Paul in London

I caught Mahler's Ninth Symphony at the Barbican tonight. Conducted by Daniel Harding with the Staatskapelle Dresden it is a great piece about life and death. Towards the end the tension was so tight you could feel Mahler's presence. Or it could have been the man in the pinstripe suit to my right breathing heavily. I wasn't quite sure what that was about but it added to the tension of the evening anyway. Who said going to a concert solo wasn't an adventure? Anyway a fantastic performance by both the conductor and orchestra. One other thing I noticed was that many of the women in the Staatskapelle Dresden brought their handbags onto the stage and slung them over their seats. It was an interesting grab bag of handbags to see. Security back stage must seem to be a bit dodgy...

DSC04298 , originally uploaded by Pauly_ . Sudoku is still popular with tube goers... Thanks to the two free afternoon newspapers including it in their pages the punters cannot get enough of it...

I didn't particularly want to see this romcom or chickflick... But F dragged me to it on the guise that it was funny and that it was at the Canary Wharf cinemas where he could sign up to this new movie deal where you pay £14 a month for 12 months and you could see as many movies you like. You do have to provide a bank statement and in this day and age of electronic banking who the hell has one of them? I also find this chain of cinemas to have the worst cinemas in London. They are usually dirty and smell like a toilet. While the Canary Wharf cinemas were clean, the toilets were flooding so I figured that was keeping consistent with their standard. As for the film, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I did like the idea that Kate Winslet's character walks from her job along Albert Embankment to possibly Clapham Junction railway station. It is such a long walk that the exercise no doubt kept her trim and looking gorgeous. She then has a gorgeous little countryside cottage i

The National Theatre was having a discussion with Tonya Pinkins on Wednesday. She used the time to talk about how she landed the role in Caroline, Or Change (which is about to finish its London run) and talk about her career and her book. She used her book to workshop how to take a compliment. She asked the audience to turn around and pay a compliment to the person behind them. The person receiving the compliment had to say "Yes it's true. Thank you". Much laughter ensued as people complimented people's shirts, smiles, hair... It is just not the done thing in London normally...

Monday I caught the film Shortbus which is an ensemble piece about the sex lives of a group of New Yorkers and directed by John Cameron Mitchell. There is the sex therapist who can't orgasm, the lonely dominatrix, the gay couple who want a third for different reasons, and a carnival of other characters that pop in and out of this sex club called Shortbus. There are some very interesting scenes in this film which were enough to keep one awake after a long night of new years festivities. The sex scenes (and there were plenty of them) weren't particularly sexy but I suspect that was the point... It all ends with a big production number complete with brass band around a New York blackout. The power of the black out to focus people on other things has been somewhat diminished over the last year thanks to some very irritating adds from a mobile phone company that seem to use the New York blackout of 2003 as the basis for telling you to switch off your mobile phone... It seems to be

Scenes from Waterloo Bridge Monday 01:36 , originally uploaded by Pauly_ . New year partying was popular in London this year, although it was mainly confined to the river approaches...

Saturday night I caught a preview of the new Renée Zelweger flick Miss Potter . It is about the life of Beatrix Potter which for the first half of the film was as jolly and upbeat as one of her books. The second half things get a little grim but then they sort things out and the film ends as briskly as one of her books. After the film I was discussing how disappointingly short the film is. At ninety minutes it seemed like it could have gone into more about the creative process behind her stories or the influence of the Lakes District on her. Particularly since in the case of the latter its preservation is part of her legacy. They could ave even read one of her stories in full to pad it out, although that might have felt like a sketch from Little Britain... Still the acting was great and it was a very watchable film. Even if Renée and Ewan weren't photographed nicely, the story was too short and there were a lot of things they could have expanded upon. Although it was a preview it

Making the most of the holiday break I caught Love Song Friday night at the New Ambassadors Theatre. Love Song is a new comedy about a man who falls in love and goes a little crazy (or was he already crazy?), his sister and her husband. It is a simple premise but with Cillian Murphy, Michael McKean and Neve Campbell in the leading roles it is quite funny. Leaving the theatre you wonder whether you actually saw anything or whether it was all in your mind. Alas it wasn't totally hilarious and I think part of the problem was that Kristen Johnston was still not performing in the role of the sister / wife. Johnston took ill early December and reportedly has returned before Christmas but she wasn't on last night. Romy Tennant as understudy filled the role. While she was serviceable in the part, looked right (if a little young) and said the right lines, it was clear watching the play that you really needed a strong female lead to make the play soar. But alas that's live theatre