Barcelona’s most refreshing alternative cinema venture offers this indie British flick to wind up its 2000 season. ‘New Year’s Day’ from director Suri Krishnamma is the story of two 17-year-olds who, after narrowly surviving a mountain tragedy, decide they want to really live – but only for another year. Like other films presented by Cine Ambigú, it is one that local distributors have no plans to release. The one-off showings have a decidedly civilised ambience, complete with candlelit tables and bar service.
Posts Tagged ‘fun’
42nd Street
The Hong Kong Singers stage the hit Broadway musical ’42nd Street’ in conjunction with musical theatre students from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Everyone knows the story about an understudy who emerges from the wings to saves the show. The original show scooped a Tony award in 1981 and is one of the longest-running musicals on Broadway. A cast of 50 will be belting out such classic songs as ‘Lullaby On Broadway’ and, of course, ’42nd Street’. In English.
I Married an Angel
San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon closes its season with the return of one of its most popular shows, ‘I Married an Angel’. The largely overlooked but beloved 1938 Rogers and Hart musical tells the story of a banker from Budapest who marries an angel only to have all hell break lose. The comedy includes such songs as ‘A Twinkle in Your Eye’, ‘At the Roxy Music Hall’, ‘I’ll Tell the Man in the Street’ and ‘Spring is Here’. Leslie Hamilton repeats her performance in the starring role of Countess Peggy Palaffi. Book at West end theatre breaks for this show and many others
Casa Olympe
This superb new bistro run by chef Olympe Versini pulls an interesting crowd with her outstanding, changing 210F menu. Excellent bread and a fine bottle of 1998 St-Joseph got a recent meal here off to a fine start, and the pleasure grew with the arrival of excellent starters – a poached egg on a chestnut-flour galette and a casserole of autumn fruits and vegetables braised in luscious veal stock. Main courses of guinea hen with a large ravioli stuffed with wild mushrooms, and pork fillet with homemade sauerkraut in a sublime sauce were earthy but elegant. Desserts were outstanding, too. One of the best bistros in Paris.
What Lies Beneath
Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford play husband and wife in this spooky thriller which draws heavily on Hitchcock and guarantees shocks and suspense in equal measures.
Ristorante Ricchi
A new fish restaurant has just opened in Piazza Santo Spirito under the same ownership as next door mythical Caffe Ricchi. Small and elegant with tables in the piazza, the restaurant offers a short menu of unfussy dishes using the freshest of the day’s catch. Antipasti include mussels in a tasty tomato sauce and Beccafico, a delicious warm seafood salad and sardines with pine nuts, raisins and orange. Risotto is cooked with squid ink and papardelle with fat shrimps, baby lobster and courgette flowers. Locally-caught, succulent scampi is simply grilled while skate is cooked in the oven on a bed of potatoes, tomatoes and black olives. Travel guides Washington DC has the full guide to this part of Washington.
Mark Wallinger
An unusually subdued Mark Wallinger exhibits his humble Christ before Pontius Pilate in the main room of the Secession. The lonely statue with amplified street noise lacks the element of surprise which astounded passers-by in London’s Trafalgar Square but if you’re lucky to visit on a slow day, it has a strange meditative quality. In the Ver Sacrum room there is a continuous showing of Wallinger’s Ecce Homo video, slo-mo images of passengers emerging through automatic doors. The downstairs gallery is taken up with Rita McBride’s transformation of the Secession building into various high-rise blocks, with the entrance as a plinth and the gilt dome atop.
Body and Soul
Long before Spike Lee or Mario Van Peebles, there was Oscar Micheaux. The son of freed slaves, Micheaux pioneered black cinema in states in 1919, and followed it up with an astonishing canon of 27 silent films and 16 sound features. His tales of black life used black actors to portray real situations. The Lincoln Center has commissioned a new soundtrack to his 1925 silent film ‘Body and Soul’, performed by the Center’s Jazz Orchestra under maestro Wynton Marsalis.
Piste
This Christmas season extravaganza offers the usual lively mix of trapeze acts, juggling, unicycles and other traditional acts as well animals to captivate the kids – a tame black panther to stroke, a tiger on a very tight leash and a menagerie of jumping and skipping pigs, goats and Shetland ponies. It’s good family fun for kids who are old enough to sit still for two-and-a-half hours – including an interval for candyfloss and popcorn.
Lao Tan
Unusual for the fact that patrons eat and then hang out, the Lao Tan is a large, loud dining room filled with a very trendy crowd. The room is bare and brightly lit, with thoughtfully simple décor. Waitresses wear traditional Guizhou blue and white cotton uniforms to match the pottery mounted on the walls. Fresh fish and vegetables are presented in a multitude of original nuances, especially the delicious potato pancakes. All went down extremely well with Lao Tan’s signature Guizhou tea. Service is not excessively speedy, but it is not a place to hurry.
