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with Paul Dacre
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An impressive noir-ish biopic, American Gangster won’t go down as a classic but it is a solid, well acted and convincing mafia-style flick.
And the moral of the story… don’t wear fur.
A buy-in-plenty-of-popcorn 8 out of 10.
Director: Ridley Scott……Starring: Denzel Washington……Russell Crowe
It’s a Free World……Ocean’s Eleven
Pictures of Gemma Atkinson in Ultimo are easily available at the Daily Mail, which spends good money on photos of her working out, showering and the rest. It’s this soft porn – stars like Hollyoak’s Gemma Atkinson semi-naked, nude or topless – that keeps the Daily Mail’s circulation up; two photos of this pole dancer on GMTV are required to get across the outrage felt by right-thinking people. (The only one who takes its politics seriously, sadly, is Gordon Brown.)
Anyway. If you’re thinking ‘phoaahh!’, I wish I / my girlfriend / my wife looked like Gemma Atkinson in Ultimo, you’ll be wanting to get yourself over to Figleaves, where Ultimo is in stock right now. But Gemma Atkinson’s Ultimo is only for bras sized D to G, if you have a more modest requirement check out what Girls Aloud’s Sarah Harding has to offer
… phoaahh!
‘Relatively small touches, that need not cost the earth, can make a significant difference to the experience the gym offers,’ is how I like to sign off my emails to Virgin Active, but it’s a message that falls on deaf ears. The transition from the fairly upmarket Holmes Place to Virgin Active, which is happy to be a cheap and cheerful bargain brand, has been quite painful.
The big sweetener, heavily promoted through posters, special staff t-shirts et cetera, was that Virgin Active would be the only gym in the country to offer hula-hoop classes. They soon found out why they were the only ones and didn’t have to tell anyone when the axe fell on the hoops. In keeping with the novelty first approach, Virgin is to be the only gym in the country to have whole rooms dedicated to Powerplates (which the Sun reckons cost £6,995 each). When that flops, perhaps it will become the only gym to offer hopscotch and Space Hoppers.
I’m glad to see I’m not alone in having the odd whinge. Someone in London has …continues here.
Local shops, backed by the Lib Dems and Cllr Sheila Newman have won the first round of a campaign to stop Tesco converting a run down Esso garage into a Tesco Express. Given that Esso has, say Greenpeace, ‘done more than any other company to stop the world from tackling climate change’, it’s hard to see why anybody should be sorry to see them leave Chorlton. And when they go they’ll leave a dirty eyesore of a site that may take years to find a developer. A former Texaco on the other side of the Chorlton was left derilict for several years before a developer took it on.
In contrast, the arguments against a Tesco are unsustainable. An Express would not be a full size supermarket and would be dwarfed by Chorlton’s Morrison’s. It would compete with Somerfield and the tatty discount supermarkets in the precinct.
The likes of Barbakan, which lays claims to being the UK’s best baker, do themselves no favours when they claim consumers would prefer to shop at a Tesco on the other side of the street. The independent Unicorn Grocery is leading the charge. Figures on their website reveal that the Tesco Express would be less than a third of the size of Unicorn. Yet, like Barbakan, they are convinced that, given the choice, shoppers will pick the smaller store.
Chorlton’s independent traders have done an incredible job of making the village special and it’s amazing that they fail to recognise that they offer unique shopping experiences with which Tesco Express simply doesn’t compete; do Barbakan really belive their customers would prefer Tesco bread?
It’s easy to approach David Williamson’s A Conversation, a triumph when staged in the Royal Exchange studio now transferred to the main stage, with expectations high. There’s the promise of a challenging journey, the starting point of which is the aftermath of the brutal rape and murder of a near perfect young middle class woman by an insane S&M obsessed monster from the other side of the tracks.
Sadly Australia’s most performed playwright offers a rather clumsy, uninsightful piece. This conversation between the families of victim and perpetrator in a bleak conference room should be uncomfortable and claustrophobic, but is terribly unconvincing.
The victim was whiter than white; we learn the worst things she ever did were to mistake a strange man’s attempt to talk to her for a unwelcome advance and to throw a tantrum aged thirteen. The rapist, irredeemably mad, bad and dangerous to know, spent his days masturbating over hardcore porn and his evenings putting people in hospital. And so the play’s underlying fault is that each character is a cliche; it’s hard not to snigger when the sister who’s been banging on about ‘factors’ turns out to be a policy adviser to a Labor politician.
David Williamson does refer to some interesting ideas; middle class sociopaths tend to become entrepreneurs while the working class become criminals. But he fails to follow anything through, perhaps because his rigid characterisation provides no scope to blur the boundaries of right and wrong and genuinely render his audience uncomfortable.
Whenever we’re in Leicester we tend to make a stop at the Fieldhead, which is conveniently located on the escape route north, unable to decide whether it is in Fieldhead or Markfield.
It’s a destination pub of the type that can sell as many Sunday roasts as bums it can seat. The food is good quality contemporary British, but lacks the invention expected of a gastropub (although it is priced in that bracket).
But the Fieldhead does need to work on its real ales. Old Speckled Hen was served frog-eyed and soon when flat, Greene King IPA was not much better.
Uploaded by mobile phone to Stephen Newton’s diary of sorts
Few suburbs of any city could put on a Pants to Poverty fair trade fashion show. It’s one of those things that makes Chorlton the best place to live in the world. We have local shops that aren’t just for local people. Destinations like Unicorn Grocery, Barbakan and the Belgian Belly. The Beech Road experience of good quality boutiques. And Cosmo reckons the city centre on our doorstep beats Paris!
This weekend I caught up with a friend in a bar on the main strip that I hadn’t heard of before, Dulcimer. We were lured by the promise of fine ales for finer folk, but careful to pick a night when they didn’t have live folk music. It’s a big place over two floors, so those folk acts will be able to enjoy a sizeable crowd and on Thursday night it was comfortably busy.
Dulcimer has bounced the PDSA next door into a long closed and forgotten off licence. The RSPCA is on the other side, with Barnardo’s next to that. The unfortunate truth is that charity shops, pound stores and other neglected units still outnumber all the trendy stuff. But thanks to likes of Dulcimer it’s getting better.
But if local councillor Sheila Newman gets her way …continues here.
It would take a lot to convince me that there is any better place to call home than Manchester, but even I’m suprised to see the city go head-to-head with Paris in a Cosmopolitan shopping feature and win.
I’d place Manchester number one at the first division of world cities, with London heading a premier league of about five that includes Paris.
Cosmo only scratches the surface of the two cities, of course. Manchester is all about big department stores like Harvey Nichols and Selfridge’s, the designer boutiques of King Street and cocktails at Malmaison.
Uploaded by mobile phone to Stephen Newton’s diary of sorts
It is most impolite to talk disfavourably on someone’s looks, but when those looks are the means to that person’s fortune I reckon they’re fair game.
Sarah Jessica Parker is not at all attractive, not even in an over produced perfume ad like this. If anyone could be reasonably compared to a horse, that person would be Sarah Jessica Parker.
And yet — and here lies the mystery — Sarah Jessica Parker is upheld as a vision of beauty to which women should aspire.
I suspect the answer lies in her girl’s girl Sex and the City persona. To be wordly wise in that girly way is something aspirational, yet apparently attainable. Her unattactiveness becomes an asset in this context: ‘if she can make it as a top model, then so can I!’
Uploaded by mobile phone to Stephen Newton’s diary of sorts
The fans may rage, but at least Amy Winehouse gives ‘em something to tell the grandkids. These sound like the kind of gigs that people lie about having been to.
That said, Amy Winehouse’s retro style does nothing for me. I reckon I’d enjoy the pub singer style warbling more.
Uploaded by mobile phone to Stephen Newton’s diary of sorts
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