Following the Oscars this weekend there are free film screenings all over town this week. Edify thyself and make new friends running across 5 different genres of movie for no expenditure whatsoever. Monday: The Duke Mitchell Film Club is holding heist night at the Cross Kings Bar on York Way with a long lost Italian heist movie "Seven Golden Men". The film starts at 8pm but there's also a "trailer trash" collection of vintage......

Londonist brings it on home. Basilico 26 Penton St N1 9PS Delivery Area: Islington 0800 093 4224 5pm-wee hours (Monday-Thursday) 11am-wee hours (Friday-Sunday) Expect to Pay: Around £10 for a 13” pie or £15 for an 18” Rating: 7 out of 10 On a handful of occasions, Londonist has ordered pizza from the Basilico franchise in Islington, a takeaway and delivery pizzeria with five locations. We were pleased with the Americana (Italian spicy pepperoni,......

We've not done very well on the virtuous January front and seem to have spent all our money and most of our nights out on the lash with a flagrant disregard for propriety and our bank account. We don't mind though because, as usual, there are some excellent free things to do in town this week. Monday: British Asian gangsta folk ska punk is where it's at with the intriguing sounding Barbar Luck at......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Franco’s Take Away 67 Rivington Street EC2A 3AY Nearest Tube: Old Street 0207 739 0231 6.30am-5pm (Monday-Saturday) Expect to Pay: £5 or less for a substantial amount of food Rating: 7 out of 10 Despite its seemingly hidden location (and Erol Alkan’s musing), this Italian (cum East Ender) sandwich bar is hardly any secret. Indeed, random queues can form......

2007 is quickly slipping away, and with it the few remaining book events for the year. As most of us are busy buying books for the bibliophiles on our shopping lists rather than reading or going to signings this week, we thought we’d present you with an alternative Book Grocer today. For those of you already finished with your shopping (you overachievers you), the traditional listings follow. If, like Londonist, you go for the......

A week after opening for the Queen, St Pancras International is finally ready for the likes of us. The station has been restored beyond its former glory. Britain's answer to Central Station is ready for business. Everyone knows by now that the sumptious Euston Road frontage to the station was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. But what else in London did the Great Scott design? Time to dust off our old 'Stalks' series,......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 1st October 1868: St. Pancras Station is officially opened as the London terminus for the Midland Railway, despite its construction being incomplete. Part of the buildings would form the iconic gothic St. Pancras Chambers, which housed the Midland Grand Hotel. Tuesday – 2nd October 1909: Twickenham Stadium hosts its first ever rugby match, with Harlequins beating Richmond 14-10. Wednesday – 3rd October 1975: After three days of......

If you were up in Edinburgh for the first week of the festival or are just back from that hedonistic week away then you’re probably feeling the pinch. You’ll not be able to go naughty Monday indie clubbing at Durr at The End. You can’t fork out to go to Cadogan Hall and watch the Charlie Chaplin triple bills with live music and celebrity hosts. Neither will you be getting a last minute ticket......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Sfizio Café 35-37 Theobalds Road WC1X 8SP Map Average Lunch Price: £2.70 for one panzarotto Rating: 8 out of 10 Londonist has a confession to make. Several weeks back, when we visited City Snacks for our first What’s for Lunch? review, we were actually planning to grab a quick bite a few doors down at Sfizio Café. Much to......

As the buzz surrounding the weekend's Tour de France action in London builds steadily, more and more people are asking where will be the best places to watch, especially during the Prologue individual time trial on Saturday afternoon. Unlike the annual Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, where the best vantage points are well established, there's no obvious form to go on for this one-off cycling spectacular in terms of where to set out your viewing stall......

We're looking forward to the smoking ban in July, not only for the fresher air in pubs and novelty uses for defunct ashtrays but also for all the events springing up to mark the occasion. The Last Tuesday Society is, apparently, a society set up by William James of Harvard in the 1870s and is currently run by artist Viktor Wynd. The society is devoted to "exploring and furthering the esoteric, literary and artistic......

Will the real Buster Crabbe please stand up? And put one of those flippers on each foot up? We were intrigued to discover that the South London Swimming Club will this Sunday morning be hosting a race for the "Buster Crabbe Memorial Cup". That name instantly transported us back to our school holiday mornings, transfixed in front of the televised black and white 1930s adventures of space hero Flash Gordon, embodied by one Clarence......

So ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Milan, deducted eight league points for their involvement in the Calciopoli scandal, provide Europe's club champions, sitting alongside the Italian nation's triumph at last summer's world cup. (Incidentally, anyone who still disbelieves Filippo Inzaghi that Milan practice free kicks such as the one they scored from should have a look at this.) Former Milan CEO Adriano Galliani, banned for five months for his part in Calciopoli, was prominent amongst......

Londonist ask that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Santoré 59-61 Exmouth Market EC1R 4QL Map Average Lunch Price: £9 Rating: 9.5 out of 10 Some months back the entertainment section of Crumbs for Men magazine featured a rave review about Santoré, a phenomenally yummy pizzeria at Exmouth Market in Clerkenwell. Then, when Santoré began home-delivery, ontoLondon duly made a jubilant note. Now that Londonist is pondering what’s......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Beatroot 92 Berwick Street W1 V3FL Map Average Lunch Price: £5 Rating: 9 out of 10 About halfway down Soho’s frenetic and cacophonous Berwick Street is a relative oasis of salubrious calm, the Beatroot Vegetarian Café. An appetizing and healthy array of vegan salads, hot food, smoothies and juices are ‘prepared with natural ingredients and lots of care’ and......

As the morning of the 2007 Champions League final dawns and Liverpool fans throng the streets of Athens, desperate to acquire a seat for tonight's match from amongst tens of thousands of corporate matchgoers, it seems an appropriate moment for the launch of our new series of articles looking at where football is going, particularly regarding off-the-field issues which seem increasingly to dominate newspaper back pages. Liverpool's opponents tonight, Milan, are especially apposite for......

Lots of new restaurant openings in London this month; in particular, a number of small single-venue establishments as well as small local chains are establishing new locations. Have you been to any of the below? Or have we missed any other new openings this month? Tell us by using the Comments link at the bottom of the article... Aubaine Popular French local opens a second outpost, including a space that goes from patisserie during......

What's that? More Eurovision, you say? OK, we're hyped up on sugary euro-ethno-pop so here we go! Rusza Magadi sings the Hungary entry, Unsubstantial Blues. It's what it says: a blues number about being dumped. With her repeated shrieks of "why did you leave me", we can think of at a few reasons.The brother of Estonia's Gerli Padar won Eurovision 5 years ago, but her pleasant, uptempo guitar-led number probably won't follow suit. Nice......

Italian goalscoring star Cristiano Lucarelli (left of picture) told a packed University College London lecture theatre last night that his country's footballing culture had something to learn from the English and that given a choice of where he could play, "If I had supernatural powers I would take Livorno and put it in England!". Lucarelli, a totem for both his home town and their football team as well as a passionate socialist, was speaking......

Next Monday evening you could join Londonist amongst the audience at the JZ Young Lecture Theatre on Gower Street as Cristiano Lucarelli, with 18 goals this season currently second top scorer in Serie A behind only Francesco Totti, joins his agent and biographer Carlo Pallavicino in presenting a seminar entitled "Money, Politics and Violence: Is there any more space for passion in Italian football?". For football fans who are not familiar with Lucarelli the......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 28. Unnamed passage through the Roman wall Where? Just north of Tower Hill (see map below) on Cooper's Row, a hotel forecourt leads through to a hidden section of London's Roman wall. An opening to the left (where that chap's passing through) leads out towards Minories. What? Where else in London can you enjoy an Italian coffee next to a 1900 year-old Italian relic? The courtyard......

Some of our most packed and venerated shopping streets are going be upgraded and canonised. Sort of: A light sculpture and large pedestrianised areas are part of a £40m proposal to transform some of the world's most famous shopping streets. Westminster Council's Oxford, Regent and Bond St (Orb) Draft Action Plan hopes to renew the central London area. The light sculpture will be suspended 30ft in the air encircling Oxford Circus [and] will change......

British Airways continues its ongoing campaign to prove to the world that airtravel for the 21st century is green, safe, convenient, and much cheaper than those using those stinky old trains. The Daily Mail reveals that British Airways has been attempting to sort out lost luggage by chucking it all on a plane and sending it to Italy where the Italian baggage handling establishment will sort it all out. No, seriously. We're not making......

Day Seven – Norwich I kept waking up last night and having to adjust my sleeping position to keep from flying out of my bunk - the bus seemed to be throwing itself about all over the place! Somehow we all survive and wake to a cold, bright day. The bus is parked outside the venue and is also, rather conveniently, a matter of metres from a breakfasty café.  Their eggs are the best so......

Day One - London I pack. Video camera, tripod, still camera - check. Stage clothes, day clothes, enough socks and underwear to get through the whole time in case we don't do a laundry run - check. Books to while away the hours waiting to load the gear in to the venue - 'Teach Yourself Japanese' and Michael Palin's 'Himalaya'. Various knitting projects, sketch pad and pencils, diary, notebooks and laptop. Hair dryer, towels, toiletries.......

Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic Airways has announced a new London-U.S. route to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to begin on 23 April, 2007. This will help open up Virgin to the midwest and heartland of the U.S. It will also be a convenient hub for travel to and from Canada and the north and northwest of the USA. Currently the only direct flights to Canada Virgin provides stop at Ottawa and Quebec, leaving the western......

An Italian terrorism expert who met Litvinenko at ITSU has tested positive for Polunium-210. Thierry Henry is out of tomorrow's North London - Arsenal v Tottenham derby thanks to a neck injury. London church leaders met last night to plan major prayer events for the capital next year, including a rally to be held at Upton Park. The much-awaited smoking ban now has a date. It's due to come into force in England on......

BBC Italian Mario Scaramella, a contact of dead ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, has tested positive for polonium-210. Mr Scaramella is not thought to be suffering symptoms but significant amounts of the substance are understood to have been found in the academic. He met Mr Litvinenko at sushi restaurant Itsu in central London on the day he fell ill. Meanwhile it turns out that both Tessa Jowell and Seb Coe travelled on one of the 'contaminated'......

Jagshemash! Borat is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. In Shanghai, Borat would be observing Inane Learnings of Penis Photos for Make Benefit Glorious Flat World of......

Despite what the ladies at the River Cafe would have us believe, Italian cooking, real, genuine, hardcore Italian cooking involves a bit more than drizzing expensive olive oil over bits of toast. Antonio Carluccio is the man to consult when going for the big guns in terms of Italian cuisine, and in between serving London the finest of Italian food in his restaurants, cafes and shops, he is giving a talk at the V&A......