Have you seen the 1999 'Animal Farm'? Babe as Joseph Stalin is basically it, as they used the 'Babe' type technology to do the animals. It's pretty much the only thing about the movie that worked.

No, Andy, please no! Also, they've already done a family-friendly version of Animal Farm and it failed. So we already know this won't work.

Seriously. Whenever I wasn't using the left hand for actual magic stuff, I had the heart out and was just walking about pressing L1 at everything.

Why does it sometimes feel that the only way consensus will be reached a woman was truly raped is if she was beaten to a pulp trying to defend her maidenly virtue, or he killed her afterward?

Agreed. I keep saying this but it isn't a remake of the De Palma film, it's a new adaptation of the book, just like the gloriously shit failed TV pilot telemovie with the most deceptively huge bucket of blood ever and where she lives in the end and goes off to fight for the oppressed with the powers of her mind wasn't…

omg, you had me going there for a few lines. Brava.

Ha, was that also the sketch about where if men menstruated they'd be boasting to one another about how many Maxipads they filled?

At my place of employment there's a bereavement leave entitlement, which I know some women have chosen to take after a miscarriage.

You know how in the sequel, right at the end when she runs into Mark's office, how her "big defining speech moment" consisted of a cringing apology to Mark for not being perfect but begging him to love her anyway? I did not like that at all. It's not in the book (although admittedly the sequel movie was completely…

I'm partway through the 'Helter Skelter' memoir and should stress I know next to nothing about the case, but I am really having trouble deciding currently whether Manson was genuinely deeply deeply mentally ill and lost in his own version of reality, or one of the most manipulative and effective trolls evar. (I know…

Exactly. The people who are all "It's obviously not serious, can't you take a joke?" clearly aren't getting that the fact rape is something to make this kind of "joke" about is exactly the fucking problem.

You don't see how thinking rape is a joke is in itself a major problem?

I've noticed that when a group of teenagers get into the media spotlight for doing something particularly awful, such as, I don't know, bashing a homeless person or what have you, if they're boys it's "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUTH TODAY??" but if it's girls it's "WHY ARE OUR GIRLS SO EVIL NOW?"

Ha yes, I remember that. Having two attractive but "average" (for want of a better word) actors playing the roles really helped the movie as a whole. They looked like a trades sharer and a student teacher (I think that's what they were) rather than two Hollywood working actors who looked chiselled and lacquered and…

THIS. If someone is found not guilty of murder, or theft or arson or what have you, and assuming the defense case isn't that the whole thing was made up, there is still someone who died, or had their property stolen or damaged, it's just that the jury found it wasn't this person who did it. But in a rape trial where…

It's not really a remake, it's just a new adaptation of the book. (I'm looking forward to it.)

Odd question: did anyone else find the subtitles, especially the dialogue options, a little on the small side? I don't have the biggest TV screen in the world, but more than a few times I had to get up and lean in for a closer look.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if all the women of the world pulled a 'Lysistrata for the 21st century' type thing, and ceased doing all the things that have led to women being sexually assaulted, just to point up the sheer absurdity of the "Rape wouldn't happen if women were careful and did X" arguments. Well,…

Exactly, The humour in the book is that she is TOTALLY FINE, just neurotic. But when all the movie marketing started and all the "lol, look how fat Renee bravely became for the sake of art" etc etc, I began wondering if the filmmakers had missed the point.

I have the special edition DVD of Little Women, and on the commentary track, in the scene where she goes to visit the poor family because her family can't be bothered and everyone's shouting at her in a language she doesn't understand, and someone thrusts the dying baby into her arms, the director says to watch her…