The arrival of two Hollywood heavyweights in our fair city has given the local media the perfect opportunity to do what they do best: namely, sneer at the lady while swooning over the gent. Renee Zellweger and George Clooney have been in town this week for the UK premier of the Clooney-directed film, Leatherheads. And the differing reactions to the pair from the ranks of Fleet Street's finest couldn't be more illustrative. Gushing journalists......

Every month, the folks at Fancyapint? get together to vote for their top ten favourite pubs. These are recently visited pubs that for one reason or another (the ambience, the booze, the company) stuck in their collective memory. Kindly, these booze-savvy Fancyapinters have decided to share their latest picks with Londonist and all our readers. Cheers! Here’s the current list from Fancyapint? in no particular order of merit. They assure us that all ten......

SFist worried over drugstore chain Walgreens celebration of Black History Month.Gothamist was surprised that apparently New York City is the fourth most miserable city in the country, after Detroit, Stockton, CA, and Flint, MI.Shanghaiist finds out what the Chinese think of Hilary and Obama.It was with a healthy amount of schadenfreude that Phillyist reported that former Eagle, and now Cowboy (ew), Terrell Owens owes the Eagles a significant wad of cash.Torontoist is two weeks......

Is it just us or was January rubbish? Nice then that February, with its special extra day this year, commences with Brazilian Carnival, yummy pancakes and Chinese New Year... it's like a whole new start for 2008 and lots of it totally FREE! Monday: Get some Monday Love at the Inspiral Lounge, Camden Lock as UK Indymedia host their radical film, talk, and music night. Free entry for all those who still believe in......

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......

It's finally here! The Sweeney Todd movie opens today. We were so excited yesterday, though, that we took to the city streets with the fabulous free Sweeney Todd Soundmap in our ears. This movie themed walk starts at Temple tube and wends its way through the back alleys cutting across Fleet Street and leading you, of course, to the site of Mrs Lovett's pie shop, Sweeney's barbaric barber shop, St Dunstan's in the West,......

Pegasus in Inner Temple Hall We were right to get excited about this event. Not only did we finally learn the difference between a solicitor and a barrister and which Inn of Court bears which emblem (Pegasus for Inner Temple, lamb and flag for Middle Temple. Grays Inn has a gryffin and Lincolns Inn a heraldic symbol; somewhat spoiling the animal theme) but we also wandered through the 20 beautiful acres, marvelled at historic and......

We flagged this up in London On The Cheap but it's so good we're telling you again. The Temple is having an open weekend this weekend. Through a doorway off Fleet Street, the Temple is home to two of England’s four the Inns of Court; The Inner and Middle Temple, as well as Da Vinci Code tourist attraction, round Temple Church. It was home to the Knights Templar and is generally steeped in history,......

This week’s events are top-heavy with poetry readings. Have our novelist friends squirreled themselves away to write tomes in their Christmas cards, we wonder? Monday: Head to the RADA Foyer Bar for a reading from the Poetry School’s third anthology, I am twenty people! All inferences to the contrary, there will actually be six, not twenty, new poets reading from their work. Free, 7.00pm. Tuesday: We were reminded last week that poetry isn’t just......

Fans of pomp and circumstance will line the streets of the City tomorrow to watch one of London’s fine old traditions unfold. Each year, the City of London gets a new Lord Mayor (most certainly not to be confused with the more well-known mayor who inhabits the glass testicle near Tower Bridge). Indeed, the office of Lord Mayor is so tied up in the ceremonial that the official web site doesn’t even bother to......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 22nd October 1809: The Croydon Canal, linking Croydon to Deptford via Forest Hill, is opened. Requiring 28 locks to overcome the gradients of the route, it would never become a commercial success, and would be closed just 37 years later. Tuesday – 23rd October 1731: A fire breaks out in Ashburnham House in Westminster, damaging much of the Cotton Library – a renowned collection of Middle English......

There's nothing like a good mug (and then someone at work nicking it), so we were rather excited to hear about Monopoly Mugs this morning (via the rather brilliant retro to go.) Based on the classic London edition of the game, New Rooms Online is selling a mug for selected spots on the map letting you pick between the likes of Park Lane, Fleet Street, Waterworks, Old Kent Road as well as a couple......

Saturday Strangeness 15 – Dragons Over London? Dragons are probably the most celebrated yet misunderstood mythical creature across Britain, yet several sightings of such leathery legends have been recorded, and such monsters feature heavily in the lore of the British countryside (remember St George?). During modern times such leviathans have been relegated to the league of fantasy, where they only exist alongside unicorns and fairies. However, dragon-like 'sky serpents', which have also been connected to......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Fuzzy’s Grub Fleet Street 62 Fleet Street London EC4Y 1JU Tel & Fax: 020 7583 6060 Monday to Friday 7:30am till 3:30pm Map St James’s 6 Crown Passage London SW1Y 6PP Tel: 020 7925 2791 Fax: 020 7930 7192 Monday to Friday 7:00am till 5:00pm Map Bow Lane 10 Well Court London EC4M 9DN Tel & Fax: 020 7236......

Meat Raffle has been putting on exciting live acts and banging out the hits upstairs at Shoreditch BarCatch for nearly 18 months now. So we thought it was quite time enough to get in touch with promoter and DJ 16oz Stewart, who used to run TVOD in Manchester, to get the lowdown. When and why did you set Meat Raffle up? February of 2006. To show off our exciting records and get a few......

Skip to the five minute mark to get to the London location stuff: Today we're gonna blow up a cafe. Clive Owen walks in, gets a coffee, comes out, and we blow up the whole place. Closed off Fleet Street to do so and we're blowing up, crashing vehicles, blowing out windows on vehicles, buses. Bit critical with the timing today.......

Still a week away from the unveiling of the new BFI Southbank complex the press have been given a glimpse of what to expect of the NFT's replacement: In addition to the existing three cinemas, the venue will include the Mediatheque, offering free access to over 300 film and TV titles from the BFI archive. The "digital jukebox" contains clips from the last 100 years, including feature length films such as Brief Encounter and......

Sucking bankers are not popular, least of all to the disgruntled cleaning staff who have to tidy up around them for less than the current London living wage. It is offically recognised by the Transport & General Workers' Union (TGWU) as "teh Suck." Sucking like a big golden vacuum cleaner, in fact. About 20 contract cleaners stormed the Goldman Sach's Fleet Street offices yesterday, leading to several highly paid bankers getting trapped in their......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. A quick note to say The Godot Company is performing Marguerite Duras' La Musica at Bookshop Theatre, 51 The Cut, SE1 8LF, (opposite the Young Vic), Monday - Saturday (not Thursday) at 7.30 pm, till December the 9th, £7/£5 - well worth a look. Wednesday We kick off this week with the Rough Guide......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways...Back, after a short rest. 11. St Bride's Avenue Where? Part of a warren of similarly ancient thoroughfares in the Fleet Street area. As its name suggests, this one runs alongside St Bride's church, south of Fleet Street, and turns 90 degrees at the north-west to lead into the church. What? Looking something like an open sewer in our photo, this is actually quite a pleasant......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Tonight Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award way back in 2003, discusses his writing and latest book A Spot of Bother. £8.50 at the Royal Festival Hall, 7:45 pm in the Purcell Room, find out more. Kevin McCloud......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 5. Johnson’s Court, EC4 Where? Part of that baffling network of passages just north of Fleet Street. Well maintained and currently undergoing a refurb of street furniture (check out the inky-black water feature - not pictured). What? A twisting, partly covered alley with some character left, despite one too many modern developments. Why use? The route is trodden by many a lexiphile, for it leads......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. To start us off, 3AM Magazine has an interview with Tom McCarthy whose debut novel, Remainder, has just been published by Alma Books, and whose critical essay, Tintin and the Secret Literature, is reviewed in the Guardian. And sticking with comics, Free New Books provides an eclectic library of downloadable reads, of most interest......

Yes, you read that sign correctly. ‘Shoot the Aged’. Erstwhile pine, and general bric-a-brac, merchants of Lee Road near Blackheath. Their genius strapline read ‘A non-charitable profit making organisation using non-voluntary staff’. Since this photo was taken in 1998, this treasure of individuality has no doubt been converted into some media agency or generic coffee house. And next-door-but one is the ‘Bitter Experience’ wine sellers. Now, just another trendy restaurant. Ah, the lament of......

It's probably a good job we don't have an -Ist outpost in the Antipodean regions otherwise there may have been a bit of gloating going on yesterday. As it is we here at Londonist will be able to placate our celebratory appetites by joining tens of thousands of other people who will "line the streets of London" today to congratulate the England cricket team as they are paraded through the city upon the traditional......

Did you see the Top 20 Film Locations list that was put together by Film London last week? It was pretty rubbish. We know these kind of things are designed to provoke dicussion and argument, but one company counting up which of the locations on their books have been used the most over the past year really isn't that great a read. Potters Field Park (as used in Little Britain)? Bethnal Green Town Hall......

There's a theory that a murderer will always return to the scene of a crime so we shouldn't be too surprised to hear that Rupert Murdoch was back on Fleet Street yesterday. The fact that he was there to preside over a ceremony mourning the loss of London's famous journalistic home though is not just adding insult to injury, it's not even rubbing salt in the wound... it's a little like Harold Shipman turning......