Peacefest, which was started to protest against the US-led war on Iraq, could be criticized for its hippy chic and idealism, but the festival benefits local charities and is good fun to boot
By Jules Quartly
Peacefest was spawned by opposition to the Iraq war and has since become the country's biggest alternative music event. This year there will be a record number of bands and as usual, tomorrow night around dusk, everyone will be encouraged to hold hands and dance in a circle repeating the word peace.

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By Diane Baker
Japanese choreographer and artist Saburo Teshigawara returns to the stage of Novel Hall tonight with his masterpiece Pages in Bones, which displays his virtuosity as a choreographer, a dancer and a lighting designer.

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By Jules Quartly
Promoting the recreational use of marijuana hit a new high in the media this week with further reports of raids on celebrities suspected of endorsing the drug. The stars' homes and companies were searched, urine was collected, hairs were plucked for evidence of illegal drug use and alleged drug paraphernalia was carted away for further investigation.

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By Noah Buchan
Claire Cunningham, a physically disabled dancer from the UK, expertly flips, twirls and delicately moves around using a harness, which illustrates that disabilities are no barrier to sublime movement.

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By Gareth Price
Back in 1996, a great perk of being a music journalist was being woken by the postman, him (or her) being unable to fit 12" slabs of vinyl, courtesy of various record and promotion companies, through the average suburban postbox. But one of the most memorable records of 1996 left outside this reporter's door in the snow was BT and Tori Amos' Blue Skies remixed by a variety of folks including Deep Dish and Rabbit in the Moon. And an up-and-coming bloke called Paul van Dyk.

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By Marcus Aurelius
Baltimore, Maryland used to bill itself as "The City That Reads." In the early 1990s, violent crime, a high teenage pregnancy rate, the illicit drug trade and the highest homicide rate per capita in America flipped that slogan to "The City That Breeds" or "The City That Bleeds."

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This FBI flick doesn't have much cinematic gloss and there isn't a lot of action, but it appeals for the sheer banality of its protagonist
By Manohla Dargis
When John le Carre appropriated a nursery rhyme for his 1974 book about spies and spy-catchers, he borrowed just three words, "tinker, tailor, soldier," then sexed up the whole thing by adding a fourth word, "spy." The new film Breach, about the FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Philip Hanssen, who sold secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia for more than two decades, suggests that it's time to dust off the rest of that same rhyme: "rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief." Now in prison, where he's serving a life sentence, Hanssen was a little of each; he was also greedy, pathetic, malevolent — a creep's creep.

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A stellar cast goes slumming and comes up with a potpourri of a murder thriller
By Manohla Dargis
The glib entertainment Fracture offers an assortment of tasty treats, notably the spectacle of that crafty scene-stealer Anthony Hopkins mixing it up with that equally cunning screen nibbler Ryan Gosling. They're beautiful slummers, these two, as well oiled and practiced as those great old-studio dissemblers who worked a soundstage to their and Louis B. Mayer's advantage. The only difference is that once upon a time Joan Crawford would have whispered dangerous nothings into Hopkins's ear, not Gosling.

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Michael Apted's portrayal of William Wilberforce and his anti-slavery crusade is just a bit too good to be true
By Manohla Dargis
Amazing Grace, a prettified take on the life and times of the 18th-century reformer William Wilberforce, carries a strong whiff of piety. It isn't a bad smell; there are notes of roses and treacle in the mix, but also elements of sweat and pain. Wilberforce, born in 1759, was an abolitionist for much of his adult life and helped bring about the end of the slave trade in the British Empire and then slavery itself. He was an evangelical Christian and social conservative who rallied for animal rights and against trade unions, which makes him a tough nut to crack. It's no wonder he makes a first-rate movie saint.

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For decades, Chinese filmmakers haven't made a major feature film about one of their country's biggest wartime atrocities: the Nanjing massacre of 1937. Now at least two directors are preparing to make a movie set against the Japanese military's brutal killings in the former Chinese capital.

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By Ho Yi
Mary's Bistro Cafe Australian Cuisine (美麗詩澳洲餐廳)

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By Ron Brownlow
Belly Wash (貝利瓦許)

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Theater

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May 18 to May 24
1. Jasmine Leong (梁靜茹) and Kissing the Future of Love (親親) with 15.4 percent of sales

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