I have a female colleague who gets annoyed that Tina Fey seems to go out of her way in her movies to deride her looks, as if she weren't such an attractive woman.

Russell Crowe is normally an actor who disappears so far into his characters you'd swear his DNA has been altered.

The movie's only serious criticism is reserved for Baker's television network, which doesn't think Americans care about Afghanistan - kind of hypocritical given this film's lack of substance.

Some reviewed 'The Master' on their knees, and while I respected its distinctive discordancy - can a movie be at once feverish and glacial? - I was unmoved.

The economic and technological changes are real, but I just can't bring myself to wax apocalyptic about the future of books.

I'm more encouraged by the saplings: new music groups, tiny new venues, entrepreneurial musician-composers who aren't waiting to be discovered but are instead building their own Establishment.

I'd put the most money on Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson - and not just because we'll probably still be waiting for the final volume in 2017.