David Monaghan

HeadStuff • 17th November 2020

TV Review | The Crown’s Fourth Season Turns on its Duty Bound Queen

The Crown season four opens with a bang. Quite literally. For three seasons, creator and lead writer Peter Morgan had been reticent about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. While incidents like Aberfan disaster and the UK miners’ strike of 1972 were given the time they deserved, the escalating conflict across the Irish Sea never got a look in. The presence of Lord Mountbatten (Charles Dance), however, made tackling the subject an inevitability.

GCN • 18th September 2019

Derry Girls star says RuPaul's Drag Race UK will be an 'eff you' to bigots

Derry Girls star Nicola Coughlan has claimed that RuPaul’s Drag Race UK will take aim at the nation’s bigots.

GCN • 2nd August 2019

These are the rumoured queens of RuPaul's Drag Race season 12

Following the announcement that Drag Race season 12 had officially begun casting calls, rumours have spread about who will be in the new cast.

GCN • 15th May 2019

WATCH: Palestinian activists urge Madonna to boycott Eurovision in ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ parody

Palestinian activist Shahd Abusalama partnered with London Palestine Action on Monday to release a 2-minute parody of ‘Papa Don’t Preach’, urging Madonna to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest. This is another of many calls to boycott the Eurovision, held this year in Tel Aviv, Israel.

HeadStuff • 5th April 2019

Film Review | The DCEU Gets Fun With the Charming Heartfelt Shazam!

Shazam! strips back the appeal of superhero adventures to its essentials – childhood wish fulfilment – and gives it a glossy millennial sheen.

HeadStuff • 14th March 2018

10 Years On | Is Funny Games A Soulless Exercise In Movie Violence?

The original Funny Games debuted in 1997, generating a critical storm of both condemnation and adoration. Directed by arthouse darling Michael Haneke, the film acts as a contemplative thesis on the nature of consumable violence, particularly that which is expressed through the American slasher film. Haneke remade the film, beat for beat, with an American cast in 2007 (and released on this day in 2008).

HeadStuff • 16th March 2017

Film Review | Aquarius Is a Poignant Reflection on Ageing and Intimacy

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius is a poignant reflection on ageing, a focused character study on the protagonist Clara (Sônia Braga), who tries to live her life in spite of multiple intrusions to its status quo.

HeadStuff • 22nd September 2016

Friends, Family and Folk Music | An Interview with Real Boy Director Shaleece Haas

Real Boy, Shaleece Haas’ documentary about a young trans musician, is sweet and occasionally hard-hitting, offering viewers a multifaceted coming-of-age narrative that never succumbs to sensationalism. Speaking to me after what must have been an exhausting post-screening question-and-answer session, Haas explains her aims in making such a film and how she hopes to reach audiences with its narrative.

HeadStuff • 6th September 2016

Film Review | The Beatles: Eight Days a Week Offers Valuable Insight into an Influential Band

The 1960s was a period of simultaneous excitement and unease, and this is the climate director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon) hopes to capture in The Beatles: Eight Days a Week. It is a film that looks at the band’s touring years of 1963 to 1966 and the ‘Beatlemania’ they inspired.

University Observer • 6th September 2016

Café Society: Review

Café Society is Woody Allen’s forty-sixth film and by now his time spent in the spotlight is showing. The film is full to the brim with the tropes and archetypes of Allen’s cinema, and they are wheeled out and displayed at such momentum that it often plays like a self-defeating parody of itself.

HeadStuff • 20th June 2016

GAZE Film Festival 2016 | Ireland's Flagship LGBT Film Festival is Back for its 24th Year

The annual GAZE International Film Festival has been a flagship event for Dublin’s LGBT community since its inception in 1992. Now in its 24th year, the festival will continue to highlight LGBT cinema for all its diversity, or so programmer Roisin Geraghty assures: “promoting LGBT film is so exciting,” she says. “You’re trying to find a very fine balance in your programming… between the L, G, B, and T."

University Observer • 19th February 2016

Short and Sweet: The Firehouse Film Contest

David Monaghan speaks to content creators at the 18th Firehouse Film Contest in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

University Observer • 8th February 2016

Youth: Review

We are all just extras. This is the message director Paolo Sorrentino hopes to convey in Youth, his second English language film after 2011’s This Must Be The Place, and his first cinematic feature to follow his 2013 Oscar-winning The Great Beauty. It acts as a poignant reflection upon life, death, and everything in between.

University Observer • 26th November 2015

Hand Gestures: Review

History is important, and no one understands that more than director Francesco Clerici. His debut feature Hand Gestures is an ode to the manual labour and history associated with craftwork.

University Observer • 8th November 2015

The Man of Many Voices: Mario Rosenstock

Mario Rosenstock is known to many as the voice (or voices) of the satirical breakfast show Gift Grub, in which he lampoons various political and sports figures throughout Ireland. On television, he is known for The Mario Rosenstock Show, a sketch show featuring his repertoire of characters in unusual situations; like Joan Burton riding a wrecking ball, or Donal Skehan breaking his nice guy act to beat up some local scumbags.

University Observer • 28th October 2015

The Queen of Ireland: Review

“My job as a drag queen is to commentate from the fringes, to stand on the outside looking in, shouting abuse.” This is the battle cry of Rory O’Neill, also known as drag queen Panti Bliss, the subject of Conor Horgan’s new documentary The Queen of Ireland.

University Observer • 28th October 2015

Filming a Queer Revolution: Conor Horgan

Conor Horgan is the director of the moment. The man behind the woman of the biggest LGBT documentary to come out of Ireland this year, he has no doubt found himself inundated with interview requests and press junkets. Tapping away on his phone he breaks intermittently to apologise. “Sorry,” he says. “This week has been manic.” No doubt.

University Observer • 9th October 2015

Distorting Reality: How Unique is Irish Comedy?

Whenever discussions around television comedy arise, two distinct styles are often pitted against each other: British and American. British comedy champions the downtrodden, all-too-human hero, while American comedy offers a more positive and uplifting outlook on life. Irish comedy, much in the vein of its British counterpart, also stems from a culture of negativity, but is there anything unique about it?

University Observer • 23rd September 2015

Revenge of the Nerds

We are all familiar with the trope of the nerd: a bespectacled, basement-dwelling mess, usually depicted with horn-rimmed glasses and a love for niche science-fiction. This image permeates nearly every aspect of popular culture, from movies to TV, comic books to literature. Almost anyone can identify these characters through appearance alone, but how true is this archetype to reality?

University Observer • 18th September 2015

Spoilers, Barbarians, and the Circus: Ian Beattie

Bouncing around in his seat at MCM Comic-Con, Ian Beattie enthusiastically shared how Game of Thrones has impacted his life, how he attempted, rather unsuccessfully, to avoid spoilers on set, and all that he has in store now that his time on the show has come to an end.