Evening Chronicle

The Best Festive Food ; Advertisement Feature

AVOID the stress of the supermarket this Christmas and make use of the wealth of local food suppliers and services we have in this region. Here's a round up of the best.

It's Tyne for Fusion Maestros ; Alan Nichol has the Latest Musings On the Roots Music Scene

THIS week, the spotlight is directed at two fusion-style bands of quite differing backgrounds but with similar approaches to their music. Both bands have powerful yet contrasting influences which are wrought into their own distinctive sound and both can be seen at The Sage Gateshead.

A Touch of the Caribbean

TOMORROW night brings some much-needed sunshine to the Tyne. Not literally, of course, just music from the Caribbean island of Jamaica. The night is billed as a Boss Sounds tribute to Bob Marley and includes sets by the "Queen of Lovers Rock" Janet Kay (of Silly Games fame) and the crying tenor of Michael Prophet.

Opera's Golden Shdowsa

WERTHER, OPERA NORTH, THEATRE ROYAL, NEWCASTLE, ALSO TOMORROW Werther. Goethe. Massenet. This is smartypants opera which demands a degree in cleverness just to explain the title! Our hero, Werther (think Frankfurter) is a classic silly sausage who is insanely in love with Charlotte, who promised her dying mother she'd marry Albert.

Diversity Are Back

TICKETS for Britain's Got Talent winners Diversity's first full gig in Newcastle go on sale tomorrow. The group's leader Ashley Banjo has promised a night to remember with Bringing A Toy Story To Life, which is at the City Hall on April 1. "I wanted to have a theme that was very universal. I was thinking through loads of things, and the toy theme came to me," he told the Chronicle in an exclusive interview. "I thought about the different possibilities and they are limitless. The show will hav...

Saint's Day Toon Tunes ; Richard Yates Previews a Concert Featuring the Work of Geordie Composer Charles Avison

THE spirit of Newcastle's renowned 18th-century composer Charles Avison is certain to be looking on as music lovers gather at St Nicholas' Cathedral this weekend for a concert to honour music's patron saint. Sunday is St Cecilia's Day and the Avison Ensemble - the Newcastle-based period instrument orchestra charged with preserving and promoting the works of their home-grown composer - will be joined by the cathedral's choristers for a candlelit concert. Avison, who was a rival to Handel, is n...

Ripping Yarn of Pirates

Fiction PIRATE Latitudes by Michael Crichton is published in hardback by Harper Collins, priced pounds 18.99. Available now. The late Michael Crichton's watchword in all of his fictional works was research, and the posthumously-published Pirate Latitudes is a believable telling of swashbuckling based on the story of a real-life privateer.

Book Charts

Battle in Dragon Kingdom ; Dragon Age: Origins

Publisher: Electronic Arts Format: PC DVD, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 PRICES: pounds 34.99, pounds 49.99 and pounds 49.99 IT'S that time of year again when gamers are faced with seemly impossible choices of which new games to buy or, for those lucky enough to get all, play. Well if you're after a game with good gameplay, descent graphics and seemingly endless entertainment then you could do worse than buying Dragon Age: Origins.

Game Chart

Game News

IT'S been reported that up to one million Xbox Live gamers have been banned for accessing the online service by using a console that has been modified to play pirated games. Although the bans are part of Microsoft's annual sweep in November for modified consoles, the timing was also critical around the launch of the multi-player smash-hit Modern Warfare 2. It is thought that illegal copies of the game had been leaked onto the internet, and gamers with modified consoles were playing the pirate...

Adverture Unlimited

Title: LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues. Platform: Xbox 360. Price: pounds 39.99 WHEN you pick up a LEGO title, you know what you're going to get. And in this case, that's a good thing. The blocky characters have managed to carve themselves a tidy little niche, nestling somewhere between platforming adventures, movie tie-ins and kids' titles, yet still delivering a unique brand of tongue-in-cheek humour that ensures the appeal isn't strictly limited to the youngsters. And Indy's ...

A Slip-Up On Screenplay

Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs (Cert U, 90 mins, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Family/Comedy/Action, also available to buy DVD pounds 19.99/Ice Age 1-3 DVD pounds 24.99/Blu-ray pounds 28.99/ Ice Age 1-3 Bluray pounds 44.99) Starring: John Leguizamo, Ray Romano, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Simon Pegg. SID the sloth (voiced by Leguizamo) yearns for a family so he "appropriates" a nest of soon-to-hatch dinosaur eggs. Manny the woolly mammoth (Romano)...

Machines March On

Terminator Salvation (Cert 12, 110 mins, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Sci-Fi/Action/Thriller, also available to buy DVD pounds 19.99/Quadrilogy DVD Box Set pounds 34.99/Blu-ray pounds 24.99/Skull Blu-ray Box Set pounds 74.99) Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, Anton Yelchin, Jadagrace Berry, Common, Michael Ironside, Helena Bonham Carter. JOHN Connor (Bale) leads the dwindling human race against Skynet and its relentless army of Terminators, f...

Thrilling New Chapter in Vampire Love Story

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (12A, 130 mins) Romance/Drama/Action/ Horror. Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Rachelle Lefevre, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning, Ed Gathegi. Director: Chris Weitz. Contains violence. NOT since Harry Potter first cast a spell over cinema audiences has a franchise based on a series of best-selling novels been as completely critic-proof as The Twi...

A Tale of Bluff and Bluster

The Informant! (15, 108 mins) Comedy/Drama/Thriller. Matt Damon, Melanie Lynskey, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Patton Oswalt, Clancy Brown, Frank Welker, Eddie Jemison. Director: Steven Soderbergh. Contains swearing and violence. WE all want to do the right thing, but few of us ever put ourselves on the line for the sake of a greater good.

Also Released

THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE (LA PREMIER JOUR DU RESTE DE TA VIE) (15, 113 mins) Robert (Jacques Gamblin) and Marie-Jeanne (Zabou Breitman) have three very different yet talented children: fiercely independent Albert (Pio Marmai), wine-loving Raphael (Marc- Andre Grondin) and rebellious and increasingly sexualised Fleur (Deborah Francois). The fates of these five people unfold in Remi Bezancon's drama, which traces 12 tumultuous years by focusing on five key dates, where tensions co...

Coming Next Week ...

Coens' Serious Stuff

A Serious Man (15, 105 mins) Comedy/Drama. Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Sari Lennick, Fred Melamed, Jessica McManus, Aaron Wolff, David Kang. Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen. Contains swearing, sex and violence. IF fortune truly favours the brave, it's no surprise that the hen- pecked, mildmannered mensch at the centre of Joel and Ethan Coen's new black comedy is pummelled senseless by bad luck. Set in a Jewish community in mid-1960s Minneapolis reminiscent of the film-maker brothers' own ch...

Pick of the Day

Children in Need 2009 (7.00pm) Terry Wogan, Tess Daly and Alesha Dixon host the charity extravaganza, featuring a performance by the Strictly Come Dancing stars and a preview of the Doctor Who Christmas special. Mastermind (8.00pm) John Humphrys welcomes four contestants to the chair as they tackle questions on their specialist subjects, the History of the NFL 1920-1974, Henry VII, the Twilight Novels by Stephenie Meyer and the Architecture of Aberdeen Since 1800.