Two years before the American Civil War, Django (Jamie Foxx), a freed slave turned bounty hunter makes his way to Mississippi to free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), a slave at the Candieland plantation owned by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). We have come to expect a highly stylised, postmodern extravaganza whenever Tarantino directs, and we […]
The Impossible (2012), dir. Juan Antonio Bayona, reviewed by Janet Rogerson
The Impossible tells the story of a middle-class British family holidaying in Thailand at Christmastime. Unluckily for them (and many others) their trip coincides with the 26th December 2004 tsunami. The build-up is short: they are a typical family, three boys, one a disgruntled adolescent, played impressively by Tom Holland, (who is destined to learn […]
MR10 Poetry Highlight with Seán Hewitt
I asked Seán Hewitt, whose poems were featured in MR9, to highlight a poet from the current issue. In an especially poetry-rich issue, it couldn’t have been an easy task.
President Higgins on Manchester’s Irish Connection
In November 2012, President Michael D Higgins visited the Northwest of England and made a number of speeches, including this address at the University of Manchester, which we are delighted to publish for the first time.
Itinerary
You don’t really stay here; a hotel is a place at which you arrive and from which you depart.
The West Stand
The Fitzsimonses’ house, about the size of an English manor, was on the middle stretch of Avoca Avenue …
Three Poems
They told you stand barefoot, the cool grass
spreading for the soles of your feet; weight
Two Poems
It’s not that he’s too old, he just doesn’t want it,
the practice being enough and sometimes
making the cut. Top half of the leader-board
The Children’s Story
The Tree reading in the street: ‘The Frome children, who all even the boys bore the names of flowers, were making a trifle …
Two Poems
Those spacious months when we lived
continents apart, pens were back in,
our letters made days more bearable.
A Season in Paradise
I find him in Empangeni. My father lies on his back at the edge of the sugar-cane valley, one arm under his head, the other flung out, fingers plaiting scrub and yellow weed flowers.
The Traffic Noir
The films were usually shown, where I grew up, in school libraries during the normal run of the school day …
End of Watch (2012), dir. David Ayer, reviewed by Janet Rogerson
by Janet Rogerson
Laura Ellen Joyce, The Museum of Atheism (Salt Publishing), reviewed by Alex Johnson
by Alec Johnson
MR9 Editorial
As we move to this newly designed site, we are keen to maintain the onscreen integrity of the poems and prose we publish …