USA Pop Culture Extravaganza!

Well, yesterday excitingly turned out to be the best day this year for free stuff and got me all excited!

I'd got free preview tickets booked a couple of weeks back to see American Pie: Reunion at the Printworks cinema 8 days before release.  These were gained through fastidiously checking the awesome Martin Lewis Free Cinema Tickets Forum  (I recommend at least one check per day), in this case because I'm a Virgin Mobile customer, usually anyone can get these tickets though!

The film turned out to be really fun and the best of the franchise since part one - I recommend to all and I'm very fussy with films!  Make sure you go on Orange Wednesday though!  A nice bonus, as with all free screenings, there were no adverts and the film started bang on time.  To top it off, everyone had a free beautiful clear bag of ODEON branded popcorn on their seat!  As I'd just had a big meal, I didn't eat it so took it home, and managed to grab about another 6 bags from empty seats on the way out!  Wanted more but did feel a bit naughty with my bulging sack!  Woopee!

After this the night got even better.  A couple of hours before the film, en-route to the city, I was partaking in my new favourite freebie-catching trick of typing "free Manchester" into Twitter which yielded only my 2nd instance of perhaps the most heavyweight score of gratis entertainment in the form of free tickets to an ARENA GIG!  Again through Martin Lewis, this time his Free Theatre and Concert Tickets Forum.

And not just any gig, a genius pairing of boyband royalty, the epically accronymmed NKOTBSB.  That's New Kids On The Block ('88-'90) and The Backstreet Boys ('93-now really!).  Fantastic fun, the NKOTB tracks have really stood the test of time and work great booming in an arena, there was loads of audience participation, one of the New Kids really whipped up the crowd and I loved his comment that "we're at the centre of the footballing universe!".  Surprisingly I thought New Kids looked tons younger than the actually younger BSBs, they sung+dressed+"togethered" better!  Never been much of a huge fan before but I am now!  A great mix of personalities with interesting things to say, good pacing and technical direction and some very sexy guys gave this HUGE concept show sort of an intimate and fun feel unlike any other I've seen in an arena!

Five full days of Salford FIlm Festival screenings totally free!

Just as I thought free festival season was over...the shows are still going on!  Just booked myself in to see 16 full length and about 20 short films over five days!  Marathon especially considering I never really watch films anymore!  Whilst semi-randomly browsing the Lowry's website, I came across details of this yearly event!  In addition, I then discovered the official site with more screenings listed!  I have been to the odd screening in the past, but often many of the films you've had to pay to see.  Well this year, it's nearly ALL FREE!  There's a mix of fact and fiction, oldies and new stuff with most films having a Manchester-area bias, with a few premieres amongst classics, with the added bonus of being in the most exciting theatre in the world!  Here's the goodies at The Lowry:

Sat 21 November
2pm: Caught Short One: Laugh This Off! Cert 18
4pm: Diary of A Bad Lad (Dir Michael Booth, Prod / Wri: Jonathan Williams, with Joe O’Byrne, Donna Henry, Jimmy Foster, UK, 2007, 92 min) Cert 18
6pm: A Drop of The Pure (Dir / Wri / Prod: Peter Vickers, UK, 72 min). PREMIERE Cert 15
8pm: Mancattan (Dir / Wri: Colin Warhurst, Prod / wri: Phil Drinkwater, UK, 92 min) PREMIERE Cert 15

Sun 22 November
2pm: Goodbye Mr Chips (Sam Wood, USA, 1939, 114 min, Robert Donat, Greer Garson) Cert U
4pm: Drawn (Prod / Dir / Wri: Joseph Warley & Nana Asomani-Poku, UK, 82 min) Cert 15
6pm: Gregory’s Girl (Dir / Wri: Bill Forsyth, Prod: Davina Belling & Clive Parsons, 1981, UK, 91 min, starring John Gordon Sinclair, Clare Grogan, Dee Hepburn) Cert 12
8pm: Made in Sheffield (Dir Eve Wood, UK, 2008, 52 min, with Phil Oakey, Martyn Ware, Jarvis Cocker) Cert 15

Mon 23 November
2pm: Caught Short Three: Faulty Connections Cert 15
4pm: Reel Life – Documentaries Cert 15
6pm: Car Park (Prod / Dir / Wri: Bill McCoid, 73 min) PREMIERE Cert 15
8pm: Rough Around The Edges (Prod / Dir / Wri: Jim Dickinson, UK, 103 min) Cert 18

On the Friday and Tuesday, the films are showing in the lovely Vue/RED cinema which I've only been to once, in the Lowry Outlet Mall, so called as it faces United's ground - genius!  Has great tacky football carpeting!

I don't believe I've seen any of these so it will be 5 days of (hopefully nice) surprises!  with a thrilling view of the new Beebland and possible chance to ride on a new tram to get there (and from Piccadilly again, not before time!). Get booking now on 0844 615 4874 to ensure your place!

Please stand-up for the Science Festival!

The end is now sadly in sight for October's free festival madness as we see the final big event now underway. I have not attended any events at this in previous years, as always tended to think it was rather child-orientated.  Well, a quick scan of the brochure I picked up about a month ago revealed that in fact there are dozens of free events specifically for what I am now technically - an "adult". 

As such, last week I got booking on the excellent website.  Sad to discover the Ardwick train depot tours fully booked, I was pleased to find out everything else wasn't.  Tonight's event at Islington Mill in Salford is the one I am most excited about as it sounds like the lovehild of the comedy and science festivals!  It is a rocket-science themed stand-up show:

"Helen Keen loves space rockets. She brings their story to life with a fusion of stand-up comedy and tinfoil in her highly acclaimed solo show. With Space Nazis, Satanists and Aeronautical Engineers! It is rocket science! will take you on a whistle-stop tour around the great brains who put monkeys, ladies, dogs and gentlemen into orbit. “inspired… crisp sophisticated comedy” (The Guardian)".

  Booking takes place on the website and there are still places available so I would advise anyone with a free evening to go along!

Yesterday's events turned out to be incredibly dull but I think they were just not my kind of thing.  I went to Blackwell's Bookshop on Oxford Road for two talks from authors, one about solving daily-life maths problems like how to cut a cake and thread shoelaces (thought this would suit my OCD nature when it comes to evenness, cutting quiche into three never goes right!) and the other about the world in 100 million years' time!  At least there was free wine and nibbles! 

Comedy Festival: 5 excellent free shows today!

Well this year is more than ever throwing up some unexpected delights!  As we hit the closing weekend, today's line up at the Town Hall Tavern (on Tib Lane, near Croma restaurant) looks excellent, it's from 3:30 until 10:00PM.  Very Fringe and perhaps a first for Manchester to have daytime shows which I'm loving, my expected highlights are as follows:

No Straightjacket Required (3:30PM)

On May 26th 2008 Mackenzie Taylor tried to kill himself. He failed.
Whatever doesn't kill you makes you funnier. So join him as he truly laughs in the face of death, illness and obsession.

Freedom Come, Freedom Go! (6:30PM)

90 days detention. Police upset by insects. Man arrested for chalking “Are we free?” on pavement. Stop and search outside Liberty exhibition. ID cards. CCTV. Snooping databases. Protest illegalised. Extradition. Torture. Tom Read tackles our disappearing freedoms and fights back.

 

The Yo-Yo Club All Star Showcase (9PM)

A spectacular showcase of fantastic acts, hosted by the inimitable Cody Chevron, with help from Colin Brisket, Wild Will Morris, the finest burlesquery by Kittie Cointreau, comedic poetical musings from Julian Daniel, headlined by musical maestro Matt Tiller!

 

 No Straightjacket Required in particular sounds brilliant, I love comedy shows born out of tragic/hurtful situations, they always turn out to be life-affirming and have me in tears one minute and hysterics the next.

  Sunday at Fab was indeed quite fab, a great mix of styles, four of the shows were great, one not so much.  Highlights included Julian Daniel and Marvin Cheeseman (what a name!  Is it real?!), two deadpan Mancunians doing poetic comedy, Phil Ellis, a kind of young Harry Hill crossed with John Cleese giving us an OLD REAL SLIDESHOW of family pics and brilliantly skewing them.  Matt Tiller is like a jollier musical Mark from Peep Show.  I've seen him a few times now, he plays the guitar and sings ditties about awkward social situations, it's quite genius.

Wednesday at the Frog&Bucket involved watching Jason Cook's new creation, Fear, which was great but not free...so I shall move on to the late-night Asylum which I got a free ticket to through the club's mailing list.  Highlight of this was an amazing, very likeable Australian eye-watering magic comedian.  He got 2 audience members to come on stage and hold either end of a string of handkerchiefs he'd tied together and pull them through his nose!  Next he hammered a nail up a nostril telling us it was millimetres from his brain, and got another brave (female) audience member to protract it using her teeth!  Good job he was fit, all punky with muscles and tattoos!  Later he dislocated many joints to squeeze through a tennis racquet.  Yes, his whole body passed through!  His mix of slapstick wackiness really whipped the up-for-it crowd into a frenzy, I have seen him and many similar acts in Edinburgh many times (sooooooo passe there during the Fringe!) but the intimacy of the venue and unexpectedness really made it ten times more powerful and surprising!  A very exciting half an hour!

Last night I attended Mother Mac's for the first time, a small pub on gloomy Back Piccadilly which I'd always been extremely curious about.  It was billed as a show celebrating the past 2 years of Beyond a Joke, the pub's monthly comedy night.  Well, it was the most WONDERFULLY dingy place I've seen comedy in this great Victorian metropolis.  All anaglypta, weird paint, clashing decor, "support our troops" posters, scowling landlady, huge pictures of old Manchester scenes and framed articles about when it burnt down and someone died/was murdered. 

I lonesomely ventured upstairs to find a surprisingly large room with one strangely dim flourescent light working and elements of aborted possible sauna conversion present.  The marvellously dark, ranty Citylife Comedian of the Year Eddie Hoo and fellow rollercoaster geek John Thorp got things off to a good start, and a punky gaggle of girls on a 30th birthday celebration who hadn't been able to get in at the Comedy Store were given a St. George flag vibrator by one of the acts who also owns a sex shop. 

Highlight had to be finishing act I Like Fish who straightaway made us aware he couldn't be arsed coming on and persistantly ranted and angered his way through twenty minutes.  He was quite unlike anyone, a good looking youngster shooting down everyone in flames for no particular reason!  Extreme car-crash viewing!

Free fun never stops in Festival City UK!

Well, after sampling everything from choc veggie chilli to 5 kinds of bloody steak to rabbit to partridge to veal to Boddington's beer ice cream at the extremely entertaining and informative chef demos tent in St Ann's Square at Europe's biggest and best food and drink festival, the literature and comedy festivals have now started. 

No free comedy last night, tonight or tomorrow, but Sunday at Fab Cafe on Portland St (scroll down) makes up for that.  There are no less than FIVE free comedy gigs, from 5-11PM.  All look fantastic, some have great Edinburgh Fringe reviews and I feel they will have that same amazing laid back vibe due to being in a quirky venue. 

However I find myself once again feeling FreeManC STRESS as In The City, billed as "the world's premier new music event", runs from Sunday(/Saturday)-Tuesday with literally HUNDREDS of gigs in dozens of venues, many of which are free!  In fact, there is also an event at the Green Room on Saturday.  I have attended this festival the past two years and it is excellent, I love the fact you can just hop around from venue to venue whenever band fatigue strikes.  I basically went to about ten venues a night last year and saw some great and some dreadful acts, but that's all part of the fun!  I did not know anything about most of them, but I did see Little Boots before she was famous!  A quick scan of the listings is quite overwhelming, the sheer scale of the event means really you just have to pick a random act/venue and go with it.  Take a risk!

More random Greenroom goodness tonight and tomorrow - Locked-In with Stacy Makishi tonight at 8:00PM and 80s Cultural Walking Tour tomorrow at 12 noon.

Heritage Open Days

Heritage Open Days

Each September, all manner of exciting cultural and historic wonderlands, numbering in the thousands, from weird underground lairs to theme parks to art deco ventilation shafts fling open their doors and put on free tours, exhibitions and talks.  Many of these are completely closed to the general public for the rest of the year!  Last year I spent a great day in Blackpool, touring the Illuminations depot, magic circle society (including private show of the EVIL MENACE that is Punch and Judy) and riding round on a open-top vintage bus.

This year, after many days spent practically making myself bald with indicisiveness over what to book and discovering once again, things like Liverpool's three Graces were fully booked, I finally decided to spend a day each in Halifax, Stockport, Liverpool and Manchester.  As this is a Mancunian themed blog, I shall concentrate on S+M ;-)

 The Town Hall

Well this "wedding cake" was, on the whole, a rather unexpectedly grand delight.  Whilst parts of the filling like the corridors were extremely austere when compared to the relentless astonishment factor of its brother in the slightly larger neighbouring settlement (more on that later), there were many sweet spots.

Take the banqueting hall.  Home to a rising Wurlitzer organ salvaged from the Paramount/Odeon cinema on Oxford St, Manchester, a huge mirrorball and excellent barrelled ceiling, this, as pointed out by the brilliantly business-minded tour guides, would make a great wedding/civil partnership venue as it has a real wow factor.  Stayed in to listen to a bit of the live Wurlitzer gig but after five minutes I have to say I was falling asleep - I clearly like the concept better than the actuality!  So I wurled my litzer outta there boyfriend!

Next, the men's toilets.  The Victorians built these with as much vim and vigour as everything else.  Some fine examples off the top of my ciabatta are the John Rylands Library, Deansgate and some by the River Dee in Chester.  They make the dreary act of relief WAY more joyous.  Well, these ones had a feature I had not seen before. That's a cistern FOR THE URINALS!  Oh yes!  Never seen a "see through" one of those before!

 

Robinson's Brewery things

I've always wanted to tour Robbie's brewery; not only is it MINE (may not be true), but the building is a wondrous victorian monster which dominates the town and is in fine fettle and about to undergo a thrilling-sounding expansion which will still retain all its charm.  Well, unfortunately that wasn't happening over the heritage open days, however, I got an excellent free lunch courtesy of them in the form of Old Tom MEAT Pie.  This consisted of MEAT soaked in that multiple world beer award-winning, treacle-like elixir.  Very yummity and just what I needed after a hard morning's civic-erection wandering.  In addition, I got a lovely chat with my auntie, sorry a Robinson's breweeeewie type lady and some samples of Old Tom (actually quite nice in a cough syrup style quantity) and the little-seen CHOCOLATE Tom (extremely loveable, nice surprise!).

Air Raid Shelter

This is open year-round but has a £4-ish admission charge.  Thus I'd not been.  Well, it is not really that great, unfortunately, only taking half an hour at the most to look round.  What made it great was talking to a lady who remembered being in it as a small child.  People apparently would travel there in buses and pay to stay as it was the nicest shelter type place to be.  Interesting atmosphere but I feel they could and should make more of it in terms of exhibitions and excitement. 

The Law Library

Had to get to this place at 11AM on a Sunday as it was only open for one hour!  It's tucked away on Kennedy St, very close to the Town Hall.  This hidden gem is a private, subscription-funded institution never normally open to the public.  The interior was all dark oak, fireplaces, and a lovely church-like feel.  In very good nick too.  Stood in a group with a few ladies and we talked to one of the librarians who told us quite a bit.  A very enjoyable half hour!

Banking Tour

Barclays Bank had put on a tour of basically all the banking buildings in the city.  Well this was SUPERB.  There are so many incredible, moumental buildings, such as the Midland Bank pictured above, which was still in use as HSBC until a few months ago.  This particular building was thought too modern-looking to be a bank so the bankers ordered the architect to stick some pillasters at the top at the final second!  It's great that many of these wonderful buildings have now found new uses, such as the mind-boggling Atheneum pub at Spring Gardens.

Town Hall

Well I had two tours of this wonderful Victorian Gothic masterpiece, which I have visited many times before for both free and paid events such as crazy theatricals, Italian consulate promo days with free food and drinks, family fun days and history days.  Along with my friend Karen, first we had a tour of the hall itself.  This involved a gentleman in fine Victorian costume guiding us round the labyrinthine halls and corridors at whirlwind pace.  Many of the facts I already knew, like the clever hidden heating systems which use the spiral staircases to allow warm air to circulate, but I still learnt a lot.  It really is an astonishingly, eye poppingly spectacular, magical place.  Really has to be seen to be believed!

 

Next we went up the clock tower!  Many narrow stairs were involved but getting to see Abel, the grand bell (biggest of 82 bells!) and the incredible panoramic view was by far the best aspect I have seen of Manchester, beating the Hilton, wheel, Shudehill and other car parks (great way to get a totally free and semi-naughty view of any city or town for that matter!) and The Modern.  It was unobstructed and we could walk all the way round the incredibly narrow balcony at the top, standing alongside the angels guarding the metropolis. 

Naughty logogram footnote: How "Lisa Simpson and Principal Skinner" aka London 2012 Olympics is that amazing Stockport MBC logogram I found?!  Fits in with my S+M concentration here but not sure how it is meant to represent Stockport!  Any ideas?!  Unfortunately I could not find an exciting old design for Manchester!