Metro Life - FREE Thursday

Don't miss Metro Life magazine, your brilliant 100-page guide to going out in London, FREE with Thursday's Evening Standard...

In this week's issue:

*FREE Odeon cinema ticket for every reader

*Kate Winslet, who could do no wrong after Titanic, talks about what it was like afterwards when she suddenly experienced the full force of a media backlash.

The dictator Stalin and the composer Prokofiev both died 50 years ago this year. A major season on the South Bank analyses the tyrant's influence on the musician's work.

*Richard Billingham The photographer who shot to prominence with his series entitled Ray's A Laugh has forsaken gritty kitchen sink life in Birmingham for new pictures on nature.

*Why do all the best comedians these days seem to be Irish? As St Patrick's Day approaches, Dara O'Briain and the cream of Irish comedy attempt to explain.

PLUS

*George Clooney makes his directorial debut in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind; Sir Ian McKellen returns to the West End in Strindberg's Dance of Death; Atlanta soul queen India Arie at the Apollo Hammersmith; Funky Finn Jimi Tenor at the Jazz Cafe; the LSO performs Mahler's Second Symphony; contemporary British art at Tate Britain's Days Like These; the Daily Mail Ideal Home Show is back at Earl's Court; Pete Tong and Radio 1 DJs do their bit for Comic Relief; TV looks at the history of style in Designing the Decades on BBC2.