Years ago, I took part in crime re-construction show here in the UK. I played an educationally challenged caretaker who got seduced, bullied and ripped off by two hookers. I thought I presented it sensitively and realistically, and felt I gave a nuanced performance.

I should never, never look at these lists. They're made to antagonise plebs like me. Not one but two films by the Dardennes brothers? I had the misfortune to see both of them: bland, boring - in the case of "Two Days, whatever" tiresomely repetitive. And Llewyn Davis is the worst film by the once-great Coen…

Try Thea Gilmore - seriously. She's been going for longer, gets about a tenth of the attention Marling does and as far as I'm concerned is much times better (and has never felt the need to resort to a fake US accent). Her excellent albums go unreviewed, which is a sin. She's about to release a "retrospective" with…

Just want to say that I've listened to this twice, now, and it's the first Laura Marling album (and I've bought all of them) that I've actually WANTED to listen to again, rather than out of a weary sense of duty. I find it has both a darkness and a sense of humour that I've always found lacking in pretty much all of…

Uncool though it might be, I'd add Genesis' live version of "The Knife". Originally from their 1970 "Trespass" album and already quite unsettling with sound effects of a crowd of protesters being mown down, by the time they recorded it live for their "Genesis Live" album of 1973, Phil Collins and Steve Hackett had…

Even as a fan of female singer-songwriters, I've never been able to really get Laura Marling, and I've been buying her albums since the start (and saw her perform the first one in concert). They all show promise, but never blossom into anything more than a slow, cool burn. Even Once I Was An Eagle left me cold -…

Clooney is one of those actors it took me a long time to warm to, even though I'd enjoyed his stint in ER. In his films, he always seemed far too smug, far too in love with himself, and "Out of Sight" was one of those turns. When he's chatting up JLo, I thought he was talking more to his own reflection in her eyes…

In a sane world, Nicole Kidman would have been laughed off the screen in "The Hours" for that stupid, marbled, waxy-looking nose, let alone her performance that confused "tortured artist" with "suffering a bad migraine". Glad to hear, though, that I wasn't the only one to find this film hard work.

I'm sure someone's beaten me to this, but I reckon John Wayne gives a damned fine, Oscar-worthy turn in his last film, "The Shootist".

I remember asking my parents, "What did Liz Taylor win an Oscar for?"

I can't remember the last time I cared about the Oscars, but I'll admit that they did get one thing right: Two Days, One Night is a dreadful, overrated piece of brow-furrowing posturing; dull, flat, repetitive and lacking any cinematic language. Sure Cotillard is good, but people seem more impressed with the fact…

Someone's probably beaten me to this already, but #7 was played straight and super-creepy in the film Enduring Love when Rhys Ifans serenades Daniel Craig in one of the latter's classes.

I love this song, and always have. Having grown up in high school depressed, ugly and stuck with the English accent that I came over with (forever branded "the skinny kid with the accent") I felt alienated from the high school culture that, from my perspective, looked like only a slightly more shopworn version of the…

I was always a big fan of Extras, but I rate the Bowie scene as the complete worst in the whole series. It's heavy handed, obvious and unfunny, while the rest of the series manages to poke fun at Gervais' character's ego (and the monster he becomes) in far subtler ways. This is the equivalent of going to the trouble…

Nice list - I always had a soft spot for "Cat's in the Cradle".

Yeah, funny that. Despite being aware of Kate Bush, I'd never really given her a listen. After discovering Tori Amos, I gave her a go. It's one of the complete mysteries to me that I've never been able to really get into her.

Interesting review - I loved her debut, played it to death, but lost interest with every subsequent album (even the much-lauded "Boys for Pele" and "Scarlet's Walk" ) until "American Doll Posse", which I felt was the rightful sequel to her debut. And then I lost interest again. This looks like it might be worth a…

I saw this when it came out. Laughably dreadfull, and I couldn't get over the premise. The sight of the wife deciding that the best thing to do for her husband was to dress up like a prostitute and give an old guy a handjob in the back of a bus was just mind-blowingly stupid. My first and last LVT film.

I should point out that he actually says he comes from Acton, an area in West London. It's wonderfully ethnically diverse and a little down-at-heel, and I jut thought I'd mention that 'cos I live there. That's all.

This was a great album - I remember being absolutely hooked on it as a teenager, just discovering music, and there was a real fierceness and bitterness to the songs about the struggle, as well as some hauntingly beautiful stuff — I particularly like the gentle, refecltive, "Writing", the yearning "We All Fall in Love…