Arts & Culture

Hilarious! That is the only word for Modern Families, the new comedy that started on Sky One last week.

New TownKillersDirected by: Richard JobsonStarring: Dougray Scott, Alastair Mackenzie, James Anthony PearsonDark, gritty and surprisingly disturbing, New Town Killers is a low budget Edinburgh-based chase movie that exceeds every single expectation one might have about “this sort of thing”.The set up is simple: down on his luck Sean is broke and lives in a lousy part of Edinburgh with his sister. Sis is 12 grand in debt to some seriously dodgy sorts and, desperate to help her out, Sean grasps at an opportunity presented to him by some well-heeled types to make back that exact sum of money.All he has to do is avoid them for 12 hours – like a big, creepy game of hide and seek.But all is not as simple as a fast-paced scamper about town with a bit of parkour thrown in for excitement. To start with, our scrawny hero, Sean, isn’t some buffed-up parkour superhero. He’s clever, but not a genius; lucky but not freakshly. …

Couples RetreatDIRECTED BY: Peter BillingsleySTARRING: Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, MalinAckerman, Jason BatemanCERT: 15A YOU can hardly begrudge gifted individuals an off day. Or a day when they might feel like just putting the old brain on the back-burner and going through the motions for a pay cheque. Fire away. Knock yourself out. I just don’t want to have to see it.And yet here we are. Couples Retreat is written by and stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, two very funny men with a proven record in the fields of both rib-tickling and side-splitting.It also stars the excellent Jason Bateman, and several other very talented people. But it is rubbish, merely another example of the kind of lazy, juvenile nonsense that passes for comedy now – made all the worse because most such movies do not have this kind of talent on board.When infertile married couple Jason and Cynthia (Bateman and Kristen Bell) manage to persuade six of their friends to …

Paddy Cole and his All-Star Band are coming to Glór on Thursday, October 22. For 50 years, Paddy has been touring and has built up a sizeable following throughout Ireland, having been ever present on the scene from the showband era into the 21st century.

The spread of violence and bloodshed in South-East Clare perpetrated by criminal gangs based in Limerick City is chronicled in a new book. Mean Streets: Limerick’s Gangland by Irish Independent journalist Barry Duggan tells how Limerick City became home to a ruthless criminal underworld.

Galway composer-performer Julie Feeney will be coming to Glór in Ennis on Saturday, October 24 to celebrate the release of her third album, Impossibly Beautiful.

ZombielandDIRECTED BY: Ruben FleischerSTARRING: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail BreslinCERT: 16 Recent classics Shaun Of The Dead and 28 Days Later finally have some real competition in the zombie movie stakes.Zombieland is the kind of film Quentin Tarantino would be making if he hadn’t disappeared where the sun don’t shine, if he was less concerned with showing off for the geeks than simply having fun. Thankfully director Ruben Fleischer still knows what genuine entertainment is.Mad Cow Disease (ah, if only they’d waited – it could have been swine flu) has mutated into a virus that turns its victims into lunatics with a wild craving for human flesh. And so the zombies have taken over the world.Columbus (Eisenberg) is one of the last humans standing, a young man who has survived the carnage thanks largely to his chronic OCD – which has gone into overdrive now that there’s a genuine threat to his continued existence. Though his biggest fear …