April’s riches include Son of Rambow (opens 4 April), director Garth Jennings’ nostalgic and delightfully inventive 1980s suburbia story, centring on two schoolboys making a home video - based on Rambo - to send into BBC kids’ show Screen Test. They find a lead actor for their big DIY action flick when the French exchange group arrives.On 11 April, George Clooney takes his serious political hat off and replaces it with a cloth cap to direct and star in Leatherheads, a 1920s romcom about the beginnings of America’s pro-football league. George is the rallying coach, Ren%26eacute;e Zellweger the firebrand local news reporter determined to uncover the mystery behind the team’s latest hero.Sally Hawkins scooped best actress at the Berlin Film Festival for her winning performance at the heart of Mike Leigh’s latest character comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky (18 April). She plays a north London girl who gets wrecked with her mates at night but is a caring schoolteacher by day. Eddie Marsan is terrific as a moody cabbie.Nearly a year after having its premiere in competition at Cannes, Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s beautiful adaptation of her own comic strip, arrives in cinemas on 11 April. The story of a girl growing up in the bewildering early days of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, it was surprisingly France’s official Oscar entry but featured only in the animated category - where it lost out to RatatouilleThe month of May brings perhaps the most surprising mainstream casting ever: Robert Downey Jr playing a superhero, albeit (supposedly) one of the most intelligent superheroes ever: Iron Man - aka genius inventor Tony Stark. Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges and Terence Howard co-star, Samuel L Jackson has a cameo and Jon Favreau (Swingers, Elf) directs, so it could be fun (2 May).Cassandra’s Dream, Woody Allen’s third London film (after Match Point and the still unreleased Scoop), finds him on doom-laden, tragic form, as two cockney brothers (played by Scot Ewan McGregor and Dubliner Colin Farrell) enter into an immoral pact on behalf of rich uncle Tom Wilkinson. Sally Hawkins (again) steals the show, Hayley Atwell is a femme fatale. There’s a hint of late masterpiece about it. Opens 9 May.Good idea or potential disaster? Like Rocky and Rambo before him, Indiana Jones, played by 65-year-old Harrison Ford, left, comes out of retirement on 22 May in a film directed by Steven Spielberg and (partly) penned by George ‘You might be able to write this shit but you sure as hell can’t say it’ Lucas. With Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett and Alan Dale joining the old gang, we’re surely entitled to ask: whose pension, exactly, is this?Sex and the city Brazenly following in the Manolo-shod footsteps of The Devil Wears Prada, the four girls from the fab TV show Sex and the City attempt a perilous journey to the big screen. Seasoned TV director Michael Patrick King is on the job while originator Candace Bushnell script-advises. Whether it’s any good is irrelevant. Its purpose? To provide more sartorial and largely inaccurate relationship advice for women the world over by tying up a few loose ends in the lives and loves of four middle-aged, oversexed New York women. When SATC (as it’s known among fans) ended in 2004, PR Samantha had a lover and cancer, curator Charlotte and lawyer Miranda were both married, and perpetually single columnist Carrie was snogging Mr Big in la belle Paris.
Four different endings have been shot in a bid to prevent Big and Carrie’s marital showdown being leaked in advance. The film looks set to break some box-office records. Expect to queue.Sex and the City: The Movie opens on 29 May Art Tate Liverpool plays host to Britain’s biggest-ever Klimt exhibitionGustav Klimt How much sensuality can you take? Klimt offers the greatest overload in the history of art. The rich mix is his forte: nudes kissing, lounging, yearning, coupling against a world of gold leaf and jewel-bright colours, a hint of spirituality here balanced by luxurious sexuality there. He is the master of consumption, material and sensual, and by now the very epitome of decadent fin-de-siecle Vienna. But he only caught on worldwide in the Sixties and this belated show is the first comprehensive survey ever staged in Britain. From Salome to The Golden Knight, paintings from all stages of Klimt’s life will be on display: sink into proto-psychedelic opulence. Gustav Klimt, Tate Liverpool, 30 %26#8239;May-31 AugustAlso arriving in Liverpool this spring are some of the biggest names in modern painting: Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Camille Pissarro and Edward Hopper in a show at the Walker Art Gallery (18 April-10 August) devoted to Art in the Age of Steam. There will be trains, certainly - think of Hopper’s locomotives disappearing across the prairie - but the focus is on the art of industrial cities: Paris, New York, London, from the birth of the railways until the 1960s.You might think Alberto Giacometti oversold, but in fact there hasn’t been a British show in decades. This one, at the beautiful gallery of Compton Verney in Warwickshire (until 1 June) looks at the sudden development of his thin men in the months following the armistice in 1945. Expect many classics, plus rare portraits, among others, of Jean Genet.Tate Modern’s big spring show is a colossal survey of 20th-century portraiture - Street and Studio: An Urban History of Photography (22 May-31 August) - highly posed indoors, casually snapped on the streets outside. All the master- and mistress- photographers of the century will be represented, from Cartier-Bresson, Arbus and Beaton to Mapplethorpe, Tillmans and Sherman. It all adds up to one in the eye for the NPG.And for anyone more interested in places than people, Modern Art Oxford is celebrating the magical landscapes of the father of American photography, Ansel Adams (2 April-1 June). From the soaring monoliths of Yosemite by moonlight to the ice lakes of Alaska, 70 images of the sublime will represent a career of 50 years.Theatre Tomorrow is another day - and Vanessa Redgrave is Joan DidionGone with the Wind Gone With the Wind, as a musical, has everything going for it. And unless the wind is coming in from the wrong direction, Trevor Nunn’s new adaptation (opening 22 April, New London Theatre) could blow audiences off their feet. Darius Danesh (of Pop Idol) plays Rhett Butler and Jill Paice (who starred in The Woman in White) is Scarlett O’Hara. A Glaswegian Rhett might give you pause for thought but Danesh looks the part (suave ‘n’ dark) and his voice should hit the spot. The ingredients of this tempestuous epic, set in 1860s Atlanta Georgia, never fail: it’s a romantic rollercoaster, America’s sentimental answer to War and Peace. The 1936 novel won its author, Margaret Mitchell, the Pulitzer prize, the movie broke box-office records and this show, with Gareth Valentine at the musical helm, looks like a ticket worth securing before the show goes into preview on 4 April.Yasmina Reza, who wrote Art, has a new play, God of Carnage, on at the Gielgud (opens 24 March). It’s about two couples who meet to discuss a scrap between their children. The warring quartet is high-profile: Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer and Ken Stott. It will be fascinating to watch them slug it out. Meanwhile, Howard Brenton also has a new play, Never So Good, coming to the National. It takes in the Suez crisis, adultery and the end of empire. Jeremy Irons plays Harold Macmillan and the cast also includes Anna Carteret and Anna Chancellor (Lyttleton, 26 March-24 May).In April, architecturally inspired company dreamthinkspeak perform a work in the hidden areas of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. One Step Forward, One Step Back draws on Dante’s Paradiso and the city’s landscape, using film, installation, models and live performance (7 April-10 May). A different kind of exploration is involved in poet Tony Harrison’s new play, Fram. It’s about the Norwegian voyager Fridtjof Nansen, who travelled in the Arctic during the 1890s. It promises to bring ice floes, bear-fur sleeping bags and the ghosts of pioneers to the Olivier. Jasper Britton is to play Nansen and Bob Crowley directs (with help from Harrison himself). Previews from 17 April; ends 22 May. And there is another not-to-be-missed chance to catch the National Theatre of Scotland’s tremendous Black Watch, by Gregory Burke, based on interviews with soldiers who served in Iraq. This is an extraordinary piece about what it takes to be part of the ‘War on Terror’. The show comes to England for the first time as part of a UK-wide tour which culminates at the Barbican (20 June-26 July).For those who require musical relief, there is a treat in store. The team behind Les Mis%26eacute;rables (Michel Legrand, Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Sch%26ouml;nberg and Herbert Kretzmer) open the highly anticipated Marguerite, based on La Dame aux Cam%26eacute;lias, but set in occupied Paris. It stars Ruthie Henshall and Julian Ovenden and is the crowd-pleasing last production in Jonathan Kent’s season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.But it is probably the National’s The Year of Magical Thinking that will (after Gone With the Wind) be the hottest ticket of the season. Vanessa Redgrave reprises her solo Broadway success in Joan Didion’s adaptation of her bestselling memoir, describing her life after the sudden death of John Gregory Dunne, her husband of 40 years. David Hare directs. At the Lyttelton (25 April-20 May).Classical From monsters to Punch, it spells boomtime for BirtwistleLost Highway David Lynch’s 1997 psychological thriller Lost Highway, his exploration of dislocation and desire via the troubled mind of jazz musician Fred Madison, might seem an unlikely candidate for conversion to opera. In its passionate mission to win new audiences for contemporary music-theatre, however, English National Opera has daringly done just that in an imaginative collaboration with the Young Vic designed to become an annual event. ‘A seething combination of sound and image’ is promised as off-Broadway director Diane Paulus adds state-of-the-art extra dimensions such as video footage and surround-sound to 40-year-old Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth’s score.Lost Highway, Young Vic, London SE1, 4-11 AprilA strong season for contemporary music continues in Birmingham on 14 April, when Oliver Knussen conducts the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in Good Dream She Has, a new setting of texts from Milton’s Paradise Lost by British composer Luke Bedford (CBSO Centre, Birmingham). The following evening sees the Royal Opera stage the world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur. Starring John Tomlinson as a monster in search of his identity, it is conducted by Antonio Pappano (Covent Garden, 15 April-3 May).Four days later, in another joint venture with the Young Vic, ENO mounts a new production of Birtwistle’s controversial early work, Punch and Judy, tantalisingly billed as ‘not suitable for under-16s’. This will be the second production of this potent piece in a month, with Music Theatre Wales launching its version at the Linbury Studio Theatre tomorrow.English National Opera returns to more traditional fare with Lehar’s The Merry Widow, in a new staging by veteran John Copley (after the withdrawal of the Southbank’s Jude Kelly), with a cast led by Amanda Roocroft, Alfie Boe and Roy Hudd (Coliseum, London WC2, 26 April-30 May). Glyndebourne’s season opens on 18 May with hot young soprano Danielle de Niese, last year’s show-stealing Cleopatra, as Monteverdi’s version of Nero’s unfaithful empress in L’incoronazione di Poppea, directed by contentious Canadian Robert Carsen (18 May-4 July).Pop Back to basics with minimalist boy-girl duoThe Ting Tings Pop music is far too important to be left to anodyne pop bands. Step forward the Ting Tings, a sunny boy-girl duo from the dour rehearsal spaces of Salford, Greater Manchester. He: Jules De Martino, drums. She: Katie White, sings and plays rudimentary guitar. Some machines flesh out the rest. There’s not much to them and that’s the beauty of it. The Ting Tings’ music is a sassy playground taunt aimed at the dancefloor. Their opening salvo, last year’s infectious demo of ‘That’s Not My Name’, announced an outfit in thrall to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Toni Basil, both righteous and breezy. Their debut album, We Started Nothing, is due out on 19 May. Spring has officially sprung.With a loud, fast new album, Accelerate, REM have just announced summer festival and stadium dates. A gig at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 24 March, kicks off a season of high-octane action.Ten years since their last (live) album, prodigal heroes Portishead are back with a glowering new one, Third, and a generous European tour (9-17 April). It really has been worth the wait.Last year’s Volta album was Bj%26ouml;rk’s most powerful in years. Her 18-month worldwide jaunt comes to Manchester Apollo on 11 April, bringing with it the usual carnival of unbridled creativity, an all-female brass section and a thumping great urgency (nationwide tour, until 4 May).In the second half of April, Indigo2, London, hosts a brainstorm of eclectic gigs from classy promoters Eat Your Own Ears. Four Tet and Sunburned Hand of the Man (24th), Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA playing as Bobby Digital (28th) and dance label Kompakt celebrating their 15th year (27th) are among the thrills in store.’Progressive patriot’ Billy Bragg is reclaiming St George’s Day from right-wingers. He’s headlining Still Looking for a New England, an alternative celebration of words and music at the Barbican Hall, London, on 23 April.From George to Gilbert: Brazilian guitar maestro Gilberto Gil brings his politically charged songs to the Barbican, London, on 31 March for a welcome one-off solo show.Led Zeppelin fans should indulge in the most gorgeous music that Robert Plant has made in ages, as he merges his voice with bluegrass singer Alison Krauss on a series of elegant covers. Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff are blessed from 5-8 May, with a final show at Wembley Arena on 22 May.All Tomorrow’s Parties returns to its spiritual home at Camber Sands, East Sussex, on 9-11 May. Webziners Pitchfork curate and Hot Chip, the Hold Steady and Vampire Weekend all play. A second weekend, at Butlins Minehead (16-18 May) is curated by Explosions in the SkyFulfilling boyhood dreams, Kaiser Chiefs have hired their beloved Leeds United’s ground, Elland Road, for a one-day megagig on 24 May. Supports include Kate Nash and the Enemy; more will be announced.Troubled diva Liza Minnelli curtailed her tour last December, after she collapsed at the end of a gig in Gothenburg, Sweden. As befits a showbiz superstar, the show carries on in May. Minnelli plays three nights at the Coliseum, London (from 25 May), before heading across the UK.Finally, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band bring their Magic tour to Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium (30-31 May); Manchester (28) and Cardiff (14 June) are the other pitstops.New albums are coming from Mariah Carey (14 April) and Madonna (28 April), but look out for the Last Shadow Puppets, Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner’s side project (21 April), as well as new music from Spiritualized (19 May).Dance Buddhist monks meet Bruce Lee, plus an electric new work from Wayne McGregorSutra In 2005, Flemish-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui created the acclaimed Zero Degrees with dancer-choreographer Akram Khan and sculptor Antony Gormley. His new work, Sutra, which features 17 Buddhist warrior-monks from the Shaolin temple in China, reunites him with Gormley, who has constructed an environment for the piece. Both men are fascinated by Buddhism and its expression through kung fu, and their ideas are drawn together to a new score by Szymon Brzoska. Cherkaoui also performs Myth at the same venue, 16-17 May.Sutra, Sadler’s Wells, London EC1, 27-31 MaySadler’s Wells also has the pick of April’s dance events, starting with a season by the highly regarded Nederlands Dans Theater. With works by Jiri Kylian and Leon/Lightfoot, you can count on jaw-dropping production values and thoroughbred dance action. Whether the result adds up to numinous dance-theatre or pretentious spectacle is for you to decide (2-5 April). The following week, Wayne McGregor premieres Entity, a major new piece for Random Dance, set to music by Bj%26ouml;rk collaborator Nico Muhly and electronic master Jon Hopkins. For fans of visceral new dance, this will be one of the season’s hottest tickets.Something chillier on the other side of the Thames, meanwhile, as Maresa von Stockert presents her new piece, Glacier, which will be danced in a world of melting ice and falling snow (Queen Elizabeth Hall, 10, 11 April). In May, hoping to excise memories of its catastrophic 2006 visit orchestrated by Valery Gergiev, St Petersburg’s Kirov Ballet returns to these shores with a shining parcel of classics. Three programmes feature Balanchine’s Jewels, Don Quixote, and a gala night (13-17 May, Lowry, Manchester, 20-24 May Hippodrome, Birmingham).Finally, a promising dance programme at this year’s Brighton Festival includes Ballet National de Marseille’s UK premiere of Metamorphoses (Concert Hall, 3-4 May), and a triple-bill of aerial dance-theatre from Lindsey Butcher’s Gravity and Levity (Corn Exchange, 12-14 May; also touring).TV Alan Sugar and other treatsGossip Girl Blair and Serena used to be BFFs (Best Friends Forever), but then Serena left Manhattan under mysterious circumstances. Now she’s back in New York and hoping to start over, but there’s just one problem: with Blair as your frenemy there’s nowhere to hide. Welcome to Gossip Girl, the teen drama to end all teen dramas and the guiltiest pleasure of the season. Based on the bestselling novels, the funny, frivolous Gossip Girl is a Devil Wears Prada for the prep-school set, with eye candy in the shape of the three male leads, a love story from across the tracks and some of the wittiest putdowns around. Yes, it might be frivolous, but as the anonymous Gossip Girl herself says: ‘You know you love me.’ You may not want to, but in the end you will.Gossip Girl starts 27 March, 9pm, ITV2 The Apprentice is back for a fourth series (BBC1, 26 March) with 16 new egos lining up to feel the force of Sir Alan’s boardroom bark. The usual heady mix of arrogance, incompetence and desperation is assured, but can anyone match the panto presence of Katie Hopkins?Perking things up after the winter glut of costume dramas, Alexander McCall Smith’s The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is a gentle Easter treat for all the family. The Anthony Minghella-Richard Curtis screenplay has soul singer Jill Scott in the lead and comes complete with meerkats, stunning Botswanan landscape and a hilarious cameo from David Oyelowo. (BBC1, Easter Sunday).US hit Dirty Sexy Money (C4, 21 March) promises lots of frothy, flippant fun. A smart send-up of celebrity and the super-rich, it stars Peter Krause (Six Feet Under) as a lawyer with values persuaded by property magnate Tripp Darling (Donald Sutherland) to represent his repulsive family.Julie Walters battles against BBC director-general Hugh Carleton Greene (Hugh Bonneville) in Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story as the moral crusader holding back a tide of sin and depravity in Britain (BBC2).Throughout spring, BBC4 winds back 700 years to uncover religion, monarchy, architecture and the arts in a special Medieval Season. Highlights include Stephen Fry on the Gutenberg press (April), and Simon Russell Beale examining sacred music (21 March).All our American favourites are back, with the fourth season of Desperate Housewives (C4, 26 March) leading the pack, plus House and Grey’s Anatomy (both five, 20 March), Heroes (BBC2, April), Brothers and Sisters (E4, April) and My Name is Earl (C4, 20 March). Finally, the great British stalwart that is Doctor Who, returns in April (BBC1).
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