You may only just be getting over your hangover, but don’t hang up your dancing shoes just yet.

You may only just be getting over your hangover, but don’t hang up your dancing shoes just yet. Here’s where to party like a local in 2010, as chosen by our experts Read part two - June to December January Ituren and Zubieta Basque carnivals ,Spain Late at night, the attic lights are still on at my neighbour’s farm. Sheepskins and lace petticoats are tugged from wooden chests

Highlights of festivities around the world

Towards the end of last week, as a kind of by-product of talking about the top films of the noughties, some colleagues and I found ourselves talking about those Hollywood actors who were big or biggish at the beginning of the decade, but of whom we suddenly realise we had heard not quite so much. One of these, grimly, was Brittany Murphy, who has died of a heart attack at her Los Angeles home at the age of 32. Thanks to what appear to be its hyper-alert network of informants among the emergency services, TMZ.com got the story first

Is the independent festival on its way out?

Hollywood actors such as Ben Stiller campaigned for The Cove’s inclusion, despite hunters’ attempts to ban it A controversial documentary about Japan’s annual dolphin slaughter is due to be screened in Tokyo tomorrow, despite last-ditch attempts by hunters to have it banned. The Cove, an award-winning movie directed by Louie Psihoyos, is the highlight of the Tokyo international film festival, whose organisers belatedly included it in the schedule only after pressure from Hollywood actors such as Ben Stiller. Fishermen in Taiji, the town featured in the film, have been in “continuous contact” with the Japanese government in an attempt to get the screening cancelled, the Guardian has learned

Fonda regrets signing letter objecting to Toronto film festival’s decision to showcase films from Tel Aviv Jane Fonda has apologised for signing a petition decrying the decision by organisers of the Toronto film festival to showcase films from the Israeli capital, Tel Aviv. In a post on the Huffington Post blog yesterday, Fonda said she had signed the letter, which has been fiercely criticised by Hollywood luminaries such as Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman and Sacha Baron Cohen, “without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn’t exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue”.

Verve Photo has posted a short piece on documentary photographer Sheila Zhao.Margarita Jimeno spent several years following Gogol Bordello, a gypsy-punk bank.

Passionate Italian fan steals limelight at Venice press conference for The Men Who Stare at Goats George Clooney is used to being swooned over by adoring fans, so it was with typical cool humour that he dealt with a very public proposition at the Venice film festival. During the press conference for his new film, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Italian fan Mauro Casciari stripped down to his underpants, which had the words: “George, pick me,” felt-tipped onto the crotch.

Oliver Stone has provoked much hostility from US commentators at the Venice premiere of his latest documentary, South of the Border Rightwing US commentators were outraged when Oliver Stone took to the red carpet in Venice this week with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the main subject of Stone’s latest documentary feature. One can only imagine their response if he manages to pull off his next plan: an interview film with Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad