ADELE, Star Wars and Booker Prize winner Marlon James might have hogged much of the publicity in terms of the big music, film and literature releases of the year, but here we select a few more highlights – including a healthy dose of Irish entries.
FILM
1Brooklyn – John Crowley’s phenomenal adaptation of Colm Toibin’s book (with the help of screenwriter Nick Hornby) – should be considered perhaps the best film of 2015 regardless of its Irishness. It tells the tale of young Irish immigrant Eilis Lacey as she navigates her way through 1950s Brooklyn. Just as she’s finally settling into her new life in the US, she is drawn back home in tragic circumstances and wonders if she’ll ever make it back to her beloved Tony.
The film looks stunning, it is joyful, funny and heartbreaking and it clicks on every level. Emory Cohen (Tony), Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Domhnall Gleeson and the rest of the cast are superb. Saoirse Ronan is the star, though, and could well win an Oscar for it.
2Song of the Sea also featured a Saoirse (voiced by Lucy O’Connell) and its Oscar-nominated Newry-born director Tomm Moore has made another brilliant animated film to follow on from The Secret of Kells.
Other filmic treats this year included Slow West – a western with Michael Fassbender, Pixar’s superb Inside Out (and the equally great short, Lava, that accompanied it), Iris – the documentary on New York fashion icon Iris Apfel, Queen of Ireland – the Panti Bliss documentary, Whiplash and the brilliant Birdman – which, for me, rivals Brooklyn as the best film of 2015.
BOOKS
3 Longford-born author Belinda McKeon’s novelTender is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years. It is mainly set in 1997 and 1998 in and around Trinity College Dublin and concerns the `madness’ of student Catherine’s destructive obsession with her friend James. It is funny, dark, intense, beautifully written and is utterly compelling from start to finish.
4 Beatlebone by Kevin Barry was an excellent book with a great premise – of John Lennon returning to the island he bought off Co Mayo in 1978 for some scream therapy and solitude. Cornelius O’Grady – Lennon’s colourful guide – was described as “one of the most memorable characters in contemporary fiction” by Colm Toibin.
5 Another of the books of the year – Anne Enright’s The Green Road – was also set in the west of Ireland, where Rosaleen Madigan calls together her grown-up children to discuss selling the family house – and so they all return for a last Christmas in their childhood abode. It was long-listed for the Booker Prize.
“The episodic, trailing, unclosed ending is perhaps the most brilliant part of this devastating, radical novel,” wrote Kate Clanchy of The Guardian. While Marlon James enjoyed the expected spike in sales for his Booker-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, two other titles that sold by the bucket-load were Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. One of the best poetry collections of the year, meanwhile, was Paul Muldoon’s One Thousand Things Worth Knowing.
MUSIC
6 It was last year that U2 released their latest album Songs of Innocence. Most people were made well aware of this, as it was magically made available for free to over 500 million iTunes customers, for what Apple CEO Tim Cook called "the largest album release of all time”. This year, then, saw Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry take the tunes on the road with their epic Innocence + Experience tour.
It was the first time in a decade that they played indoor arena venues as opposed to stadiums and the first time since their Botanic Gardens gig in 1997 and playing the Waterfront pre-Good Friday Agreement in 1998 that the Dublin northsiders played north of the border. “You are heroes to us,” Bono told his Belfast masses at their first SSE Arena gig last month. Poignantly, the band played Belfast after two of their Paris concerts were postponed following the terrorist attacks on the French capital the previous weekend.
7 Ten years after his magical Illinois album, Sufjan Stevens released another classic in Carrie & Lowell, named in honour of his late mother and his stepfather. The heavenly Should Have Known Better and the gorgeous Fourth of July are two of the best songs he has ever written, while All of Me Wants All of You and Death With Dignity are also exquisite.
I got to see one of Sufjan’s gigs at The Helix in Dublin and while it didn’t quite do the album justice and didn’t compare to previous gigs of his, Carrie & Lowell remains something of a masterpiece.
In joint first place for my album of 2015 is Art Angels by Grimes (aka the uber-talented Canadian Claire Boucher). Courtney Barnett, The Unthanks, Marina and the Diamonds, The Decemberists, Tame Impala, Belle and Sebastian and Hot Chip also put out brilliant records, while Hot Chip’s gig at Belfast’s Limelight was one of the best of the year.
COMEDY
8 Cork’s Chris Kent is emerging as one of the best comedians on the circuit and his brilliantly deadpan dry wit will appeal to fans of Kevin McAleer. His 2015 show Stop Stalling was an hour of comic gold. Much of it was about Kent and Mrs Kent’s honeymoon in Vegas and `mini-moon’ in Ireland and had me in tears of laughter.
As he explained to me ahead of a Belfast gig in the summer, “As the honeymoon deteriorated and fell to s**t, I knew that I had some material in the bank. As terrible as things are going, you’re always like 'Ah, there’s something here. But I won’t say it just now because it’ll spoil the mood.’”
And David O’Doherty’s show We Are All in the Gutter, But Some of Us Are Looking at David O'Doherty – which came to Derry’s Playhouse last month – saw DO’D deliver another stand-up masterclass.
FESTIVALS/THEATRE
9 Playwright Brian Friel sadly passed away in October, just a couple of months after a festival dedicated to him took place in Belfast and on his doorstep in Donegal. The first north/southLughnasa International Friel Festival – in August – featured a remarkable array of plays, performances, talks, music and dance events. “It’s about celebrating Brian’s work, alongside Beckett and Oscar Wilde,” said festival director Sean Doran, who has also programmed festivals around Beckett and Wilde.
The signature play was a Lyric Theatre production of
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, which came to Letterkenny, the Lyric in Belfast and Dublin. “It couldn’t be a better waving of the flag for a great playwright,” said Doran. Another highlight this year was the excellent Lyric/Abbey co-production of O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman. Two other festivals who put together first-class programmes were the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and Belfast Book Festival.
CLASSICAL
10 The Ulster Orchestra’s very existence was under real threat last year because of funding cuts, but it’s in rude health now and performances under the baton of Venezuelan chief conductor Rafael Payare have been widely acclaimed. “I was brought up with the belief ‘to play and to struggle’,” said Payare.
“In other words, to achieve anything worthwhile you must tackle it with passion and commitment. Rest assured that our passion and commitment to bring Northern Ireland our best performances of the world’s greatest music has never been stronger. Even though it has been a troubled time, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
