My fears are the obvious ones: that marketplace-minded publishers - all four of them - will shy further away from literary fiction, international authors, poetry, and the other marginal but hugely important regions of the book world.

You can feel righteous fury in every frame of The Magdalene Sisters. The movie is both a masterpiece and a holy hell: Watching it, you feel you're being punished for a crime you didn't commit. Which puts you, come to think of it, in the same frame of mind as those poor Magdalene girls.

It's easy to say "This year in art sucked." After all, about 85 percent of all shows of contemporary art are bad. But 85 percent of all art made in the Renaissance was bad.

My reaction to 'Sin City' is easily stated. I loved it. Or, to put it another way, I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. I loved every gorgeous sick disgusting ravishing overbaked blood-spurting artificial frame of it. A tad hypocritical? Yes. But sometimes you think, Well, I'll just go to hell.

Along with my peers, I gripe about the increasing number of superhero films, and I'm sad that so many critics so uncritically use words like franchise, which should be reserved for your local Burger King.

The English have a wellspring of comedy that will never be exhausted: the combination of bestial urges and excellent manners.

Still, you can't complain about the number of movies being made. Never have the means of making movies been so accessible to so many. The problem is getting bodies into seats.