26th Aug2018

Swan Lake (Theatre)

by timbaros
Dmitri Akulinin and Irina Kolesnikova- photo credit Vladimir ZenzinovYou’ve only got until Saturday September 1st to see perhaps one of the most amazing, and beautiful, ballet performances you’ll ever see this year, and perhaps in many years.
The internationally acclaimed St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre have made their return to the London Coliseum with their production of Swan Lake. And what a production it is! With picture perfect ballet performances, amazing costumes, and even more amazing sets, you will sit spell-bound as you watch the performers dance to one, if the not the most, famous ballet pieces of all time.
The St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre 2015 season was a sell out with over 25,000 seats sold. So due to huge demand, the company has graced London with 9 performances. This strictly limited 2018 season now takes place between Wednesday 22nd August and Sunday 2nd September 2018. 

Founded in 1994, St Petersburg Ballet Theatre is renowned globally not just for its beautiful Vaganova trained dancers, but also for its stunning full-length productions. The company travels internationally performing classical masterpieces from its repertoire includingGiselle,Don Quixote,The NutcrackerandSleeping Beauty. The incredibly popular Company is in such demand that it gives over 200 performances every year. 
 
Irina Kolesnikova, prima ballerinaat St Petersburg Ballet Theatre since the age of 21, leads the Company that continues to have remarkable successes around the world – from Sydney to Johannesburg, from Paris to Istanbul. And she is truly astonishing in the role.
 
Kolesnikova will be joined by guest stars including the Bolshoi Balletprincipals Denis Rodkin and Alexander Volchkov . Both will dance the role of Prince Siegfried. TheMariinsky Theatre’sprincipal dancer, Kimin Kimwill also dance Siegfried. Also joining isBolshoiprincipal dancerYulia Stepanova, who will also dance the role of Odette/Odile. 
Swan Lake, if you don’t know the story, tells the classic love story of Prince Siegfried and Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer’s curse. St Petersburg Ballet Theatre will perform this balletic masterpiece as it was meant to be seen, boasting gorgeous traditionally painted backdrops, Tchaikovsky’s moving score, a full-sized orchestra and critically acclaimed dancers performing the full-length production for London audiences.Swan Lakeis undoubtedly a production everyone must experience at least once in their life.
 
It’s really an amazing production, and will leave you breathless and speechless. I highly recommend getting tickets as soon as possible as the short run, might, and will probably, sell out.
Production:St Petersburg Ballet Theatre Present Swan Lake
Venue:London Coliseum,St Martin’s Ln, London WC2N 4ES
Dates:Wednesday 22ndAugust – Sunday 2ndSeptember 2018
Performances:Tuesday – Sunday Evenings 19:30, Thursday & Saturday Matinees 14:30, Wednesday 29thAugust & Sunday 2ndSeptember Matinee 14.30
Prices:£20 – £95 plus booking fee.
Booking:https://londoncoliseum.org/swan-lake-st-petersburg-ballet-theatre
Performance Schedule*
Odette/Odile
Irina Kolesnikova Aug 22ndeve, 23rdeve, 25thmat, 26thmat, 28theve, 29theve, 30theve, Sept 1stmat,
  2ndSept mat
Yulia Stepanova Aug 23rdmat, 24theve, 25theve, 29thmat, 30thmat, 31steve, Sept 1steve
Prince Siegfried 
Denis Rodkin Aug 22ndeve, 23rdeve, 25thmat, 26thmat, 28theve,
Kimin Kim Aug 23rdmat, 24theve, 25theve, 30thmat, 31steve, Sept 1steve, 2ndeve
Alexander Volchov Aug 29thmat, 29theve, 30theve, Sept 1stmat
*The Producers reserve the right to substitute any named artist(s) at any scheduled performance(s).
Category : Theatre
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19th Aug2018

Little Shop of Horrors (Theatre)

by timbaros
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS by Ashman ; Directed by Maria Aberg ; Designed by Tom Scutt ; At the Regents Park Open Air Theatre, London, UK ; July 10 2018 ; Credit : Johan Persson

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS by Ashman ;
Directed by Maria Aberg ;
Designed by Tom Scutt ;
At the Regents Park Open Air Theatre, London, UK ;
Credit : Johan Persson

There’s a human-eating plant in Regents Park, and the more it eats the bigger it gets – and it’s all at the wonderful Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in the new show ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’

On skid row in downtown Manhattan, a flower shop called Mushnik’s is not doing much business. But Seymour Krelborn (a wonderful Marc Antolin), who works at the shop owned by Mr. Mushnick (Forbes Masson) has mysteriously acquired a plant, a plant so unlike any in the shop. It’s a plant that looks like a venus flytrap, but this plant is very different. It’s a plant he has called Audrey II (Vicky Vox plays the plant later in the show), named after the co-worker he is secretly in love with Audrey (Jemima Rooper). This plant doesn’t want water like all the other plants in the shop, as discovered by Seymour when he pricks his fingers and drips blood on the plant, and it’s happy drinking his blood. But the more blood Seymour feeds the plant, the bigger it grows, and soon enough Seymour can’t give any more blood to the plant, and it’s grown so huge that’s it’s become a celebrity (and so has Seymour). But how can Seymour continue to keep his plant happy and all the while attaining his new celebrity status (and the money that comes with it?). He has to give Audrey II more blood, and this includes people. The first to go into the plant is Audrey’s abusive boyfriend Orin Scrivello (Matt Willis – of pop group Busted). But who will be next? The plants keeps telling Seymour ‘I’m Hungry’ so he’s at odds as to what to do next. And this all takes place in the beautiful outdoor theatre.
Playing until Saturday, September 22, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ is great fun to watch only.  Lets hope the good weather continues until the end of the shows run – as ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ is best enjoyed when it’s not raining. The cast are all wonderful, and Vicky Vox is literally larger than life as the plant. With music and lyrics by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ is still good fun and even better set amongst all those trees in Regent’s Park. Just be careful and don’t get too close to one, it might eat you!
For tickets:
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12th Aug2018

The Negotiator (Film)

by timbaros
Beirut.Day3.Sc57.©Sife.Elamine-1418.CR2

Beirut.Day3.Sc57.©Sife.Elamine-1418.CR2

Jon Hamm and Rosamund Pike star as CIA agents in the thriller ‘The Negiotator’ (a/k/a Beirut), in cinemas and on digital HD from August 10th. 

In 1972, former U.S. diplomat, Mason Skiles (Jon Hamm), was caught up in a terrorist attack that changed his life forever. While throwing a party for the local elite in Beirut, the son Karim (Yoav Sadian Rosenberg) he and his wife Nadia (Leila Bekhti) had adopted was taken. It turned out that Karim had an older brother who happened to be a notorious Palestinian terrorist who wanted to be reunited with him.
 
10 years later, while working as a mediator in Boston, Skiles receives an unwanted invitation to go back to Beirut. Quickly dragged back into the system he hastily left, Mason is assigned a mission by CIA Agent Donald Gaines (Dean Norris) of negotiating a swap with a terrorist group: a kidnapped American CIA agent for a terrorist leader. But when obligated to cooperate, Skiles is assigned a cultural attaché (Rosamund Pike) to help navigate the city. Unravelling clues and uncovering political agendas along the way, the duo discover that relationships between America, Palestine and Israel may be more complex, and corrupt, than first thought. And the masterminds behind this kidnapping happen to the adopted son and his older brother. This all takes place in the backdrop of war-torn 1982 Beirut. 
 
From the writer of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and The Bourne Identity, ‘The Negiotator’ is a suspenseful drama with great acting and action sequences. Hamm might have found a new movie career after Mad Men in this role. Pike is in fine form but takes a back seat to Hamm and the other actors. ‘The Negiotator’, at 1 hour and 49 minutes, ticks by quickly and provides lots of suspense in an ‘Argo’ and ‘Jason Bourne’ – like style drama.
Category : Film
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12th Aug2018

My Friend Dahmer (DVD)

by timbaros

Image-31-05-2018-at-18.47Jeffrey Dahmer, the American who murdered 17 young men back in the 1980s and 1990s, was showing signs of strange behaviour at a young age, according to the new film My Friend Dahmer.

Based on the 2012 novel of the same name by cartoonist John Backderf, who had been friends with Dahmer in high school, the film shows how Dahmer came from a home where his parents constantly fought, and where he had an unnatural curiosity of the insides of animals. Dahmer, who grew up in Bath, Ohio, is brilliantly played by Ross Lynch, in a film that’s sharply edited and continually tense and spooky by the director, and writer, Marc Meyers. We see that Dahmer was awkward even to his own family, with a crazy and alcoholic mother (played by Anne Heche – in her best performance ever), and how Dahmer had a shed in the woods where he did certain experiments with animals.

Dahmer is eventually adopted by some of the cool kids in his class to perform certain acts that drew attention to himself, basically these acts were spasms set out to cause disruptions, but they also seemed to do something to Dahmer’s soul, for he became more and more intense and weird, turning some of his evil thoughts from animals to, eventually, humans. Dahmer even plotted to kill a local doctor whom he became attracted to, but it was not meant to be. But it’s in these early years that we see the beginnings of Dahmer’s sinister future – how he would end up becoming one of the world’s most cruel and crazy mass murderers.

Luckily for us, this film ends before the killings begin, but we know that this was the path that Dahmer’s life would take – the murder of many gay men in some of the most brutal and horrific ways.

Category : DVD
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