If so, you’re probably better poised than we are to win a contest kicking off today. So listen up artists, armchair critics, and wannabe designers: HarperCollins, in collaboration with the Saatchi Gallery, are sponsoring a competition to design a book cover for the forthcoming The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal, Sean Dixon’s debut novel. To all our artsy readers: opportunity knocks (though we’re not making any claims about fame and fortune). The collaboration......

It’s almost Christmas! Over the Christmas holidays, we’ll be here every day recommending the best of what’s on television. We’ll do the hard work, slogging through the TV listings, and let you sit back with a nice hot drink and a mince pie. Enjoy! On TV, Londonist likes: Strictly Come Dancing (BBC1, 17:50-19:15 and 21:25-22:10) While we haven’t been keeping up with the excitement of this year’s dancing fun, we know lots of you......

We're looking forward to the smoking ban in July, not only for the fresher air in pubs and novelty uses for defunct ashtrays but also for all the events springing up to mark the occasion. The Last Tuesday Society is, apparently, a society set up by William James of Harvard in the 1870s and is currently run by artist Viktor Wynd. The society is devoted to "exploring and furthering the esoteric, literary and artistic......

This week - Leo dodges bullets in Sierra Leone to find a pink diamond (Blood Diamond) and Peter O'Toole flirts with someone 50 years his junior (Venus). First up Blood Diamond. To begin, you must read the most authoritative review of all - our own. After that it may seem like a waste of time to read what the broadsheets have to say but let's do it for tradition's sake eh? Bradshaw gives it......

Leonardo DiCaprio was yesterday nominated for an Oscar for his role as Danny Archer in Blood Diamond, while his co-star, Djimon Hounsou, is up for a Best Supporting Oscar. The film directed by Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai, The Siege) is first and foremost an action movie although it does do a good job of highlighting the misery caused by the illegal trade of conflict diamonds in Africa. But is it any good? Well......

The nominations for the Oscars (or the 79th annual Academy Awards if you're bing picky) have been announced: Best Picture: The Departed Babel Letters From Iwo Jima Little Miss Sunshine The Queen Best Actor: Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) Leonardo DiCaprio (Blood Diamond) Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson) Peter O'Toole (Venus) Will Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness) Best Actress: Helen Mirren (The Queen) Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal) Penelope Cruz (Volver) Meryl......

This week - A Scottish doctor finds himself embroiled in Amin's Uganda (The Last King of Scotland) and Affleck is rubbish again, (Smokin' Aces). Four star ratings across the board (The Times, Guardian and Independent) for The Last King of Scotland, a film not about James VI but about Idi Amin. Bradshaw describes it as "thoroughly enjoyable, confident, dramatically satisfying". The bulk of the praise goes to Whitaker for his portrayal of Amin, Talk......

German. Art. Controversial. Diana. London. Do you know how long we've been waiting for an article to come along that contains all of those words? And, finally, today our prayers have been answered: An art show based on a controversial German stage work about the death of Britain's Princess Diana has found a home in London. Christoph Schlingensief's "The Last Hour" was originally scheduled to be part of the Frieze Art Fair, which runs......

Actually we don't. Well M@ probably does. The rest of us love the WORDS because the NUMBERS just make our heads hurt. Anyway - we love tourists that's for sure. We love landmarks too. We also love tourists at various landmarks so we have room in our heart for tourists (and Londoners) holding up baffling signs while they're there: The sum of the reciprocals of the squares of the positive integers is pi squared......

The London Film Festival is looming once more like a giant whale spewing cinematic treats from its blowhole. We'll be going along to every preview screening we can manage to let you know what's worth digging deep for this year. The full line up will only be announced on Thursday the 15th of September, but the opening movie is going to be The Last King of Scotland: Based on the award-winning novel by Giles......

This week's FFN is written by our new recruit Ben, who has stepped into the breach following the call from our readers last week not to scrap the weekly roundup. This week’s roundup includes a big summer blockbuster (X-men 3 – The Last Stand), a rubbish comedy (Friends With Money) and a film about a monkey (Curious George). Perhaps you ought to go to the theatre instead. Or better still you could rent “Ghost”......

It's all very well planning for St George's Day frolics, but how many of us will see Sunday morning with our throats intact? We advise all readers to get themselves down to Borough Market as quickly as possible and stock up on garlic. While you're there you may as well nip into Southwark Cathedral and steal as much holy water as you can carry. According to Wikipedia WE'RE ALL DOOMED: Vampires, along with witches,......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. It's a good week -- Macmillan is pledging to publish unknown authors, Peter Akroyd is making an appearance (even though he's presumably the sidekick in this particular show), we've got a new Victorian novel (and you can never have enough of those), some Welsh poetry (which actually scares us a little bit), and a......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. There's not a whole lot going on this week in the way of live literary events, but there are more quality releases than we've seen in months. Additionally, we can say with confidence that there are some great events coming up in the near future. Ahh, things are looking up in the lives of......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. If your New Year's Resolution is to read more, then you're in luck this week, as the publishing industry returns with a vengeance. They must be rolling out the new releases before they worry about anything else, though, because it doesn't look like they've gotten around to scheduling any events... Events Around London: We've......

If, like us, you prefer your horror films with at least a token veneer of intelligence and emotion, you’ll have been rubbing your hands together with glee at the prospect of an ‘Exorcist’ prequel directed by none other than Paul Schrader. Schrader, a stalwart of outsider cinema since the 1970s and writer of such controversial cinematic landmarks as Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ, was not the obvious choice given that his......

Neil Young - Prairie Wind As prodigious as he is unpredictable (this after all is a man whose record company once sued him for not sounding like himself), Neil Young's 41st solo record, just shy of his 60th birthday and recovering from an aneurysm that almost killed him earlier this year, finds him in a gentle, reflective mood on his strongest and most affecting album in ten years. Returning to his country folk roots,......

The Dandy Warhols - Cargo, Tuesday 30th August If we'd released this today and not two and a half years ago there'd be a lot more assholes in here than there are. The cooler than cool Dandy Warhols have no time for the terminally cool, the wannabe coiffured scenesters and hangers on that you tend to get at small venue album release shows like this one; the Bohemians Like You they so wonderfully take......

Mr. Bronson has gone to the teacher's lounge in the sky. Michael Sheard the actor who brought to life the dreaded Grange Hill teacher Mr Bronson has died from cancer aged 65. Londonist has fond memories of Bronson and his indescribable hairpiece attempting to teach scallywags like Gonch and Imelda Davies French and rather gruffly taking Roland under his wing - even going so far as to allow him to retake his exams after......

Tony Scott is something of a poor man's Ridley, although to be honest both brothers make some strange career choices. Ridley is pretty much untouchable after giving us Blade Runner, Alien and The Duellists. Post Blade Runner things got a little messy until Thelma and Louise and then dipped again until the double whammy of the crowd pleasing Gladiator and the very loud Black Hawk Down. Next up is Orlando Bloom crusading his little......

The British Film Institute has decided to kick off the new year with a festival entitled The Wild Bunch celebrating America circa 1965 onwards and the cinema that era produced. "Out of this time of social change, came a decade and a half of challenging, irreverent and innovative film-making." The BFI website explains. The season is two months long and promises some real gems, such as Easy Rider (on tonight at 6:10) , The......

On 15th December we wrote up a post with the title: The Last Pete Doherty Story Of The Year? With another 16 days to go to the end of the year, we all knew there was easily time for at least one other story, especially with Babyshambles still touring. NME.com goes for the lazy (but less esoteric than ours) option with its headline London Gig Ends In 'Shambles', reporting that Babyshambles failed to play......