Trip.Mi

A new website has just gone online, offering a secure and sensible way to arrange car-pooling in Ireland. It’s well designed and well thought out, and aside from the obvious benefits of sharing expenses and reducing carbon footprints, any initiative that promotes community-minded solutions like this has to be a good thing.

So go- pool, share, and enjoy!

Seen on a bin near Jurys Hotel. Photograph by Jane Ruffino

Tiger, tiger...

Last night on Wexford Street

seen in town

So Maser, we still love you….

Yey, it’s that time of year again! If September still gives you shiver-inducing memories of the beginning of term and the monsoon rains outside are telling you that ‘Summer’ (HA!) is officially over, take comfort in the knowledge that the most depressing month of the year also plays host to the most innovative festival to hit Dublin. Yes folks, the eagerly anticipated Dublin Fringe Festival is upon us again.

The Fringe Festival is an exciting exploration of a variety of arts, from dance and theatre to dubstep and rock. This year it runs from the 6th to the 21st of September in a variety of locations throughout the city, with the infamous Spiegeltent being the hub of activity (this year located in the Iveagh Gardens). The nature of the Fringe Festival makes all forms of art accessible to people from all walks of life, wherever their interests lie.

Friday the 6th sees the Fringe Fest open in style with the BATUCADA! party, which promises to be a high-energy night of afro-latin style music, dance and performance. The highly popular La Clique is back for 2008 after it reached unprecedented success at last years festival. The show combines elements of caberet, burlesque and acrobatics – it’s sure to sell out so get your tickets for this one quick. The festival also boasts some quality gigs to cater for all musical tastes throughout September. Catch Manchunian rock veterans, The Fall, play the Spiegeltent on the 9th, Duke Special combines music with theatre through radio noir thriller, The Silhouette, on the 10th and sultry-voiced beauty Maria Tecce returns on the 12th and 13th after last years sell-out show. There’s also a fantastic Dubstep night in the Spiegeltent on the 12th and founding fathers of rap, The Sugarhill Gang, perform their 30th anniversary party concert at the Spiegeltent on the 14th.

If theatre and performance art is more your cup of tea then there is an unsurmountable selection to choose from – with theatre being the very essence of the Fringe Festival. Take a trip into the murky world of the likes of Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel with a five minute personal Surrealist trip courtesy of Bootworks Theatre or, if you fancy something a little lighter, why not check out Tommy Tiernan’s directorial attempts in Help!, starring his cousin, Eleanor Tiernan, as a struggling comedian.

With over 200 events running over the course of the festival, the term ’something for everyone’ could have been coined to describe the fringe fest. Don’t take my word for it, check out the listings for yourself and get booking. As my nan would say – It’s culture Dahling. Enjoy!

Mon 1st 7pm programme: you’ll like Mondays now
We’re back to Monday nights at the weekly free ‘picture show’ screenings at our usual venue in Ranelagh this week, but we start at an earlier time this Monday. The programme for Monday 1st September kicks off at 7pm with the usual Irish Short Films Slot starting the show but at 7.30pm we show ‘Yellow Gate Women’ (dir Margaretta D’Arcy (2006); running time 60 mins), a documentary about the Greenham Common Women’s protest that began in the early 1980s against the siting of Cruise missiles at an airbase in England and went on for years. The film was screened at Galway Film Fleadh last year (and again this year, I believe) and it was shown a while back at the Portobello Film Festival in London and has been shown elsewhere.

Following the Q&A and any ensuing discussion we’ll be screening ‘Happiness’ (dir Conor Horgan (2005); running time 27 mins), which involves a wide variety of people all around Ireland expressing their idea of happiness to camera. I expect this film to start screening at 9.30pm, if not earlier. We screened Conor’s award-winning first short ‘The Last Time’ on 26th May and again more recently. His latest film ‘About Beauty’, a documentary about Irish artist Dorothy Cross, is being broadcast on RTE1 later on the very same night that our ‘picture show’ is showing ‘Happiness’ ie this Monday 1st (at 10.30pm or thereabouts) and will be screened at the IFI during the forthcoming ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ Documentary Film Festival 2008 in late September. (Conor has kindly agreed to our showing ‘About Beauty’ after that festival screening and will be doing a Q&A about it with us then.) The rest of our programme for this Monday night will be detailed later.

Commentary on a mural by the ubiquitous Maser, seen on a hoarding beside the Bernard Shaw.

Update