FILM: ISOLATION (WITH LIVE SOUNDTRACK) Duke Of York Sun 1st

Whatever your views on whether we should be at war with the various peoples we’re currently rucking with, only the most callous have anything but respect and sympathy with the soldiers themselves. So, the fact that a quarter end up sleeping rough on their return to civvy street is a shocking and highly emotive subject, making Isolation a highly charged documentary from the off. The film is balanced with poetic photography and a more positive second half, but even before the live soundtrack from the director, this ought to leave a mark on you. (JK)

THEATRE: STEEL MAGNOLIAS Little Theatre Tues 3rd – Sat 7th

The 1989 film version of this story of Louisiana women – featuring a cover of Julia Roberts doing her best impression of a bulldog chewing a wasp, Sally Field cackling like a housewife on the brink of breakdown and Dolly Parton donning a hairstyle Marty McFly might not fall for – would hardly register in a video shop forage, let alone get scanned past. The stage version is less hateful, more witty and tragic, testified to by its recent debut on Broadway. (BM)

TALK: ANDREA POLLI Lighthouse Thurs 5th

In a dream for meteorological geeks everywhere, New Mexico digital genius Andrea Polli turns weather and air pollution recordings into smouldering video and sound instrumentations. Tonight, she’s taking time out from producing Now That’s What I Call Antarctic Wind Turbines to discuss her practice of sonification, a process developed between Polli and partner Chuck Varga which translates data into sound, and give a demonstration of some of the techniques she’ll be using during a residency at Portslade’s Blast Theory studios this month. (BM)

EXHIBITION: LAUNCH ME North Laine Photography Gallery from Thurs 5th

Fancy getting the pictorial evidence of your sordid night with a pensioner under the West Pier skeleton out to a wider audience? At the end of each summer, the gallery at the top of the creaking Snoopers Paradise staircase gives the notoriously shy and reclusive Brighton public the chance to enter the hallowed pages of the Brighton and Hove Calendar by sending in their snaps. Multiple shots, Flickr page links and brimming portfolios are all encouraged. You know what to do. (BM)

EXHIBITION: BUNKER BEAUTIFUL Grey Area until Sun 8th

Given that it fits both words in the title, the ever-beguiling, resolutely atypical hidden cavern that is the Grey Area is perhaps the only place a project describing itself as “a makeover show in an underground shelter” could have been held in. The project aims to use sleights of light and sight to make visitors respond to the space, turning the rooms into projected mirrors. In a setting which could cause ants claustrophobia, we can only hope we like what we see. (BM)

EXHIBITION: I THINK OF YOU AND I SMILE Blanch House Sun 8th Thurs Sept 30th

Sadly, what often passes for “art” is little more than decoration – something lovely looking but empty of content. Dominic Bradnum makes meticulous paintings of neon signs, often bearing enigmatic, or at least intriguing, slogans. His work takes cues from both Jenny Holzers’ Truisms – a series of public-space signage bearing loaded slogans and opinions – and formally recalling Gerhard Richter’s paintings of photographic and light aberrations; transposing the visual tick of one media into another and embracing the resultant incongruity. (MB)

THEATRE: BLT YOUTH GROUP Little Theatre Thurs 19th – Sat 21st

Catch some of the best young acting talent in the city in a high-paced romp Cristiano Ronaldo would be proud of, kicking off with a breakneck speed version of Around the World in 80 Days featuring elephants, typhoons, trains, near-death experiences and hot loving. The only thing the team behind the programme seem to fear is tepidity, because they’ve followed that with five plays based around giant venomous centipedes, dragon kings, Russian orphans and eye-stealing witches. That’s the costume budget blown. (BM)

EXHIBITION: LIDIA DE PEDRO Ink_d Gallery until Sun 22nd

A much-anticipated return for Ink-d’s finest Spanish gem following the first solo display of her intricate, flamboyant and feisty silkscreens at the gallery last summer. This show, Recurring Obscenity, is a set of original new works inspired by the graphic designer’s ideas on obscenity, which should only add to the stupendously entertaining visual richness of her kaleidoscopic canvasses. They’re accompanied by collages and 3D depictions of alternate realities and “fantastical otherworlds” by Maria Rivans. (BM)

THEATRE: TRAVERSE LIVE Duke of York’s Mon 23rd

We’d be lying to you if we tried to pretend Edinburgh Festival hadn’t decimated the August cultural offering, most cruelly on the comedy scene, where gentle tumbleweeds spend most of the month cluttering the floorboards like the mossy wraiths that they temporarily are. If the dearth of mirth (sorry) hasn’t tempted you north, catch a piece of the playwriting action with this simultaneous broadcast of readings from some of the best names in the business from the Scottish capital’s Traverse Theatre. (BM)

EXHIBITION: A FINE LINE Fabrica until Mon 30th

We defy anyone to traipse past the cathedral doors of Fabrica at the moment and not wonder how and why those steel curves of white are arching across the gallery like pylon spider webs. They’re the brainchild of Frederic Geurts, a 3D physics obsessive who has rarely exhibited outside of Belgium and deals in fragile, delicately balanced architecture. Part of a collaboration between Fabrica and galleries in France and Belgium, Geurts’s quest, he says, is “a search for the tipping point – the moment of almost falling over.” (BM)

WORDS BY MATT BARKER, JAMES KENDALL AND BEN MILLER