So it's like sex then? A lot of fumbling and a bit of yucky stuff is all forgiven if it ends in a great climax?

A good novelist starts with a strong finale in mind and writes towards it. A poor novelist starts with ten pages about a really imposing tree and flounders about thereafter. TV serials, especially American ones, just aim to survive as long as they can, they're not written with a particular climax in mind so it's…

I'm not allowed to dislike this band then dan? I'm supposed to adore tone deaf "singing", one finger synth playing and vapid songs from a band twenty years past its sell by date otherwise you'll get all upset and huffy? Thanks for the heads up. Is it everyone who's banned from having a negative opinion of something…

It's really sad seeing people persist in doing something way past their peak, such as it was. It's like watching a fat forty year old ballerina puffing and creaking at the bar. The Pet Shop Boys were rubbish when they were popular and they haven't been popular for twenty years. This is about as hip as reviewing the…

The Getaway has a truly macabre ending in Thompson's original story, something completely ignored by the film.

Andrei Tarkovsky wanted an excuse to get out of the Soviet Union for a bit and film in Japan. He wanted the motorway and city to look futuristic, rather than a pile of crumbling Stalinist concrete. The freeway sequence got shot and put in the film to justify his time out of the country. If you think that scene is…

A girl has to earn a living but let's not pretend she's writing Madame Bovary here.

What exactly was he so depressed about in the first place? The fame? The money? The girls? If you don't want to be a talentless rap star then don't be. The only thing worse than rap music is white boy rap music, and the only thing worse than that is rap music by white boys in French. I've heard better temper…

That was a great one, the balletic way it takes out the Cybermen in 'five doctors' is brilliant. It's so unrobot like - moving like a ballet dancer instead of a tin can on legs. It pops up again in several of the novels and it's high time it featured in the new series.

Ash was an android e.g. a robot designed to look like humans. Science Fiction is full of androids but in reality, though we're surrounded by robots, none of them look at all human so we're not freaked out by them. Robots build cars and explore space for us and we don't bat an eyelid. It always rankled with me that…

The Robots of Death is a terrific Who adventure, and the wonderful art deco styling of the robots, and their quiet courteous efficiency adds all the more to their threat. The first Tom Baker adventure, the Giant Robot, is another well loved story. The Robot there is essentially a force for good driven mad by the…

I still don't understand why she's evil for holding this view while the current President, Vice President and Secretary of State are held to be angelic despite believing exactly the same. Do they get a pass because hipsters assume they're lying?

I'm surprised more films aren't made about mountaineering. The main problem with most thrillers is how stupid they are - why don't people just call the police on their cell phones? Mountain climbing is one of the few times when people really can be put in peril without hope of rescue these days. The themes of…

As Dr. Strangelovecraft points out, you're completely wrong Jmaurer. India suffered from pervasive famine, extreme poverty and terrible growth rates after independence until the 1980s when it's economy was run under socialist lines. The only things it produced were corruption, pointless paperwork and starving babies.

And, um, obviously the moon is named after the giant gods who ruled earth before Zeus and is pronounced as such (as in words like titanic) - it's not named after Titian,the Renaissance painter.

Bucky, which moon and probe were you referring to? I'm intrigued. Galileo is the only spacecraft to actually orbit Jupiter and there's never been one put in orbit around any of its 60 odd moons. Were you thinking of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Titan? You know, the largest moon of Saturn?

Dan Brown may have learnt nothing from Flaubert on the subject of writing but he's banked on some sound advice from George Bernard Shaw. I'm sure he'd rather read terrible reviews in the back of his Rolls Royce as he's driven to his second best yacht than brilliant reviews while eating cold baked beans out of the…

Scriabin is more interesting to play than to listen to.

Emmylou can certainly sing, but, in a nip and tuck one day game, Chris Harris would be more likely to keep it tight with the ball and slog a quick twenty.

"Women's suffrage" means women having the vote, Rev, not women suffering.