Aladdin In this year's most wilfully crackpot panto line-up, Pamela Anderson shares the role of the Genie (see Flip Chart, page 7) with Ruby Wax and Paul O'Grady, while Brian Blessed lends booming support as the villainous Abanazar. New Wimbledon Theatre (0844 871 7646), Friday to 10 Jan

Hansel and Gretel Cornish experimental troupe Kneehigh bring their surreal sensibility to bear on the Grimm fairytale, with lively music, rough poetry and some rather unlucky ( Read more... )
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"It just looked really incongruous to me ? this hi-tech reference to a website, out in the desert selling rocks; it was something that I thought was really funny. I suppose if you were doing landscape gardening you might want to buy rocks from them, but it's a long way from anywhere."

The children's picture book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, an occasion marked in bookshops and school assembly halls up and down the country for months on end. The stage show, which has been in repertory since 2001 ? not just in the UK, but across America, Chile, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia ? is about to transfer to London's West End for the duration of the Christmas season.

And on Christmas ( Read more... )
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Ant & Dec's Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story (Michael Joseph, £20) is certainly chatty, written in alternating paragraphs, but it's more of a natter and a noggin, and if they have any emotional baggage we don't get to hear of it. Ant (high forehead) covers his parents' divorce in a sentence, and admits to being less outgoing than Dec, who was the shouty youngest of seven. But perhaps it's wrong to look for complexity in the nation's most cheerful double act, and their love ( Read more... )
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Despite being the largest monastery in England, the sprawling mass of Charterhouse is cleverly secluded. The soaring spire which protrudes above the tree tops is the only clue as to what lies beyond. On the inside, the building comprises a labyrinth of passages and cloisters, libraries, chapels, winding stairwells and inner courtyards.

In theory, anyone can join the community (one monk was a computer consultant in a former life, on a salary of 45K a year). Applicants should approach in writing ( Read more... )
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The unusual thing about this Warhol, however, is that it is unique. Unlike the artist's other screen prints ? which were run off, sometimes in hundreds of editions ? he only made one of the work he called Eight Elvises.

This is why an unknown buyer has been persuaded to part with $100m (£60.5m) ? in the depths of a recession ? to buy the work in a private sale. It catapults Warhol straight into the top 10 list of the most expensive artists of all time.

An auction price of $43.8m ( Read more... )
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There are times when the Atlantic is so wide and stormy that English can be tossed in at one end and come out the other in a voice that makes French or German seem far more familiar. This book, which sets out to chart a "new map of love" using Apuleius' tale of Cupid and Psyche as its compass, marks one of those moments.

It's not so much the words psychologist Carol Gilligan uses, though the meanings that have clustered round some of these occasionally make one a little dizzy. Nor is it ( Read more... )
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One can only imagine the glee of the serious music lovers when Jarrett took an unscheduled decision. "I decided to give a little talk about jazz and classical music," he recalls on a clear line from his home in New Jersey. "The night before, Kathleen sang spirituals like 'This Little Light of Mine' and I thought the words described the differences between jazz and classical. 'This Little Light of Mine' is about knowing you already have 'it' versus 'I gotta go get it.' I think the going and getting ( Read more... )
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And it really is all of those things ? Joanna Page, who plays Stacey is cute as a button, just Bridget-Jonesy enough for us empathise with, the type of lass any well-brought-up young girl would want to be friends with. And Mat Horne (Gavin) is, for want of a better word, fit. In a safe way. And well dressed, with the not-at-all-bad-looking Page as his girlfriend, so mothers like him and men have a degree of grudging respect for him. And then there's James Corden, who plays Gavin's ( Read more... )
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But the love affair with the fame memoir could finally be coming to an end. After the phenomenal critical and commercial success of autobiographies by the likes of Michael Parkinson and Julie Walters, there are now signs that readers this Christmas would rather unwrap a copy of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight trilogy than Ant and Dec's saucily-titled Ooh! What a Lovely Pair.

Literary agents have branded it a "disastrous" autumn for the celebrity memoir genre and the book publisher ( Read more... )
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That moment in Deborah Warner?s stage realisation is designed to be cathartic in much the same way as the chorus ?Worthy is the Lamb? is at the close, but only because these ancient biblical texts are dramatised and illuminated from the perspective of our own experiences of life and death. What she has done here is simple, it?s lucid, and it?s definitely about us.

Moments into Handel?s opening Sinfonia she and her set designer Tom Pye have effected a seamless ?dissolve? ( Read more... )
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You'd think we'd be calling it An Inspector Palls by now. Stephen Daldry's Expressionist, Fall-of-the-House-of-Birling version of the JB Priestley war-horse seems to have been running forever. But seeing the first night of its transfer, after a short break, to the Playhouse, I was delighted to discover that the production is just as fresh and thrilling as it was at its National Theatre premiere nearly a decade ago. The brilliant staging concept clearly has an inexhaustible vitality, being ( Read more... )
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"I was intrigued," says Mezrich, "and so started hanging out with him and his friend, who'd been kicked out of Facebook, essentially. I was blown away by the drama and how fast it happened for these two best friends ? and how they were now no longer friends at all."

If the motivation for the email was justice for his friend Saverin ? a chance to show the world just how he'd had been disposed of, apparently cheated out of his share of the company by someone he thought a ( Read more... )
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I, Alex Cross, Patterson's latest detective novel, was published November 16. With the blockbuster film release of the Twilight sequel New Moon, three older Stephenie Meyer titles also climbed into the top ten.

1. I, Alex Cross -  James Patterson
2. True Blue - David Baldacci
3. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
4. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
5. The Help - Kathryn Stockett
6. New Moon ( Read more... )
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People don't smoke here, ever. It's almost certainly illegal and... "Bollocks!" she says, sparking up. "That's the spirit," I tell her. What I'm actually thinking is: "This is very naughty and you're going to get us arrested," but she takes such pleasure from small acts of rebellion that it seems churlish not to play along.

Amazingly, no one complains. Either this is because the place is almost empty, since it's mid-afternoon. Or Joss escapes censure on a technicality: ( Read more... )
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Therefore, while preparing to interview her for her latest film, it was surprising to discover how unfamiliar I was with much of her previous work. Apart from her 2006 role in The Illusionist, her résumé includes: Stealth, Cellular, Next and London ? all Biel films that few remember ? leaving the critically reviled The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry as, by far, her biggest box-office successes.

Though smart and sassy as Larita Whittaker in last year's Easy ( Read more... )
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It's unlikely that any member of the Royal Family ever got to hear of Tricia's Wedding ? although, by some accounts, a few former household servants might not have been averse to a private screening. But what's shocking now is not that Her Majesty was played by a drag queen, but that this global icon had been on the throne for 20 years before anybody even attempted to portray her. Perhaps it was her very iconic status ? the head on the postage stamp ? that deterred filmmakers. ( Read more... )
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So, having tortured and dismembered the murderer, he sets out to take revenge on the justice system ? from inside prison. What the justice system ? in particular, public prosecutor Jamie Foxx ? haven't realised is that Butler has a background in CIA black ops, dreaming up high-tech ways of killing without leaving a trace.

The film's entertainment value resides almost entirely in the ingenuity of Butler's modus operandi; but this is cancelled out by the film's underlying ( Read more... )
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With almost half a million copies sold, "Going Rogue: An American Life" beat new blockbusters by James Patterson and Stephen King to become the highest-selling book in the country, according to Nielsen BookScan.

Palin ran for vice president last year on John McCain's losing ticket and is seen as a potential Republican presidential contender.

She launched the memoir, published November 16 by HarperCollins, with a blitz of media appearances and a political ( Read more... )
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The early and protracted death of Kitson's Down's syndrome aunt earlier this year is the genesis of his emotional maelstrom. "How can you make death funny?" he asks on our behalf. "Strap in" is his teasing answer, using one of his favoured Americanisms that sound so wonderfully incongruous coming out of the mouth of this Derbyshire man. "Do you think that the Grim Reaper was less frightening in the days when everyone had a scythe?" he asks us next, assuring us of his ability ( Read more... )
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