This year’s West End Christmas lights will be themed around Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. For the first time ever, the illuminations on Oxford Street, Regent Street and in the City will all be switched on simultaneously and carry Scroogesome designs. The Dickensian profusion coincides with the release of Disney’s new version of A Christmas Carol, with Jim Carrey revisiting his Grinchian ways in the part of Ebeneezer Scrooge, alongside a tripartite Gary Oldman (Bob Cratchit, Marley, Tiny Tim), Bob Hoskins (Mr Fezziwig) and Colin Firth (Fred). According to IMDb, this is at least the 50th version of the oft-told tale, and the second major production by Disney. Can Director Robert Zemeckis’ 3-D IMAX treatment bring fresh cranberry sauce to this endlessly reheated turkey? Judge from the trailer. If we turn a blind eye to the anachronistic London Bridge (bah humbug), this might just be the best thing to happen to the tale since Gonzo, Kermit, Piggy and Caine. Tickets for the 3 November cinema preview are on sale now, at £50 each (which includes a charitable donation to Great Ormond Street, in best non-Scroogian fashion).

So, err, yeah. Yessss. Eddie Izzard! That’s who I’ve come to talk to you about today, mmm. He’s presenting some of his Work In Progress at the Arts Theatre on Great Newport Street each night at 11:15 between today (Friday 1st February) and Sunday. Is he really? Is he really…

When Londonist looked there were still some tickets available from a well known site for Sunday night and you may also be able to find them twanging themselves onto other websites.

Eddie performed some similar gigs at the same venue last July, so it will be interesting to find out how his material has blossomed (though apparently not to fruition) since then. Looks like learning the words to “The Bare Necessities” from Disney’s Jungle Book beforehand could be a good move, though.

Groovy photo via Mai Le’s Flickr stream.

For over a year now Disney’s hit High School Musical has been pretty much inescapable, spawning two chart-topping soundtracks and launching the career of tween idol Zac Efron. The HSM bandwagon shows no signs of slowing down either, with the legitimate theatre production of the film playing a short stint at London’s Apollo Hammersmith Theatre as of June 30th. This new incarnation is separate from the UK tour, which begins on February 19th in Edinburgh and runs until the end of the year, proving that the nation’s appetite for good-natured cheese isn’t even close to abating.

Stateside, HSM’s success has been nigh-on unstoppable, with US high schools being able to stage their own productions of HSM2 as of October, following numerous amateur productions of the first film. With tours set for Italy and Spain in March, plus a Dutch production starting in November, it looks as if HSM will be with us for some time. And whether it’s the cheesily-hummable hits that get you going or the sight of Zac Efron baring his abs on the cover of Rolling Stone, it looks like you’ve got plenty more coming your way.

By Ben Fowler

Gold, frankincense, myrrh. What are these to a small child? If the magi were really such wise men, they’d have headed to Regent Street, where Hamleys and the Disney Store provide all the playthings a growing Saviour needs.

Please send festively themed Touch Up London entries to londonist – at – gmail – dot com

DCist spent the week honoring some local heroes. First and foremost, they honored 75 year-old Mona Shaw, who smashed up a local Comcast cable office with a hammer after she got fed up with their terrible service. They also premiered a new music video by rising D.C. band Georgie James and got some great comments in support of a local reporter who got kicked out of the White House by First Lady Laura Bush for asking a tough question about voting rights. Finally, they got a chance to hear from famed photographer Annie Leibovitz about her new exhibition at the Corcoran and…they had to bust Wizards star Gilbert Arenas for cheating at Halo 3. Sometimes Agent Zero isn’t always a hero.

Gothamist loves fall – and can’t helping loving City Councilman James Oddo for letting his f-bomb flag fly when a Norwegian comedian fails to be funny. Also fun: A makeover that a statue of Mahatma Ghandi got. Not so fun: A noose found outside a Columbia professor’s door, a strange murder where a man killed his date and slept next to the body for days. The And the Big Apple blog spoke to Jonny Greenwood about his solo projects and that album his band Radiohead dropped this week.

Phillyist rubbed elbows with teenagers and had their pens stolen at a concert, which made the, stark “raven” mad. A local drug bust proved that they really do need you to take your shoes off at the airport, and got a glimpse of what might have been a normal sight if the Phillies hadn’t choked. They also made it through hell, and found themselves back in 1995.

Oh, it’s on. Sparked by Desperate Housewives‘ recent assessment of medical schooling in the Philippines, SFist witnessed a heated protest at the Disney Store — i.e., Disney-ABC TV. (Come again, Teri?) A building manager/tenant feud led to a passive-aggressive find. (Meow!) And an electronic mail exchange between SFist and SF Bay Guardian scribes amused and angered readers. (Pft.) Flare-ups notwithstanding, cyclocross enthusiasts impressed us with their bloody knees, perilous cycling skills, and tight spandex. (Dangerous? Yes. But safer than riding Muni buses these days.)

In London, an almighty crack has appeared in the floor of the Tate Modern gallery which allowed plenty of puns and innuendoes to fly around to coincide with a sudden load of sexy stuff that has flooded the city. Meanwhile, for those trying to avoid getting hot under the collar about cracks and coupling, there was the chance to ponder the economics of music tickets and then taking all that financial thinking to a free lunch and a little learning. And learning is cool, as long it’s free and makes it onto the map.

All week long, Bostonist has laughed until their sides split at the Boston Comedy Festival Comedy Contest, in which over 90 comedians compete for a big break. But it’s not all funny–some extremely talented female comedians got robbed this year. Bostonist had plenty of other reasons to laugh besides the comedy festival. For starters, the public transportation system has decided that commuters need a little soft rock to get through the day. Bostonist will laugh until the strains of Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie” drives them insane. And, if they weren’t laughing, Bostonist was definitely smiling as the Red Sox advanced and beat Cleveland in Game 1 of the ALCS. But it absolutely wasn’t funny when the MLB rained on a presidential candidate’s attempt to raffle off much-coveted Red Sox tix.

Want to know what else is happening across the Ist-a-Verse? Check out this week’s favorites on Austinist, Chicagoist, Houstonist, Sampaist, Seattlest and Shanghaiist, and Torontoist.

SFist’s Disney-ABC TV protest image: Jim Herd.

]]> As it gets closer to Halloween for LAist, a contributer recollects her tale of staring down the serial killer, Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker. Must think happy thoughts — okay, free organic chocolate chip cookies for Los Angeles — now that’s a happy thought. Other happy Los Angeles thoughts include an interview with Jack Kehler of The Big Lebowski (he was the Dude’s landlord), a beautiful and magical photographic moment in Venice and the press making the speaker of the California State Assembly, Fabian Nunez, run away when being asked hard questions about sketchy luxurious and worldly expenses.

DCist spent the week honoring some local heroes. First and foremost, they honored 75 year-old Mona Shaw, who smashed up a local Comcast cable office with a hammer after she got fed up with their terrible service. They also premiered a new music video by rising D.C. band Georgie James and got some great comments in support of a local reporter who got kicked out of the White House by First Lady Laura Bush for asking a tough question about voting rights. Finally, they got a chance to hear from famed photographer Annie Leibovitz about her new exhibition at the Corcoran and…they had to bust Wizards star Gilbert Arenas for cheating at Halo 3. Sometimes Agent Zero isn’t always a hero.

Gothamist loves fall – and can’t helping loving City Councilman James Oddo for letting his f-bomb flag fly when a Norwegian comedian fails to be funny. Also fun: A makeover that a statue of Mahatma Ghandi got. Not so fun: A noose found outside a Columbia professor’s door, a strange murder where a man killed his date and slept next to the body for days. The And the Big Apple blog spoke to Jonny Greenwood about his solo projects and that album his band Radiohead dropped this week.

Phillyist rubbed elbows with teenagers and had their pens stolen at a concert, which made the, stark “raven” mad. A local drug bust proved that they really do need you to take your shoes off at the airport, and got a glimpse of what might have been a normal sight if the Phillies hadn’t choked. They also made it through hell, and found themselves back in 1995.

Oh, it’s on. Sparked by Desperate Housewives‘ recent assessment of medical schooling in the Philippines, SFist witnessed a heated protest at the Disney Store — i.e., Disney-ABC TV. (Come again, Teri?) A building manager/tenant feud led to a passive-aggressive find. (Meow!) And an electronic mail exchange between SFist and SF Bay Guardian scribes amused and angered readers. (Pft.) Flare-ups notwithstanding, cyclocross enthusiasts impressed us with their bloody knees, perilous cycling skills, and tight spandex. (Dangerous? Yes. But safer than riding Muni buses these days.)

In London, an almighty crack has appeared in the floor of the Tate Modern gallery which allowed plenty of puns and innuendoes to fly around to coincide with a sudden load of sexy stuff that has flooded the city. Meanwhile, for those trying to avoid getting hot under the collar about cracks and coupling, there was the chance to ponder the economics of music tickets and then taking all that financial thinking to a free lunch and a little learning. And learning is cool, as long it’s free and makes it onto the map.

All week long, Bostonist has laughed until their sides split at the Boston Comedy Festival Comedy Contest, in which over 90 comedians compete for a big break. But it’s not all funny–some extremely talented female comedians got robbed this year. Bostonist had plenty of other reasons to laugh besides the comedy festival. For starters, the public transportation system has decided that commuters need a little soft rock to get through the day. Bostonist will laugh until the strains of Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie” drives them insane. And, if they weren’t laughing, Bostonist was definitely smiling as the Red Sox advanced and beat Cleveland in Game 1 of the ALCS. But it absolutely wasn’t funny when the MLB rained on a presidential candidate’s attempt to raffle off much-coveted Red Sox tix.

Want to know what else is happening across the Ist-a-Verse? Check out this week’s favorites on Austinist, Chicagoist, Houstonist, Sampaist, Seattlest and Shanghaiist, and Torontoist.

SFist’s Disney-ABC TV protest image: Jim Herd.

]]> http://londonist.com/2007/10/elsewhere_in_th_35.php/feed 0 http://londonist.com/2007/09/sporting_weeken_23.php http://londonist.com/2007/09/sporting_weeken_23.php#comments Sat, 29 Sep 2007 00:07:13 +0000 London_Duncan http://londonist.com/?p=7007

It’s entirely in the nature of ducks that they can fly under the radar, but only in fairy tales do kings arrive unannounced. Nevertheless, even those who would count themselves fans of ice hockey may be surprised to learn that the O2 Arena this weekend hosts not just one, but two clashes between a pair of North American professional teams. And not just a pre-season slapabout, mind you. These are the opening fixtures of the brand new regular NHL season and count as home games for last term’s champions, the Anaheim Ducks, as they migrate across eight time zones to host their local rivals from 35 miles down the highway, the Los Angeles Kings.

It’s the equivalent of Manchester United opening their Premiership defence against Blackburn in San Francisco, which these days doesn’t sound so outlandish given the top clubs’ regular pre-season tournaments in Asia and the States. The reasoning is pretty much the same in both cases. They’re looking for ways into lucrative foreign markets that have typically been resistant to the obvious charms of their sport. Even then, that the honour of the first regular season game in Europe should fall to London is still a surprise given that Scandinavia and former Soviet territories provide a sizeable proportion of the NHL’s players, and therefore foreign fanbase, while we don’t seem to have provided one player ever and for the most part could barely care less. The other day the Ducks paraded the legendary Stanley Cup, which was originally sold from the West End, around the capital in an open topped red bus and as one hockey scribe explained:

You don’t really realize the power of the Cup until you go away from its comfort zone. It is a celebrity even on the streets of London, where football’s FA Cup reigns supreme among the sporting populace. Everywhere we went, people pointed and stared and asked hush questions as the Cup passed by.

What he failed to lip read was that the enquiries were “Who are they and what is THAT?” Just like us though he did notice that there was plenty of other interest.

There are cameras everywhere — in the tube waiting areas, in pubs, on the streets — documenting your every move. It can be unsettling when you stop to think how pervasive the surveillance is.

And this from a man used to having a Department of Homeland Security.

Anyway, unusual though this weekend’s events are, they do not constitute the first bold location decision by the NHL. The sport probably has most in common here with rugby league in that it’s fiercely popular in areas of the North (and also Canada), but attempts to spread the game’s appeal southwards have met with only limited success. Despite posting some record attendance figures the game is struggling for television audiences and therefore to secure its status as one of America’s Big Four sports. The excitement, as convert Ian Winwood wrote in the Guardian, is very much in being at the game itself:

Live hockey can be, and often is, an experience like no other. No game loses more in the translation to television than that played by 200-pound men skating at up to 40 miles an hour, laden with body armour, chasing a disc of vulcanised rubber and using a combination of balletic skill and basic thuggery as the tools of their trade.

Those that snapped up tickets quickly back in March will be able to experience that for themselves as they pack out the 17,500 seater arena this Saturday and Sunday evening while those of us having to make do with coverage on the goggle box could do worse than make our way to a pub we recently recommended for watching Canada in the rugby union World Cup, the Maple Leaf on Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, which is likely to make up for the somewhat diminished visual spectacle in atmosphere and camaraderie as it is predicted to be packed with feverish ice hockey fans all weekend and is conveniently close to sporting apparel emporia for those vital nouveau skateiste jersey purchases.

And just in case you’re thinking that fella in the picture looks strangely familiar, ice hockey’s top team were founded a mere fourteen years ago by the Walt Disney Corporation as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, inspired not so much by the live action movie concerning the classic misfits-to-heroes rise of a youth hockey team, but more by the animated series that was inspired by that movie and featured a team of that name which consisted of wild fowl pucksters of a similar nature to those martial artist amphibious reptiles you may have encountered. The name was only altered in 2005 when Disney sold the franchise. Nobody involved seems to find any of this particularly unusual. We await the Super League debut of the FilmFair backed Warrior Wombles of Wimbledon with much anticipation.

Picture via Joits’s Flickr stream.

Now I’m the king of the swingers

Oh, the jungle VIP

I’ve reached the top and had to stop

And that’s what botherin’ me

I wanna be a man, mancub

And stroll right into town

And be just like the other men

I’m tired of monkeyin’ around!

Theatre producers The Steam Industry may not have designed their live stage version of Disney’s The Jungle Book to turn in to a singalong event but once King Louie begins his tuneful ode to homo sapiens, we doubt the audience will stay silent.

The Scoop outdoor theatre season has been faithfully keeping to its programme of original performances this wet and windy summer, like the National Theatre’s Watch This Space outdoor festival a little further along the Thames. The Scoop is the amphitheatre space next to City Hall and the cool, smooth, stone curved steps around the slate-coloured performance space does not easily transform into hot, tropical jungle filled with treacherous snakes and wily tigers or lost little boys in the care of conscientious bears. Still, if The Steam Industry were able to put Treasure Island, The London Nativity, The Causcasian Chalk Agamemnon and Oedipus out there, we’re quite excited to see what they do with this much-loved Disney classic.

There are lots of opportunities to catch this free outdoor performance so if bad weather disrupts Baloo’s rendition of The Bare Necessities and the vultures are halted in their slapstick, you can pack your rug and cushions and head back for another try. It’s free, it’s got the good kind of dancing bear and hypnotic snakes… what do you have to lose?

Disney’s The Jungle Book Kids at The Scoop, More London site near City Hall, Wednesday 15 August, Friday 17, Saturday 18, Sunday 19 August and furhter dates, 6pm, free. For more information and the full list of dates, go to the More London website here.

There are a million things to do in London this week, but if you fancy a night in, here are a few things to keep you occupied.

On TV, Londonist likes:

Monday, 2 July – Friday, 6 July

Wimbledon Today (BBC2, 20:00-21:00) Chances are, your workplace won’t let you watch Wimbledon during the day, so here’s your chance to catch up all week. Watch and see how many ways they can come up with saying “play has been suspended due to rain.”

Monday, 2 July

Britain’s Next Top Model (Living, 21:00-22:00) The Brit version of the US model search is back for series three. Addictive telly featuring overly dramatic, not very bright models competing for a modelling contract. Sure to be full of tantrums, tears and whinging. You can’t go wrong.

The Tower (BBC1, 22:45-23:35) Part two of this eight part documentary on development of the Pepys Estate in South London. In this episode, the last council tennants are out and the development is set to begin. There’s also problems in the condemned building with squatters coming into conflict with pregnant women. It’s a fascinating look at the contrasts in this lovely city of ours.

Friday, 6 July

Saving Planet Earth (BBC1, 19:00-20:00 and 20:30-22:00) To prep you for Saturday’s Live Earth event, the odd couple of Graham Norton and Alan Titchmarsh host this fundraising event from Kew Gardens to end Saving Planet Earth season, featuring Natasha Bedingfield, Beverley Knight and Manic Street Preachers and other musical guests.

Saturday, 7 July

Hannah Montana Live In London (Disney, 15:20-16:00) If you’re a secret fan of the Disney show featuring a high school student with secret identity as a pop star (no, seriously), you won’t want to miss her March live performance at Koko.

Live Earth (BBC1, 17:30-22:30) Live from Wembley Stadium, it’s Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross and Edith Bowman presenting Live Earth. Taking a leaf out of the Live 8 book, these worldwide concerts are being staged to raise global awareness of climate change. The London portion of the event features performances by Madonna and The Black Eyed Peas. There will also be highlights from the other concerts around the world.

Sunday, 8 July

Disappearing London (Sky Three, 23:00-23:30) Maddness’s Suggs takes a look at the places in London that are, as the title suggests, disappearing. This episode sees him checking out the Tooting Bec Lido and some cabbie shelters.

On the radio, Londonist likes:

Saturday, 7 July

The Saturday Play: Avoid London…Area Closed…Turn On Radio (BBC Radio4, 14:30-16:00) This drama by Mike Walker features a family dealing with the events of 7/7.

Live Earth (BBC Radio2, 20:00-23:00) If you can’t be bothered to watch the whole thing, Russell Brand’s presenting this show live from backstage. Expect lots of mayhem and madness amongst the performances and interviews.

Online, Londonist likes:

TfL’s mobile update service – Tired of getting to the tube and finding out the line you’re taking has delays and you’ve got to take a different route? Sign up for TfL’s update service and get a text or email to alert you if there are problems on your normal route. You can set up the times of the messages and choose the days you want to get updates. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

Sadler’s Wells – The Londonist favourite dance venue has a brand new website, and we’re loving it. There’s tons of info and it’s really very pretty.

London Photo Blog – Beautiful photos of London, trying to “collect pictures of the characteristics that make London unique”. Take a look on a day you’re frustrated with living in London, to remind you how beautiful it can be.

You can only sanitise the world so much. If subject to the film board, Earth would certainly get an 18 certification. To their credit, Nintendo consistently provides fun for all ages while never slipping into completely antiseptic Disney terrain. Games that may at first seem to have been designed solely for children often end up gaining quite large adult audiences. And sometimes some of the appeal that these games hold for us old folks is that we can teach them how to talk dirty.

Nintendo’s brilliant Animal Crossing franchise –life simulation games starring anthropomorphic animals – makes working hard to pay off one’s mortgage strangely fun. Part of this enjoyment comes from the amount of interactivity built into the game. Most characters that you encounter will invent nicknames for you and use them in phrases like, “Did you have a nice morning, pally?” If you’re lucky, at some point they’ll also say something like “I think I say ‘pally’ too much. Can you think of something cooler for me to say?” This is where the interactivity comes in. Oh yes, we can think of something cooler for you to say…

When one of these more colourful replacement phrases splashed across the screen of eleven year-old Khloe Leslie’s copy of the game, her mother was rather upset to say the least. Whitney, a character present in many Animal Crossing towns, told Leslie “I think calling someone fucking cow is PRET-ty harsh.” Indeed it is, Whitney! We always knew that Whitney was not to be trusted, but honestly expected better manners from a posh wolf like her. Such language may be acceptable from common amphibians like Camofrog, or even rocker dogs like K.K. Slider, but out of the mouth of a lupine lady like Whitney it is a fucking disgrace.

Due to a ten-character length constraint on the phrases that one can teach the likes of Whitney, we were forced to shorten some of our favourite abuses into possible names for Web 2.0 applications. Since it is uncertain when venture capitalists are likely to fund Cockgobblr, we’ll just have to be happy with it spewing forth from Camofrog’s potty-mouth for now.

By Dave Knapik

Image taken from zimpenfish’s Flickr photostream.

That most eclectic of musical festivals, the South Bank Centre’s Meltdown, has announced its line-up for 2007. After a hiatus last year while the Centre was undergoing a much needed facelift, the festival is back with a bang – and this year it’s being curated by channel-hopping, square-jawed music man, Jarvis Cocker. “We shall rouse you from your slumber. And you’re going to love it,” writes the bespectacled one on the South Bank website.

The range of bands is as broad as the festival’s tradition, and Jarv’s unique tastes, would lead you to expect, ranging from the hard metal craziness of Motorhead, to the post-punk Americana of Devo, via some symphonic bliss from John Barry and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. There’s even a performance by newly flower-loving Iggy Pop and his Stooges.

Jarvis even regresses us back to our childhood with a concert presented by producer Hal Willner, consisting of classic themes from Walt Disney, as well as picking out bands that had Londonist thinking “Oh yeah, whatever happened to them?” like Cornershop and The Jesus and Mary Chain.

Tickets go on sale tomorrow (Thursday 3 May) at 9am, so remember to tell your work that you’ll be in late – or turn up early, and sit there refreshing the South Bank website impatiently.

Meltdown runs from 16 to 23 June at the newly-refurbished South Bank Centre. The line-up can be found on their website

Iggy Pop’s garden will be at the Chelsea Flower Show 22–26 May. Jarvis Cocker will be the subject of a South Bank Show special, due to air on 10 June.

By Michael Reeve

Image taken from Beatnic’s Flickr photostream.

This week – The East German Stasi listen in on a writer’s life (The Lives Of Others) and Disney rape our minds (Wild Hogs).

First up, The Lives Of Others, a film written and directed by a man called Florian Maria Georg Christian Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck. It won the Oscar for best foreign language film this year for that name alone. It beat Pan’s Labyrinth to the prize, a film that we thought was one of the best of the year in any language, but having seen it, this German film does measure up. The critics agree.

James Christopher gives 4/5 to a film that has apparently, “put the fear of God into the German cultural establishment. It rips the stitches from memories that are still fresh and deep.”

The basic plot is that a writer’s flat is bugged by the security services and monitored by a Stasi agent. However, the agent begins to sympathize with the dissident artists who frequent it.

Christopher writes that,

What doesn’t ring entirely true is a Stasi officer who undergoes an angelic change of heart. This is a harsh leap, and arguments still rage about whether or not unsuspecting audiences should be allowed to take it.

The film looks wonderfully depressing. Christopher describes the atmosphere as “exquisitely 1980s. The cruel backdrops are marvellous shades of grey.”

Few films have dared paint East Germany and its legions of demons in such honest and unsparing detail. Von Donnersmarck puts a pickaxe into the past.

Bradshaw gives “this fierce and gloomy drama” 4/5

When the film first came out in Germany, it became notorious for turning against the prevailing trend of nostalgia for the old East Germany, a phenomenon known as Ostalgie,

The Lives of Others is a very different experience to Good Bye Lenin!, the funny and much-admired satire from 2003 on East Germany’s collapse which, frankly, came close to indulging the shabby communist regime.

Quinn at The Independent gives it full marks, 5/5,

So much narrative cinema pretends at the idea of redemption – the character who has an epiphany, changes his ways and, in that repulsive cliché, “moves on” – that when a convincing drama of self-transformation comes along there is a danger that we might undervalue it, or overlook it, or assume that we’ve seen it all before. That’s because most movies can only really convey a change of mood. It’s a rare picture that can persuasively dramatise a change of mind, and a change of heart. This is why you should take pains not to miss this outstanding, and astounding, German film.

The end of the film final scene is brilliantly understated and in his review, Quinn does not want to “give away the magnificence of the final scene” but,

all that can be safely said is that it takes place in a bookshop, and features a sentence of four words that may bring a tear to your eye. To both eyes, for that matter. It pulls together, with beautiful economy, the threads of poignancy and hope which this film has so dexterously and diligently fashioned.

Watch the trailer -

and then go and see it.

Next up, Wild Hogs

Bradshaw gives it 1/5, hooray!

Looking at the actors on the poster outside the cinema – John Travolta, William H Macy, Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence – triggers a kind of awestruck anticipation. They are four faces on a Mount Rushmore of rubbishness. Which one of these Hollywood middleweights is going to be the most utterly abysmal? Which is going to phone in the most inept performance? It’s like King Kong versus Godzilla versus Alien versus Predator: all four creatures lined up on the starting blocks for the 100m Terrible Acting event … Well, it’s a photo-finish, but by a nose, by the briefest sliver of proboscis. It is John Travolta who is first among equals in this mind-sodomisingly mediocre family comedy from Walt Disney.

Thank you sir.

James Christopher also gives it to 1/5 – woooo!

One mad beer-crazed morning they decide to rip up the shopping list and take to the road. They are going to be true rebels and God help anyone who gets in their way. For Macy that means trundling into stacks of carefully placed hay bales. Tim Allen cracks dentist jokes. Travolta wears a bandana. And they all try to avoid looking gay. This is not easy when they are stalked by a crazed and lonely homosexual cop.

Quinn gives it 1/5 – hat trick!

Not very wild. Four suburban males, fearful of middle-age decline, decide to jump on their motorbikes and discover the romance of the road. This amounts to a run-in with a gang of psycho-bikers led by a menacing Ray Liotta. The template is Billy Crystal and chums doing a cattle-drive in City Slickers, which now looks like Easy Rider in comparison with this. John Travolta plays the bankrupt one, Martin Lawrence the henpecked one, Tim Allen the disgruntled one and William H Macy the nerdy one as they trade threadbare quips about homophobia, mount their bikes and putter towards their paychecks.

Watch the trailer -

Trailer of the week- Oceans 13

Put your hand up if you like cartoons. Put your hand up if you experience a surge of happy childhood memories whenever you hear the famous Looney Tunes intro music. Put your hand up if you felt particularly cool and sophisticated while watching a Japanese anime like Akira or the kink-fest Legend of the Overfiend. Put your hand up if you ever defaced an important schoolbook by drawing pictures in the top right-hand corner to create your own flipbook animation because for a brief while you fancied becoming a cartoonist. Put your hand up if you want to spend your Friday Night at the V & A reliving these experiences and more.

It’s the last Friday of the month so the traditional outing for the thrifty Lonodn-based thrill-seeker is to head to the V & A for their monthly Friday Late. These Friday Late nights are always a big hit and we can see why: free entry and the lure of a bar in museum surroundings, the attendance of some very cool VJs and DJs and the chance to see the V & A collections in a completely different light, possibly through the bottom of a glass and through a wall of sound…

Tonight’s offering is Friday Late Animate, a celebration of all things that can be considered “animation.” From obscure, scratchy, stop-motion short films to the feature-length opulence of Disney classics, it’s all been brought together for one night only.

This evening’s theme lends itself to some cutely named events such as PixiLate and the slightly sinister sounding Butcher’s Manipulation Disco. It sounds like a very broad event that will incorporate everything and anything that is vaguely animation, from dubious but hot alien boy-on-boy yaoi action of the Japanese manga canon to adorable and innocent antique flipbooks, with a few diversions into the brightly coloured, super-slick world of computer generated imagery.

Workshops… screenings… a cartoon based on Raphael’s masterpieces that will be created and shown in the same evening by graduates of the Cenral St Martin’s animation course… and, curiouser and curiouser, the promise of a “live science-fiction jazz band” that will play a soundtrack to a story of your own creation. Bring pen, paper and a willingness to be animated.

Friday Late Animate at the Victoria and Albert Museum, tonight from 6.30pm, free. For more information go to the website here.

Battersea Power Station’s future remains in doubt as the fantastic hulk of the art-deco building itself remains in sorry dereliction.

Yesterday, the Guardian reported that the new owners of the £400m prime 36+ acre riverside site, Treasury Holdings, had scrapped development plans approved by Wandsworth Council in November last year and speculated whether London might be about to lose the four iconic chimneys altogether to yet another bland, luxury, residential development if the Power Station is allowed to further deteriorate beyond the realms of renovation.

English Heritage has confirmed new “masterplans” are being drafted and that the developers have expressed a “commitment to repair, refurbish and bring the site back into beneficial use” aiming to start work on essential repairs to the Power Station within 2 months. A spokesman for Treasury Holdings, however, said that “the overall plan for the listed power station was still unclear”. Not exactly ready to send in the builders, then.

Meanwhile, shiny new Barratt Homes are sprouting up on the other side of the road and the sad, old Power Station remains wrapped in aspirational hoarding trumpeting a bright and beautiful future which, sadly, seems ever more unlikely to be seen.

Powerstation facts:

- Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed the red telephone box, Bankside power station (now Tate modern) and Liverpool Cathedral.

- St Paul’s Cathedral could be placed inside the power station without touching the sides.

- Infamously, an inflatable pink pig was tethered to one of the southern chimneys in December 1976 for the photo shoot for the cover of Pink Floyd’s album “Animals”. The pig broke free of its moorings and rose into the flight path of London Heathrow Airport to the surprise of pilots in approaching planes. The runaway pig was tracked by police helicopters before coming to ground in Kent.

- Over the last 25 years plans for the Power Station’s refurbishment have included the creation of Disney-style theme parks, ice-rinks, chimney-top restaurants, steam fountains, circuses and rooftop gardens. None have come to pass.

Photo courtesy of Jon’s Flickr stream

Sign the online petition to save the chimneys here.

A Disney movie you probably won’t see anytime soon.

Winning hearts and minds by forzagaribaldi features a couple of posters we haven’t seen ourselves yet from a series that seems to be entitled Operation Magic Kingdom.

Mickey may look pretty lethal in that get up, but everyone knows that Donald is the one with the short fuse…

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A Disney movie you probably won’t see anytime soon.

Winning hearts and minds by forzagaribaldi features a couple of posters we haven’t seen ourselves yet from a series that seems to be entitled Operation Magic Kingdom.

Mickey may look pretty lethal in that get up, but everyone knows that Donald is the one with the short fuse…

]]> http://londonist.com/2007/02/photo_of_the_da_80.php/feed 0 http://londonist.com/2007/01/salvador_dali.php http://londonist.com/2007/01/salvador_dali.php#comments Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:40:10 +0000 londonist_nealr http://londonist.com/?p=5209

Dali poking at eyes on “Spellbound”

I know it’s a few months early to announce, but it is Surrealism, so there you have it. That Tate Modern, there’s no telling what they’re going to do over there.

Salvador Dalí loved movies and collaborated on several films, most famously Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1945). Dalí designed the film’s – of course – dream sequence, which features lots of eyes. Eyes, eyes, eyes. If you’re a surrealist, it’s all about the eyes, isn’t it? Eye and fish. Four and half minutes were cut from Spellbound’s dream sequence – which was good for the film, but bad for art and film historians.

Check your attic. If you’ve got any negative up there with some eyeballs and Ingrid Bergman call Vincente Todoli, director of the Tate Modern. He’ll send some goons over to collect it. And if you’re lucky, he’ll take you to dinner.

The exhibition will feature storyboards, photographs, and other materials cataloging Salvador Dalí’s involvement with the cinema, including his collaborations with Luis Buñuel on “Un Chien Andalou” (1929) and “L’Age D’Or” (1930) and his animated Disney short “Destino”, finally completed and released in 2003.

Check out the Luis Buñuel retrospective at the National Film Theatre this month and next. The two Dalí collaborations will be screening together until the end of January.

There was a strong display of British talent at the International Emmy Awards. Graham Norton was there too. The success of Brit shows has sent the Americans into a remake frenzy according to The Times:

Life on Mars, the BBC time-travel drama starring John Simm about a Manchester detective who is catapulted back to the 1970s, won the best drama award. David E. Kelley, the producer behind Ally McBeal, is now writing an American version for ABC, owned by Disney, in a partnership with Fox television. The series, made by Kudos, a London independent company, has been sold to 13 countries. Its second series, soon to air on BBC One, will be the last.

It’s a great concept that just might survive the transition. Less sure about recreating Little Britain – Little America with the guy who used to play Buck Rogers taking over from Tom Baker perhaps…

American remakes are also planned for The Thick of It, the Whitehall comedy, Steve Coogan’s Saxondale, Footballers’ Wives and Blackpool, the BBC One musical drama.

The Thick of It is returning to British screens at Christmas with a new Shadow minister replacing Chris Langham, so that’s probably the only thing that Londonist will be watching in December. Pauline Fowler’s leaving EastEnders? We didn’t know the thing was still running. Is Den still messing around with that girl from Grange Hill?

Brit winners:

Best Actor – Ray Winstone

Children & Young People – Sugar Rush

Comedy – Little Britain

Documentary – Hiroshima

Drama Series – Life on Mars

Non-scripted entertainment – Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares

Have you always thought you were destined for greater things?

Are your kids so thick and boring that you can’t even live your life vicariously through them?

Still want that shot at the big time?

Well, have you ever thought of pushing your pets into the limelight?

Right now Disney are on the hunt for the next big feathered thing in the shape of a pirate parrot (and the auditions are in Hammersmith, not Hollywood):

Talent scouts are looking for a parrot which may star in the next Pirates Of The Caribbean alongside Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom.

The “feathered superstar” will be required to speak and learn a script. It will also be an official “spokesparrot” for the film.

Think of the benefits: parrot groupies, all the sunflower seeds you can eat… of course there’s always the chance you’ll get to meet Orlando Bloom but everything has a downside right?

If you are thinking of entering your parrot (or maybe a young offspring dressed as a parrot, we doubt these Hollywood types are too picky) then we recommend you do a bit of a background check first.

You don’t want to makie it to the very pinnacle of the avian celebrity ladder only to have the tabloids dredge up that time Cocky the cockatoo filmed himself snorting birdseed off the thigh of an underage lovebird do you now?

Let’s take a look back at a week that raised this Zen koan: if Kevin Federline got into a wrestling ring with a wrestler, who would you root for?

Austinist was in an entertainment state of mind as they covered the dickens out of the Austin Film Festival, depicted all the Big 12 football coaches as South Park characters, and interviewed Jose Gonzalez.

Chicagoist talked about the passion as they bid adieu to Bell Beer, went medieval on vending machines, and loved some of Da Bears.

DCist went wonky this week as they discussed affordable housing and their probable new Mayor meeting with New York’s Mayor Mike to discuss schools. Oh, and puppies. Cute, adorable puppies.

Gothamist checked out a Strokes/Kanye West show, pondered how long one should wait in line for a muffin and had their hearts broken in real-time as they live-blogged Game 7 of the Cards/Mets series.

LAist was in a loving mood as they loved Howard Stern on satellite radio, a Keith Olbermann rant, and some photos of a Burning Man Decompression party.

Londonist was all about sex and violence as they got a vist by Hugh Hefner and LL Cool J pulled a Jim Morrison only to see an internet chat-room fight dissolve into one guy going after another with a pick-axe.

Parisist was all over the Euro Disney “sex-tape” (seriously, check it out), linked to a video of some home-made video of travel trips, and threw themselves into the middle of a big debate on blogging (in French).

Phillyist pondered some great ideas, ideas like New Jersey not being half-bad, or a web site that delivers beer online. They also gawked once again at pretty, pretty pictures.

Houstonist, however, pondered some really bad ideas. Like robbing a bank with really bad hair. Or tasering a SF indie band. Or gardeners refusing to work for gay clients.

Sampaist said hello and had cool footage of a Red Bull formula racer running around Sao Paulo (text in portugese).

Seattlest was in a party mood as they cheered getting free beer at the top of a Mt. Pilchuck, a John Hodgman reading, and their sports guy was nominated for an award.

SFist thanked the Heavens for providing them with such entertaining political leaders. Their Mayor’s 20 year-old girlfriend is got caught drinking, a state Assemblywoman was totally crushing on their Governor, and a fight over police foot patrols turned into a battle royale between the cops and a member of their Board of Supervisors.

Torontoist pondered all things silly this week, like silly Toronto Mayors in history or the U.S. Coast Guard taking live target practice over the Great Lakes and the silliest of sillies- a new Monty Python musical.

Image of the giant slides at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall from Londonist M@

Written by SFist Jon

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Let’s take a look back at a week that raised this Zen koan: if Kevin Federline got into a wrestling ring with a wrestler, who would you root for?

Austinist was in an entertainment state of mind as they covered the dickens out of the Austin Film Festival, depicted all the Big 12 football coaches as South Park characters, and interviewed Jose Gonzalez.

Chicagoist talked about the passion as they bid adieu to Bell Beer, went medieval on vending machines, and loved some of Da Bears.

DCist went wonky this week as they discussed affordable housing and their probable new Mayor meeting with New York’s Mayor Mike to discuss schools. Oh, and puppies. Cute, adorable puppies.

Gothamist checked out a Strokes/Kanye West show, pondered how long one should wait in line for a muffin and had their hearts broken in real-time as they live-blogged Game 7 of the Cards/Mets series.

LAist was in a loving mood as they loved Howard Stern on satellite radio, a Keith Olbermann rant, and some photos of a Burning Man Decompression party.

Londonist was all about sex and violence as they got a vist by Hugh Hefner and LL Cool J pulled a Jim Morrison only to see an internet chat-room fight dissolve into one guy going after another with a pick-axe.

Parisist was all over the Euro Disney “sex-tape” (seriously, check it out), linked to a video of some home-made video of travel trips, and threw themselves into the middle of a big debate on blogging (in French).

Phillyist pondered some great ideas, ideas like New Jersey not being half-bad, or a web site that delivers beer online. They also gawked once again at pretty, pretty pictures.

Houstonist, however, pondered some really bad ideas. Like robbing a bank with really bad hair. Or tasering a SF indie band. Or gardeners refusing to work for gay clients.

Sampaist said hello and had cool footage of a Red Bull formula racer running around Sao Paulo (text in portugese).

Seattlest was in a party mood as they cheered getting free beer at the top of a Mt. Pilchuck, a John Hodgman reading, and their sports guy was nominated for an award.

SFist thanked the Heavens for providing them with such entertaining political leaders. Their Mayor’s 20 year-old girlfriend is got caught drinking, a state Assemblywoman was totally crushing on their Governor, and a fight over police foot patrols turned into a battle royale between the cops and a member of their Board of Supervisors.

Torontoist pondered all things silly this week, like silly Toronto Mayors in history or the U.S. Coast Guard taking live target practice over the Great Lakes and the silliest of sillies- a new Monty Python musical.

Image of the giant slides at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall from Londonist M@

Written by SFist Jon

]]> http://londonist.com/2006/10/news_from_aroun_2.php/feed 0 http://londonist.com/2006/03/cogito_ergo_sum_21.php http://londonist.com/2006/03/cogito_ergo_sum_21.php#comments Wed, 29 Mar 2006 12:16:15 +0000 Londonist http://londonist.com/?p=3126

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com. This week’s summary was brought to you with the help of Inky Circus ….thanks Inky!

Event of the week

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation opens at the Science Museum this Saturday. Prebooking is strongly recommended cause, us inkettes dunno, it’s Pixar and they are easily the coolest geekiest most-badass bunch of tech enabled film buffs ever. That’s right. The same people that brought you The Incredibles, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and the fab short For the Birds, are baring their sketchbooks for all to see in South Ken for the next while. Quick sum up: Pixar are the folks who swept up where Disney left off in the early 90s with the two-tiered approach to kiddy films (low down for the kids to reach and up high for the adults – the comic formula the Muppets got down pat). But lo and behold, Disney’s buying them up as we speak, for $7.4 billion. So there’s obviously gold in them pictures; go see for yourself.

Also. Hats off to those of you who watched David Attenborough’s Planet Earth on Sunday night, and discovered that a snotite is a stalactite made of bacteria. Ew. The next installment is on Sunday on BBC1 at 9pm and it’s all about deserts. Expect nasty scaly things like scorpions to feature this weekend, alongside more aesthetically pleasing desert foxes and gazelles. Derren Brown is still doing his psychological Tricks of the Mind on Channel 4 but it’s up against Planet Earth so you’ll have to set your video. Unless he does some serious Jedi mind tricks on us all.

Elsewhere

The ever cool ICA is dishing up the last in its four part film series exploring the psychology of confused identities this Sunday with Screening Conditions: The Truman Show plus. The plus refers to psychoanalyist Andrea Sabbadini who introduces the film as well as guest speaker Michael Brearley putting in his two precious cents.

The Natural History Museum offering just a quickie lecture about Climate Change on Thursday, and a glimpse at Life Under the Antarctic Ice on Friday. The Royal Institution takes up some of the afternoon slack with an Out and About session of lectures and debates focusing on nanotechnology, the magic of prime numbers, and the brain in sickness and in health.

It’s been said that the best things in life are free. This week, the Dana Centre are showing us how we can get our hands on the free stuff by having a Takeaway Festival. That doesn’t mean a bhaji and a bhuna, it means software and stuff, teaching you how to make the most of free downloads and programmes. There are three installments – today it’s all about pods and blogs and publishing yourself online, Thursday will teach you about free software for editing audio and how to avoid copyright traps, and then Friday has a session on open source computing. Great stuff. For the crazy inventors among you, eccentric science TV bod Adam Hart Davies and inventor Trevor Baylis (the man behind the wind up radio) are poised to take you through a trip down memory lane in their Reinventing Technology lecture.

In another break from tradition, two sciency films this week. First up is the Deep Sea IMAX movie at the Science Museum. We over here at inkycircus do love a good IMAX. And if it’s all about fishes and sharks and stuff, double bonus. The other film is more Indiana Jones and less octopi, it’s called Firewall. Think internet security meets tech geeks meets blackmail meets ransom meets Harrison Ford. It’s probably not terribly intellectual but it promises fun. Reviews have been a bit shaky, but if you think Mr Ford’s still got it, Firewall will be playing at a multiplex near you.

For those of you who saw the article in February’s WIRED magazine about those intriguing robotic fish you can catch them for yourself at the London Aquarium. They took three years to build and are real pretty. The first is fast like a tuna, second can accelerate like a pike and the last can navigate like an eel.

As spring blossoms, the London Zoo is advertising how great their animals are for explaining, how, you know, the birds and the bees, ahem, do, cough, it. It’s an attempt to use the flushes of their cavorting critters to avoid those of parents trying to explain sex to their kids. And what better way than sharing the delights of the Jackass penguins, Banggai cardinal fish and gidgee skinks sex lives. Worth a laugh at worst. Some decent sex ed at best. The birds and the bees at London Zoo!

Finally, there’s plenty of stuff to keep you entertained on the net, like the many cool science radio shows out there. They’re all on at odd times so it’s worth tracking down internet radio players if you want to have a listen. BBC World Service & BBC Radio 4 have Digital Planet (the newly restyled Go Digital), The Material World, Science in Action, and Leading Edge. ABC news has the truly fantastic Dr Karl, and CBC in Canada has its Quirks & Quarks.

When and Where?

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation – Opens Saturday April 1st through to June 10th 2006, Science Museum, £9 adults, £7 children

Screening Conditions: The Truman Show – movie and discussion – Sunday April 2nd, ICA, £20 full price, £16 concession

Takeaway Festival – Free Software – Free Culture, 11.00 – 10.30pm, Wednesday March 29th, Dana Centre, FREE

Takeaway Festival – Free Audio Culture, 11.00 – 10.30pm, Thursday March 30th, Dana Centre, FREE

Takeaway Festival – Creative Computing – Open Source Culture, 11.00 – 10.30pm, Friday March 31st, Dana Centre, FREE

Reinventing Technology, 7 – 8.30pm, Tuesday April 4th, Dana Centre, FREE

Out and About, 1.30 – 5.30pm, Tuesday April 4th, Royal Institution, £13.

Robotic Fish – London Aquarium – in the freshwater tanks next to the Atlantic tanks. £11.75 – £8.25 depending on your age and time of visit.

All Natural History Museum lunchtime lectures take place at 2.30pm with additional slots at the weekend, last an hour, and are FREE.

TV Listings

CSI: Las Vegas 9pm Tuesday, Miami 10pm Tuesday, New York 9.10pm Saturday, all C5. David Attenborough’s Planet Earth: 9pm Sunday, BBC1. Derren Brown’ Trick of the Mind: 9pm Sunday, C4.

Radio Listings

Go Digital: 2.05am Wednesday, BBC World Service.

Science in Action: 10.05am Friday, BBC World Service.

The Material World: 4.30pm Wednesday, BBC Radio 4.

The Leading Edge: 9.30pm Thursday, BBC Radio 4.

Afternoon all. Last week, Sarah scored 3 out of 5, which percentage-wise, is actually our best ever result. So there you are. Perhaps some sort of prize is in order. Any suggestions? Go on, leave a comment, it will make our day. It wouldn’t have to be about Sarah, or even about the Premiership, it could be about anything. We’re just craving some CONTACT right now. It’s Friday afternoon and another weekend of non-stop hedonism is about to begin, you know, the usual thing: booze, ketamine, supermodels, designer labels, chinawhites, dogging, dancing, gambling, stealing, blowing cocaine up Pete Doherty’s arse with a straw…..all the basics. But right now, we’re just questioning whether this kind of activity has any real meaning, whether there’s any real meaning to our lives??? Maybe you can tell us? Please, just say something…..anything.

On with the show…..

Your name & occupation?

Fraser James. Web developer but currently un-employed perfecting my “Sit and Go” strategy, looking for work again now though as a career in Poker seems a little optimistic and to be honest quite boring. I’ve got four years experience so if anyone’s got a good job please get in touch.

Where do you live?

I live on the border between Islington and Dalston but close enough to Islington to be in the nice bit. There’s Porsches and nice streetlamps outside. Despite the fact that the streets are nice and clean and they took my christmas tree away this year when I asked them, the council tax bill is still massive.

Which team do you support?

I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Cumbria and my closest football league team in a league was Milnthorpe Corinthians. Since I couldn’t watch them on TV my brother said I had to pick another team. I chose the winner of a game between Newcastle and Liverpool, thankfully Liverpool won.

Your favourite player in London?

Has to be Frank Lampard Jnr. He scored so many goals this season and he’s so bloody consistent. He’s also going to help us win the World Cup this year and if he does, I’ll love him forever, even if he does play for Chelsea.

If Joe Cole was an animal, what animal would he be?

He’s really stupid isn’t he? It seems that unless you tell him exactly what to do over and over again he’ll just keep on running with the ball and won’t stop, or do loads of tricks to please the crowds. For that I’d liken Joe Cole to a lemming. Although according to Wikipedia the myth of Lemmings becoming suicidal en masse and jumping of cliffs into the sea was created by Disney for the film White Wilderness. I liked the game though.

Your favourite place in London?

When I lived in Stockwell I used to love travelling over Vauxhall Bridge on the top deck of the 88 at night. My head wouldn’t stop moving from side to side looking at all the great landmarks. I have to get a bendy-bus into town now and it really pisses me off that I can’t pass the journey time looking at all the things you don’t see from street level. When I was a kid my dad had an HGV licence so he’d sometimes do long trips delivering eggs for a friend who owned a egg-farm nearby. I used to love getting in cabin then and looking down on everything it was great… this is starting to sound like the JCB song so I’ll stop now.

If you were to catch Dennis Bergkamp breaking into your place of residence, do you think that you could take him? How would you disable him?

His jaw is massive so I’d probably break my hand if I tried to punch him so I wouldn’t do that. He scored that great goal against the Argentinians in ’98 so I’d probably forgive him and let him get away with a little slap and a telling off. If needs be I would disable him with one of those blow-up planes that you get in duty-free.

Have you ever been sick on the tube?

No.

Thank you. And now for your predictions.

Arsenal v Bolton

Arsenal really are struggling this year, who could have thought the loss of one player could make that much difference. Sol’s not playing so Alex Song is playing instead, I’ve never heard of him and i doubt you have either. The African Cup of Nations is over so Bolton get most of their squad back. Pascal Cygan is also injured which tips the balance back in favour of Arsenal. Lawro says 2-0 home win, I say draw.

Fulham v West Brom

God knows. Both average teams who seem to win every so often just keeping themselves above the relagation zone. Lawro says 2-0 home win, and I’ll have to agree with him.

Middlesbrough v Chelsea

Middlesbrough are really on the slide and so it’s a really great time for them to play Chelsea and they are gonna get whupped. Lawro never has any prediction which has one team scoring more than 2 goals so he’s gone for a 0-2 away win. I’d agree with him but I reckon there’s going to be more goals that that and maybe one or two more season ticket throwing incidents.

Man City v Charlton

Charlton spawned a win against Liverpool mid-week so they’ll be thinking they’re all great and being a bit cocky about the whole thing so I’m with Lawro on this one as well. Home win.

Sunderland v Tottingham

I don’t know if Mido is playing after he made a right tit of himself in the African Cup of Nations. How smug must the Egyptian manager have been after that one. Lawro says 1-1 draw but Danny Murphys playing his first game since his shock move from Charlton so I’m going with him having a cracking game and Tottenham to prevail as victors. Away win.

Thank you Fraser and you stay classy, London.

According to this article about a rather bizarre ménage-à-trois, life on the Mudchute farm is rather racier than we’d ever imagined. Aladdin, the new super-stud “rare Irish Moiled” bull, is at it “five times a day” – like our very own dear Prime Minister. Tony has it easy, as Aladdin has to service two cows a day, and we’ll leave it at that before we say something rude about Cherie.

Tom Davis, farm manager, said that “If all goes to plan they’ll both have calves in September”. We can’t wait. There will be lots of other new additions to look forward to as well – the farm will be teeming with “piglets, lambs and ducklings” in what promises to be a surfeit of cuteness. It’ll be like a sodding Disney movie or something.

Oh, there might be a crop of mysterious Polish artists living in the llama sheds, too, if we’re extra specially lucky. (Londonist is very glad to hear that Jozef Niescior is settling in well at his new home in the Church of All Nations, and wishes him all the best for the future.) So get yourself down to our second favourite farm (this is our favourite) for some hot cow lovin’, in a non-participatory capacity, of course. Unless you’re weird. Er, we’d better stop now.

It may not have snowed on Christmas day, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that if you get to shop in stores that don’t have proper names, life is a continual sprinkling of soft white powder. Especially if you read the Hindustan Times, who claimed yesterday: London Hit By Cocaine Epidemic. Now that does sound a little more fun than bird flu, but we knew this already. The HT, not known for mincing their words, lead into their story about yet another momentous police sting operation with:

…the heat is on the UK celebs now. All because of supermodel Kate Moss who was stupid enough — or too stoned — to get caught.

Possibly both, since Moss broke the first rule of breaking the rules: DON”T GET CAUGHT.

But it get’s worse.

Her pusher was even more stupid. He has been identified apparently. And the police are saying Moss was just one of his many celeb clients. Most of whom are leading stars of television, fashion and music.

We wonder whether Kate Moss’s dealer is a fan of The Third Man or those Matt Damon movies. We hope that at least he makes his getaway in a Mini Cooper; doing it proper like, since the parties are going to be a little dull for a while.

It’s taken police four months to investigate the identity of the most popular man in Britain, two of which were presumably spent laughing their arses off at the infamous Babyshambles recording tapes. We’d like to think there was also a deep cover investigation, like in Infernal Affairs, with an officer dressed up in a pork pie hat and mumbling inanities at NME writers so that he’ll be accepted into the band”s inner circle. We’d also like to think that Disney won’t turn Christopher Robin into a girl either but we’re running short of miracles these days.

It’s all part of another campaign by the Met to have a go at the toffs. A senior Police officer said that some celebrities “have openly admitted to cocaine use and think they are above the law. This is not the case”. Well it shouldn’t be but they do tend to have very good lawyers. And they’ve already agreed to let Moss off with a cursory spanking since she only did a couple of lines and never had any on her (so not THAT stupid then).

Still, the story leaves us once again surprised that anyone, especially the Media, remain surprised about the extent of cocaine use these days. Which may go some way to proving that drugs really do make you stupid, although it does give the drinkers a break. But while Blair and co are still figuring out the equation:

drugs=feel good / cheap drugs=more drugs=feel even better, therefore 0 drugs=?

we wouldn’t want to take it away from the arresting officer at Heathrow who’ll get to tell all his mates: “I banged up Kate Moss!”

This week: Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, Broken Flowers and Into The Blue.

Kicking off this week then with more half-term, stop-animation goodness in the form of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

The film gets three stars from Pete Bradhsaw who thinks it will be “best be enjoyed by tweenie goths, who will want to turn out for it out in full costume on Halloween night before getting into the real business of annoying the neighbours with a spot of trick-or-treat.” Good God! Can you imagine going round Pete Bradshaw’s house for trick or treat: Are those glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth supposed to be scary? I’ve seen scarier things on the Disney Channel. And call that a fake knife-wound? Someone needs to have serious words with their special effects department.”

Where were we? Oh, yes Corpse Bride…Bradshaw can’t seem to decide if it’s any good or not (hence, the middling three stars) and concludes that “after the meticulous and thoroughly imagined triumph that was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this looks like something that Tim Burton dashed off in double time. He’s done it with great panache, though.”

In the Indie, Anthony Quinn is equally noncommital (especially as at the time of writing there doesn’t seem to be a star rating attached to the film), preferring to praise the film’s more technical aspects:

The animation, which recalls the pointiness and grotesquerie of Ronald Searle, is wonderful, so too the voicework and the denouement of self-sacrifice emerging from the titular bride’s unlikely combination of Miss Havisham and Brian De Palma’s Carrie.

In the end, we’re told to think of it as “Tim Burton does, as “just a love story with skeletons”. A sentence which,as you may realise, doesn’t make any sense.

In the Times, James Christopher is in generous mood and awards Burton’s film four stars, calling it “an animated marvel” and “a terrific puppet fantasy” mainly, it seems, for the way it portrays the zombie afterlife as “a Mexican Day of the Dead” (now that’s a good idea for movie!).

Next up is Bill Muray in Broken Flowers. Now we would have covered this first, as we have been really looking forward to it…except we kind of suspected that all the reviewers have been really looking forward to it as well. It’s just one of those kind of films.

True to form, Bradshaw gives the film four stars in the Guardian. “A lugubrious, lenient, sweetly acted comedy,” gushes Bradders, adding that the film includes a “a tremendous performance from Bill Murray, whose fanbase is in for a treat”

And then Bradshaw gets all confessional on us:

Anyone who suspected that critical acclaim for that film was down to a global conspiracy of male-menopausal critics who thought that they, too, might one day entrance Scarlett Johansson with fatherly wit might have similar grounds for scepticism here. Murray gets to have highly-charged, if not always sexy encounters with four beautiful ex-girlfriends in their 40s, and indeed flirtatious scenes with two complete babes in their early 20s. And that doesn’t even count the scenes with his current girlfriend: Julie Delpy.

Broken Flowers, concludes Bradshaw, has “big laughs [and] shrewd truths” and is Jarmusch’s “most enjoyable, accessible work for some time, perhaps his most emotionally generous film”. There’s loads more praise in the review, but we think you get the idea by now.

It’s a similar story in the Independent where the paper remembers to add the stars this time (four of them), except here Tony Quinn sees more of a correlation with films such as High Fidelity i.e. it’s a ‘revisiting old girlfriends’ movie (although we would like to see the ‘Bill Murray plays record shop employee’ movie).

Quinn muses that the film wouldn’t really work without “Murray, the sad-clown prince and world-class haunter of hotel rooms” holding the thing together; and “that Jarmusch hasn’t quite got the willpower to pull it together as a movie,” but despite that its the “terrific performances of the women in general and of Murray in particular” that makes the film a four-starrer.

Weirdly, when we got round to clicking on the Times’ review we were actually willing James Christopher to not like the film…and we almost got our wish.

It’s only three stars from Jimmy, who, despite a self-confessed “love [for] Jarmusch’s elusive heroes,” finds “Murray’s stony-faced loner a tough ask.”

And while he finds “joy..in the scenarios [that] never play out as expected,” Christopher ends up feeling “that more, in this case, would be infinitely better.”

After all that gushing praise we can hardly be blamed for wanting to read a few of the reviews for ‘wet, attractive people, flick Into the Blue could we?

Bradsahw gives Jessica Alba et al a surprisingly weighty two stars, and coins our new favourite word into the bargain:

Jessica Alba – the most babeissimo woman in Hollywood right now – spends a great deal of the movie swimming around in a bikini which has been made from just enough material to fashion a beret for a mouse.

Goddammit Pete, now we want to see the ‘mouse in a beret’ film!

(And why we’re on the topic of great words, full marks to Pete for getting the word ‘pulchritudinous’ into his review.)

Pete sums the film up as “fantastically silly, but it’s moderate entertainment”, while over in the Independent (no stars again, sorry) Tony Quinn seems a little less open to the idea:

I never imagined I’d be bored by Jessica Alba in a swimsuit, but Into the Blue brought me close. It’s not the underwater adventure of treasure-hunting that palls so much as the cast: could there be a blander hero than Paul Walker? The plot is reduced to the devil (drug dealers) and the deep blue sea (sharks), with the sharks giving better performances.

That’s the whole review.

The Times doesn’t even bother to review the film…however it does give us our first ‘film news’ link this week: an interview with Woody Allen in which he professes his love (yes, again) for London:

“My family couldn’t wait to get back to London,” Allen says, a sentiment echoed by Soon-Yi, who declares that “there’s so much special to do here for the children that I’ve managed not to duplicate anything special we did here last summer”.

There’s a slighlty more revealing interview in the Guardian’s film section today: this one with Steve Coogan. So, does he admit to egtting Courtney Love preggers? You’ll have to read the article.

Bit of comic book stuff: will there be a Sin City 2? And the bombing scene in V for vendetta will stay in the film.

Trailer of the week: could be Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (yes, Val Kilmer is in it, but it’s supposed to be alright), it could be Brian Jones biopic, Stoned, or it could be Cillian Murphy in drag for Breakfast on Pluto, we can’t decide.

One of the highlights of this Londonista’s career to date was a somewhat short-lived summer job selling ice-pops outside the Rhino enclosure at London Zoo.

Unfortunately it was an ill-fated affair that ended in disagreement over worker ice-pop consumption on the job. The leaving line of “But the Rhinos ate them” didn’t really wash with the then Food and Beverage Manager.

This experience, coupled with a secret and perhaps sick fascination with Disney’s The Lion King, has meant the Regents Park menagerie has always been close to our heart.

So we were excited to see London Zoo is running a competition to win the once in a lifetime experience of meeting the Zoo’s three lions face to face, and being given a behind the scenes tour of the enclosure with one of the keepers.

By following The Lion King African Trail and taking a close look at some of the other animals (not too close though) visitors should be able to search out the answers to trail questions. And when you’ve done all that and completed the trail you get entered into the draw and get a chance to meet the lions…which is a good thing remember.

Heckling the Lion enclosure en route with bass tinged ‘Mufasas’ is discouraged.

‘The Lion King African Trail’ takes place each day up to 27th November 2005 and if you book online at www.zsl.org you’ll save 10% on your ticket price entry to the Zoo.

Thank God the wait is finally over. The cinematic event of 2005 is finally here: Herbie: Fully Loaded has hit our screens and, as predicted, it is the biggest pile of steaming, foul-smelling celluloid ever produced.

In fact it’s so bad that Peter Bradshaw feels the need to bring up the Third Reich in his one star review.

Ah yes: the Volkswagen Beetle, the only car design still on the roads to be personally and enthusiastically endorsed by Adolf Hitler.

Bradshaw calls the film an “excruciatingly unlovable sequel to the not-particularly-treasured Disney movies” during which “Michael Keaton emails in his performance” and Lindsay Lohan manages to utilise less facial expressions than the car.

“It’s every bit as hilarious as it was in 1968,” says Bradshaw and it seems Anthony Quinn agrees with him. It’s just one more star from Tony in the Independent who reveals two slightly surprising facts: first, Matt Dillon is in this turgid piece of pap (he “should have a word with his agent” advises Quinn); and second, “the only noteworthy feature is all the weird innuendo over the sexual potency of a car”.

Ewww.

Over in The Times James Christopher acually awards Herbie: Fully Loaded two stars, but we can’t really work out why. He calls it “an awesome piece of fluff: a romantic comedy without a single sensible sprocket under its vintage bonnet,” which is hardly a compliment, and calls the CGI stunts, “as preposterous as one could wish”.

Maybe it’s the “pneumatically blessed Lohan” that Jim likes, or (more likely) it could be “Dillon’s villain” (hey, that rhynmes!) who is “a shallow, toothy joy”.

In the end it doesn’t matter how bloody toothy Matt Dillon gets, we’re still never going to submit ourselves to this film.

So why did we start off this week with such a turkey? Well, frankly, because there’s bugger all else on major release this week.

We kind of had high hopes for Dear Wendy, but it looks like those hopes have been dashed on the rocky outcrops of the broadsheets’ merciless coastline (sorry, we’re bored with rubbish films so we’ve been reduced to forming contrived analogies).

The film (which was written by Lars Von Trier and directed by Thomas Vinterberg) only picks up two stars in the Times despite James Christopher’s claim that it is the “only interesting new missive on offer this week by a long stretch.”

The film is intended as a satire on US gun culture, but one that can only be viewed as “an exhilarating rites-of-passage film if you are a psychopathic, trigger-happy New Romantic” according to Christopher.

The “melodrama is dismal,” apparently and “the consequences predictable”, plus the “satirical psycho-drama” just gets “silly”.

Pete Bradshaw likes it even less, handing out his second one star review of the week, but at least he manages to avoid mentioning Nazis this time.

Poor Jamie Bell, Britain’s great post-child hope, has been saddled with a starring role in this unbelievably annoying film scripted by Lars von Trier, who has come up with yet another of his giggling exercises in parasitic, pseudo-satirical Americana.

Meow Peter!

“It would be great to see a film that exposes America’s love affair with guns, and liberal America’s guiltily complicit relationship with this love affair,” Pete continues “But this terrible movie isn’t it. Dear Wendy is a misfire, and a misfiring peashooter at that, a film that smirkingly attempts to hitch a free ride on the excitement of gunplay, while affecting to satirise it in a semi-fantasised locale which indemnifies the author against any possible charges of uncool disapproval.”

Can’t see that making it on to the press adverts.

Finally, in the Independent it’s another solitary star from Anthony Quinn who just accuses the film of suffering from a “heavy-handed treatment and smugly absurdist tone”.

Looks like Von Trier and Vinterberk have got their work cut out after this one.

So are there any films out there worth watching this week? Well, yes, but you have to go watch a documentary about Rwanda…not exactly a ‘Friday night with a large coke and extra popcorn’ job we know, but a decent film is a decent film.

Shake Hands with the Devil tells the story of Roméo Dallaire, the French-Canadian leader of the UN force sent to Rwanda in in the mid-Nineties. In his three star review in the Times says the film could act as “a companion piece to Hotel Rwanda,” (there’s a tough double bill if we ever saw one) and says that it “deepens our awareness of the causes and extent of the butchery that took place”.

The only reason it doesn’t pick up more stars is because “occasionally Dallaire’s guilty demons get in the way of the real heart of this story.”.

That doesn’t seem to bother Peter Bradshaw though, who gives it four stars and calls it an “outstanding documentary,” a “gripping and moving film,” and “the best new film of the week” (although it’s on a limited release – Londoner’s are maybe best going to the ICA to see it).

The film also “leaves us with tough questions,” says Bradshaw, including “Have the western superpowers faced up to their own guilt? Where are the guilty men in Rwanda now, and what positions of power do they enjoy? On what basis do we divide the portions of moral responsibility between us and the Rwandans themselves?”

Like we said, definitely not a date movie but probably something you should think about seeing if you get the chance.

To the film news, and from one extreme to another: muppets! Well, nearly. Apparently Jim Henson’s studio are ready to make a sequel to The Dark Crystal. Tentatively titled The Power of the Dark Crystal, it’s apparently going to feature some CGI alongside the more traditional animatronics and you can expect it to be released in Autumn next year. Great stuff.

And if spooky muppets aren’t quite trippy enough for you, what about the website for Darren Aronofsky’s new film The Fountain? It doesn’t do much apart from freak you out, but for some reason we like it. Plus you can download it as a screensaver…which might be a bit much thinking about it.

And if all that’s not enough to supply you with some conversation fodder in the pub tonight then why not print out this list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

We know it’s ludicrous and meaningless but we can’t help but have a read. Forrest Gump?!

Trailer of the week this week has to be Broken Flowers. Jim Jarmusch? Bill Murray? Jessica Lange? This looks ace!

2004 has been the year of superhero dads chaining themselves to various things. Could 2005 be the year of the aggreived mums?

If so, then Janice Crowley could be the first of many. She chained herself to the railings outside the Courts of Justice today in protest against the Child Support Agency’s handling of her ex-husband’s upkeep payments.

And, of course, she was dressed in a costume. In this instance it was Mother Christmas (although, if Londonist is being brutally honest, we don’t really think she has the legs for it).

However, if other mothers are to take up the baton and give Fathers4Justice a run for their money next year they might have to do their homework when it comes to female superheroes.

There’s Wonderwoman…and,erm, Wonderwoman. Ok, let’s check the Wikipedia list of female superheroes for help.

Let’s see: Batgirl (too close to Batman maybe?), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (no easily identifiable costume), Elektra (bit obscure that one), Halle the Hooters Girl (could be seen as sexist that one), and of course She-Hulk (unweildy costume?).

Hmm might be tricky. Maybe Mothers4Justice could take a different tack. Disney characters maybe?

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2004 has been the year of superhero dads chaining themselves to various things. Could 2005 be the year of the aggreived mums?

If so, then Janice Crowley could be the first of many. She chained herself to the railings outside the Courts of Justice today in protest against the Child Support Agency’s handling of her ex-husband’s upkeep payments.

And, of course, she was dressed in a costume. In this instance it was Mother Christmas (although, if Londonist is being brutally honest, we don’t really think she has the legs for it).

However, if other mothers are to take up the baton and give Fathers4Justice a run for their money next year they might have to do their homework when it comes to female superheroes.

There’s Wonderwoman…and,erm, Wonderwoman. Ok, let’s check the Wikipedia list of female superheroes for help.

Let’s see: Batgirl (too close to Batman maybe?), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (no easily identifiable costume), Elektra (bit obscure that one), Halle the Hooters Girl (could be seen as sexist that one), and of course She-Hulk (unweildy costume?).

Hmm might be tricky. Maybe Mothers4Justice could take a different tack. Disney characters maybe?

]]> http://londonist.com/2004/12/mothers_4_justi.php/feed 0 http://londonist.com/2004/11/when_animals_at.php http://londonist.com/2004/11/when_animals_at.php#comments Wed, 24 Nov 2004 23:16:44 +0000 london_euan http://londonist.com/?p=157

A statue has been erected at Brook Gate in Park Lane to honour the animals that have served and died with British and Allied forces.

Unveiled by Princess Anne the memorial sculpture consists of two mules a horse and a dog, and whilst recognising all animals that have fought in war, it pays special tribute to 60 that got the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross.

The accomplishments of these animals reads like a pitch meeting at Disney for their next animated feature, as they include “Rob, a para-dog who made more than 20 parachute drops while serving with the SAS on top-secret missions in Africa and Italy” and “Mary of Exeter, a pigeon, which flew back with her neck and right breast ripped open, savaged by hawks kept by the Germans at Calais“

We can hear it now:

- “It’s like Watership Down meets Guns of Navarone, Meg Ryan voices a plucky under-dog pigeon entrusted with flying an enigma code breaking machine back to the States, but she gets attacked by Nazi hawks, Sam an eagle, voiced by Will Smith comes to her rescue, gets the code machine back to the President so Mel Gibsons platoon of attack dogs can storm Hitlers secret bunker, and end the war.”

- “Where the hell are you from Working Title? Get out of my office!”>

Londonist would also like to point out that it’s not only war that has claimed the lives of many brave animals but space exploration is also built on the corpses of many fearless primates.

“The very first primates ever fired to an altitude near space were the monkeys Albert 1 and Albert 2. They died in 1949 in the nose cones of captured German V-2 rockets during U.S. launch tests.”

Also in the area of science animals have made many great contributions, with one of the most famous being Pavlov’s Dog in the formulation of the theory of conditoned reflexes.

Not a lot is known about what eventually happened to the dog, but legend has it that after Pavlov rang the bell without feeding him one too many times, and then added insult injury by pulling the old “pretending to throw a stick” routine, the dog went for his throat and had to be put down.

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A statue has been erected at Brook Gate in Park Lane to honour the animals that have served and died with British and Allied forces.

Unveiled by Princess Anne the memorial sculpture consists of two mules a horse and a dog, and whilst recognising all animals that have fought in war, it pays special tribute to 60 that got the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross.

The accomplishments of these animals reads like a pitch meeting at Disney for their next animated feature, as they include “Rob, a para-dog who made more than 20 parachute drops while serving with the SAS on top-secret missions in Africa and Italy” and “Mary of Exeter, a pigeon, which flew back with her neck and right breast ripped open, savaged by hawks kept by the Germans at Calais“

We can hear it now:

- “It’s like Watership Down meets Guns of Navarone, Meg Ryan voices a plucky under-dog pigeon entrusted with flying an enigma code breaking machine back to the States, but she gets attacked by Nazi hawks, Sam an eagle, voiced by Will Smith comes to her rescue, gets the code machine back to the President so Mel Gibsons platoon of attack dogs can storm Hitlers secret bunker, and end the war.”

- “Where the hell are you from Working Title? Get out of my office!”>

Londonist would also like to point out that it’s not only war that has claimed the lives of many brave animals but space exploration is also built on the corpses of many fearless primates.

“The very first primates ever fired to an altitude near space were the monkeys Albert 1 and Albert 2. They died in 1949 in the nose cones of captured German V-2 rockets during U.S. launch tests.”

Also in the area of science animals have made many great contributions, with one of the most famous being Pavlov’s Dog in the formulation of the theory of conditoned reflexes.

Not a lot is known about what eventually happened to the dog, but legend has it that after Pavlov rang the bell without feeding him one too many times, and then added insult injury by pulling the old “pretending to throw a stick” routine, the dog went for his throat and had to be put down.

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