The year was 1959, and in an often overlooked corner of Hackney, one of the world's most recognisable Hollywood beauties was bringing just a touch of Californian colour to a peculiarly English affair: a budgie show. Jayne Mansfield, living in London while making the film Too Hot To Handle, was invited to the All Saints church in Haggerston in September 1959 to help judge the East London Budgerigar and Foreign Birds Society show. Michael......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews continues, courtesy of James Bryan… This week Brad Pitt’s latest (with a title so long it shouldn’t be allowed) The Assassination of Jesse James etc, the alternate realities of The Nines, Vince Vaughn slumming it in Fred Claus, the video game adaptation Hitman, Kenneth Branagh directs The Magic Flute and a re-release for the classic All About Eve. If you get annoyed with trailers that give the plot......

Is your February feeling a little flat? Do you long for the endorphine-fueled glow that only a song full of witty hiatuses before the verse hits it's punning conclusion can bring? That unique feeling that you can only get watching a man in drag clutching the pink frills on his toga as he falls for a boyband-member lookalike in dodgy gladiator armour? Then Achilles in Heels is the show for you. Of course, this......

Hmmm did we miss the heavenly firework display that covered the Earth's atmosphere a few weeks ago? Should we be worried even now that the shuffling noise coming from the corridor is not just Will dragging his sack of fan mail into the office, but actually a carnivorous plant intent on giving us a good tongue lashing? A Day of The Triffids style light show is the only way we can rationalise that David......

Whether you like it or not, the film release everyone's talking about this week is Mr & Mrs Smith. We don't really need to explain why do we? Unless you've been on Mars for the past month you can't have missed the Brad/Angelina gossip that's been doing the rounds, but full marks to Pete Bradshaw (again) who sums up the whole debacle rather nicely in the opening paragraph of his two star review: They......

Despite them not having a relationship of any kind, it seems Brad Pitt is looking to move to London to be nearer weirdo goth home wrecker, Angelina Jolie. According to rumours Pitt has "instructed estate agents to start searching posh parts of west London" which gives him "a convenient half-hour drive from Angelina's Buckinghamshire mansion" (let's hope Brad doens't receive a 'booty call' during rush hour otherwise it's going to take him a hell......

Further proof that celebrities care little for the general public or welfare of the business sector was given today as ramifications of the recent Pitt-Aniston split reverberated around the plush yet oddly creepy halls of London’s Madame Tussauds. The famous wax-works, obviously believing as did the rest of us that the Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston union was forever, had created a joined wax sculpting of the pair that now needs hacking in two as......

No time for a fully-fledged Friday Film News this week, as it's the Londonist Office Xmas Party this afternoon, so we're just going to skip right to the interesting film tidbits section: Following on from last week's teaser trailer, there's now a preview of the War of the Worlds teaser poster online. Is it just us or does it remind you of the poster for The Life of Brian? Somehow we don't think that......