in preparation for an annual Young People’s Art exhibition.The art exhibition is held each year and showcases young people’s art across a variety of media. This year, in advance of the exhibition, local artist Nathalie El Baba has organised a professional street artist to give a graffiti demonstration for young people interested in the art form.The demonstration runs from 2pm until 6pm at the Riverpark in Scariff, next to the playground and young graffiti enthusiasts will be invited to create their own graffiti masterpiece.Now in its fourth year, the youth art exhibition is open to young people across the country and is an opportunity to see what art forms young people are engaging with.Speaking about the event, Nathalie explained her children are very interested in graffiti …

WEST Cork musician and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta broadcaster, Peadar Ó Riada, is inviting entries from harpists and pipers for the Seán Ó Riada Gold Medal competition 2012.One winner will be chosen in each instrument category and will be presented with a Seán Ó Riada gold medal and prize money at a gala concert in the Rochestown Park Hotel, Cork in January.The competition, now in its third year, was initiated by Peadar Ó Riada as a means of bringing together the family of listeners to his weekly traditional music programme Cuireadh chun Ceoil on RnaG and building a worldwide network of traditional music fans.Last year, the competition was for the flute and there were over 60 entries from all over the world. The finalists included a Lutheran priest from Finland, a young Irish-American musician and award-winning Scottish guitarist and flute player. The competition was won by Tim McHugh from Mayo.Cashel goldsmith Pádraig Ó Mathúna has designed and created the Seán …

TOM Malone’s Market House Bar in Miltown Malbay will present American folk band Session Americana on Thursday, September 27.Session Americana, who have their roots in Boston, describe themselves as a rock band in a tea cup, or possibly a folk band in a whiskey bottle. The six-piece band collective of talented musicians offer an anything-could-happen show.Described as bringing a kind of ease and genuineness to this timeless music, the band sometimes present the latest batch of original songs and sometimes reach back into the depths of the American song bag.They come to Clare following the release of their newest album, Love and Dirt, which is a cohesive collection of songs, a playfully irreverent take on roots music with an edgy experimental side. The record was tracked by Matt Malikowski and noted producer, engineer and mixer Paul Q Kolderie, known for his work with the Pixies, Radiohead, Hole, Dinosaur Jr, Throwing Muses, Morphine and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.An essential part of …

It’s being described as the funniest thing to come out of Ireland since, dare I say it, Father Ted. Many who tuned into Friday night’s double bill of Moone Boy on Sky One may not agree that it is on par with the comic genius of the Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthew-penned sensation, but I think it might come close in the nostalgia-for-old-Ireland sense. Anyone who grew up in the 1980s, or indeed suffered through them, will get kicks galore out of Moone Boy, which is co-written by Chris O’Dowd and Nick Vincent Murphy and is semi-autobiographical of O’Dowd’s younger days.Indeed O’Dowd also stars in it as Sean, the imaginary friend of one Martin Paul Kenny Dalglish Moone, the youngest of a scatter-brained family living in Boyle, Roscommon. Sean appears generally to offer Martin the worst advice imaginable at every turn, complete with banjo playing to block out the tirade of expletives from older sister Trisha at one juncture. He …

Hope SpringsDIRECTED BY: DavidFrankelSTARRING: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve CarellCERT: 15A You have to admire any Hollywood producer for taking on a film about an ageing couple trying to deal with a dead marriage. If I was wearing a hat, I’d take it off to Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones for agreeing to get on board. It’s not the most comfortable of assignments and everyone knows they won’t be bringing in the Batman numbers. For one thing, nobody wears a silly mask and, for another, it’s possible to understand what’s going on without a degree in Advanced Codology.Streep and Jones are Kay and Arnold, married 31 years and settled in their separate ways. Or at least he is, content to hide behind his paper, doze off to the golf in the evening and sleep in the guest bedroom. She wants a bit more, so she books them in for an expensive week of couples therapy. Which might bring …

For all its bells and whistles. For all it’s mega-watt cast and the years of planning and anticipation that have gone into Avengers Assemble it is, at its heart, a pleasingly old-fashioned movie.The Joss Whedon-directed flick about a squad of six disparate superheroes who have to learn to trust each other in order to defend the earth against a Norse god and an army of aliens hell-bent on eradicating our species could have been awful. Like properly career-endingly, hackneyed, “what the hell is going on here? I want my money back” awful.Instead what it boils down to is not that different to an early Bond movie or even (and this might be just a bit of a stretch) an old Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks film.It is thrilling heroics combined with some clever, funny banter and a plot that requires more than one sentence to describe, but fewer than ten. It’s Flash Gordon, The Shadow or Dick Tracey with fancier …