Colourful parades, masks, costumes and plenty of music, food and fun. It is the Masopust season with many events taking place around the country. One of them, the Bohemian Carnevale, is opening on Friday with a big dinner at the Prague restaurant Vojanův dvůr. A traditional pork feast, a carnival ball for children and a mask competition are among the events on the programme list until 24 February.
To celebrate Valentine’s Day on Saturday, you have a number of options. You can join the Saturday workshop at Kampa Museum, create your Valentine’s card and look into the private life of several Czech artists. If you have extra money to spend, you can enjoy a romantic evening at Mandarin Oriental with aromatherapy bath, candlelit dinner, sparkling wine and chocolate-dipped strawberries. It is recommended to bring a partner. Or you can go wild on your Valentine’s Day with the Canadian indie rock band Islands at Klub 007 in Strahov.
But if you don’t want to wait that long for a concert, you can go to Palác Akropolis tomorrow to check out the New York-based punk and rock band Girls Against Boys. Do not expect any girls, only boys with electric bass guitars.
Multilingual singer and Czech Republic’s first karaoke champion, Gail Whitmore, is presenting her first 2009 Human Jukebox music show this week. Gail knows lyrics to more than 1,000 songs. You can request any of them, and she will sing them for you – unaccompanied and from memory. Anything from rock, rap, opera, gospel, to TV commercials. To see this impressive show, go to Divadlo Na Zábradlí on Sunday at 7pm. You can read more about it in the weekly column Do It on Thursday.
A new performance with English subtitles is opening in Švandovo divadlo on Friday. A Month in the Country written by Russian playwright Ivan Turgenev is the late 1840s story of Natalya who bored with her husband and her lover starts a relationship with her son’s young tutor. Another comedy also with English subtitles is on the schedule for Saturday. Elton John’s glasses is a play by David Farr about a family reunion, football and rock music.
The experimental NoD space stages a project by Jakub Kopecký and Pascal Silondi called Údolí (Valley). Using 3D animations and laser techniques, the authors look at the existence of man in virtual reality. On Sunday 8pm.
Do you enjoy scary movies? Can you handle watching violence, sex and horror? If yes is the answer, you should not miss the Shockproof Festival at Kino Aero. You can start today with the US films Brain Damage and Eaten Alive and end with The Butcher on Sunday. Here is a short invitation.
The story of California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, could also be shocking for some cinema visitors. But I recommend watching Milk directed by Gus Van Sant (Paranoid Park, Elephant, Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho) with Sean Penn in the main role.
Milk is based on actual events and so is Bryan Singer’s film Valkyrie also entering the Czech cinemas this week. The movie takes place during the WWII when a group of German soldiers attempt to assassinate Hitler. One of the conspirators is colonel Claus von Stauffenberg played by Tom Cruise.
Czech director Marie Poledňáková is back with another family film. You Kiss Like God (Líbáš jako bůh) is about a high school teacher Helena who handles her students and her extended family quite well but both become overwhelming once she falls in love with František. The movie features some of the Czech leading actors like Jiří Bartoška, Eva Holubová, Oldřich Kaiser and Barbora Hrzánová.
Kateřina Heilmannis a staff writer and translator at the Monitor. She
likes writing about cycling and culture.
You can reach her at [email protected]
