The Thrill of It All, Forced Entertainment, Riverside Studios

Forced Entertainment’s new show is deliberately, and brilliantly, shambolic

It’s pretty hard to describe a Forced Entertainment show. But let’s try anyway: imagine a stage full of crazy dancers, the men in black wigs, the women in white ones, prancing around, flinging their arms in the air, mistiming their high kicks, and then running frantically up and down the stage. The lighting slides from bright white to sick pink, and the music is pop tunes with Japanese lyrics. Welcome to a wonderful world of controlled zany exhilaration.

Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore's take on the decline of the American empire

If Michael Moore's new film were a person, it would be diagnosed with a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. His Cook's Tour through the ills of capitalism spans, inter alia: forced repossessions; worker lock-ins; the breadline salaries of airline pilots, some of whom sell blood or use food stamps to pay the bills; a scam, perpetrated by a judge in collusion with a private company, to make money by sending harmless youngsters to a correctional facility; Hurricane Katrina; the election of President Obama; cats flushing toilets - in short, everything but the kitchen sink.

Interview: Liz Mermin on Horses

The director discusses her fascinating documentary about racing thoroughbreds

Whoever first made the observation - some say Winston Churchill, others Ronald Reagan - there is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man, and a woman. On stage these noble beasts have inspired some highly successful plays, including Peter Schaffer's Equus, recently revived with Daniel Radcliffe, and War Horse, still living up to its name in the West End after over two years (panto horses probably don't count). In cinema, the legacy is more mixed; but not for nothing is the Western, arguably the greatest of film genres, also known as the horse opera. Horses, Liz Mermin's intensely strange documentary, is a fascinating addition to this stable.

Richard Hawley, Royal Festival Hall

Sheffield songsmith is a romantic at heart

"So, we made it eventually." Having postponed this show two weeks ago due to the M1 doubling as a skating rink, Richard Hawley opened not with a song but an apology. It was hardly necessary. The sold-out Royal Festival Hall last night was prepared to forgive Sheffield's second-finest songsmith - after his chum Jarvis Cocker - almost anything.

Sheffield Doc/Fest: the wrap

Hot docs and hustle in South Yorkshire

Upon emerging from Sheffield railway station, one of the first things you clap eyes on is Andrew Motion’s 2007 poem What If? unfurling down the side of one of the university tower blocks and gleaming faintly in the last of the autumn sun. With its exhortation to “greet and understand what lies ahead... The lives which wait as yet unseen, unread,” it’s not a bad incidental epigram for a festival of documentary film-making whose trailer was inspired by the city’s cosmopolitan identity. Doc/Fest opened on Wednesday with Mat Whitecross’s Moving to Mars (pictured below), about a family of Burmese refugees transposed to Sheffield, and, by the time it drew to an end last night, had included 120 films from around the world. But there is a second, almost entirely separate Sheffield Film Festival, running alongside the traditional one of screenings, prizes and audience Q&As, a much more inward-looking one.