Five Things Listing

From the much awaited premier of The Men Who Stare at Goats and film master Jacques Audiard's latest work The Prophet to less known rich pickings from world cinema, the London Film Festival 2009 promises to be excellent. We'll report back from the screening rooms in our next issue.

Truelove's Gutter
Richard Hawley

Armando Iannucci's vicious satire against the politicians in Whitehall and the White House. If you are looking for a deeply meaningful dissection of imperialism you won't find it here, but for a satisfying lampooning of modern politicians' spineless self-interest you could do far worse.

It's Valentine's Day 1962, two years after season one ended, Kennedy is now president and the Cuban missile crisis looms. This hugely atmospheric and gripping television series continues with marital breakdowns and looming political upheavals.

Newspaper archive
Online

Read the first issue of The Chartist from 2 February 1839, or accounts of the Matchgirls' Strike, on this massively expanded archive of newspapers both local and national from the 19th century.

Radical Nature
Barbican, London
From 19 June

Subtitled Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009, this exhibition will create a "fantastical landscape" with solutions and utopian visions to address environmental changes.

Nobel winning author Wole Soyinka's play is set in Nigeria at the end of the British Empire. A great chief has died, and now his horseman is to kill himself to accompany him to the land of the dead - until the British rulers intervene. This moving play mixes Nigerian culture with Greek tragedy.

Mongrel's debut album, Better Than Heavy, is a powerful fusion of hip-hop and indie. The Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy meets the Clash, and a love child of last year's Love Music Hate Racism carnival.

The supergroup includes John McClure of Reverand and the Makers, Drew McConnell from Babyshambles, ex-Arctic Monkeys bassist Andy Nicholson and rapper Lowkey.

David Hare's witty new play Gethsemane roots the betrayal of the Labour government in its willingness to abandon its principles in exchange for the good opinion and cash of the wealthy.

An exploration of the work of architect, designer, writer and artist Le Corbusier (pictured), the season contains exhibitions, talks, symposiums and debates about his legacy of urban planning and design.

Amandla, the Xhosa word for "power", is a collection of music celebrating the South African victory over apartheid.

It charts the lives of those living under the brutally racist system, forced to move to the townships and industrial centres to work as servants or miners for their white rulers.

It is a celebration of resistance, and the then-imagined future of blacks in South Africa.

After its run in the Live Theatre Newcastle this play by Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall is based on a true story about a group of miners who in 1934 joined an art appreciation group. What results is a group of workers who get the chance to explore and create art for the first time.