One of the spring 2010’s season absolute champions is the knee- high and over knee sock. Knee high socks - as well as over-the-knee and thigh high socks - are back as a trend, and the options on how to wear them are many. From the sporty to the sparkly, to layerings of socks over tights; a great pair of socks can add volumes to an outfit.

Also, as part of a design trend that looks to the future, the military outfit is back in business. Actually, the military and tribal trends collide to become this fierce fashion trend. Ancient civilizations come to life in leather tunics, metal plating, and war paint. Unequivocally fearless and with room for endless creativity, the main criteria for the modern warrior is confidence.

Reminding everyone of the “Make love not war” times, the pants are again a champ this year, and the more colourful they are, the better. From tailored trousers to skinny cigarette pants, to ripped jeans and leather leggings; over the past years pants have predominantly been worn in block colours. What’s more, they’d become...

Soprano Angela Gheorghiu has cancelled her remaining two performances of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Bizet’s “Carmen.”

Gheorghiu withdrew in August from her first six performances of the run, which began Dec. 31. She was to appear in those performances with her husband, tenor Roberto Alagna. The staging had been designed around the couple, but Gheorghiu said in October she and Alagna are divorcing. Carmen is written for a mezzo-soprano, and Gheorghiu hasn’t performed it on stage. She said that she needs more time to prepare for the role. In a statement from her relayed by the Met, the singer implied that she was not ready for the role. “To make so important a debut as Carmen, I want to be as prepared dramatically as I am musically,” she said. “Therefore, I will postpone my role debut until a later date when I can work intensely with the Richard Eyre production.”

Elina Garanca was assigned to replace Ms. Gheorghiu’s earlier performances.

On occasion, Gheorghiu has had difficult...

According to the organizers of the show, all tickets for the Sarah Chang Violin Battle performance on Valentine’s Day are sold out. The concert is part of a Culture Crusade larger project meant to support quality as opposed to kitsch in performing arts.

Violinist Sarah Chang is recognized the world over as one of classical music’s most captivating and gifted artists. Appearing in the music capitals of Asia, Europe and the Americas, she has collaborated with most major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the principal London orchestras and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. Notable recital engagements have included her Carnegie Hall debut and performances at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, Symphony Hall in Boston, the Barbican Centre in London, the Philharmonic in Berlin as well as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. She has reached an even wider audience through her...

The short and medium feature festival NexT will open for a fourth edition on April 13, in two of Bucharest’s cinema venues, Scala and Union. Organizers say this year the film competition will include a list of 30 titles, all of them selected by critic Andrei Gorzo. The festival hands several awards, the most important being the NexT trophy and the Cristian Nemescu award for directing. For the first time since its debut in 2006, this year the official partner of the festival is EFA, the European Film Academy, bringing a series of new events to it. Thus, 13 shorts will be screened in the Short Matters project, one of these films is “Restauration”, a German- Romanian joint production. Also, within the Short Matters, the public will be able to see the EFA award recipient for 2009, the Polish film “Poste Restante.” Besides all this new sections, the festival will bring in its traditional programs, including a section dedicated to director Cristian Nemescu and sound designer Andrei Toncu, both of them killed in a car crash.

During the Critics’...

On March 2, on the National’s Big Hall stage, theatre lovers will be able to see one of Bulgaria’s most famous performances.

The Sofia National’s “Exiles” is directed by famous director Alexander Morfov.

Based on a story by Bulgaria’s best-known writer Ivan Vazov in 1884, “Exiles” focuses on the lives of several refugees to Romania, who come together animated by the same ideal: a revolution that would free their country from Turkish occupation. Alexander Morfov is easily the most recognizable name in contemporary Bulgarian theatre. In short, his performances are extraordinary, sold out and have earned him dozens of awards. The beginning of Morfov´s theatre career was accommodated in various theatres around Bulgaria; however, most viewers first acknowledged his work on the big stage of Sofia National Theatre. The latter being a grand space, Morfov took good advantage, with large scale, spectacular, vibrant performances. Some of his landmark works include stagings of “A Midsummer Night´s Dream” and...

There may be no vampires walking its halls, but the Gothic architecture and a dark, non-fictional history are enough to give you the shivers, according to “Huffington Post”, quoting the world’s most frightening buildings ranking, made by Lonely Planet. The Hunyad or Corvinus Castle, in Hunedoara, came in second in the ranking which includes, among other frightening buildings, reactor 4 of Chernobyl. The ranking is opened by the Wat Rong Khun, in Thailand, a building which looks, at one and the same time, as a traditional religious site, an ornate wedding cake and an avant-garde work of art. On the left and right, along the path leading to the temple, stand stone hands, which make you feel as if you wandered off in a horror movie, in which living dead are rising from their graves. The Metropolitan Correctional Centre in Chicago is also ranked among the buildings which make one’s stomach churn. Imposing, shaped as a triangle, the centre has such small windows one may think they were not meant to let the light in, but to let out arrows launched by archers defending a medieval fortress....

The first edition of the Film and Culinary Art-Tasting Festival opened, on Sunday night, with exclusive excerpts from the film “Undeva la Palilula” (Somewhere in Palilula), in the presence of personalities including the minister of Culture, Kelemen Hunor, Maria Dinulescu, Constantin Chiriac and Tudor Giurgiu. The poet Mircea Dinescu, the host of the festival taking place in the Cetate Cultural Harbour, stated that the event is held “under the banner of the arts” and “under the banner of the Danube”. In the opening of the festival, Mircea Dinescu also inaugurated the Angel Park, a space hosting statues of angels, in the Cetate Harbour. The Park was meant as a response to an idea launched by the former minister Dan Matei Agathon, the Dracula Park. The director of the festival, Constantin Fugasin, stated, in turn, that he initiated the event because he had noticed that, although winning international awards, Romanian films are not known in the Balkans.

The 20 minutes’ excerpt from “Undeva la Palilula”, in an exclusive preview at the festival, present a fantastic, pastoral...

George Clooney outgunned his rivals at the Labor Day holiday weekend box office in North America with a low-calibre opening for his assassin drama “The American,” as the lucrative summer movie going season wound down on a traditionally weak note. According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, “The American” earned $13 million during the three-day period beginning Sept. 3; its tally stands at $16.1 million since Wednesday, when it got a two-day head-start on the competition. The opening is slightly better than industry forecasts, but is similar to that of his 2008 flop “Leatherheads,” which ended its brief run with $31.3 million. The film, in which Clooney plays a stone-faced gun enthusiast holed up in a picturesque Italian town, was directed by rock photographer Anton Corbijn. It was released by Focus Features, the art-house unit of General Electric Co’s NBC Universal. Also new were 20th Century Fox’s violent fantasy “Machete” at No. 3 with $11.3 million, and Warner Bros.’ Drew Barrymore romantic comedy “Going the Distance” at No. 5 with just $6.9 million. Both opened on...

British band Morcheeba will return to Bucharest this autumn, for a special performance part of the European leg of their worldwide tour to promote their most recent album, ‘Blood like Lemonade,’ organisers Events announced.

The trip-hop pioneers will perform at the Palace Hall on October 5, the fourth concert of the British band in Romania following their performances at B’estfest 2007, Peninsula Festival in 2008 and the Fratelli Club in the capital last year.

DJ Paul Godfrey, his brother Ross Godfrey, instrumentalist, and vocalist Skye Edwards are currently promoting their seventh studio album in Europe, after several performances in the United States. The album, released in Great Britain on June 7, marks a return to the band’s first albums, being their most introspective work so far, Events said in a press release quoted by Agerpres news agency. The first single off the new album is called “Even Though.”

Morcheeba made its debut on the British music stage in the mid 1990s, when the Godfrey brothers recruited Skye Edwards as vocalist, during a chance...

The Venice Film Festival honoured veteran director John Woo at a star-filled celebration awarding him with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Daily Mail reports. Woo accepted the award from American director Quentin Tarantino, president of the jury for the main competition at this year’s festival, and Hong Kong director Tsui Hark. He dedicated the award to his mother, wife and family. Woo is the director of such 1980s Hong Kong films as “A Better Tomorrow” and “The Killer,” both starring Chow Yun-fat and highly imitated in Hollywood for their stylized action sequences. Moving to Hollywood in the mid-90s, Woo directed John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in “Face/Off” and “Mission: Impossible II” starring Tom Cruise. Woo told Speakeasy that he was completely surprised when he first learned that he would receive the award. “It was really unexpected.” Venice festival director Marco Müller at a press conference this week heaped praise onto Woo and his influential style of Hong Kong and Hollywood action movies. “I don’t feel like I was bestowing an honour,” he said. “It was waiting for...

For the third year consecutively, Romania is a guest in the Thames Festival. Running between September 11 and 12 and organized by the London Mayor’s Office, the festival is the most spectacular open-air event, celebrating the river and the cultural diversity of London. Romania is present in all the four sections of the festival: New European Village, Bandstand, Feast on the Bridge and Carnival Night. According to the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) London, the ethnographers Steliana Baltuta and Elena Vaculisteanu from the Botosani County Museum will be presenting, at the Romanian stand, the Romanian dowry chest, embroideries and folk costumes, accompanied by demonstrations by the folk artisan Niculina Andronache on the loom, brought ad hoc from Botosani for this event. Over 500,000 people will have a chance to watch the Romanian show, which will most assuredly become the attraction of the New European Village section, dedicated to countries in Central and Eastern Europe, with a rich cultural heritage, defined by millenary traditions. The Vorona brass band, one of the most famous...

Brukhental art works in Gdansk exhibit

The Gdansk National Museum hosted, on September 4, 2010, the opening of the exhibition “Van Eyck – Memling – Bruegel. Masterpieces of Painting from the Collections of the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu”. The exhibition is the result of the collaboration between the two museums, which started this year, with the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR)-Warsaw. It will offer the Polish public a closer look at styles of painting and painters rarely present or entirely absent form Polish collections. For the first time in the history of Polish museums, three paintings by Hans Memling, two portraits in the Sibiu collection and “The Last Judgement”, which is part of the Gdansk National Museum collection, will be exhibited together. The exhibition will be accompanied by a calendar of scientific and educational events, including several lectures given by Polish art historians and critics (held mainly at the National Museum of Warsaw), as well as activities for children and youngsters.

Norwegian architecture on...

Friday

10 am- Jewish Community Centre

Shtetl and its World-colloquy featuring Prof. Dr. Liviu Rotman, Dr. Emil Rennert – Austria, Dr. Simon Geissbuhler, Switzerland

4.30 pm-Union Cinema

Itzic Manger - Documentary presented by director Radu Gabrea

7 pm - Big Synagogue

Kabalat Shabat

Saturday

10 am – Jewish Community Centre

Yiddishland – round table moderated by Dr. Aurel Vainer

7 pm - Jewish State Theatre

“Alein ist die Neshume rein” – “Onto himself the soul is pure” featuring Yaakov Bodo & Misha Blecharovitz - Yiddishpiel Theater - Israel

9 pm - Green Hours 22 Club Jazz Café

Vienna Klezmer Band (Austria)

Sunday

11 am – Peasant Museum

Concert Hakeshet Klezmer Band (Romania), Jewish Dance “Hora” group (Romania), Mames Babegenush (Denmark)

5.30 pm - Green Hours

Mazel Tov Klezmer Band (Romania), Presburger Klezmer Band (Slovakia)

8.30 pm - Jewish Community Centre

Yiddish Experience -...

Machete (USA 2010)

Directed by Robert Rodriguez, Ethan Maniquis

With: Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro

Showing at: Movieplex Cinema Plaza, Hollywood Multiplex, Cinema City Cotroceni, Cinema City Sun Plaza, Cinema City Cotroceni VIP

Verdict: Not for the entire family

Fans who saw the trailer in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 “Grindhouse” double-feature continually asked Rodriguez to turn the make-believe ad featuring Danny Trejo into a real blood-and-guts vengeance story and so he did. Rodriguez has complied, maintaining a fair amount of the wicked humour and every bit of the savage bloodshed the trailer promised. And those who will choose to go for it will have precisely what they are paying for, I mean the entire lot, from beheadings to blood spatter in abundance and kill shots to the head by the dozen, with other means of dispatch: death by corkscrew, high heels, crucifixion. Just exhilarating.

They also get a crazy range of supporting players — Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, Lindsay...

Autumn’s Delights

Venue: Peasant Museum

Running from September 3 to 5

Maramures Traditional Producers and the Peasant Museum invite you to Autumn’s Delights Fair, a special occasion to taste the delicious produce of traditional Maramures households.

Everything from traditional main courses, sarmale, pies, cozonac and house-made bread to children’s specialties and wine can be found here. Local producers will also demonstrate live their cooking abilities, accompanied by children’s traditional folk groups. Free entry from 10 am to 7 pm.

I Love Handmade

Venue: Bucharest Museum

Running from September 4 to 5

Everything made by human hands, form clothing to food, jewellery and toys can be found in this sixth edition of the I Love Handmade Fair. Free entry between 10 am and 9...

Eitetsu Hayashi will perform on October 20 at the Palace Hall in Bucharest, organizers inform by press release. The event is put together by Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Japan Foundation, with the support of Japan’s Embassy. The best up-to-date taiko musician’s concert will be highlighted by Isao Matsushita’s ‘Hi-Ten-Yu’ - A Concerto for Japanese drum and Orchestra,’ as well as traditional drum readings of famous Romanian composers, from George Enescu to Tiberiu Olah and Ciprian Porumbescu. Tickets range from RON 50 to 180 and can be bought in the Diverta network. Eitetsu Hayashi, the internationally acclaimed Japanese musician ranked as the world’s leading taiko player and one of Japan’s foremost living cultural assets, has over the past 34 years led an international musical revival of these instruments. His performances have been credited with bringing a musical fulfilment that can surpass that of a full orchestra – ranging from serene tranquillity to the rhythmic, roaring thunder created by his giant 300kg O-Daiko drum.

Eitetsu Hayashi, was born in Hiroshima in...

The National Theatre Festival (FNT) will present, in its 20th edition, the latest play directed by Silviu Purcarete – Le Roi se meurt (Exit the King), by Eugene Ionesco, an international production. The show premieres on September 15, within the Ex Ponto Festival in Slovenia, and will be presented, then, within the FNT, before touring to France, Italy, Montenegro, Macedonia and Croatia. This new production will mark, in January 2011, the inauguration of the new building hosting the Esch Theatre in Luxembourg.

A household name in European theatre, Silviu Purcarete chose to direct, in 2010, Ionesco’s Le Roi se meurt, with an international cast, after having tackled, successfully, in 2007, the latter’s Macbett, at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The international production, thus, affords the director the opportunity of a renewed encounter with Ionesco, but also with composer Vasile Sirli, one of his close collaborators, and with artists in France, Slovenia and Luxembourg. “Silviu Purcarete takes on this play which, up to now, had seemed fairly alien to him, and I’m trying to...

The Palace Hall will sound of the best in jazz sounds this fall, as on October 29 as of 8 pm, a unique and first-time concert featuring Herbie Hancock will delight quality music fans.

Herbie Hancock is a true icon of modern music. Throughout his explorations, he has transcended limitations and genres while still maintaining his unique, unmistakable voice. The musician’s success at expanding the possibilities of musical thought has placed him in the annals of this century’s visionaries. With an illustrious career spanning five decades, he continues to amaze audiences and never ceases to expand the public’s vision of what music, particularly jazz, is all about today. Hancock’s creative path has moved fluidly between almost every development in acoustic and electronic jazz and R&B since 1960. He has attained an enviable balance of commercial and artistic success, arriving at a point in his career where he ventures into every new project motivated purely by the desire to expand the boundaries of his creativity.

There are few artists in the music industry who have...

Those who are attached to blood and gore and to the intentional B- category style of Robert Rodriguez will be able to rejoice as of this weekend, with “Machete”. The film was co-written, produced, and directed by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis. It is an expansion of a fake trailer that was released together with Rodriguez’ and Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 Grindhouse. Machete continues the B movie and exploitation style of Grindhouse, including in part the same footage. Danny Trejo stars in his first lead role as the title character. He also played the role of a character named Machete in the Spy Kids franchise, which Rodriguez directed. However, they are not intended to be in the same fictional universe. The story revolves around Machete (Danny Trejo), a former “Mexican Federale” turned renegade. After a shakedown with a druglord (Steven Seagal), Machete roams Texas looking to do yard work in exchange for money. Michael Benz (Jeff Fahey), a local businessman and spin doctor, explains to Machete that the corrupt Senator McLaughlin (Robert De Niro) is sending hundreds of illegal...

Films selected in the Balkanimation feature film, international shorts, students’ films, Romanian films and Balkan film competitions will be analysed by two juries made up of resonant names in European cinema, invited to Bucharest to vote the winners of the fifth edition of Anim’est – the Romanian Animation Film Festival.

According to a release quoted by Agerpres, those who will vote the winners of the Best Short Film, Best Feature Film, as well as of the Anim’est Trophy, offered to a film in the International Short Feature Film section, will be Romanian film critic Mihai Chirilov – artistic director of the Transylvania International Film Festival and curator of the New York Romanian Film Festival, the Italian Simone Massi – director of “Memories of Dogs”, winner of the Anim’est 2007 Best Short award, Phil Mulloy – one of the most successful British indie animation directors of the past decades, the Portuguese Regina Pessoa – the one who consecrated a unique animation technique, the winner of several awards for her films, present in important festivals worldwide, and the...

Exhibition on Second Vienna Award, at Alba Iulia National Unification Museum

The National Unification Museum in Alba Iulia hosts an exhibition of documents, photographs and maps on the 1940 Second Vienna Award and the atrocities that Transylvanian Romanians were subjected to by the Hungarian authorities, Mediafax reports. A spokesman for the museum, Liviu Zgarciu, told the agency on Monday, that the exhibition, titled “1940 – A Tragic Year in Romanian History. 70 Years since the Second Vienna Award”, comprises maps, documents, charts and photographs from the archive. “The exhibition proposes to evoke, by means of documents, maps, charts and photographs, the dramatic moments that Romania faced in the summer of 1940. These include, first and foremost, the Second Vienna Award, the international act of August 30, 1940, following which Romania was forced, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, to relinquish almost half of Transylvania’s territory to Horthy’s Hungary,” Zgarciu stated. The exhibition is running until October 25.

Byzantine concerts by the...

Mad Men, meanwhile, marked its third consecutive win in the best TV drama series category. “We can’t believe we are here. We want to thank the (Television) Academy for recognising us again,” said the show’s creator Matthew Weiner.

The 62nd annual Primetime Emmy Awards, held in Los Angeles, took on a fresh look today as a slew of new shows dominated the television industry’s highest honours. Seven of the eight major acting awards went to either newcomers or different stars than last year. Jim Parsons, the geeky physicist on The Big Bang Theory, was named the best comedy actor, ending the two-year Emmy reign of 30 Rock’s Alec Baldwin.

Edie Falco took home her first comedy actress Emmy for Nurse Jackie, beating Australian actress Toni Collette. Kyra Sedgwick won her first Emmy after five tries for playing a tough police detective in drama series The Closer. “You think you don’t have a chance in hell of winning after five times ... I’m beyond my wildest dreams,” Sedgwick said after accepting her award. Even the reality competition slot had a new champion, with Top...

What the Venice film festival lacks in star power this year it hopes to make up for with an unusually young list of directors and the appearance of some of Hollywood’s more enigmatic figures. With the irrepressible Quentin Tarantino heading the jury that hands out the coveted Golden Lion at the end of the Sept. 1-11 event, it is fitting that mavericks and misfits more than movie royalty look set to steal the headlines. “In a way Venice can still hold itself up and say ‘we’ve got the edgier American people coming, as you have Vincent Gallo and Monte Hellman, for example,” said Jay Weissberg, film critic for trade publication Variety who is based in Italy. “It makes it look as if they are holding up the art side of cinema.”

It is a calculated gamble at a time when Venice, the world’s oldest film festival and one of its most prestigious, is struggling to fight off competition from Toronto, which overlaps with Venice and features many of the same movies.

Its location in North America, relatively low costs and the presence of so many industry executives looking to deal...

Mamaia 2010 Music Festival top prize won by Daniela Mihaela Cojocaru

Daniela Mihaela Cojocaru won the Mamaia 2010 Trophy, granted in the 40th edition of the Pop Music Festival, after having performed “Trurli”, composed by Vasile Vasilache, Mediafax reports. In the Performance section, the top prize was won by Cristina Florentina Vasiu, who sang “Suflet gol” (Empty Heart – songwriter: Petru Mircea), the 2nd prize went to Rodica Elena Tudor, singing “Tu n-ai avut curaj” (You didn’t have the courage – songwriter: Serban Georgescu), and the third to Cristina Andreea Stroe, singing “Dor de viata” (Lust for Life – from Aura Urziceanu’s repertoire). In the Songwriting section, the first prize went to the song “La umbra ta” (In your shade) – song and lyrics by Dragos Dinca, sung by Lucia Carmen Dumitrescu. The second prize was claimed by “Misterioasa mea” (My Mystery Girl) – song by Nicolae Caragia, lyrics by Daniela Doroftei, singer Mihai Bajenaru, while the third was won by “O viata de artist” (An Artist’s Life) – song by Marcel Dragomir, lyrics by Eugen Dumitru, singer...

The exhibit entitled in its world pilgrimages simply “Romania” will be shown at the peasant Museum as of September 2 under the name My Romanian Journal. It will run only for a week and it comprises of 130 photographs. “I love voyages. Voyages where the going from one place to the other informs, allows one to go deeper. One day, in May of the year 1958, it became clear to me that to follow the Danube from its source to its end was one of those inevitable voyages,” reads a quote from famous photographer Inge Morath on the exhibition prospectus. Inge Morath’s dream of travelling the length of the Danube River, begun in 1958, was not realized until 1995. In 1958, six of the nations bordering the river were led by Communist governments which placed severe limitations on Western photojournalists. As she later wrote, “Either one was refused a visa right away, or one got one only good for transit, or for a stay of one to three days but with restrictions as to the places one could visit.” Morath was denied even a transit visa to Hungary. To her surprise, however, she received permission to...