Last night's Dream Within a Dream event at Birmingham's Ikon Eastside was fun. As well as being a Halloween-themed night, it was also the venue's Closing Party for the season. The current incarnation of Ikon Eastside is a disused factory in Digbeth, winter is upon us and disused factories in Digbeth get bloody cold in winter. It all makes sense to me. The main event was organised by 7-Inch Cinema, Birmingham-based [I think] organisers of hip and groovy underground film events. I missed the first hour's worth on account of tardiness and random acts of raconteuring, but I caught Black [...]

“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.”- Edgar Allan PoeTonight I'll be going to this:Dream Within a Dream is a special closing party in collaboration with Ikon Gallery to bid farewell to Ikon Eastside until 2008. Taking place on Halloween, Ikon and 7inch invite all restless spirits into the warehouse for a night of gothic thrills. Diversions for the evening include live scores by Broadcast and Black Galaxy, guest DJ Julian House from the Focus Group and a specially-created installation by filmficciones. Please feel free to dress appropriately…I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

For the uninitiated, Jeffrey Lewis is an anti-folk singer-songwriter from New York's Lower East Side who writes quirky, intelligent and painfully catchy songs delivered in a fast-talking, sotto voce style. His website says his material "mixes 60s acoustic psychedelia like Pearls Before Swine with the experimental art-punk of the Fall and the urban lyricism of Lou Reed, sounding a bit like if Woody Guthrie fronted Sonic Youth." I'd prefer to describe it as sunny nihilism, but that's just me trying to be succinct. It's my new hobby.He also moonlight's as a comic-book artist - and a rather gifted one at [...]

Go to a gig, read a book or watch a film it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that true Characters are few and far between. Where once there were performers, writers and actors who went to the trouble of living a little before they went to the trouble of becoming famous, we now live in a world that seems to impatiently skip that intermediate step. You only have to compare a 1970s Parkinson interview with its modern-day equivalent to see it in action. For actors like Robert Mitchum or Cary Grant, “Before They Were Famous” meant something more than an [...]