As we mentioned briefly before, Thursday brings the East 2008 Festival. For six days, a cornucopia of performances, exhibitions, workshops, food and other events ensures entertainment with emphasis on promotion of the best of East London. Here’s our pick of the mix: 6th March: F-EAST - artists Wiebke and Nicholas Morgan cook a meal from 12 recipes from a Nigel Slater cookbook, and serve it for visitors as an exploration into ownership and the......

Two weeks into the New Year and it's important to find things to distract yourself from the grey weather, gym timetables, failing diets and attempts to avoid alcohol. If you're still feeling the pinch post festive season then we've got some excellently cheap things for you to do this week to cheer, edify, inspire and amuse you. Monday: Happy days! The Fonz will be at Forbidden Planet for a book signing between 5-6pm. It's......

Kick off the week tomorrow with Stephen Fretwell at Cadogen Hall (£15). The singer songwriter is touring his 3rd album "Man On The Roof" and by all accounts it's pretty good. Or if you like your things with a bit more soul (or rubbish pop depending on your point of view) then the 'legend' that is Craig David begins the first of four dates at Ronnie Scott's (£25). The Mercury nominated one man dream-machine......

The nominations for the London Film Critic Awards (as voted for by the Critics Circle, who else?) were announced today. So here's a quick rundown of who's up for what. Pride and Prejudice (which we have to admit, we didn't go and see) has got the most nominations with eight, including best actor for Matthew MacFadyen, best director for Joe Wright, best actress for Keira Knightley, and best supporting actress for both Brenda Blethyn......

TV is going monster mad this week, in the run-up to Halloween. There are vampires (The Real Vampire Chronicles, Tue 10.55pm C4 - about Allan Menzies, the maladjusted Anne Rice fan who took his Vampire: The Masquerade LARPing way, way too seriously), demons (The Curse Of The Omen, Wed 11.05pm C4 - investigating the supposed jinx that has struck the cast and crew of the son-of-Satan-in-suburbia film), mummies (Egypt, Sun 9pm BBC1 - featuring,......

A lot of the US papers are carrying reviews of Roman Polanski's Oliver today so we thought we'd bring you a bit of a roundup of what they're saying. We'll kick off though with the only UK paper to get in on the act so early: the Standard. Nick Curtis was at the British premier of the film last night and his review is headlined The Best of Twists, so there's no grey areas......