Category: entertainment and leisure news

THAME artist, Alan Kidd, has been invited to show his work at the first exhibition to be staged by Ballon Rouge Art, a new gallery in Thame.

Ballon Rouge describes itself as: “..a new concept for giving art lovers art. An intimate private gallery in Thame, Oxfordshire representing a growing eclectic list of contemporary painters, sculptors and makers of funky art.”

This will be the gallery’s first of a limited number of exhibitions each year featuring affordable collectable and original work by established and new artists from the UK and abroad. Its ethos is “quality art for everyone.”

Admission to their shows is limited and by invitation only.

Visit the Ballon Rouge http://ballonrougeart.com/

AS well as the fantastic music programme, Music in the Park 2012 will also have some exciting fun activities to add to your enjoyment. Mix 96 radio will be back with their popular mega slide, and an inflatable bungee run.

A new attraction for this year will be ?land zorbing?. For the uninitiated, this involves getting into a large inflatable ball and rolling round the zorbing area. All great fun for children, but they may have to get behind their parents in the queue!

With a beer tent and a wide variety of catering and trade stalls selling a wide range of goods, there really will be something for everyone.

Sponsors and volunteers still needed

The organisers of Music in the Park are committed to keeping ticket prices low to make sure everyone is able attend this great local celebration. However, they are only able to do so thanks to the generosity of the event?s sponsors and volunteers. This allows the organisers to put on a great event at affordable prices and still raise money for the Friends of Elms Park so that they can improve the park and encourage its use by all members of the community.

This year?s main sponsors are Arriva, Soha, ALR Services and David Wilson Homes. The new ‘Beats, Breaks and Electronica’ music venue, The Bubble, is being sponsored by new local music management and promotions company, FastestDog. There are still attractive sponsorship packages available for local businesses wanting to raise their profile. Simply complete the form on the website: www.musicinthepark.org.uk

Volunteers to help out on the day are also vital to the success of the event. Anyone wanting to volunteer can also apply using the form on the website.

WHERE? St Mary?s Church Thame, 7.30pm. Bruckner Mass in E Minor and Locus Iste, Brahms and more. Two choirs for the price of one! Conductor Duncan Aspden joins TCC with his Petros Singers from London to bring an appropriate and romantic sound to the music of Bruckner and his Viennese comtemporaries.

http://www.thamechamberchoir.org Tel 01844 292088/ 215680

TOMORROW: Friday, March 16 – We Need To Talk About Kevin; 112 mins, 15 cert. Dir: Lynne Ramsay. Starring Ezra Miller, John C Reilly, Tilda Swinton

WHAT happens when bad children happen to good parents? Does it mean they are not, in fact, as good as they had imagined themselves to be?

With these questions, British director Lynne Ramsay has created a nihilist tale of guilt and horror. Working with co-writer Rory Kinnear, she has adapted Lionel Shriver?s prizewinning 2003 novel ? whose much-spoofed title is now part of the language ? about a woman whose teenage son Kevin has committed a Columbine-style massacre.

And what does an independent-minded, career woman do when she is landed with a nasty little boy, precisely the kind of smug competitive male she has spent her whole life trying to subdue and surpass?

What American Psycho was to consumerism, We Need to Talk About Kevin is to both sexism and feminism, a brilliantly extreme parable, operatically pessimistic. In the end, the audience is left with the same unanswerable question: what made Kevin do it? Nature or nurture? A mother supplies both. Kevin is flesh of her flesh and perhaps an inability to judge him is her awful biological destiny.

It is tremendously acted by Tilda Swinton and by Ezra Miller, with inspired images from cinematographer Seamus McGarvey. A beautifully made and thought- provoking film.

Thame Cinema is based in the Thame Players Theatre in Nelson Street Thame.

All films start at 8pm (unless otherwise stated) and doors open 30 minutes before each film. Admission is just

SHOWING this weekend at Thame Cinema 4 All, The Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame: THE MASTER – USA 2012, 143 minutes, 15 certificate – Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams.

Joaquin Phoenix is Freddie Quell, recently de-mobbed from military service in WWII. He is a man with a past ? short-fused, violent, with a troubling attitude to women and a capacity to brew near hallucinogenic moonshine out of whatever otherwise noxious liquid he has to hand. His efforts at building a life post war start to unravel. By chance, he comes upon a welcoming, kind, and accommodating group of people who immediately befriend him and offer him solace, safety, and the potential to heal himself. This group are affiliated to a set of beliefs known as ?The Cause?, under the dazzlingly charismatic leadership of Philip Seymour Hoffman?s ?Master? Lancaster Dodd.

This is not a film about Scientology, you understand. Given that organisation?s, shall we say, litigious sensitivities, we must just get that cleared up from the off. However Paul Thomas Anderson?s latest is an expansive and masterful consideration of a self-help guru with a lucrative side-line in publishing, a man with a devoted, needy, and passionately defensive following in late 1940?s America. His philosophy involves aliens and past lives extending back ?trillions? of years ? submission to his doctrine allows the individual to connect with their countless former selves, and find the path to individual self-realisation.

Fans of Anderson?s work will recognise his sweeping cinematic style, and his closely observed, carefully paced, and lavishly composed examination of his subject. What differs slightly here is the focus on the psychological tug of war between troubled loose cannon Freddie and Hoffman?s controlling guru, and the former?s ambivalent response to The Master?s attempts to manipulate him. Phoenix has certainly never been better ? damaged, vulnerable, volatile, compelling. Hoffman, as ever, is a joy to watch as a man with an apparent lightness of touch, but a passionate need to control, and a requirement of absolute submission. And Amy Adams exudes saccharine venom as the Master?s latest bride, his most devoted and zealous follower.

The film made it to the top 10 of numerous critical top 10?s of 2012, and is definitely one that demands to be seen on a big screen.

THE Rotary Club of Thame in partnership with the Thame Youth Theatre is organising a Murder Mystery evening at Longwick Village Hall, on Saturday, March 10, starting at 7:30pm prompt.

The Tickets are

MARCH EVENTS AT THAME MUSEUM – Saturday, March 10, 12 noon to 2pm ? Bring us your buried treasure! Anni Byard, County Finds Liaison Officer, will be at the museum to analyse free of charge your artefacts or archaeological finds. If you have any finds either from your garden or whilst metal detecting that you believe to be pre-18th Century, then bring them along on the day.

Thursday March 15, 7.30pm ? Monthly talk; ?A FARMER?S BOY? ? a talk by Bridget Fraser, Director of the Barn Galleries in Henley. Bridget is also an award-winning writer of short stories, writes poetry and children?s stories. She also performs poetry at the Henley Literary Festival.

?A Farmer?s Boy? is a collection of oral histories from the local farming community which has been made into a film. Bridget will be talking about the making of the film, which she described as a ?steep learning curve?, and the stories of the men who feature in it. A moving testimony to those who helped to shape our farming landscape over the past 75 years. A Farmer?s Boy tells the real-life stories of hard work, struggles, wartime spirit, adventures and achievements experienced by those who worked the land during the last century from the mouths of those who were there. It has been called
?A Poem to the past?

Tickets are

TRAIDCRAFT good, Hand-made cards, pre-loved books and toys, as well as loads of cakes, will be available at at Coffee and Cake sale in aid of Lighthouse in Thame.

March 10th – at Christchurch, Upper High Street, Thame. 10am to 12.30 pm. Contact: Carol: on 01844 213826 for more information

THE Thame-Sinaia Friendship Association Quiz Night will take place at the Barley Hill School Hall in Thame, on Friday, March 9, with a prompt start at 7:30 pm.
Sue Boyle will be the quizmaster. Tickets are

A YOUNG singer-guitar player from Thame, has wowed the judging panel of the UK?s biggest original music competition and sailed through the audition stage of Live and Unsigned.

Samantha Jayne, (better know to Music In The Park fans as Samantha Hoare) will be competing against the most talented bands and artists in the country at the Regional Final Showcase of Live and Unsigned 2012 on April 15 ? all in a bid to make the Grand Final at The O2!

Samantha Jayne battled against hundreds of auditionees to secure a spot in the live shows. Acts that made it through auditions will now take part in a live Regional Final Showcase in front of hundreds of spectators. The best acts will also get the opportunity to play at some of the biggest festivals in the UK from over 100 Festival slots including Beach Break Live, Boardmasters, Bearded Theory, Strawberry Fields and Osfest. This year?s competition also offers acts an extra chance for exposure as being filmed for broadcasting on the Sky TV Network in an exclusive fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Sam told ThameNews.Net: “I’m an acoustic singer and guitarist; I am seventeen years old, and I go to Lord Williams’ Sixth Form. Under performances, I go by Samantha Jayne, simply because I prefer it to Samantha Hoare, but I’m ususally referred to as Sam by most people.

“I write a lot of my own music, and when I cover things, I specialise in taking very overproduced songs and turning them into something more acoustic. Either that, or I do songs that I just love. I’m influenced by artists like KT Tunstall, Florence + the Machine and Ed Sheeran, and I love every kind of music from heavy rock to soul. I’d say my genre was acoustic overall.

“I play a lot of things at school, having won Singer of the Year (school singing competition) in 2010. I played at Music In The Park last year, and hope to again this year, and played at the Thame Food Festival in September. I also did Thame’s Got Talent last year, and as a more trivial fact, I have a habit of dying my hair insane colours, and it pretty much changes all the time !

“I generally just love all music, and I’m trying to raise as much support as I can for Live & Unsigned. The thing itself in on 15th April, in Sub89 in Reading, at 12:15pm, and the tickets are