The Time Out London hot list
The biggest and best things happening in London this week
Summer's in full swing, but there's plenty more to get excited about besides the warm weather. This July is jam-packed with top-notch events, unmissable theatre openings, blockbuster film releases and more superb pop-ups than you can shake an organic Bratwurst at.
Below is a handful of great happenings in the city just this week. Got a tip for something hot happening next week? Tweet us your suggestion and it might just make our top ten!
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The ten hottest things to do this week
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Everyman: The Power of Summer
Until Sun Aug 31
Battersea Power Station, SW8 5BN
Cemeteries, swimming pools, car-park roofs. Outdoor cinemas are popping up in all sorts of nooks this summer. But for a killer location, nothing beats Battersea Power Station. For seven weeks from July 10, Everyman is opening a 250-seat outdoor cinema in the iconic complex. With a 1,000- capacity bar and the Street Feast crew bringing Yum Buns and jerk chicken, we reckon this will be a destination for films and an in-between-festival top-up.
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Hackney WickED Art Festival
Friday-SundayHackney WickED Riviera, Forman’s Fish Island, Stour Road, E3 2NT
Back for its seventh year in 2014, this energetic three-day festival across Hackney Wick and Fish Island gives the public a chance to explore the labyrinth of creative activity in east London. The line-up will feature a broad selection of art-focused talks, workshops, exhibitions and tours, plus stalls to browse, performances to be wowed by and street food to keep energy levels where they should be.
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The Cornershop
From SaturdayThe Cornershop, 19 Wellington Row, E2 7BB
It has taken artist Lucy Sparrow seven months to create soft, furry replicas of more than 4,000 pieces of merchandise for her latest project, but now her vision is in place and she's ready to share it with us: a shop in which every item, from the tampons to the till, is made from fabric. A derelict cornershop in Bethnal Green has been lovingly restored to house Sparrow's cuddly creations: fuzzy fishfingers, plump pick 'n' mix, spongy Spam and luxuriously soft loo roll, all in stock for the whole of August.
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Opso
Four stars10 Paddington Street, W1U 5QL
This Greek spot in Marylebone didn’t exactly hit the ground running. In Opso’s first month it took me three visits to find the kitchen in full tilt. Visit one had a partial menu. On visit two the restaurant was unexpectedly closed. A stoic third attempt was rewarded with some excellent meze dishes. Opso blends its modern architectural look with a contemporary menu of small plate dishes – mezédes – that are pimped up almost beyond recognition.
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The Nether
Until Saturday August 9Royal Court Theatre, 50-51 Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
One of the myriad ways in which life was simpler before the internet is that theatre-makers didn’t feel they had to portray the bloody thing on stage: it’s fundamentally impossible to make some bloke looking at a laptop dramatically interesting.The genius of US playwright Jennifer Haley’s multi award winning ‘The Nether’ is that it uses the medium of sci-fi to pep up its points about the web, but it uses it lightly.
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Beach Rugby
Friday and SaturdayWood Wharf, 100 Preston's Rd, E14 9SB
Last year Beach Rugby took over Covent Garden's piazza with a drop of 200 tons of sand and this year they're coming for east London! In Wood Wharf, the area of Canary Wharf where many a pop-up has popped, there will be a pitch large enough for five-a-side touch-rugby tournaments. Day one will see teams (entry by donation) battle for the London Beach Rugby Cup 2014, a magnum of champagne, a case of Doom Bar beer and SunGod sunnies.
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Found Footage Festival
Friday and SaturdayLeicester Square Theatre, 6 Leicester Place, WC2H 7BX
This cult American showcase of odd and hysterical undiscovered videos is a hoot. Hosts Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett (whose credits include The Onion and 'The Late Show with David Letterman') introduce clips from their 20-year-old collection of VHS videos found at garage sales and thrift shops. Utterly bizarre and hysterically funny, it's like sifting through YouTube for funny vids, but way better.
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Visions Festival
SaturdayVarious venues
After a storming (and scorching) Year One, hip one-day festival Visions returns to Hackney for more fun in the August sun. Across four intimate venues in the vicinity of London Fields, Visions presents musicians including two big headliners: hard-partying pop-punk Andrew WK and Minneapolis trip hop brooders Poliça.
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Gilbert & George: Scapegoating Pictures for London
Until Thursday August 28White Cube Bermondsey, 144-152 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3TQ
Never have kisses seemed more self-consciously sardonic than in Gilbert & George’s ‘Scapegoating Pictures for London’. Each multi-panel photomontage bears the artists’ signatures along with a couple of Xs. These are constants in a shifting sea of inflammatory signifiers. It’s the old contemporary art ‘light touch paper, stand well back’ trick, repeated, scaled up and repeated again for good measure.
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Shuffle Festival
Wednesday-SundayTower Hamlets Cemetery Park, Southern Grove, E3 4PX
Director and local boy Danny Boyle’s Shuffle Festival returns to Tower Hamlets, offering up a selection of classic films – often accompanied by Q&As – on a big screen set up in the atmospheric environs of the cemetery park.
Looking for more fun in London?
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