Although the French national holiday Bastille Day officially takes place on July 14, Boston residents and visitors will get to celebrate it early when Harvard Square hosts a marathon block party this Sunday, July 13, to commemorate the start of the French Revolution in 1789.

The assorted activities scheduled during the family-oriented event include attractions for children, ranging from a parade with the one and only Curious George to face painting, as well as highlights for adults, such as scrumptious French cuisine provided by Sandrine’s Bistro, Chez Henri, Brasserie Jo, the Elephant Walk, Rialto, and Petit Robert.

Attendees will also have a rare opportunity to observe a traditional waiters race called La Course des Garçon de Café, which will feature a pair of free round-trip tickets on Jet Blue as a grand prize. To top the day off, music from Boston French Party’s DJ Kamal will allow dancers to work off some of the calories ingested, thanks to the assorted food available throughout the day.

If this stateside celebration of Bastille Day sounds as appealing to you as it does to me, visit Harvard Square.com to learn more about what to expect on Holyoke Street this Sunday. The festivities will last from 3pm to 10pm.

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Those excited to attend need not worry about having to wait another entire year for the event to roll around again, however. It’s back on the Harvard Square roster this Sunday, May 11th — or at least it is as I write. So, before you throw the kids in the car or on the bus/train and head all the way over to Cambridge, take a moment or two to verify MayFair 2008 is indeed still in the works at the official website. If it is, then…

Gather the family, dress warm and casual, and head over to Harvard Square in Cambridge for its 25th Annual MayFair festival. From 12pm-6pm, attendees will enjoy a diverse selection of activities, entertainment, shopping opportunities, and foodstuff, all for the admission price of $0. According to organizers, this year’s MayFair features “six stages of LIVE entertainment, 30+ Restaurant Vendors, hundreds of Street Vendors selling artwork, jewelry, vintage clothing, neighborhood sidewalk sales.”

Harvard Square is a hop, skip, and jump from the Charles River, as well, providing easy access to an invigorating, nature-filled walk if the fair gets overbearing. That’s not uncommon when there are huge crowds, almost a given at peak times during any outdoor event in the thriving Harvard area.

Visit HarvardSquare.com for detailed information about the community, in addition to a complete list of all that’s in store on Sunday.

Post from: The Boston Traveler

From 12pm-6pm, attendees will enjoy a diverse selection of activities, entertainment, shopping opportunities, and foodstuff, all for the admission price of $0.

According to organizers, this year’s MayFair features “six stages of LIVE entertainment, 30+ Restaurant Vendors, hundreds of Street Vendors selling artwork, jewelry, vintage clothing, neighborhood sidewalk sales and Chalk on the Walk.” And, that’s not even to mention the free shorts programs that will be screened at the top of each hour from noon to 4pm at the Brattle Theatre (40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, 617-876-6837).

As of this writing, the Weather Channel forecast for Sunday is a pleasing upper 40s to high 50s, with just a slight chance of showers. So, although the temperatures sound agreeable for puttering around outdoors and sampling the many, many delights of MayFair, remember to pack an umbrella, too, just in case.

Harvard Square is a hop, skip, and jump from the Charles River, as well, providing easy access to an invigorating, nature-filled walk if the fair gets overbearing. That’s not uncommon when there are huge crowds, almost a given at peak times during any outdoor event in the thriving Harvard area.

Visit HarvardSquare.com for detailed information about the community, in addition to a complete list of all that’s in store on Sunday.

Post from: The Boston Traveler

At about 2:30am, (un)lucky residents and passersby had the opportunity to witness fire literally shooting out of a Harvard Square manhole and ten feet into the air at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Dunster Street. A series of four or more explosions were the result of fire beneath the ground, and fortunately, no one was hurt.

The fire eventually extinguished itself around 8:30am, about five hours after the Cambridge Fire Department responded to the emergency. According to Deputy Fire Chief James F. Burns, the culprit was oil in a subterranean utility tunnel that was set aflame by an explosion after an electrical cable malfunctioned.

Take a look at the video following the jump to see something many of us don’t see often, courtesy of dear old Massachusetts.

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The ten-year-old annual event began as an informal affair in 1999, but has since matured and expanded into a full-fledged, more conventionally arranged series of screenings. And, unlike the fare you’ll find at whatever national chain happens to service your community, many of the scheduled works at BUFF will be hosted by the writers, directors, and stars who bring the films to life. If you’ve ever been to a hosted screening before or even watched the extras on a DVD, you probably agree there’s nothing like discovering details about a movie straight from the horse’s mouth.

This Saturday and Sunday, BUFF films and shorts in a variety of genres, ranging from musicals to horror to comedy, will be shown at two venues in Cambridge near Harvard University: Brattle Theatre (40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, 617-867-6837) and AMC Loews Harvard Square (10 Church Street, Cambridge, 617-864-4581).

Highlights include Saturday’s presentation of the German film-noir crime drama The Road to Nod from writer/director M.A. Littler (AMC Loews Harvard Square, 9:45pm, 100 minutes, Germany, 2007) and Sunday’s Closing Night screening of host and director Tony Krantz’s Otis (Brattle Theatre, 8:30pm, 90 minutes, USA, 2008), a dark serial-killer horror-comedy that premiered at SXSW earlier this month. Otis stars Bostin Christopher in the title role, along with familiar actors like Daniel Stern (Home Alone), Kevin Pollak (Casino), Quincy-born Illeana Douglas (Stir of Echoes), and Cambridge-born Jere Burns (TV’s Help Me Help You).

Tickets to individual movies cost $8 each for the general public and $6 for students and seniors. Moreover, trailers for the two intriguing movies mentioned previously, The Road to Nod and Otis, follow the jump. [More Information]

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The occasion was the current writers strike plaguing the film and television industries. If you haven’t been keeping up with that story, writers want a cut of the money made from so-called new and digital media—you know, prevalent stuff like DVDs, iPod downloads, and online video streaming—but the production studios that currently control the money are saying, “No way. We love everything just as it is right now, with all of the revenue lining our pockets.”

It’s no surprise that a region such as Boston, which is bursting with colleges and universities, also has its fair share of writers, some of whom even specialize in TV and movies. One is Cambridge-based Jaime Paglia, a co-creator and writer for the fantastic Sci Fi Channel series Eureka, which I highly recommend to the uninitiated.

Paglia organized last Friday’s march and rally to galvanize support in Boston for the striking writers, who are mostly walking the lines in New York and California. The affair was so well planned, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly guru Joss Whedon even showed. You have to understand how much Whedon is adored by his legions of fans to fully appreciate what a big deal that was. Rob Kutner, a scribe for the ultra popular Jon Stewart series The Daily Show, was also in attendance.

As the local newspaper The Cambridge Chronicle reports, hundreds of supporters joined Paglia, Whedon, and Kutner to trek through the slippery, slush-covered streets of Cambridge and show their solidarity with the writers on the picket lines.

Thanks to Chronicle staff, everyone can get a sense of what the event was like by watching the 157-second video that follows.

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