Something For The Weekend

Win a weekend in the Dorset Square Hotel...

The Dorset Square hotel has been described as timeless, elegant and uniquely English, and it won the Conde Nast award 2007 as "The Most Excellent London Hotel", so you know it's gotta be good folks.

Part of the Small Luxury Hotel Group, like a true thoroughbred, everything about the Dorset Square Hotel is utterly English. Nestled in the fashionable Marylebone Village area of London's West End, this historic Regency residence is ideal for those who know how to enjoy the good things in life... quality, style and truly individual service.

Not to mention their Award Winning Restaurant, the Potting Shed, where you can sit back, relax and enjoy modern English cuisine with a selection of Southern European fare. With mountains of terracotta pots and seed boxes, there's even a live jazz performance every Friday evening.

All of the 37 rooms and suites are furnished with antiques, classic fabrics and original paintings for you to study as you slip into your fluffy bathrobe. The hotel offers a range of accommodation from double bed rooms to four poster bed suites and King junior suite, as well as air-conditioning, two-line speaker telephones, voice mail, wireless internet access, personal mini bar, satellite television, private safes, hair driers and bathrobes. All rooms have marbled en-suite bathrooms too, Frette linens, goose pillows, daily newspapers and work desks.  After a weekend here, you'll probably want to move in.

Marylebone itself provides a vibrant mix of stylish and fashionable shops and restaurants in a unique urban village environment. It's an unparalleled shopping destination in the heart of the West End of London. Writers and musicians, soldiers and statesmen, doctors and scientists, artists and architects are all among the galaxy of great names who have lived here in the past; ghosts that perhaps still haunt the streets of the Estate...

To win a weekend in the Dorset Square Hotel, email us your name and address here

- This competition is now closed.

***Please note: comments on this blog will not be counted as competition entries

go to the launch of Tolkien's new book...

First there was The Hobbit.
Then came The Lord of the Rings.
Now, comes J.R.R. Tolkien’s oldest story of Middle Earth... 

With all the magic, adventure and extraordinary depth of imagination that has made you love Tolkien's stories.On the 17th of April, publishers all around the world will be launching the first new book from the Tolkien Estate in 30 years – The Children of Hurin.

This exciting event will be held at Waterstones book store in Piccadilly with a full day's events kicking off from 10am. 

Join them for a day long extravaganza of readings, competitions and activities, including illustrator Alan Lee signing the novel.

Discover more at www.tolkien.co.uk

Enter our competition to win a signed copy of the book, plus tickets to LOTR the musical, by emailing us your name and address, here

***Please note: comments on this blog will not be considered as competition entries
 

Video of the week...

Let's face it, the hatred for all things tax-related spans the globe, and though it might not mean too much to us Brits - an American competition to win $25,000 in association with TurboTax - Vanilla Ice is involved, so we're bloody well gonna pay attention. That's right, VANILLA ICE is choosing the best YouTube video submitted to the brief - "make a rap about TurboTax." Some things have to be seen to be believed.

This is our personal fave, it's genius! Watch it, wipe off your tears and don't forget to click here and vote. These people deserve to win, if only for the fact that they danced around Manhattan spouting tax-related lyrics like crazy people.  Er... it wouldn't happen in London, people...

If you don't have a free youtube account, sign up so you can vote.

Notting Hill Arts Club...

Present DIVE...

9th April & 7th May, 6pm-1am, free before 8pm £5 after

The Notting Hill's new bastard bass driven (soon to be weekly) Monday night DIVE features a veritable line up of those hearing and playing the radio waves of tomorrow.

Presenting a slipstream of musical genres live (moving from punk experimentalism to the newest nastiest bass driven party music in town) DIVE is a bass heavy demented Monday night with one of the meanest resident dj line ups around…

In rotation there will be residents Hannah Holland (Trailer Trash), Sinden (Kiss FM), Radioclit, Naomi (All You Can Eat), Dan Dangerous (another music=another kitchen) and Starbuckers. Everyone of these residents is a player in their own right and responsible for the hottest nights, remixes and radio shows in London town.

Live on the 9th of April see Paloma Faith, ably supported by a surprise line up of nu punk terrorists. Keeping the needle firmly in the red will be Mc Chickaboo doing what only she can do next to the resident DJ tag team of Sinden and Hannah Holland.
Address: 21 Notting Hill Gate, London W11 3JQ
Tube: Notting Hill Gate
Dresscode: no suits & team colours
Info: 020 7460 4459
email: [email protected]
web: www.nottinghillartsclub.com

the wheels on the bus go round and round...

Sara took advantage of some tour bus tickets and set about being a tourist for the day in London. She later admitted that watching the sights she's seen a thousand times roll past the windows offered more for the imagination than she ever expected...

Did you know that Sean Connery and Roger Moore are neighbours, on the same street of London’s billionaire row in Belgravia?

Did you know that in 2002, when they dredged a section of the Thames for the Golden Jubilee, six unexploded WWII bombs were found at the bottom?

Did you know that Cleopatra’s needle is over 3500 years old and its twin-sister lives in Central Park?

Did you know that Gordon Brown is already living at 10 Downing Street?

Did you know that Trafalgar Square used to be the royal stables?

Did you know that Tower Bridge is not really made of stone? It’s actually steel with stone cladding over the top to make it match the Tower of London.

If you’ve got a head for trivia, The Original Tour will quite literally be a field day for you. Some of the facts and figures that the onboard guides had at their fingertips made us suddenly imagine what the cluttered streets around us would have looked like in Victorian times, or Elizabethan times, or even before the two cities of London and Westminster had grown to join together. The major monuments, like St Pauls and the Tower would have seemed so much further apart when there was still scrubland and trees in between. It’s completely mind-boggling when you compare it with the glass and steel monoliths that dominate our skyline now.

Even though the tour is made for “real” tourists, we found it was fun to sit back with the camera-snappers and watch the city go by on a sunny day. For someone who has been in and around London most of their life it’s actually refreshing to look again at all the parts we take for granted or don’t really see on a daily basis. The best thing about the tour, though, is probably the free Thames cruise. It’s not often you get to see London from that angle and it was quite exciting floating by the moored battleships which seemed giant in comparison to our boat and floating easily under the bridges was a nice change from battling through the crowded pavements above.

Plus, as if all that wasn't enough, you'll have an arsenal of trivia for the next pub quiz.
Book The Original Tour with Thames Cruise from £16.50

Win a weekend at the Holland House Hotel, Cardiff...

For a great weekend escape from the daily mundanity, enter this week's competition to win a luxury weekend break for two people in the Holland House Hotel, Cardiff, including full use of the leisure facilities during your stay.

The Holland House, Cardiff is a 4 star luxury hotel situated within minutes of Cardiff city centre and the Millennium Stadium.  It's the perfect excuse to explore one of Wales's greatest city - don't forget your digital camera!  This stunning hotel offers 165 luxurious bedrooms with fabulous views of the city centre and Cardiff Bay. Guests can also take advantage of the award winning First Floor restaurant and stylish First Floor bar, the Vital Leisure Club with  it's 18 metre pool, sauna, steam room and jacuzzi and the Vital Spa with 13 beauty treatment rooms.

Prize:
The prize includes a luxury weekend break for two people including full use of the leisure facilities during your stay. (2 nights)

Email us with your name and phone number and the subject line HOLLAND CARDIFF to win.

Supernatural starlet - Kristen Stewart...

16-year old Kristen Stewart admits to being quite critical about the movies she is in.  Yet the young actress - who made a strong impact back in 2002's Panic Room - admits to being surprisingly happy with her latest film, The Messengers. 

"Every movie that I've ever done always looks fake in some way and this one just looks real.  They did such a good job and the pacing of it is so eerie."

The horror film, directed by the Asian horror masters, the Pang brothers, revolves around parents Roy (Dylan McDermott) and Denise (Penelope Ann Miller) who have packed up their family and moved to a spooky old house in the middle of nowhere.  They think this might be the best way to reform their "troubled" teenage daughter, Jess (Stewart) and bring the family closer together.  While her dad and his new hired hand, John (John Corbett), plant sunflowers, getting ready for the summer harvest that could make or break them financially, Jess and her little brother Ben start seeing ghosts.

When acting in a horror movie such as this, Stewart says she is spontaneous, rather than intent on heavy preparation. "You can't be a method actor in a movie like this, because everything that happens to this girl is circumstantial."

Initially reticent about taking on The Messengers, Stewart says she succumbed simply because she loves the genre.  "I always have loved horror movies and I really love that Asian influence over here right now.  There have been a few movies and this is the Pangs’ first American release.  I thought that was really exciting which was the main reason I wanted to do it, but I would do more horror movies.  You don't do stuff like this just because it's good for your career, but because it's fun."

Another key, and creepy, element to the film is a flock of dark and foreboding crows that terrorise the family.  “They become this permanent fixture,” she says. “At first I (Jess) see them as part of life on a sunflower farm, always flying around until I realize they always seem to be there when situations turn creepy. When my character first comes into the house, she’s checking it out and a black thing kind of flashes by the window.  They’re very mysterious, very ominous and are always messing with my (character’s) head.”

Having seen the final film, Kristen is excited by how the Pang brothers have brought their unique horror style to a contemporary thriller set in middle America.  “The film is rugged.  It’s dirty.  It is dark and sharp-looking.  There are no soft edges.  It is like everything on the farm – hard, like the scythes and the sickles and the old dead tractor.”

As successful as young Kristen may be in front of the cameras, she's also focusing on her studies and getting ready to begin production on her next film, The Yellow Handkerchief.  "It's really sensitive, it really reaches out and it's really desperate, I'm really excited about it."

While enjoying acting, Stewart's real passion is writing.  "I really want to be a writer," she says. When we last met on the set of The Messengers it was poetry, "but that was a phase, now I just want to write a novel."  But movies are in her blood, so her writing, she says, "may one day include a screenplay."  In the meantime, she says she hopes good roles for young actresses her own age remain challenging and provocative.

THE MESSENGERS is released in cinemas on 6 April. Book your tickets here

To win an "I might chicken out on the spooky stuff" pass - an Odeon voucher for two people to any film, plus popcorn, email us here