The week ahead
Cinema
Palme d'Or winner The Wind that Shakes the Barley opens nationwide on Friday. Get your fleeces out - the summer outdoor film season is in full swing in Temple Bar's Meeting House Square: tonight, it's the Clint Eastwood classic, Unforgiven. Every Thursday night, black and white classics will be screened. Film folk will be drawn to more than 300 events in this year's Darklight Festival, which starts June 22nd: www.darklightfestival.com
Festival
Featuring everything from circus acts to exhibitions, theatre, comedy and a programme for children, the Midsummer Festival hits Cork from June 20th to July 1st. Highlights include Corcadorca's production of The Tempest, Frank and Walters, Doublethink, Camille O'Sullivan (left), Nathan Haines and John Spillane. The Spiegeltent will be erected in Emmet Place and holds 500 people. See www.corkfestival.com
Moroccan market
You've read about the Taste of Dublin Festival above; foodies should also take note of a Moroccan Market opening tomorrow at 2.30pm in Wolfe Tone Park, Dublin 1. For five days, some of the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Morocco will flood the area. There will be stalls selling textiles, crafts, jewellery and foodstuffs. In Thomas Street, Dublin 8 tomorrow NCAD students will hold a fashion show and street party, 2-5pm.
Country life
Make hay while the sun shines. In Trim, Co Meath today at the annual Haymaking Festival there will be traditional music, song and dance as the experts mow hay along the banks of the Boyne using horses, scythes and vintage machinery. There will be a donkey derby, and sheaf-tossing - the art of tossing an 8lb sheaf over a 60ft bar. The Polish ambassador will start proceedings at 2pm. Free fun for all.
Music in great country houses
Head tonight to the greatest Palladian house in the country - Castletown House, of course - for the last of this year's concerts in salubrious surroundings. Emma Johnson will play two of the great clarinet quintets (by Mozart and Weber) as well as a Tchaikovsky arrangement with the Contempo Quartet. The avenue leading up to the house is at its best just now for a pre-concert walk. Tickets €35 and €45, from 01-6642822
Television
Apart from the soccer, check these out: Steve Coogan stars in a new seven-part series as Tommy Saxondale, an ex-roadie with anger-management issues (Monday, BBC2, 10pm). Gordon Ramsay (left), another man who delights in behaving badly, also returns next week with a nine-part series of his food magazine show The F Word (Tuesday, C4, 8.30pm), and Kirsty Wark interviews Harold Pinter on Friday at 11pm on BBC2