PETER JACKSON has gone from making rough figures out of plasticine to moulding some of the biggest movies in film history. The bearded, bespectacled, tousle haired 43 year-old Kiwi defied convention when he determined to do Tolkein's epic Lord of the Rings his way. It seemed an enormous gamble to film the tales of Middle […]
On May 6th, Oscar 'The Golden Boy' De La Hoya (37-4, 29 KO's) challenges Ricardo 'El Matador' Mayorga (28-5-2NC, 23 KO's) for the World Boxing Council Light-Middleweight title at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. After that, he says, he wants to move back down to welterweight to fight Floyd Mayweather Jnr. De […]
Planning a recent trip to Australia, I narrowed down my stopover options to Tokyo or Kuala Lumpur. I had heard a lot about Tokyo from friends who were there for the 2002 World Cup, and it sounded intriguing. On the other hand, travelling via Kuala Lumpur meant less overall flight time. My annual leave was […]
From the TMO Archive – the legendary Greg Dulli talks to TMO about the Afghan Whigs, Nina Simone, and Pathos in songwriting.
In the year 2000, during restoration work, a rare and important mural was uncovered at the communal fountain of the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima. It was not necessarily a welcome surprise, at least at first, as this painting from the Middle Ages depicted a tree covered with phalluses. “At first when the painting was […]
While A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian is ostensibly a comedy, and an effective one at that, it’s not without genre breaking moments, particularly in its portrayal of the aged. It’s the story of an elderly Ukrainian widower, a naturalised British citizen, who finds love, in the form of an economic migrant with “superior […]
In recent years, few British authors have managed to straddle the line between critical acclaim and commercial success quite as effectively as Jonathan Coe. Much admired for his earlier novels, such as The Accidental Woman, The House Of Sleep and, in particular the era-defining What A Carve Up!, Coe with 2001's The Rotters Club went […]
The brutal murder of an unarmed man in a Belfast pub by members of the IRA in January – coming only weeks after the IRA's robbery of the Northern Bank – provoked a wave of outrage and demands for the disbanding of the IRA. The international campaign for the prosecution of the killers mounted by […]
In the dead of night, two weeks before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, five people broke into Shannon airport in the west of Ireland. Although Shannon airport is not a military base and Ireland was and remains officially at peace with Iraq, they found a US war plane and, according to charges brought against […]