Ireland

Subterms

    More stories

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      Graham Norton Comes Around

      by

      The Irish entertainer is known for his freewheeling talk show, but in his novel “Home Stretch” he explores what it’s like for a gay man to return to his home and find both it and himself wholly transformed.Graham Norton has been a saucy mainstay of British entertainment for so long that it is hard to imagine him doing anything else. Talk-show host, radio presenter, Eurovision Song Contest frontman, “RuPaul’s Drag Race UK” judge, he is known for being quick, empathetic and outrageous, and for relishing nothing more than a good dirty anecdote. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      ‘For Those I Love’ Sets Sad Stories to Electronic Beats

      by

      David Balfe never thought the public would hear his deeply personal debut album. But it became a runaway success in his native Ireland.David Balfe feels guilty. The Irish musician’s debut album “For Those I Love,” which he recorded under the same name, has had the kind of success most artists only dream of: It has won widespread critical praise and was only beaten to the No. 1 spot in the Irish album charts by Justin Bieber.But the record wasn’t made for public release, and Balfe said he feels uncomfortable receiving recognition for an album about his working-class Dublin childhood and a friend’s recent death.“I seem to have benefited from the release of these difficult and deeply personal stories,” Balfe, 29, said in a recent video interview. “It’s a little bit out of my control now.”He described the album — which depicts gang violence, poverty and substance addiction — as “storytelling set against a backdrop of electronica.” Its lyrics mix reminiscences of all-night parties with Balfe’s close circle of friends and indictments of wealth inequality in Ireland — a country where both house prices and homelessness rates have surged in recent years.Balfe grew up in the North Dublin suburb of Donaghmede, but went to school and had family and friends in nearby Coolock, where crime levels were rising throughout his teenage years. “I emerged at a young age into quite a violent backdrop and aggressive place,” he said. To survive there, he added, “I needed to learn a coldness.”On the album, Balfe explores death, grief and inequality in Dublin, which he said were all “intrinsically linked.” On one track, “Birthday/The Pain,” he recalls a homeless man who was murdered on the street where he lived when he was six.Balfe said he was “struck by the universal acceptance of a record that is so descriptive of a very specific piece of geography,” adding that he was surprised to see the “minutiae of a world that I grew up in resonating with people from a world so far from mine.”Balfe’s best friend, Paul Curran, played a key role in many of the stories told on “For Those I Love.” They met in high school, and Curran went on to become a popular spoken word artist, writing and performing work about everything from politics to soccer.At Chanel College, in Coolock, the two discovered music in lunchtime guitar jam sessions organized by an English teacher, Mick Phelan. “David and Paul were non-judgemental,” Phelan said of Balfe and Curran in a video interview. “They had their friends, but they talked to everyone. I saw a humanity and a maturity in them that I don’t often see in teenage lads.”After graduating, Balfe and Curran continued making music and art together: first in a hardcore band called Plagues; later, as part of Burnt Out, a collective that made audiovisual works that addressed youth unemployment in Coolock, which was running at around 25 percent throughout Ireland at the time.Balfe returned to the problems of Dublin’s suburbs in 2017, when he began “For Those I Love,” layering vocals over a solo instrumental project he put together in his mother’s garden shed. He brought his own voice — half-sung, half-spoken, in a strong Irish brogue — to the sample-heavy dance music he had written, mixing in snippets of WhatsApp voice notes and spoken word work by Curran.The tracks were made to share with his closest friends and his family, he said: “A document of love and thanks for the sacrifices they made.”In April, Balfe released a short film, “Holy Trinity,” as part of the For Those I Love project. Tiberio VenturaBut in February 2018, Paul Curran died by suicide and Balfe, grief-stricken, put “For Those I Love” on pause. The next few months were “a thundering whirlwind of chaos,” he said, that felt like “a day and a decade in one.”“In the shadow of grief, all of us were very different people,” he said. “It’s very easy to believe that you might never be creative again.”Balfe’s return to writing music was the “first step in the recovery” after Curran’s death, he added. Some of the material, like the opening track “I Have a Love,” was rewritten completely, changing from an ode to his group of friends to a eulogy to Curran; nostalgic new songs, such as “You Stayed,” were added.“It was very much a mode of self expression and survival at the time,” Balfe said.When “For Those I Love” was finished, in May 2019, Balfe put it on the independent music platform Bandcamp, to share with family and friends. A few Irish music blogs found it, too, and the record received some favorable reviews. But Balfe’s fortunes really changed when “For Those I Love” came to the attention of Ash Houghton, an A&R manager at September Recordings, which also represents Adele and London Grammar.“The album speaks for itself,” Houghton said in an email. “My only thought at the time was that it would be a tragedy if more people weren’t able to hear it.”Houghton offered a release on the label, yet Balfe initially was hesitant to share such personal work with a wider audience, he said. But friends who had also known Curran suggested the album could help others, he said, “and speak to them as they move through their own grief.”In March, September Recordings rereleased “For Those I Love,” which entered the Irish album charts at No. 2, and Balfe’s debut live show in Dublin, scheduled for October, sold out in 10 minutes.Niall Byrne, the editor of Nialler9.com, an Irish music site that was one of the album’s early champions, said in a video interview that, while many Irish musicians were producing good music, “you don’t hear a lot of rawness.” It was this quality, he added, that set Balfe’s record apart.A recent wave of new artists, he said — including Balfe, the group Pillow Queens and the post-punk band the Murder Capital — were “less defined by genre or sound,” but rather “by the sensibility and values their music holds. Their lyrics are informed by real issues.”Balfe said he was working on a new album, that would also be informed by Dublin and its politics, but that the project had hit a “frustratingly stagnant brick wall.” Despite the success of “For Those I Love,” he was still working “a day job,” he said — though he didn’t want to say what that was. He kept the job, which he had before signing the record deal, out of “fear of turning the thing that I love the most, the creative pursuits, into labor.”Since the wider release of “For Those I Love,” Balfe said, fans had been messaging him on social media, to share how the record has “helped them shake their grief.”He still mourns Curran, he said: “A semi-successful local record isn’t going to make that better.” But, he added, he was happy that his music has touched others. “Those responses,” he said, “have gone a long way to help with some of the guilt.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Carmel Quinn, Irish Singer and Storyteller, Dies at 95

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCarmel Quinn, Irish Singer and Storyteller, Dies at 95A hit on the television variety-show circuit of the 1950s and ’60s, she also sang to packed crowds for many years at Carnegie Hall for St. Patrick’s DayMarch 14, 2021Updated 1:52 p.m. ETThe Irish-born singer Carmel Quinn gave an annual St. Patrick’s Day benefit concert at Carnegie Hall for a quarter-century.Credit…Carnegie Hall Susan W. Rose ArchivesCarmel Quinn, a blue-eyed, flame-haired Irish singer and storyteller who packed Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick’s Day for a quarter-century and regaled her audiences with tunes and tales from the Old Country, died on March 6 at her home in Leonia, N.J. She was 95. The cause was pneumonia, her family said.Ms. Quinn, who was born and raised in Dublin, came to the United States in 1954 and won an audition on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” the next year. Those auditions were famous for their rigor: Others who passed them included Pat Boone, Tony Bennett and Connie Francis; those who flunked included Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly.Ms. Quinn became a regular on another Godfrey television show, “Arthur Godfrey and His Friends,” for six years while rotating through other popular variety shows of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, including “The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Mike Douglas Show” and many more. Much later, she showed up on “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee.”With the gift of gab and a voice that some compared to Judy Garland’s, she performed at the White House, first for John F. Kennedy and then for Lyndon B. Johnson.Ms. Quinn performed at the White House for President John F. Kennedy, right, and for President Lyndon B. Johnson.Credit…UPIThe standard Irish songs in her repertoire included “The Whistling Gypsy,” “Galway Bay” and “Isle of Innisfree.” In later years she filled out her act with a patter of anecdotes about life in general and amusing relatives in particular. One was her Aunt Julia.As Ms. Quinn told the story, Aunt Julia always wore her hat in the house so that if someone came to the door whom she didn’t want to see, she could say, “I was just on me way out.”Ms. Quinn disapproved of bachelors. “Make you sick, they would,” she would say, “out there sowing their wild oats and praying for a crop failure.”And her way of bringing people back down to earth if they got too big for their britches was to call out loudly: “Sorry to hear about the fire in your bathroom. Thank God it didn’t reach the house!”But holding pride of place for Ms. Quinn were her concerts at Carnegie Hall. They began in 1955, when she was approached by a group that wanted to raise money for a hospital in Ireland. Mr. Godfrey built an audience for her that first year, instructing his radio listeners, “Now, you get out there and go to Carmel’s concert.” But after that, she was draw enough on her own. She gave benefit performances each St. Patrick’s Day for more than two decades, and they all sold out.“The night of the concert, you couldn’t get in the place,” she told The New York Times in 1975 on the eve of the 20th anniversary of her first St. Patrick’s Day show. Hers was initially a solo act, but she later included groups like the Clancy Brothers and the Chieftains, their spirited performances turning Manhattan’s prestige concert stage into an old-fashioned Irish music hall.Writing after her St. Patrick’s Day show in 1969, Robert Sherman of The Times called her “a breezy hostess and a totally engaging singer.” Her music, he said, would “warm the cockles of any son, daughter or passing acquaintance of the auld sod.”Carmel Quinn was born on July 31, 1925, and grew up in Phibsborough, a now trendy neighborhood on the north side of Dublin. Her father, Michael, was a violinist and a bookie. Her mother, Elizabeth (McPartlin) Quinn, a homemaker, died when Carmel, the youngest of four siblings, was 7.Carmel sang with local bands and studied for a while at a teachers’ college, but she dropped out when she started winning singing engagements. Then she left for America.She married Bill Fuller, a colorful Irish music impresario, in 1955. As more Irish were coming to America, Mr. Fuller opened ballrooms in New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, and she sang in many of those venues.The couple initially lived in the Bronx, but they would take Sunday strolls over the George Washington Bridge and soon found a small brick house in Leonia, just across the Hudson River. They separated in the early 1970s, and she lived in the same house for the rest of her life.Ms. Quinn is survived by two daughters, Jane and Terry Fuller, and a son, Sean Fuller; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Her son Michael died of a heart problem in 1988.Ms. Quinn, second from left, with, from left, the actor Niall Toibin, the cabaret performer Julie Wilson and William Warnock, Ireland’s ambassador to the United States, in 1970 at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway, where Mr. Toibin was appearing in Brendan Behan’s “Borstal Boy.”Credit…Solters-SabinsonHer love of being onstage took her to cabarets, clubs and Off Broadway. She starred in several musicals, on the road and in summer stock, including “The Sound of Music,” “Finian’s Rainbow” and “The Boy Friend.”She also presented revues of her own work at the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan: “Wait ’Til I Tell You” in 1997 and “That and a Cup of Tea” in 2001, in which, Neil Genzlinger of The Times said, she demonstrated “a Jack Benny-like gift for comic timing.”She continued to perform until she was 88. But it wasn’t all laughter and song. One of her final performances was in November 2013, after the death of the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Ms. Quinn took the stage at the Irish Rep and recited his “Aye” and “Old Smoothing Iron,” evoking the working women she knew so well. She received standing ovations.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      The Small Irish Animation Studio That Keeps Getting Oscars’ Attention

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Small Irish Animation Studio That Keeps Getting Oscars’ AttentionWith “Wolfwalkers,” Cartoon Saloon completes a hand-drawn trilogy based on Celtic mythology. The film epitomizes everything the studio stands for.Tomm Moore next to drawings from “Wolfwalkers” being exhibited at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny, Ireland.Credit…Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York TimesDec. 16, 2020, 3:29 p.m. ETWhen Tomm Moore and 11 friends in the small city of Kilkenny, Ireland, set out to make an animated movie in 1999 based on Celtic mythology, they could hardly imagine their labor of love would become a studio that would revolutionize the animation industry in Ireland, revitalize interest in folklore at home and connect with a global audience.Nor could they envision that their studio, Cartoon Saloon, would go on to earn an Oscar nomination with every feature release, an impressive accomplishment for a relatively young outfit. And yet now, with their fourth feature, “Wolfwalkers,” directed by Moore and Ross Stewart, chances are the Oscars will howl at them once more.Taking its influences from Celtic ornamental art, the studio is known for rousing stories told from the perspective of children taking their first steps into adulthood, often with a subtext about respect for nature. Visually, the films feature intricate designs, as if they were Celtic patterns (spirals, knots, triskeles) brought to life through hand-drawn motion.A scene from the Cartoon Saloon production “Wolfwalkers,” directed by Moore and Ross Stewart.Credit…Apple TV+As a child, Moore first got the idea that animation could be a career path when he discovered international artists were working in Ireland. “I remember seeing stuff on TV about Don Bluth’s studio in Dublin and the Jimmy Murakami studio making the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’ I was conscious of that,” the director told me by phone. Later, as a teenager, he joined Young Irish Filmmakers, a Kilkenny organization that introduced him to like-minded artists and offered access to equipment.But while the seed for what would become Cartoon Saloon was planted there, it grew when he studied animation at Ballyfermot College in Dublin. There, he met Paul Young and Nora Twomey, the studio’s co-founders and two of its major creative forces. Originally, the group’s plan was to get hired at Sullivan Bluth Studios (“The Land Before Time”), but when that company left Ireland for the United States, the future became unclear. The only option was smaller animation companies, but none were making features at the time.Broke but resourceful, Moore took on freelance work, and, together with Young, came up with the name Cartoon Saloon. By then, Moore and his friend Aidan Harte had an early idea for a film inspired by the ancient Book of Kells. Celtic mythology had interested Moore since childhood when he would consume books by Jim Fitzpatrick that recounted Irish legends as if they were superhero epics, and later the comic book Sláine, about a Celtic warrior.“The Secret of Kells” was the first in the studio’s trilogy based on Celtic mythology.Credit…GkidsIn 1999, Moore and Harte’s concept won a grant from Young Irish Filmmakers, which also let them set up a studio in an old orphanage that served as the group’s premises. With nearly a dozen friends, they left Dublin for Kilkenny to begin production on a trailer for what would become their first feature-length project, “The Secret of Kells” (directed by Moore andTwomey), the first in a trilogy about Irish myths. But it would take a few years — and include detours into commercials to keep the business afloat — before backers signed on.“When we started Cartoon Saloon, the plan wasn’t to do it forever,” Moore said. “We thought at a certain point we’d get ‘real jobs’ in another studio, but it just kept on going.” He added that the friends figured they could make “The Secret of Kells” in a year or two. Instead, production didn’t start until 2005, the same time the studio started working on “Skunk Fu!,” a series created by Harte. (By then the staff had grown to around 80 artists. Today, between Cartoon Saloon and Lighthouse Studios, a joint venture with the Canadian film company Mercury Filmworks, there are more than 300 animation professionals in Kilkenny.)With “Kells,” the bulk of the work was still being done on paper, not only because the amount of infrastructure required for 3-D animation was unfeasible, but also because traditional methods best suited their sensibilities. “We knew we could make a little bit of money look like a lot of love and care if we did it by hand,” Twomey said. Now, the artists draw by hand on digital devices to streamline production, as they did with Twomey’s 2017 solo directorial debut “The Breadwinner,” another Oscar-nominated project, this one set in Afghanistan.“The Breadwinner,” directed by Nora Twomey, was another Cartoon Saloon production to be nominated for an Oscar.Credit…GkidsBut when “The Secret of Kells” was released, Cartoon Saloon was struggling. Although the film garnered festival awards worldwide, it was a flop at home. The studio was hit by the late 2000s financial crisis and, with nothing in development, was at risk of going under. That’s when the film received an unexpected Oscar nomination for best animated feature in 2010. “I thought it might just end up a footnote in history books saying there was an animated feature based on Irish history but I didn’t think it would make such a mark,” Moore said.The accolade probably saved the studio. “I think we might have fallen apart without it,” Moore said, though the Pixar film “Up” would go on to win the Oscar. Moore added that the nod “made us recommit to making features. It was an endorsement from the other artists in the industry saying they wanted to see more of what we were doing.”For that life-changing nomination, the director credits GKids, the New York-based distributor of independent animation, which has released all of the studio’s films stateside (including “Wolfwalkers” theatrically). “If it wasn’t for GKids picking it up, we would never have gotten the Oscar nomination.”The new “Wolfwalkers” concludes the Cartoon Saloon trilogy.Credit…Apple TV+Then an infant company born out of the New York International Children’s Film Festival, GKids set up an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run and carried its first awards campaign on behalf of the movie.With renewed interest in Cartoon Saloon and extra support from Screen Ireland (formerly the Irish Film Board), Moore embarked on “Song of the Sea,” his second movie in the trilogy. This time shape-shifting selkies were the focus. It was during this process that Moore made it his goal to keep the spotlight on his country’s heritage. “Song of the Sea” earned him and the Cartoon Saloon team a second Oscar nomination.“We’re part of the rediscovery of Irish culture,” Moore explained. “We have had a strange relationship with how Ireland gets represented onscreen in other countries, and so we wanted to speak for our own culture for the next generation.”Moore’s wife is a teacher at an Irish language school, so preserving their nation’s native tongue was also a priority for him. All of Cartoon Saloon’s movies and shows have Irish-language versions.With “Wolfwalkers,” the final installment in the trilogy, the studio made a conscious decision to create a larger action adventure. Set in 17th-century Kilkenny, the film plays as historical revisionism wrapped in a fantastical tale where humans, while sleeping, can turn into wolves. Artistically and narratively, it’s their most ambitious undertaking yet. Initially, Cartoon Saloon shopped the project to Netflix, but when the streaming goliath passed, Apple stepped in.Released by GKids on 500 screens across the United States last month and on Apple TV+ Dec. 11, the movie has received glowing reviews and has been the subject of loud awards chatter.For now, Moore is ready for an inspiration-replenishing sabbatical. Up next for Cartoon Saloon is “My Father’s Dragon,” which Twomey is directing and which is scheduled to premiere on Netflix in 2021. Based on a 1948 children’s novel by Ruth Stiles Gannett, the fable follows a young boy searching for a dragon on a magical island.For Cartoon Saloon, a venture born out of the friendship and a shared love of drawing among Irish kids crafting wondrous worlds, the journey so far had been grand.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Crock of Gold’ Review: Shane MacGowan, Still Alive and Laughing

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusClassic Holiday MoviesHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Crock of Gold’ Review: Shane MacGowan, Still Alive and LaughingRambunctious, even in a wheelchair, the hell-raising Irish musician is the subject of this Julien Temple documentary.Shane MacGowan, as seen in the documentary “Crock of Gold.”Credit…Andrew Catlin/Magnolia PicturesBy More