I wasn't especially wowed by the film, but enjoyed it nonetheless. I don't think it holds a candle to most of the classic or Brosnan Bonds, but is probably better than Casino Royale and definitely better than Quantum of Forgetfulness.

Severine isn't really any different from most Bond girls, the expectation that she do something more is misguided. Remember, most Bond films have two Bond girls, the first of whom dies early.

The real Bond 'girl' in this one is actually M.

English spellings tend to change down the centuries as well, causing further confusion.

And I believe that dwarf in the clip above pronounces Smaug correctly. It's definitely more of an ow sound than aw, and not at all smog, so sayeth the BBC adaptation and various Tolkien lecturer's I've heard.

To be fair though, before the Internet there were film magazines, which usually got the scoop on upcoming film projects. So it's not like big projects were genuinely surprising. I remember excitedly reading articles and seeing pictures (granted, only 3 or 4) for Independence Day about half a year before it came out.

The Matrix was the last film I distinctly remember appearing from literally out of nowhere, seeing trailers for it in a New York hotel a week before it came out.

X3 has some interesting ideas and great moments, I would argue the image of Wolverine painfully passing through the death storm to kill his love is very powerful, but overall the picture fails because it tries to do too much with too many characters. Perhaps a more competent director could have kept all the plates spinning and made a good show of it, but whatever the reason Ratner doesn't succeed.

And to add to his problems, one of his key plots (Phoenix) is wholly uninteresting because the character change has already happened off screen. Jean Grey is already 'full Phoenix' when she first appears and her character crosses the line within seconds as she murders the man she loves most. There's not really anywhere else to go after that and the subsequent handling of this murder is superficial at best, there's no great internal struggle with the power. The rest of her story is just about other people being afraid of her and using her, or her just looking/being evil for no real discernable reason.

Then you have the fact that this main story has very little to connect it with the mutant cure plot. Sure, Jean Grey is physically present in the attack on the island where the cure is located but thematically, her power isn't tied to the cure.

I'm a huge fan of Vangelis, whose epic score for Alexander raised that film's quality several notches. Oh, and he did Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner too.

These two are my favourites.

The superiority of the novel doesn't surprise in the slightest. I used to loathe the prequel universe, but the Dark Horse comics and the Clone Wars series have proven that it can be highly interesting and entertaining. Everyone writes better Star Wars than Lucas, but then, that was always the case back in the 70s.

See, I have no history or expectations with the Final Fantasy franchise, and don't know any of the characters in any game or even what world it's set in (other than a vague sense that's more fantasy than sci-fi!), so I've never judgeed it on the merits of its faithfulness or respect to its namesake. However, I've endured enough examples of that experience with other properties so completely see where you're coming from.

Dead Ringers is a UK impressionist sketch show, pretty funny stuff.

Final Fantasy Spirits Within is a fascinating movie, if only because it's a Western-targeted film made by Japanese with all their sensibilities but intermixed with American movie cliches, so it comes with both an environmental message and a kick-ass band of marines cut from the Aliens cloth.

He also pops up for a cameo as a rivetingly off-ball character in A Knight's Tale.

Some of The Shield dvds, Dexter and Spartacus are 18 too, for various obvious reasons! It used to be that only HBO really had content that was mature enough to warrant an 18 in the UK but other channels like Showtime and Starz have come along in recent years. There really does seem to be a market in the US for TV programmes that are mature.

But then, it's also easy to forget that in the US censors have a no tolerance attitude when it comes to nudity but are comparatively light on violence. The opposite holds true in the UK. So primetime network shows would occasionally come over to the UK and be given an 18 just because the violence was considered too much for our stiff upper lip. Although in the last decade or so the censors seem to be letting more stuff through, which is probably why most of the seasons of 24 are rated 15 despite featuring plenty of torture and violence.

On another note, I love the fact that you have so many of the classic 80s action movies.

Not that I'm defending those piece of shit movies, but it is because of Transformers that good movies did get made. The substantial revenue received from guaranteed blockbusters allows studios to fund movies that otherwise wouldn't get made due to the perceived risks involved. It's not really an equation where studios would have made 40 good movies in place of the 1, in the same way that spending several billion on Curiosity doesn't mean that that money would have otherwise paid for homeless shelters in Detroit.