Scene + Heard: Your entertainment guide to the weekend
Nicki Minaj is due to take to the stage at 3Arena, Dublin, at 9pm tonight, and everybody will have their fingers crossed that all goes to plan.
A late appearance in London earlier this week was described as a “disjointed drag of a performance” by The Guardian; and a show in Bordeaux was cancelled last Saturday due to technical reasons, with some fans already at the venue responding with angry chants of “Cardi B”.
In Cork, gigs for the long weekend include Wild Youth at Cyprus Avenue on Saturday; and St Luke’s hosting of Interference (tomorrow), Scullion on Saturday, and Lankum on Sunday.
For the folkishly inclined, there’s a tribute to Seamus Creagh at Cork School of Music tomorrow night featuring the likes of Jackie Daly & Matt Cranitch, and Greenshine.
Moving Hearts have announced two gigs for the National Concert Hall on July 9-10, while the great Peggy Seeger will be joined by her son Calum MacColl for a concert at the Pavilion in Dún Laoghaire on July 23.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers play at pyramids in Giza on Friday, and fans who missed the nightboat to Egypt can catch the show on the band’s social media (YouTube, Twitter and Facebook from about 7pm).
Meanwhile, Hozier seems to have taken the difficult second album in his stride, with Wasteland, Baby! Entering the American charts at number one, having sold about 75,000 copies — plus thousands of streams — in its first week.
Fashion designer Marc Jacobs is embroiled in a legal battle with Nirvana, following the designer’s use on a t-shirt of a yellow smiley face with the word “Heaven”, which the band’s representatives say infringes their copyright on an almost identical design.
Channel 4 has been ramping up the publicity for its new Irish-set drama The Virtues. Hopefully this means that Shane Meadows’ series will be shown soon. Stephen Graham who Meadows also cast in This Is England, plays a troubled former inmate of Ireland’s brutal care system who returns to the country of his birth.
Given the British director’s track record, we can probably predict that it’ll be decent but grim. After already suffering the wrath of Donald Trump, lighthearted show Saturday Night Live is now being challenged by the Catholic Church following a routine by Pete Davidson.
The comedian ruffled clerical feathers with such lines as: “If you support the Catholic Church, isn’t that like the same thing as being an R Kelly fan? I don’t really see the difference, except like one’s music is significantly better.”
According to NME, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio from the diocese of Brooklyn demanded an immediate apology stating: “The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.”
Richard Linklater’s amazing film, Boyhood, is on RTÉ2 Friday night, while on Monday, TG4 will show A Jar With Brendan Behan, the show from 1970 featuring Niall Tóibín channelling the persona of the hard-drinking writer.
Capernaum is finally available to see in Ireland, after getting much praise on the festival circuit (including a prize at Cannes) and an Oscar nomination.
A moving tale of poverty-stricken children in Lebanon, venues showing it include Triskel in Cork. The same Cork arts centre also has French drama The House by the Sea. Both run from Sunday to Thursday.
