Film: Le Week-End, Cornerhouse, Opens Friday 11 October
Veteran British actors Jim ‘Pod Clock’ Broadbent and Lindsay ‘voice of TC-14’ Duncan play an aging 60ish couple whose kids have long flown the nest and now have to wrestle with the terrifying notion that they only have each other in the lead up to the inevitable end. You know, death ‘n’ that.
Faced with this terrible prospect, Meg (Lindsay) and Nick (Jim) travel to the city of love, gay Parie, the city in which they spent their honeymoon. Grasping by their fingernails to any remaining hints of romanticism within the relationship, Nick and Meg, in between the bickering, attempt to reclaim their marriage.
Le-Week-End is the fourth collaboration between director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureshi following The Buddha of Suburbia, The Mother and Venus, with some critics hailing it as their best yet.
Full price £7.50. Buy tickets here.
Event: The Manchester Weekender 2013, Various Venues, Thursday 10 October – Sunday 13 October
Manchester’s other celebration (not MIF) of all things art and culture returns for its fourth outing. The weekender offers a weekend-long snapshot of some of the best our city has to offer, the insightful, the creative, the informed, the innovative, the new, the beautiful, the plain weird and even some of the tasty and the drinky. Helps.
On Friday, Turner-prize winning artist, Jeremy Deller, presents 'All That Is Solid Melts Into Air', a disparate array of artworks and ephemera held together by the desire to uncover the roots of working class music culture (Manchester Art Gallery, free).
Saturday is hanging around the corridor (Oxford Road) with a load of stuffed stuff in 'Nature’s Library' in Manchester Museum, guided walks talking Lowry and Turing and a 'Radical Pop-Up Print Shop' along the road where you can get your hands on one of a thousand free screen-printed, artist-produced poster, print, chapbook or flyer made exclusively for the Weekender. We like free.
Sunday has bike tours, football, scoffings, adventures and the 'Polari Mission Bibleathon', whatever the bloody hell that is.
There’s an overabundance of things going on at the Weekender. Way too many to list here. So have a look yourself you lazy blighter.
Hold on... that's not Manchester
Music: Everything Everything, The Ritz, Friday 11 October – Saturday 12 October, 6.30pm
Formed in 2007 by University of Salford students and school friends Jonathan Higgs (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Jeremy Pritchard (bass,vocals), Michael Spearman (drums) and original guitarist Alex Niven, now departed and replaced by Alex Robertshaw, Everything Everything are a Manchester-based arty-pop band hailing from Kent, Northumberland and Guernsey, which, incidentally, is also the birthplace of John Savident, noted baldy ‘check’ (chin into neck) Coronation Street character Fred Elliot.
Their debut album, Man Alive, was nominated for the 2010 Mercury Prize while second album, Arc, toned down their jerky math (some say weird) pop in search of more mainstream success. It worked, singles Cough Cough and Kemosabe attacked the radio like a rabid mountain lion on a lame baby lamb… with flu.
Tickets £18.50 available here.
Theatre: Jesus Christ Superstar, Phones4U Arena, Friday 11 October
This Webber and Rice stage show has been beefed and tweaked for an arena format with the lead, Jesus (Ben Forster) cast from an ITV Talent show (that I’m pretty sure nobody has heard of – Superstar anybody?), former Spice Girl and the-one-that-could-sing Mel C as Mary Magdalene, Oz funnyman Tim Minchin as Judas and Chris Moyles in a leering turn as Herod (the one that was partial to infanticide), a game show host in red velvet demanding the audience declare Jesus either a fraud or not.
This arena adaptation delivers heavy musical numbers, powering ballads and the obligatory acrobatics going-on all over the shop. Well, it is an arena tour, and nobody has produced an arena tour without a backflip since 1968 when the back flip was invented, along with the computer mouse.
Tickets £62 - £73 (how much?). Book here, but only if you’re Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud.
So, how'd you like it Sir?
Festival: Manchester LIT Festival, Various Venues, Until Sunday 20 October
When we first heard of the LIT fest we thought finally, it was about time the Latvian Ichthyolatry Trust got its due recognition. After all, what is more holy than a fish. Jesus loved ‘em.
Alas, this LIT fest is about words ‘n’ stuff. Since its inception in 2006, MLF provides rare and imaginative opportunities for audiences to experience high quality live literature and accompanying events and activities. Already in full flow across multiple venues in Greater Manchester, this festival features internationally acclaimed authors, walking tours, industry figures and exclusive performances spread across venues from Chetham’s School of Music to the Dancehouse and Gorilla to the John Ryland.
This weekend, the sultry Sarah Churchwell, author and Professor of American Literature at the University of East Anglia gives F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby a good going-over while jazz band Alligator Gumbo perform live music from the roaring 20s on Friday 11 October at Matt and Phreds (£10). While on Saturday 12 October novelist and indie film director Xiaolu Guo will be in conversation at the Anthony Burgess Foundation (£6).
For a look at all goings-on visit here.
Sarah Churchwell
Comedy: Lucy Porter: Northern Soul, The Dancehouse, Oxford Road, Friday 11 October, 8pm
Lucy Porter is lost, or at least she thinks she is. She’s not really sure. Where’s her spiritual home? Does she even have one? Born in Croydon, a place that has applied unsuccessfully thirteen times for city status, says it all really, to a Northern Irish dad and a mum from the Midlands (who met in Africa), Lucy never felt like she belonged down south, so she moved up here to Manchester, married a Welshman and even tried travelling the world. Alas, she’s still seeking her spiritual home – someone should probably tell her she hasn’t got one.
Familiar from popular TV and Radio panel shows including Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Mock The Week and Radio 4’s Unbelievable Truth, Lucy returns to the UK tour circuit, fresh from a critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe Festival show.
Tickets £11-£13 available here.
Museum: Soup Collective @ the National Football Museum: 3D Memorabilia Printing, Until Tuesday 15 October
Ever looked at your football memorabilia (and everyone has football memorabilia) and thought, you know what I need, another version of that football memorabilia, but a lesser plastic version. Well then, this one’s for you.
Visitors to the museum are being encouraged to bring along a piece of their own football memorabilia for a spot of laser surgery. The NFM are teaming up with Manchester art group Soup Collective to bring a new exhibition to the museum as part of the Arts Council England funded project, Out of Play.
Using state-of-the-art 3D printing technology, your item will be scanned and potentially make it into the exhibition that explores the idea that each object has its own tale to tell.
FREE. More info here.
You mug
Film: Harpurhey Handmade Film Festival, North Manchester, Thursday 10 October - Sunday 13 October
This small festival will feature short films and photographic installations featuring and created by folks from North Manchester. The event will run over four days across four venues: The Small Cinema in Moston, Harpurhey Neighbourhood Project, Manchester Communications Academy and, weather permitting of course, an outdoor projection site on Ash Street, Harpurhey on Sunday.
The films within the festival have been produced using a range of instruments, camcorders, smartphones, flip cameras and DLSRs and can be anything from 6 to 60 seconds long. You may feel a little aggrieved and slightly short-changed going to watch a 6 second film, but then it's all free, so can't complain.
Moston Small Cinema
Art: Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War, Special Exhibitions Gallery, IWM North, Opens Saturday 12 October
War. Huh. Yeah. What is it good for? Well actually, it makes for some pretty nifty paintings… Say it again y'all.
The first ever large scale exhibition of the Imperial War Museum’s national collection of contemporary art produced since the first Gulf War. IWM holds an unrivalled collection of twentieth and twenty-first century British art, including some of the most significant artists exploring war and conflict today. The exhibition includes work by Steve McQueen (no not that one), kennardphillipps, Langlards & Bell, Miroslaw Balka, Willie Doherty, Paul Seawright, Ori Gersht, Jananne Al Ani and Edmund Clark.
The exhibition will aim to look at how we perceive war and conflict through art in an era in which the modern day audience have instant access to both literary and visual content from the very frontline beamed right into their eye-boxes at the mere whimsical click of a button. Does wartime art still carry any relevance? Does it give a more poignant and piercing portrayal? Does anyone care? Go see.
There’s also a terribly disturbing photo of Blair (below). Not so much the explosion. But that face, the forehead. “The horror… The horror”
You'll never guess where I am...
Green: Manchester Garden City Autumn Tidy Up, Piccadilly and NQ, Saturday 12 October, 12-6pm
Volunteer at this event and get yourself some of those vital brownie points or karma or whatever you need to not spend eternity being poked up the arse by Beelzebub with a red hot tripod or having to talk to This Morning's Katie Hopkins . I’d take the tripod to the arse every time.
Manchester Garden City, a joint initiative between design practice BDP and CityCo, are asking groups or single volunteers to help them lay bark, paint, weed, plant and wood-stain benches in order to get spots of Piccadilly Basin and the Northern Quarter spruced up in time for the winter months.
You’ll be awarded free drinks and pizza at Matt & Phreds for all of your troubles. So there is such thing as a free lunch. You just have to work for it.
For more info and to volunteer email gardencity@cityco.com
This canal boat was a bit, well, odd
Drink: New Boost Juice Bar, Trafford Centre (near M&S), This Weekend
Some folks from Boost popped into our office this week and force feed us so many fruity smoothies that two of the team actually turned into bananas and had to go home. One of them was mugged and eaten by the big Gorilla on Whitworth Street. Right…
Boost are opening their second store in the Trafford Centre this weekend, the first opened back in 2007 and remains one of the top three busiest Boost stores in the world, not bad considering there’s hundreds of stores spread across sixteen different countries. We’re a thirsty lot. Boost sold no less than 27 million drinks in 2012, enough for everyone in Nepal to have one. Which is unfortunate, the Nepalese famously hate smoothies.
Have a boost here.
Who let that juice loose?
Food: National Curry Week, Everywhere, Until Sunday 13th October
200 years ago an Indian migrant opened Britain’s first curry house. A curry house in which patrons smoked hookah pipes, reclined on bamboo-cane sofas and sampled their first taste of spicy food. We’ve been hooked ever since. The Chicken Tikka Masala, reportedly created in Glasgow (exotic), replaced fish and chips as our national dish, soon to be followed by the Jalfrezi as we got more adventurous and our taste buds died off a little.
We all have a curry story, the one that caused your eyes to excrete more fluid then a horse after a knees-up, the one that caused you to challenge Andrex's supply chain and the one that the devil tried and couldn’t stomach (Hint: Never try a Scotch Bonnet). So pop on down to our notorious Curry Mile and pay homage to the glorious curry. If you don’t fancy the Curry Mile, and let’s be honest, a lot of you won’t fancy the Indian food by numbers, head over to the Tiffin Room in Cheadle. It’s the best Indian food we’ve ever tasted.
Clingfilm your tongue
Fashion: Handbags at Dusk, Dukes 92, Castlefield, Wednesday 16 October, 6pm-8.30pm
Handbags. What would women do without handbags? Well for one they’d have nowhere to somehow lose their keys every single time they really need them, nowhere to accumulate coppers and half-arsed shards of cosmetics, they’d certainly have more bulbous pockets.
Well you can bag a bargain at the 'Bring a Bag Sale' and help raise money for The Birdhouse Fund - set up by Manchester women for other local women who are struggling to achieve their full potential because of the turbulent and hard-knock nature of our existence.
Previous events have raised over £1,000, so donating your unwanted bags is just as important as buying other people's.
Entry is £5 per person or free if you donate a minimum of three bags. Either way you’ll get a glass of bubbles on arrival.
Email roz@rozhughes.com for more details and how to get involved.
Bags of fun
Theatre: Animal Farm, Oldham Coliseum, Wednesday 16 October - Thursday 17 October
George Orwell’s abiding political satire and dystopian novel remains as applicable today as it did in 1945. A socialist at heart, Orwell became a critic of both communism and capitalism, with influences for the novel garnered primarily from the rule and iron fist of de facto Soviet Union leader, Joseph Stalin. It’s a damning account of the twisting of socialist ideology based around a farm, in which the chief revolutionaries begin to adopt the characteristics of the banished despot Farmer and prophetically declare: ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ This fast-moving dramatization of Orwell’s satire remains faithful to the spirit of the original. It is also taught us that little piggies are actually utter bastards.
Tickets £5. Book here.
His bestiality days were over
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