The Evening Standard kicked off the 08/09 British Theatre awards season announcing their longlist of theatrical heavy-weights, newcomers, regulars and Hollywood stars for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Kevin Spacey and Kenneth Branagh fight it out for the best actor accolade; Kev for Speed-The-Plow at the Old Vic, Ken for Ivanov, currently at Wyndham's. Wanna be in their gang? Better get some Shakespeare into your repertoire. Alongside Branagh and Spacey in the best actor......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 18th February 1996: An IRA bomb explodes on a double-decker bus on Aldwych, killing the bomber and injuring eight members of the public. Tuesday – 19th February 1960: Prince Andrew is born in the Belgian Suite of Buckingham Palace. Wednesday – 20th February 1913: Two suffragettes set fire to the tea pavilion at Kew Gardens at around 3am, destroying it completely. Thursday – 21st February 1946: Alan......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews returns, courtesy of James Bryan… As we wallow in the truly miserable news that Aliens Vs Predator made more money at the box office last week than No Country for Old Men, we sigh and turn our attentions to this week’s offerings. The three biggest releases this week are all stamped with Oscar. We’ve got Johnny Depp singing in Cockney and slicing throats in Sweeney Todd, Tommy Lee......

All this attention on Lily means her poor old dad hardly gets a look in. That should change when the new series of Robin Hood kicks off later in the year. Keith Alan gets the plum role as The Sherriff of Nottingham and while he may not entirely surpass good old Alan Rickman's turn in the Costner movie, from the clips up on the site he does seem to overshadow the rather flimsy looking......

After the weekend spurge of violence we take heart today in the fact that At least two high-powered bows and 50 arrows have been stolen from an outdoor activity centre in north-west London. Although police are worried that such weapons could be dangerous in untrained hands we're confident that bows and arrows are only ever the weapon of choice for justice wielding vigilantes. There was Robin Hood for a start, and although he never......

The Science Museum is once again playing host to an exhibition based on a movie following the success of its Lord of the Rings fan fest. No life size replicas of Sean Bean dead in a boat this time round, but you will get to see a certain paranoid android. Yep, props and sets from the big screen adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are due to go on display from the......

No time for a fully-fledged Friday Film News this week, as it's the Londonist Office Xmas Party this afternoon, so we're just going to skip right to the interesting film tidbits section: Following on from last week's teaser trailer, there's now a preview of the War of the Worlds teaser poster online. Is it just us or does it remind you of the poster for The Life of Brian? Somehow we don't think that......

Londonist is a little overexcited about Channel 4's new series The Heist which starts tomorrow. The premise of assembling "a gang of authentic criminal masterminds to attempt the perfect crime." sounds right up our street, but, as usual with these types of things, reality is way more interesting. Over the weekend The Times reported that the three gamblers who managed to take £1.3m off the Ritz casino nine months ago, have been allowed to......

Continuing the somewhat Japanese theme begun below, Londonist notes that Yukio Ninagawa will be the director of Hamlet at the Barbican starting November 10. Japan’s fascination with Shakespeare is long-standing (see “Othello”, below) and, for this writer at least, perpetually puzzling. Ninagawa’s love of the Bard is perhaps even more puzzling, since he speaks no English. He directed Nigel Hawthorne in King Lear in 1999. Since Hawthorne spoke no Japanese, this was all done through......