Category: entertainment and leisure news

WELL, it’s nearly time for the third, First Thursday Music Club, held every first Thursday in the month, in The Old Stables, behind The James Figg, Cornmarket, Thame.

We have a few returning artists this month (April 1, 2010) – Steve Philipps ( Nice Legs Shame about the Face) all the way from the wilds of Northants, Mick Mewett (Tonsil) is back without Itis this time, Strings Attached – piano, cello and great vocals, the amazing Tim Morrison and hopefully, a few new acts too.

A big thanks to all who’ve made it such a success so far.

SEE website for details: LINK

THAME Players in association with Creative Cow, are soon to present the explosive dark comedy DUMB SHOW by Joe Penhall.

NOT SUCH A DUMB SHOW (Contributed)

THAME Players welcome the return of the Devon based Creative Cow Theatre Company to perform Joe Penhall?s comedy, Dumb Show. Creative Cow is rapidly building a reputation as a highly professional company performing superb drama. In 2009 they performed Bill McIlwarith?s the Anniversary to a highly appreciative Thame audience. Dumb Show will only further their reputation.

How far will people go to destroy a celebrity? And what is privacy when the whole world knows who you are? Barry, a hapless TV comic, is a sucker for celebrity status. He?s an easy target for ?financial executives? John and Jane, with their promise of fat fees and the five-star treatment he deserves. First performed at the Royal Court, London, Laurence Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Joe Penhall explores how Barry deals with an avaricious media in this explosive dark comedy. As Barry says, ?A horse walks into a bar and the barman says ?Why the long face?? It?s funny because it?s a horse. Not because the horse may or may not be alcohol dependent. The whole point about jokes is that they?re just jokes. They?re not true stories?. The Daily Telegraph described the play as ?superb ? mesmerizing ? utterly persuasive?.

Dumb Show will be performed at The Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame at 7.45pm on Saturday 10th April. Tickets cost just

FILM: An Education – USA 2009 123 minutes 12A certificate – Directed by Lone Scherfig, starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson.

NICK Hornby’s adaptation of Lynn Barber’s memoir is a clever, funny and surprisingly poignant portrait of a young woman coming of age and learning a few uncomfortable lessons. 16 year old Jenny, played with great wit and confidence by BAFTA winner and Oscar nominee Mulligan, is suffocating in the depths of middle class early 60’s suburbia. She is enslaved to her father’s carefully orchestrated vision of a secure and respectable future: educational diligence, homework, attendance at orchestra, polite afternoon teas, and the promise of an Oxbridge education. But the education she gets is not quite what father had in mind: considering herself more sexually sophisticated than her peers, and bored with geeky teenage paramours, Jenny wastes no time succumbing to the charms of an inappropriate, older man.
What could have been a style-heavy homage to youth and 60’s London is rescued from retro-sentimentality by Hornby’s screenplay – just gritty enough to be slightly unsettling, packing a real emotional punch, with astute observations on class, prejudice, and loss of innocence, and with plenty of sharp, laugh out loud dialogue. And the performances are spot on. Mulligan is fresh and breezy, arrogant and eager for adulthood, but with flashes of child-like vulnerability. Molina is priceless as Jenny’s Dad, fastidiously counting each penny invested in their middle class aspiration; Pike makes a funny and fabulous dumb blonde, and Thompson delivers a delicious cameo as the droll, anti-Semitic headmistress who has seen it all before. A delight from start to finish.

This Saturday 27th March, 2010 – Doors open 7.30pm Film 8pm. Admission

A SINGING workshop with a professional singer from Jerusalem, Dafna Dori, proved to be so inspiring for organiser, Cat Young, that she is offering a repeat opportunity for those who missed it, or those who would like to do it again!

Cat explained: “Dafna came over to Wallingford in July 2009 and led a session where we learnt two folk songs ?one in Hebrew and one in Arabic. Very quickly we were able to get this sounding really good, and then added a bit of rhythm to create an even more beautiful sound!

“But don?t take my word for it; this is what Elizabeth said after the last event:

?I can?t believe how much we learned in two hours ? some new warm-ups, new modes, secrets of how Middle Eastern singers get those subtle effects, pronunciation, rhythm… Dafna was very charming, kind and encouraging.?

If you?d like to join in with this fun, practical workshop and you?re a singer or musician of any standard, then come along to the Crowmarsh Pavilion (near Wallingford) on Monday, March 22.

Doors open at 6:15pm and the workshop starts promptly at 6:30pm, and the evening will end around 8:30pm.

Tickets cost

THAME CINEMA 4 ALL – this Saturday, March 20 – Julie and Julia – USA 2009; 123 minutes – 12A certificate
Directed by Nora Ephron, and starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci.

NORA Ephron’s delightful film tells the parallel stories of two real-life characters who never met: Julie Powell, contemporary blogger/novelist and Julia Child, America’s answer to Elizabeth David, author of a series of now classic cooking texts, and the US’s earliest incarnation of the TV celebrity chef.

In 2002 New York City, Julie is frustrated and unfulfilled in a thankless administrative job. In 1946 Paris, Julia Child is equally frustrated with the life of a diplomatic spouse – millinery and bridge are not enough for a keen intellect and considerable capacity for boredom. Both women turn to food for intellectual and spiritual enrichment. Child – patrician, eccentric, very tall, female and with little French – bulldozes her way into the Cordon Bleu cookery academy, becomes an accomplished chef and teacher, and takes up a 15 year challenge of translating the mysteries of French cuisine for an English speaking audience.

Powell, meanwhile, decides to set herself an apparently insurmountable culinary task, and write a blog about the experience: she chooses to cook her way through Child’s tome Mastering the Art of French Cookery, taking on 524 recipes in 365 days.

The minutiae of two lives placed side by side make for a satisfying exploration of massive social change, not least the lives of middle class females or the business of writing and communicating. This is a film that celebrates the routine and the domestic and the day to day business of sharing food and a home. The cast are wonderful, particularly Tucci and Streep as the unlikely but devoted Childs. Witty and civilised, this is a film for anyone who likes to feed or to be fed.

This Saturday 20th March – Doors open 7.30pm Film 8pm. Admission

THIS is a Ringmaster message from Thames Valley Police.

HAVE YOUR SAY – The following Have Your Say Meetings are being held at Thame Police Station, Greyhound Lane, Thame:

Saturday 13th March, between 10:00am & 12:00noon.

Monday 22nd March, between 5:00pm & 7:00pm.

This is your opportunity to speak with your Neighbourhood Officers to discuss any local issues of concern. Please come along, no appointment is necessary.

Message Ends.

To find out more about Thames Valley Police in your area – please go to our website at www.thamesvalley.police.uk

The White Ribbon – Austria/Germany 2009; 143 minutes
15 certificate – Directed by Michael Haneke, and starring Burghart Klaussner, Christian Friedel, Josef Bierbichler, Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur.

CHILLING, brilliant, disturbing – three adjectives frequently applied to the work of Austrian director Michael Haneke, arguably the premier cinematic auteur of the last 20 years, and someone who expertly uses the medium of film to dissect and dispassionately scrutinise Western culture.

The White Ribbon, winner of the Palme D’Or at last year’s Cannes film festival, has already been hailed as superior to Hidden, his 2007 thriller that ranked numero uno in a recent Times survey of the top 20 films of the last decade. Set in a remote village in rural Germany just prior to the outbreak of World War One, The White Ribbon documents the mysterious crimes taking place in an apparently conventional and peaceful community that reveals itself to be deeply dysfunctional beneath the surface. It is a ghost story, a whodunnit, a historical parable but without resolution or denouement, lesson or justice, although the narrator invites us to see it as prescient of later events in German history, perhaps a contemplation of what motivates people to extremism or antisocial behaviour.

Like the rest of the director’s oeuvre, this is a typically open ended and enigmatic narrative, and the viewer is left with the task of how to interpret it. If you want a tidy ending then this might not be for you. But this is not cinema as sedative or escape – it is a uniquely intelligent cinema that shakes you up and shifts your perspective on the world outside the theatre. Don’t miss it.

This Saturday 13th March
Doors open 7.30pm Film 8pm.
Admission

2010 Programme of Talks at Thame Museum, from March 11, 2010, with a local theme.

? Mar 11th The Thame Cross (The Thame Hoard,
MTB219, the Motor Club, the TTC emblem and the
museum logo)

? April 8th The Court Building (a tour of the
building showing its development and evidence
of the former cottages)

? May 13th Geology and Settlement (local
geology, its impact on settlement and how is
appears in local gardens)

? June 10th Place House and the Cattle Market
(the archaeological significance of the site)

All talks will begin at 7.30pm and tickets can be purchased from the museum reception at

POLICE officers recently broke up an illegal Rave in Nethercote Lane near Lewknor.

On Sunday, 07/02/2010, approximately 40 people were moved off the site by police and the landowner and during their removal two arrests were made for possession of controlled drug and driving under influence of alcohol.

Sgt Chris Hazell, based at Thame police station in Greyhound Walk, commented: “Thames Valley Police are committed to taking positive action in response to illegal music events. We would like to remind the community to contact the Police at the first sign of suspect activity. We would like to make potential organisers aware that Thames Valley Police will actively investigate such events and take positive action towards the prosecution of offenders and the seizure and loss of sound equipment, as with the Waterperry Rave last year.?

ROCK NIGHTS OUR BACK after a short break over the Christmas and new year. Rock the Pavilion is back once a month on the 2nd Friday of each month. This coming Friday, 12 February, we are pleased to invite back as a headlining band Blame Jack with support from, Were Not Mexicans, Rotary Attachment, Week in Verona and Go Go Buffalo.

As usual its only