Everyone wants to look prettier; it’s a natural part of human character. This becomes more of a priority as one gets older – bits start to sag which once held their own, and newer, advanced beings overtake you in the game of life. If the recent trend of HD re-releases is anything to go by then someone, somewhere, feels that certain games deserve the justice of a make-over so that they can keep up, and stay relevant, in the modern age. Or, if one was cynical, it could be suggested that it is a simple and cheap way to cash-in on a gamer’s nostalgia. Whatever Ubisoft’s intentions, the choice of Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc from the limbless Frenchman’s series is a bizarre one. Rayman 2: The Great Escape is not only better remembered but a better game full-stop; a classic 3D platformer worthy of a place on any console. The problem for Rayman 3, brutally, is that the best game in the heralded Rayman series has only just been released, the beautifully back-to-the-future Rayman Origins. What it does offer, however, is a rollicking platforming adventure of great wit, dare and imagination, but one that ultimately has the same flaws that held it back nearly a decade ago.

Released in 2003 for the Xbox, PS2, Gamecube, and PC, Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc was very well received for its looks, style and humour. Nine years later and very little has changed. The basic story is… trivial, a fact Ubisoft wryly acknowledge by having in-house crack-addict (allegedly) and Happy Mondays impersonator (one for the kids) Murfy reading the story out from the game manual. André, an evil black Lum, is spreading his evil across the land by transforming red Lums into black. Then Globox eats him, resulting in both him and André tailing Rayman as he saves the world, etc. etc. Think GLaDOS of Portal 2 as a potato narrative device and you have the idea, albeit a more primitive one. Crime and Punishment it is not, but it was never meant to be. It’s not why they get from A to B, but how they do it that matters in a platformer.

Coming from a series of such pedigree and a period of unique development for the 3D platformer, the gameplay in Rayman 3 is both immediate, familiar and fun at the same time. Whilst it has all the familiar aspects of platforming (platforms!), there are still certain innovations that stand up well today. A series of power-ups, activated by stamping on garishly-coloured cans, add variety to the formula. Ranging from chain-arms to whirlwind fists, taking in a helicopter-head along the way, these add to the gameplay, although it soon becomes apparent what needs to be used where, meaning puzzles offer little variety to the overall pace of the game and add little challenge for the average gamer.

Several hours into the game this becomes an issue; situations become repetitive, with the same resolutions required for similar problems, meaning that you take less interest during a playthrough and almost cruise through the game. This is a shame, as the environments themselves are bristling with a surprisingly dark character, whilst the protagonists themselves are full of bright one-liners and ridiculous, over-exaggerated body movements; without the witty narrative, it would still be funny. The combat is intuitive, using a lock-on system akin to classic Zelda Z-targeting, but soon becomes repetitive. A combo-meter adds flavour and is interesting in itself but quickly becomes ignored as you plough through the main quest. With only 12 achievements, there is little incentive to get 100% in each level unless you’re a completionist.

As a HD remake, the game must stand or fall on its presentation as the main selling point. Unfortunately, it’s a thoroughly hit-and-miss affair. A good looking game for the period, the high-specification serves to expose imperfections which were hidden by the more primitive pixels of the last generation. Cut-scenes haven’t been touched, leading to the bizarre situation where the main game is prettier than the pre-rendered CGI. Characters are cutely blocky and full of cute quirks, but, like the backgrounds, they suffer in detail. Rayman, however, has a nicely shell-shaded look, and the smoothing out of textures does add a sheen. However, like many games of the HD re-make revolution, the graphical touches are barely noticeable and add very, very little to the overall experience.

The soundtrack, bizarrely, is a paradoxical mess. One second you will be cruising to a glorious techno-funk tune before suddenly being assaulted by disembodied voices. Volume levels are all over the show, resulting in a disorientating experience. One minute you’re beating up enemies in near silence before suddenly your ears are assaulted by a background noise miles away. Unfortunately, it suggests lazy production values, the last thing you would expect of a Rayman game. Developers need to realise that simply re-packaging a game is not enough; they need to improve the experience, not just give it a brushing over.

Luckily, Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc was for the most part already a highly polished experience before Ubisoft pulled out their buffers. An inventive if flawed platformer, it offers a solid combat system with a unique sense of style and humour, that, although never reaching the heights of Rayman 2, is still an impressive addition to the roster. It is in many ways a paradox: the gameplay is consistently fun but inexplicably repetitive and offers little challenge; the graphics smarten-up much of the texture work but in doing so expose other flaws; and the sound, although featuring some real foot-stomping funk tunes, is let down by an horrendous lack of balance. The graphics aside, these are problems which were prevalent a decade ago and have still not been fixed; for a new release this is inexplicable and exposes a real flaw in the HD re-release fad, despite what may be good intentions.

The Walking Dead franchise has been one of the multi-media runaway success stories of this millennium. First conceived as a gruesome black-and-white monthly comic book series in 2004 by Robert Kirkman, and still going strong 96 issues later, it was also the subject of an extremely well received television adaptation. Telltale Games, they of Tales of Monkey Island fame, were handed the responsibility of converting the morally ambiguous, gruesome and often emotionally difficult series into a game. Thankfully, they’ve managed to create a terrifically thought provoking affair; half interactive film, half survival horror, it’s all heart both on and all over the screen.

Like Back to the Future before it (and still on-going), The Walking Dead is split into five episodes with sequential release dates, with ‘A New Day’ being the first in the series. This is admirable; not only does it split the game into affordable, 400 MSP/£3.99 gobbets – a bargain – but it also allows time for the action of the episodes and the consequences of your own decisions to sink in.

As you can imagine from such quality source material, the story is the meat and gristle of the game. Telltale and Kirkman from an early stage made the wise decision of creating a new narrative with an original mix of characters in a similar time-frame and location, rather than re-creating the already-familiar tale of Rick Grimes. Instead, you play as Lee Everett, a man with a mysterious past (as always) who is thrown headlong (literally) into events. Familiar faces, like Hershel, appear, but a prior knowledge of the Walking Dead is not necessary; the sign of a quality tie-in.

This quality shines through in the exceptional presentation. Utilising a comic-book style (think XIII),the graphics are clean, crisp and detailed; the use of pencil lines for body folds and contours is particularly impressive, as are the emotions the characters are able to express through their facial features. The settings are likewise full of character and designed to maximise either the potential for claustrophobia or the danger of being out in the open; whether at a farm or a fortified store, you rarely feel safe. When the game does get violent (this is a zombie apocalypse after all) the gore is particularly striking, slamming home the gruesome consequences of the situation; an early incident involving a hammer, zombie, and watching child is particularly shocking.

Although there are the obligatory hordes of zombies to avoid/stare at ominously from a distance, these would not be nearly as menacing without the fear in the protagonists’ voices, and the admissions of what they have lost while they protect what fragments of their lives remain. The voice-acting is first class; reactions are moderated, understated, often panicked, yet never over-acted. Although no actors from the series reprise their roles, this matters little; this is a convincing world, inhabited by ordinary people caught in an extraordinary situation, whether they’re trying to protect their family or simply survive.

If the impression so far is that the game is more akin to an interactive film rather than a video game, then you’re not far off. Like the illustrious Heavy Rain, the game involves lots of strolling around, tailed by a probably too static camera, interacting with the various other characters within the environment to either gather information, form/break alliances, or further the story. Although it could (and has) been accused of shallowness, this does not really do the game justice; the gameplay fits the atmosphere that’s been painstakingly created. A third-person shooter, for instance, would be ridiculous, and a purely cut-scene based cinematic would not offer enough interaction to immerse the player. Instead, you use the right stick to search for interactions, be it with a person, object or zombie. What combat there is generally involves moving the interaction ‘toggle’ over the zombie before pressing the particular interactive button, mapped to the main buttons (A, B etc.), which then results in Lee kicking the face off the undead victim. Whilst talking to a person, you’re given several options for response which have to be chosen within a time-limit. What you say effects how they react to you and whether they decide to help you or not. You can lie to them, but they might notice, chastising you; you could even tell the truth, but that might cause even more harm.

Interestingly, Telltale Games have stated that every choice enforces a consequence that may not be noticeable until the fourth or fifth episode in the series. Although many of these may just be a different character interaction, certain situations require harsh, immediate moral judgements, normally forcing you to choose between one of two characters to save from immediate death, leaving the other to their doom. Fans familiar with the tough morals of the comic, where popular and long-lasting favourites are suddenly and mercilessly killed off, will be aware of the frightening practicality of many of these decisions. Do you save the resourceful, tough man who saved your life early in the day and is incredibly useful in these harsh times, or do you pull the child from the clutches of the zombie, your moral compass insisting that the child must be saved, despite the fact it may hinder your own survival? The choice is not as straight forward as you may think, nor is there necessarily a ‘correct’ choice; both decisions have their pros and cons, which must be quickly weighed up before it’s too late. These situations are unsettling, difficult and extremely tough; your decision is reflective of your own attitude, and questions you in a way that video games rarely achieve.

The Walking Dead is a tantalisingly ambitious project; high production values have met a driven narrative to create an entirely engrossing experience. It may only last for five hours or so, but this will likely be in one sitting, such is the gripping nature of the story and the tension prevalent throughout. Whilst the gameplay is perhaps a little shallow, it works to move the narrative along whilst offering enough interaction to make you feel like you’re part of the apocalyptic and terrifying situations. Not only is this an extraordinary circumstance, but it is also an intensely human one too; irrationality and common sense clash in the will to survive, with perfectly decent people arguing to cull children in an attempt to remove excess baggage. This is a tough world, but one which will continue to thrill, shock and provoke thought long after the last episode has finished. At £3.99, The Walking Dead: Episode 1 – A New Day is not a risk; it is an essential purchase.

I ended up at The Garage’s “Booty Call” last night, following an outpouring of fem-rage across twitter and facebook at the advertising campaign shown on the left. A woman out in Glasgow one night had spotted the flyer and become upset at the objectification of the women in the advertising campaign, the linking of a clubnight with the sex industry and the implication that the sex industry was “sexy”, rather than for sad losers who either cant get a shag without paying someone, or who choose to pay someone to fuck them because they like the control and dominance that gives them over women’s sexuality.

She alerted other feminists to this imagery, and we started giving feedback to the Garage, via their facebook wall. The initial response from the Garage was dismissive, deleting all criticism and banning several commenters. We then moved to twitter, using the hashtag #smashbootycall. If one lesson was learned from the Hetherington occupation, it was that if they try to silence you, don’t go away quietly – escalate like crazy. And so we did.

“You’re serious, aren’t you” said one. I just smiled. The other woman in the group flat out refused recounting a number of stories of being harrassed and touched up in nightclubs, including one incident where a man had put his hand right up her skirt and another where a bouncer had come to the defense of a man that she had challenged after he had touched her up. “You will get sexually assaulted in there, you know that don’t you” she said. I acknowledge the risk, but hell its not exactly something that would be unusual is it, being wantonly in possession of a vagina and all. Eventually I persuaded someone else to come along with me, and off we set.

A thankfully short queue, saw us in to the club quite quickly. My bag was searched, while my male companion was body searched. All the men were body searched, but I didn’t see any body searches of women, but the bag search was done by a female bouncer, so presumably such may occur on occasions.Getting there at 11.59, I got in free, halving the entrance free with my trusty companion. Yup – they’re still doing the “girls” get in free shite.

I’ve never been to the Garage before, so we had a wander round. There was a middle bar, with karaoke, a downstairs dancefloor and the main upstairs cavernous dancehall with a spectators balcony. The first impressions I got was how male the gender balance was. Despite women getting in free before 12, approximately two thirds of the clubgoers were male, which quite surprised me. The other thing which struck me, being of the vertically challenged variety, was how tall the women were. Dotted among the men were these 6ft amazonian women, which I had to crane my neck to see. I remarked on this in wonder to my companion, who pointed out that it was their shoes….and indeed when I looked down massive platformed high heels seemed to be the footwear of choice for almost every woman in the club. I have nothing but admiration for anyone who can take more than three steps in such footwear, it is truely a skill which has been mastered (and they did look quite amazing) , but at the same time they also looked like the kind of thing that you could break your neck in – especially if you needed to move away from something/someone quickly.

The middle bar was quite fun. A female DJ was running karaoke, and while the participants were almost universally terrible, it was none the less a good atmosphere and the dreadful attempts at singing only added to the lighthearted ambiance. I didn’t stay long there, but it did strike me that not only were most of the performers male, but that men took up considerably physical space, occupying the main area, while the women clustered at the edges.

We went upstairs to main dancehall, and within five minutes saw the first bit of harassment. A woman sitting in a booth, giving off clear but silent “don’t touch me” messages was getting her thigh felt by the man sitting next to her. He was paying her no attention, talking to another man, while running his hand up and down her thigh. Every time she edged away a little, he edged a little closer and her discomfort at the situation was plain to see. As in the middle bar, not only were there considerably more men than women, but again men took up far more space than the women, in sprawling groups with expansive movements, while female groups stuck in far tighter huddles. The other thing which struck me was how “white” the clientele was. At that point, I hadn’t seen anyone non-white in the entire club.

We went to dance. The space that the men took up was obvious on the dancefloor. Despite the lethal footwear of the women, it was men who trod on my feet, who crashed into me, whose dance movements resulted in me getting whacked in the face once and narrowly avoided getting whacked about four more times. After a short time another couple started dancing next to us. While they were dancing the man kept insisting on touching the woman, who repeatedly kept pushing off his hands and insisting that she didn’t want touched, including a very clear “No” that could be heard above the music. Eventually she left the dancefloor with her male companion in tow, fairly obviously feeling pressurised and uncomfortable with his actions.

After a while we moved to the downstairs dancefloor – and hell – this was pretty good. Far more space, a female DJ and more mixed crowd, both in terms of gender and ethnicity, gave it a much more inclusive atmosphere. For all the heightened sexual vibe present upstairs, downstairs was a far more healthy sex-positive space. The unwanted touching and male space invasion observed upstairs was absent and while there were couples snogging in quite a number of the booths, and around the edges of the dancefloor there wasn’t the invasive male presence that seemed to dominate upstairs. Not only that, but my pal got hit on by another bloke, which quite surprised us given that the Garage is primarily a straight club with a strong heterosexual norm. The whole atmosphere was just so much more relaxed, sensual and inclusive than the white het-male dominated space we had just left.

Booty call was being heavily promoted throughout the club, with quite a number of posters up on the walls and in the women’s toilets. To the Garage’s credit, they had changed almost all of the advertising to the new theme, except on a video being played in a number of locations through the club, advertising its nights, which still used the sex-industry inspired advertising when promoting Booty Call. This video is well worth comment. The ratio of males to females observed in the club was completely reversed in the video with far more women featured than men. Not only that, but the women in the video were presented in a heavily objectified manner, flirting with the camera, suggestively sucking straws and pouting, while the men were presented in active roles, including being featured taking pictures and imitating filming.

There was a visible security presence throughout the club, with bouncers positioned at the edges of dancefloors and on the balcony above the main hall. While this demonstrates a commitment to ensuring their clients safety, I saw no female bouncers which would have given me more reassurance that there was an approachable presence to report sexual harrassment and unwanted touching to, and that it would be taken seriously by someone who understood women’s concerns and most probably had experienced such themselves.

We went back upstairs to the main hall to dance again. On the dancefloor next to us, a woman had been hoisted onto the shoulders of one of her friends. While she was up there, a nearby man made a great performance of trying to lift her skirt and look up it, to the approval and encouragement of his laddish mates. So far no personal harassment, but true to form about half an hour before closing, a rather drunken male sidled up beside me, lurking at my back. I was aware of his presence, and quite uncomfortable with it, but it wasn’t until he started touching my arm that I actively moved away. He moved closer and then started rubbing my thigh, and trying to reach around. I moved away further and he lurked at my back for a good few minutes before shuffling off.

While my friend was right – despite being a sober, modestly dressed forty year old, outwith the usual target demographic of sexual predators – I did experience sexual assault, its by no means the worst club-night I have been to. Why then the Garage chose to advertise it as a rapey, creepy environment I have no idea. Despite the “girls” get in free promotion, suggesting that they wanted to encourage more women to come to their club-night, the gender imbalance suggested that it hadn’t worked in the slightest. A number of commentators on the Garage facebook wall, pointed out that clubs were, among other things, a venue for pulling and the sex-industry inspired imagery was designed to invoke this. The gender imbalance meant that if that was their aim, a number of men would go home sadly disappointed and although the odds were better for the women, the sex-industry friendly promotional materials would tend to encourage the creeps that liked that kind of thing – the ones that you avoid like the plague.

To give the Garage credit, they did eventually change the advertising, demonstrate a level of safety awareness through the use of bouncers on the dance-floor and the downstairs dancehall was a genuinely welcoming environment at the same time a greater awareness of women’s concerns and experiences would make the club a more gender balanced environment, eradicate some of the rape culture tolerance witnessed and make it a generally better night out.

After recent initiatives that included a Memorandum of Understanding with the Singapore Institute of Technology, a jointly-operated campus with Ngee Ann Polytechnic and the new Confucius Institute (itself a cooperation with Nankai University), this move nevertheless comes as a surprise, but another university spokesman added:

The trust fund of Kim Jong-il has very generously agreed to make a donation of fifty million won available to the university as well as first option on an exciting new consignment of computers from Hana Electronics, so we were only too happy to form the Glasgow University North Korean Institute (GUNKI) and assist the study of Dear Leader in this way. Indeed we hope that this new initiative acts as a launchpad for further collaboration as our reputation continues to rocket in this region.

Chris Sibbald refused to rule out a new outdoor smoking area, while also hinting at a refocusing of the union’s core market.

Members of the existing academic community were less gracious. In a wintry interview with the Glasgow Guardian Dr Kozel Krusovice, whose work focuses on the nationalistic significance of Eastern European drinking games, said ‘vital research’ would now be lost as the university had made clear its policy was now to focus on the lucrative East Asian market at the expense of other areas. He noted that he had spent literally thousands of hours emailing his colleagues over the past eighteen months to stop cutbacks to his department, and this would mean ‘mutually assured destruction’ for both parties in the long-run.

A statement could not be obtained from the Anti-Cuts Action Network (ACAN), the Cuts Action Network for New/Alternative Ethics (CANNAE) or other protest groups, but one unnamed spokesperson suggested they were attempting to occupy the GUU forthwith. This, it was claimed, could potentially cause ‘major’ disruption to the GUU bookings schedule, with four weddings, a funeral, and a Tory Party bake sale scheduled for the next nine months, bringing in significant amounts to the union’s bank account to allow them to maintain their extensive range of student services.

Students from the Glasgow School of Art have been turned away from voting in Glasgow University Sports Association (GUSA) elections. This comes despite Art School students being allowed to vote in previous years, and presidential candidate Chris Millar planning in his manifesto to canvass those students.

The decision comes as the result of a clause in the membership section of GUSA’s constitution which reads:

Membership shall apply to all those registered students of the University of Glasgow who have paid their subscription to the Sports and Recreation Service.

GUSA President Leo Howes told Guardian that this meant that the eligibility of students from the Art School to vote in these elections depended on the course the students were studying:

It basically comes down to if they have a University of Glasgow matriculation card or not. So some students who study on courses co-delivered between Glasgow and the School of Art would count as a Glasgow University student for GUSA membership.

However, Guardian spoke to a number of students from the GSA who don’t study on a co-delivered course who said they had voted in previous years. They all said they thought it suspicious they were turned down in year when GUSA and SRS are discussing limiting the number of GSA students who would be eligible to use Glasgow’s sporting services.

A third year Visual Communication student at the GSA, who wished to remain anonymous but showed us his GSA matric card, said:

I’ve voted in the past two years and it’s only this year when one of the Presidential candidates, whose not being backed by the GUSA establishment, raises the issues that effect the GSA that we get turned away at the door. That doesn’t seem right.

Howes sought to clarify GUSA’s position:

The clause has aways been in our constitution but perhaps in previous years there has been confusion or something that perhaps nobody really clarified in the last few years. As soon as we became aware of it we decided that we needed to clarify the process for this year.

He also addressed the idea that his early support of presidential candidate Steph Collins had affected GUSA’s decision as her opponent Chris Millar had specifically sought to canvass students from the GSA in his manifesto:

I obviously put out a statement saying that I believed one candidate was better for the job, because of that I have had very little to do with the elections outside of chairing the hustings. It is actually a neutral member of staff who is responsible for running the elections.

Glasgow School of Art Student Association president, Sinead Dunn, told Guardian that she had spoken to students from the GSA who technically shouldn’t have been able to vote who had been able to cast a ballot and others who had been turned away at the door:

I think it is strange that if students were eligible to vote in previous years, by convention rather than regulation, that this is happening now and it needs to be seriously looked at.

Polls close today at 6pm for GUSA elections, with the results being announced later this evening.

“Well you know, we did this to fuck our label” bantered Rodrigo, leaning out over the crowd, apparently jokingly. “But, as the project grew, we decided we wanted to take it on tour.”

The project Rodrigo of guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriella is talking about is new album Area 52, produced in conjunction with Cuban music collective C.U.B.A to give it that big band sound. This is a fine, creative idea for a studio album, but it destroys almost everything that makes Rodrigo y Gabriella an extraordinary live couple. Sad to say, tonight’s show is a loud and slightly hollow experience.

From the off, the show seems ill-thought out; rather than start in their normal style with some acoustic heavy metal to get the crowd going, they leap straight into a few big band numbers. The poor sound balance is immediately apparent – the brass section are far louder than anyone else, particularly the twin guitars, thus blasting away any intricate subtleties in a fanfare of horns. This carries on for 45 minutes or so, the crowd becoming more and more restless, before a 20 minute surge of acoustic material brings them back to life. This is then sandwiched between some more Cuban material, before an encore of even more Cuban re-interpretations (and an inexplicable bass solo).

What was offered was saturated and deafeningly underwhelming; the intricacy and intimacy of the guitars, the awe-inspiring company of talented musicians, these little things which makes Rodrigo y Gabriella such fascinating viewing were mercilessly shoehorned by the relentless noise. Little coherency was apparent in the set, let alone an explanation from the vocal-shy entertainers; song names might of helped in discerning each brass blast from the next. It wasn’t awful, but that certainly doesn’t excuse the puzzling, ill-fitting dullness of it all.

If, for example, the Cuban songs were sandwiched between the more rounded, well thought out acoustic sections, then it might have worked. If, instead of marketing it as a Rodrigo y Gabriella gig, it was presented as ‘Rodrigo y Gabriella y Friends’ in a seated concert setting, that would have worked. If the concert happened a month earlier, tying in with Celtic Connections as a World Music piece with a subsequent concert tour, that would have definitely worked. Instead, what we’re given is a half-way house, an enviable experiment that just does not work in a live-gig setting, which at nearly two hours was far too long, with many of the sold-out audience not bothering to wait for the traditional will-they-won’t-they encore tease and instead making for the Glasgow night.

It wasn’t all bad though. The axe-massaging duo are still extraordinary and mesmerising talents, their sheer skill enough to carry most efforts. When acoustically focused, Rodrigo’s melodies dancing with the slap-rhythms of Gabriella, the results testify to two of the most outstanding musicians in world music. This intricacy, immediacy and humility of tune, harnessed by the tight connection between audience and musician, both stripped down to the bare essentials of rhythm and soul, is what makes the band essential listening. Remove this, and you have nothing; add to it and you have too much. The C.U.B.A experiment, fine in a studio with take-after-take refinement, restricts and over-complicates the experience; extra noise and rhythms saturate the majestic simplicity, and the lack of focus removes the intimacy of two people, two guitars and an enraptured audience. In effect, what you are getting is the Rodrigo y Gabriella name, but not the soul or the performance. This is not Rodrigo y Gabriella, but rather a hollow shell with no real identity, and for people of such raw talent, that’s a waste.

rodgab.com

The blurb in the GFF programme on this film sounded exciting: “Two Russian ghosts embark on a surreal, dreamlike journey… to the end of the world”! How could anyone pass up this surreal journey with striking imagery and some comedy thrown in there, just in case a film with no living humans is just a bit too hard to handle? The premise of the story is the journey of two Russian ghosts as they try to find the doorway to the human world to become alive again. I say premise, singular, because it’s the only one. We get no other background information, nothing to give the story weight. It all feels a little bit one-dimensional.

The story does however take off and the characters of the two ghosts develop quite well thoughout the film as they hike though beautiful scenery, meeting strange characters (a singing hippie, some deer, a creature from the underworld, a wise owl …)  and finding weird objects (a tree that screens videos from the 80’s, a rock that plays music, deer antlers sans deer…). Expecting humour in a film so obscure is usually too much to ask but Finisterrae delivers. Although crude at times it adds humanity to the characters and gives layers to the film without revealing too much, keeping the surreal and weird tag firmly attached.

Although the film utilises its small budget relatively well most of the time, using some great camera tricks for difficult scenes, it is spoiled when you realise the beautiful mountain scenery in front of you is actually a painting-a fact clearly established through a stationary waterfall shot. The visuals in general were somewhat disappointing, perhaps not but because of any choice or failure by the filmmaker: the picture was blurry, had a dead pixel and was being played from a DVD projected to ten times the size it should never be. If care and effort had been put in it to the projection it may have been a stunning film to watch on the big screen as the sweeping landscape was the main attraction throughout the picture. I wouldn’t have expected any less from Eduard Grau, the cinematographer responsible for A Single Man, but this was quite disappointing.

Finistarrae was not all unpleasant although a little too long, at times feeling a bit drawn out, with scenes fitted in seemingly because they may be pretty to look at (or at least  would have been if projected properly) rather than to advance the story or any point. This distracted from the narrative a little too much to ignore. I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’re especially into this kind of thing, but at least the film gave us a lot to chat about afterwards – which  is not at all a bad thing.

Markovics’s directorial debut is a claustrophobic exploration of guilt, suffused with the sweet stench of death. The previously unknown Thomas Schubert plays the orphaned Roman Kogler, an inmate at a Viennese juvenile detention centre with an imminent parole hearing. Having been turned down in the past, and given the seriousness of his crime, he’s less then optimistic about his chances – without giving it away, Roman’s transgressions run deeper then spraying up a few trains and shoplifting a few beers.

The film follows Roman’s attempts to get a meaningful job to support his application, playing the part of the reformed citizen. After a few false starts, he’s given a break as a coroner’s assistant, a clinical, no-nonsense affair in Austria with all the hallmarks of cold, state-run efficiency. Dressed in dreary, branded grays, Roman and his colleagues dart around the city in truck full of tin containers, emptying the morgues and dressing the dead.

On day release, Roman’s time away from the detention centre’s iron bars, electric cord kettles and strip searches is borrowed, filling the film with a palpable tension that pervades the film’s ninety minutes. As well as his guilt, we see Roman quietly grappling with the both the pain of being a motherless child and a young man – Breathing features one of the most gut-wrenchingly awkward boy-meets-girl scenes you’re ever likely to see on screen. Despite all his problems, we only see the subdued Roman explode on two occasions. For a film shot in such an suffocating, explosive environment Markovics’s piece demonstrates a remarkable maturity.

This is a slow and beautifully shot piece that expertly constricts the viewer to the threshold of discomfort, whilst simultaneously revealing a freedom granted by an awareness of the proximity of death. Remarkable.