Arts & Culture

THIS year marks 30 years since Ennis man and champion Irish dancer, Michael Donnellan first learned his one, two, threes, and in those three decades not only has he world titles under his belt but next month he launches a new tour with his latest stage production.

EARLY in Brian Friel’s play Faith Healer, Frank Hardy admits his only conviction about his erratic gift. “I can tell you this: there was one thing I did know, one thing I always knew right from the beginning – I always knew, drunk or sober, I always knew when nothing was going to happen.”

THE ninth Nell Galvin Festival will take place in Moyasta from this Friay to Sunday.

AN oil painting from Carmel Doherty was the prize in a fundraiser for the Anon is Anall arts exhibition.

One DayDIRECTED BY: Lone ScherfigSTARRING: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson, Ken StottCERT: 12AOne Day is based on the much-loved recent novel of the same name by David Nicholls. The book passed me by but, by all accounts, it’s a fine read. I suppose, as with any written work that gets the screen treatment, the film’s release inspired the usual mix of anticipation and dread among the novel’s admirers.

THE threat of canning much of BBC4’s schedule along with swingeing cuts to BBC3’s funding has sparked numerous ‘save’ campaigns in other media outlets and online. And why wouldn’t they? Catering for the notoriously difficult 18 to 35-year-old market, between them they have given us cutting edge comedies such as The Thick Of It, Little Britain and Gavin and Stacy, great music programmes, riveting dramas and insightful documentaries.

Scream 4*Directed by: Wes CravenStarring: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin Hanna****Directed by: Joe WrightStarring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchette, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng Lampshade hanging isn’t what you think it is. It isn’t what I thought it was either until recently when I discovered that the Internet, birthplace of such wonderful terms as “jumping the shark” and “nuking the fridge” had come up with a term to describe the practice in TV or movies of an element of the story that threatens the audience’s suspension of disbelief  by calling attention to it… and then moving on.

IT is not macabre but rather a memorial, the artist behind an exhibition of outfits inspired by missing or dead women tells The Clare Champion. The Lost Girls, by Áine Phillips, is being displayed in Ennis as part of the Rianta exhibition by the Ground Up Artists Collective (GUAC).The seeds for the project were set when Áine began to imagine losing someone herself. “I began work on the project in 2009. I started developing the idea because my oldest daughter went to college in Dublin and the feeling that your child is gone and is she ok and you can’t keep an eye on her the way you once did when she lived with you. I thought about families of lost girls or women who disappeared in Ireland and around the world and I thought about what that would be like if your own girl, your daughter, your sister, your wife, your mother went missing, so I decided to do …