This week I'd like to recommend:

- Nick Moran's Telstar, a surprisingly witty, sensitive and atmospheric dramatisation of the life and death of the pioneering, gay, 1960s record producer Joe Meek. Even if the shoestring budget is evident in the lack of locations, the feel for the stultifying and homophobic conventions of the period is strong.

- Jessica Biel's performance in Easy Virtue. The aristocratic Whittaker family in Coward's play - adapted for the screen by Stephan 'Priscilla' Elliott - seriously underestimate the resilience of her character, Larita, a racy American widow who has married the son and heir. Much as I always underestimated  Biel as an actress thanks to her purely decorative performances in The Illusionist and the execrable Next. It's a delight to see her get her healthy American choppers into mannered Britflick royalty, Kristen Scott Thomas and Colin Firth. Her performance alone makes this more than a by-the-numbers period flick.

- Waltz with Bashir. Deeply moving genre-busting animated documentary, in which Israeli Director Ari Folman claws back his own and his fellow former draftees' memories of the 1980s Lebanon War. The best evocation I've seen of the fact that war consists of long period of tedium studded by adrenaline-squirting moments of terror and a randomness that is as cruel and shocking as it is absurd.

- chef Igor Tymchyshyn's new menu at Orrery - three courses for £50 including excellent slices of cold, wine-poached foie gras, plus a deep-flavoured and not ridiculously-priced bottle of Pinot Noir recommended by the sommelier. On a more credit-crunchy note, the Theo Randall diffusion-line pizzas at Pizza Express are perfectly nice, especially the shrimpy one. In the last ten days, I've also, weirdly, had lobster caldereta (stew) at Es Pla in Fornells on Menorca, the favoured restaurant of the King of Spain, and a £4.99 frozen, pre-cooked Canadian lobster from Lidl. The Menorcan one was better (I thought I'd explode, I ate so much), but the Lidl one, though somewhat overcooked, was good value at the price.

- Gordon Ramsay's energy. I saw him cook for students at Tante Marie, the venerable cordon bleu cookery school outside Woking, which he's bought in conjunction with his friend (and Tante Marie graduate) Lyndy Redding. While preparing a three course meal with his talented associate and Claridge's chef Mark Sargeant, Ramsay, kept up a constant stream of patter then went on a whistle-stop tour of all the kitchens in the building, grilling the students, most of whom seemed utterly star-struck. He's no less dynamic in person but considerably more reflective than he appears on screen. Although there's still the odd joke and jibe (if puffins looked like Anthony Worral Thompson, he said, he'd never have got in trouble for eating them), he seemed genuinely hurt at having fallen out with former protege and best friend Marcus Wareing. I only got to ask him one question: did he let his customers eat cake at his new restaurant in Versailles? "Do I f***." he replied.

(The charming Lyndy Redding runs the catering company Absolute Taste, which supplies Ramsay recipes to large events; she also does all the catering for Formula One, and because her company is part-owned by McLaren, which is also near Woking, I got to tour their remarkable building. Built into a hummock that makes it almost invisible on approach, much of it underground, and with a vast curving glass frontage looking over an artificial lake, it's like a Bond villain's lair crossed with a Hobbit's home. Normally, only F1 drivers, employees, and people who can put down 50,000 Euros - as a DEPOSIT -  on one of McLaren's cars get to come here. Even though I have no interest in motor racing and little in cars, it was a gob-smacking place, from the pool and specially designed weights room where Lewis Hamilton builds up his neck muscles, to the spotless bays where the F1 cars are endlessly rebuilt, to the collection of vintage motors ranged behind the glass wall.)

- The restored River Cafe. Lovely room. Lovely food. Though I can also recommend a semi-improvised menu for a stew I made this week from sobrassada sausage, carrots and chickpeas.

- Waste at the Almeida and Six Characters in Search of an Author at Gielgud. It was fun to see the Young Vic flooded for Tarrel Alvin McCraney's In the Red and Black Water, although the script never really justified such a distracting device. A fine central performance brimming with emotion from Ony Uhiara, though, and swaggeringly potent support from Ashley Waters.

- the Ben Nicolson exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea. Even if you don't go to the exhibition, the seafront at Bexhill, and the modernist lines of the DLWP itself, are made for cold, bright days.