A treat for you, dear readers.  Okay, the weather's rubbish but hopefully you've managed to get away for a bit.  If you haven't, I hope you have something lined up.  For those of you who have neither, book yourself a ticket to the Barbican cinema for tomorrow and do yourself the favour of settling in to watch one of the most romantic, most beautiful and heartwarming films ever made.

La Nouvelle Vague changed cinema.  Directors like Jean-Luc Godard and Agnes Varda brought us young screen gods such as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.  Francois Truffaut wrote the essay that started it all, and this film, Jules & Jim, may just be his masterpiece.

The titular characters are best friends whose relationship is put to the ultimate test by age, war and the love of Jeanne Moreau.  This was the film that made her an international star, and never has she been more innocent, beautiful, sexy and intelligent.  She embodied what the French New Wave was.  Made eight years before 1968 and the student riots, this film presents a Paris that is full of whimsy, bare floorboards, bicycles, cigarettes and sex.  Some may argue that there are no better examples of French cinema than this.  In a way, they might just be right.

Jules & Jim plays at the Barbican tomorrow.

It's nice when people from the internet can come together in real life and put on a do.  It's nice that you can go along and get to know some of these people that you've only known from afar.  It's also nice when you're in a fab location and are being entertained by more than a handful of interesting folk and being fed by some master chefs.

Nice To Meet You is set up by Art Wednesday, an arts and culture website that promotes what's new to do in the city.  Thereafter, they set up their own event.  Nice To Meet You

#1 proved such a success that they are back for a second round, and #2 looks set to prove similar fates.

The one night only event takes place next Wednesday, and is led by Ben Hammersley.  The polymathic broadcaster is an internet technologist, Editor-at-Large at Wired UK, the Prime Minister's Ambassador to East London's TechCity and erstwhile war correspondent and photographer.  Pixie Geldof will provide the night's entertainment with her band Violet, with a barbeque on offer by speciality caterers Funthyme.  It all sounds like a jolly good time, provided the weather stays as nice as the ambience is sure to be - the venue is Dalston Roof Park.  Further dates are pencilled in for August and September, with talks by experts from fields as diverse as business, art and advertising; it's definitely one to keep a close eye on.

Nice To Meet You #2 is at Dalston Roof Park from 1830 on Wednesday 11 July.

It's a funny time in London art and culture. Of course, we have the great Summer of sport to come, and along with it a series of knockout exhibitions, films and cultural exploit. The yesr kicked off a storm too and Londoners and London visitors have had a wide array of choice. The newly-expanded Photographers' Gallery opens this Thursday with a large-scale show by Edward Burtynsky, but until the season begins anew with breakneck speed (and until the weather begins to deliver on the promises of this past weekend), let's have a momentary respite and retire to the cinema with one of the all-tims greatest, recently restored an screening at twelve of the city's finest cinemas.

La Grande Illusion is one of the trilogy of truly great films made by French director and artistic heir Jean Renoir. What should be a dark and depressing story is treated witha lightness of touch and is imbued with Renoir's trademark empathy and warmth, a skill unparalleled as a film director. Three French soldiers are being held captive by the Germans during the Great War and the film charts their attempts at escape.  Made in 1937, on the eve of the unforeseeable tragedies that lay ahead, and a memorial on the last great tragedy, there is an uncommon prescience on display here.

There's the rub.  La Grande Illusion isn't a swashbuckling yarn, or a comedy of errors, and nor is it either a simple war film or anti-war film.  Each character is painfully realised and played with a depth that is rare on screen - if you find it, it is generally the actor who steals the entire show.  This is a film about not being right and not being wrong.  It's a film about doing what you do, however disturbing that may be, and knowing that that's all anybody else is doing.  It is a moral tale, without heroes or villains.  It's a film about people, in all their personal complexities, and the like will never be made again.

La Grande Illusio n is on limited release across the country now.