My Cultural Life - London

The mostly hotly anticipated film of the year, with twilight screenings at the IMAX selling out weeks before the film’s release, The Dark Knight looks set to light up the summer with the crime thriller fireworks of its stellar cast. Remember the adrenaline that was pumping through your veins during The Bourne Ultimatum? Times that by five and you’ll have some idea of what to expect.

I imagine I’m one of a handful of people left in Britain who still make compilation tapes. Yes, tapes. Readers Recommend, the weekly Guardian column which nominates a subject for discussion one week and gives its chosen 10 song playlist for readers to download the next, isn’t exactly aimed at me. But composing lists with a view to creating a compilation has a wider appeal to Rob Flemings everywhere, and The Guardian Book of Playlists, which features 100 Readers Recommend columns, embraces fans of artists from Françoise Hardy to Rachel Stephens.

Mike Leigh’s latest film, 'Happy Go Lucky', has been received with enthusiasm as review pages proclaim: Mike Leigh does happy! Karen Ball wondered if she was the only film viewer who found the film’s heroine annoying. But then she decided, that may have been the whole point...

‘You, the Living’ is not so much a comedy as a ‘glumedy,’ that is a film which primarily sets out to be funny but invests its laughs with a pervading sense of doom and gloom. The film, written and directed by Roy Andersson, is from Sweden and has a very Scandinavian sensibility about it. Whether it is down to the long nights or the high price of alcohol, Scandinavia tends to be especially good at making light of misery.

Peter Reddick is one of the most highly regarded of British wood engravers and has had a long and distinguished career, beginning his training at the Cardiff School of Art between 1947 and 1948. Carolyn Stubbs met Peter Reddick as he was preparing for a major retrospective of his work at Spike Island Print Studio – ‘A Backward Glance’. 

The popular brief description of Heath Ledger as the actor Oscar-nominated for his role as a 'gay cowboy' hardly does justice to the complexity he brought to his character through his posture, accent and tone. Shamini Sriskandarajah takes a closer look.

'The month is December of 2005, although I can’t quite remember the actual date. I am in the Crypt of St. Martins in the Fields and opposite is a man who has just told me that he wants to commit suicide...' Matthew Turtle gets up-to-date on the renewal of London's most treasured parish church.