London's cultural scene steams into August with an eclectic range of arty goings on. Those of you with art collections to refresh are in luck this week. Contemporary Arts Project's "Start You Collection" are offering a whole load of "highly collectible" art for under £200 from Friday, asking, "Without our art collections, how would we understand our cultural roots and trace its development to the present?" Indeed. And let's face it, if you can't......

Kevin Spacey today hijacked his own promo for new gambling film 21 to slam the BBC for giving certain West End musicals 13 weeks of free publicity disguised as reality TV shows. Whilst recognising that they helped promote West End theatre in general he's clearly got the hump that it's the camp musicals hogging the limelight and cashing in on ticket sales rather than the more serious plays running at theatres like his own......

Ahh, art or money? It's something we ponder daily here at Londonist. (Can't we have both?) The big question is also being asked over at the Old Vic by none other than Kevin Spacey and his mate Jeff Goldblum in Mamet's Speed-the-Plow. We're also pondering how to get our hands on tickets for this sure-to-sell-out show. Previews run til Saturday; the show's booking until April. Also Opening Photography fans should pop along to the......

'Tis the end of panto-season. No more Ross Kemp in Wimbledon, no more Suzanne Shaw at the Barbican - even Ian McKellan has vacated the Old Vic. Soon the time will come when we pine for hairy men in frocks and Technicolor landscapes. However, to ease us gently out of the season, London FrontRunners is putting on two charity performances of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at the Drill Hall this Sunday 13th January.......

Mince pies are proliferating on supermarket shelves people. It really is time to book your festive entertainment. I mean, we told you back in August about Cinderella at The Old Vic. Stephen Fry's "cheekily updated" script, Pauline Collins' Fairy Godmother and Sandi Toksvig's narrator promise to make this a cracking, cross dressing, cake filled chuckle fest in a veritable grande dame of a venue. Our advice is to try and get as close to......

We're skint again! We've spent all of our money on festivals only to find that we've spent hours standing in the rain listening to the bands we didn't really want to see but our best mate wanted to because they fancy the singer. This means that yet again, we can't go and do any of the things we want (and yes we're sulking). We can't go to any of the gigs we'd planned to,......

Summer has at last hit us. So, with just 122 days to go until christmas, it must therefore be time to start thinking of how to broach that whole visit back to parents/family. What on earth should you do with that horrid snotty nephew? Or, to put it another way: To Panto Or Not To Panto? Now, sorry if this causes offence, but pantomime IS generally rubbish. (*Insert compulsory "oh no it isn't" reference......

Anyone who has ever surfed the internet in a quest for enlightenment about British theatre will undoubtedly have come across the West End Whingers’ blog. By now, Andrew and Phil have become internet blogging stars, doing for theatre what Belle de Jour did for prostitution with only slightly less lubricant. Andrew and Phil have ranted against ticket prices, bar prices, fringe theatre and the general state of affairs since 2006, accumulating a huge fan......

Always on the scout for the best the city has to offer, Londonist has caught wind of a cheeky little theatre deal to tempt you into one of its most vibrant and newly buffed up venues. Vernon God Little is currently showing at the Young Vic, just down The Cut from its bigger, creakier sibling, The Old Vic (no relation). Vernon God Little, the novel, won the Man Booker Prize in 2003 with its......

On Thursday night the Old Vic reverberated to the sound of a man pogoing enthusiastically against a glass ceiling. Rufus Wainwright, whose latest album, "Release the Stars", debuted last week in the UK album charts behind only Linkin Park, has comprehensively conquered his natural demographic of romantics seduced by the Broadway panache of his debonair vocals and cognoscenti who recognise a prodigiously gifted singer-songwriter when they hear one. Much as he is suitably grateful......

Busy week as ever in the capital for music, so straight in we go: Monday night sees Fountains of Wayne grace the Astoria with their power-pop melodies. Tickets are still available from the usual places, however are going quickly. However if power pop isn't your sort of thing, you can seethe avant-garde guitar experimentalists Wilco play Shepherds Bush Empire on Monday night, which is well and truly sold out. If you like your Joy Division......

"Retirement? You're talking about death, right?" Robert Altman has died. No real London connection aside from the messy 'Resurrection Blues' at the Old Vic last year and the fact that The Long Goodbye is one of Londonist's favourite films: They don't make 'em like that anymore.......

Hollywood hunk Vince Vaughn will grace the stage at The Old Vic this Sunday, 8th October, as part of The 24 Hour Plays Benefit. "In collaboration with six writers and six directors, the actors will create and stage new works in just one day". Starting out in 1995 as "an opportunity to bring together a community of creative people in a time-limited experiment", The 24 Hour Plays "recently teamed with Planet Impact, a philanthropic......

A jumbo jet was forced into a series of steep dives over London earlier today due to instrument failure. The Standard screams: "The aircraft dropped to its minimum permitted altitude of 1,200 feet meaning it was seconds from a major disaster." Mayor Ken is being urged not to block the expansion of London City Airport after he claimed recently that there would be no need for the airstrip once Crossrail is built. Good reviews......

An 80-year-old Blackheath woman who fell and broke her neck when the bus she was travelling on stopped suddenly, has died in hospital. Apparently "figures in London show a rise in robbery and other offences around the time of Halloween" so this year the Hallo-hoodies are going to get cracked down on. The late Princess Margaret allegedly enjoyed extra-marital one-night stands in London hotels. Kevin Spacey has waived his fee as the artistic director......

The latest defection from LA to join the gangs of Hollywood ex-patratriates gobbling up the primest of London prime real estate is Neve Campbell. The film actress is currently in London rehearsing the Robert Altman directed, Arthur Miller scripted play Resurrection Blues at the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo. The Old Vic is no stranger to asylum seekers from Hollywood: no less than Kevin Spacey runs the place as Artistic Director and keeps up......

It was sighs all round this morning in the Londonist office when we read the news that Robert Altman is to direct Resurrection Blues at the Old Vic, starting next month. The audible relief sprang not from the fact that Altman is an accomplished director and should do a cracking job of Arthur Miller's script. Nor was it anything to do with the fact that Altman has brought on board Neve Campbell and Matthew......

- Heathrow's Terminal 2 is going to be demolished as part of the 2012 revamp. - Boeing's fuel-efficient jet landed at Heathrow at 1:13 p.m. yesterday after a 22 hour, 42 minute trip from Hong Kong that crossed two oceans and covered 11,664 nautical miles. Therefore breaking the world record for longest, nonstop flight by a commercial airliner. - On the tenth anniversary of his death, a stainless steel sculpture of a Nigerian bus decorated......

What is Kevin Spacey doing? Just as it looked as he was recovering from the whole 'taking my dog for a walk in the middle of the night' debacle, and the fact that Cloaca wasn't very good, he has to go and give Justin Timerblake a job. Londonist actually breathed a sigh of relief at the weekend when we read in this Observer interview that (contrary to tabloid rumours) Spacey hadn't been offering Cameron......

Anyone off to the Old Vic tomorrow evening will be greeted by Canary Wharf's cleaners as part of a delegation from the Transport and General Workers Union in an attempt to raise public awareness of their campaign for a living wage. Morgan Stanley who are sponsoring the Kevin Spacey play National Anthems are accused by the union of treating their cleaning staff unfairly. T&G organiser Paul Davies says: "Cleaners who earn under £6 an......

Today's Telegraph has a good article on "female impresario", Sally Greene's recent investment in the legendary Soho jazz club. Greene is the woman who 'saved' the Old Vic, convinced Kevin Spacey to becoem a patron of the theatre, persuaded Elton John to write all 19 songs for the Billy Elliot musical (so, she has her flaws too), and has just booked Sharon Osbourne for the Vagina Monologues. Greene has gone into partnership with Pete......

Getting the remake treatment this week is the fondly remembered Magic Roundabout, recreated in a very European computer generated style, with the added draw of celebrity voices, such as Kylie Minogue, Joanna Lumley, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent and Robbie Williams. This doesn't save the film from taking a critical kicking as both Bradshaw in The Guardian (two stars) and James Christopher in The Times (two stars also) aren't exactly engaged in a nostalgia fest,......