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Most people (though I don't count myself among them) find it difficult to imagine Simon Pegg as a romantic interest.  Even I admit that the gauche, paunchy commitmentphobe in Run Fat Boy Run is a hard man to love.

But he's a better man than his rival for Libby's (Thandie Newton) affections, American financier Whit (Hank Azaria, currently audible as myriad characters in the Simpsons feature).  For a start, he doesn't go to spinning classes.  On the other hand, he also got his young son arrested - five years after abandoning his pregnant girlfriend at the altar.

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Dir: Antonio Campos; Cast: Chelsea Logan, Rosemarie DeWitt, Christopher McCann, Tiffany Yaraghi, Stacy Jordan; 62min/2005

Earlier this year I was involved in a project (to be finished) which involved documenting peoples’ experience of losing their virginity. Like learning to become a therapist I involuntarily remembered my own milestone experience.

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Like many muggles sympathetic to Harry's (Daniel Radcliffe) plight with the Dursley's, I was somewhat saddened that the Dementors didn't have their wicked way with Dudley (Harry Melling) - not that there seems to be much of a soul to suck out.

But if nothing else, the underpass confrontation livened up an opening sequence more suited to an NSPCC ad than a summer blockbuster.  There's nothing quite like getting in trouble with the Ministry of Magic, yet again.

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Hostel: Part II

Director: Eli Roth; Cast: Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips; 93 min./2007; Rated R.

I have to admit I had my doubts about watching Hostel II, because of what director Eli Roth had said before the film's screening, "The amount of violence that I got into Hostel: Part II, I don't think has been allowed in an American film before." This didn't surprise me, as this is probably the only way the sickest man in cinema right now can promote his film.

Actually, I was horrified by the anticipation that I was going to see a film more violent than the first instalment of Hostel - which some believe is the most violent film ever to be made in Hollywood.

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Much has been written of the 8,601 diamonds placed in the skull that forms the centrepiece to Beyond Belief, Damien Hirst's current exhibition at the White Cube galleries in London.

This review differs slightly in that it does not intend to be a critique of the artist as an artist. Instead I will write only of the viewing experience.

In the beginning there's a queue - not beyond belief. The lady handing out the tickets takes your name and post code. I advise invention. I was Tony Montana, from Battersea.

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I managed to put it off for years - and I say this as someone who held season passes to DisneyWorld into her twenties. Musicals aren't my cuppa, and it was never my favourite film despite the soundtrack (which is fortunately preserved in the stage version).

In fact, it took the arrival of friends from America who saw it, loved it and put money in my hand for tickets before I was convinced it was worth my time. Even then, I almost missed it after a nearby restaurant failed to get my order out in time.

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It wouldn't be out of the question to imagine that celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's first syllable spoken on earth might have been four-letters long beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet. Listening to Ramsay, who uses the word f*ck more times than he adds spices to his dishes, is a pleasure because he puts so much passion into his poetic deliverance of the ‘f' word.

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La Mome/La Vie en Rose
Director: Olivier Dahan; Cast: Marion Cotillard, Silvie Testud, Gerard Depardieu, Jean-Pierre Martins; 140 min./2007; Rated PG-13.

Faced with any problem or difficulty in our daily lives, most of us tend to adopt a fatalistic outlook, thinking that this is it - the biggest disaster that could happen to an unlucky resident of this wretched world, that the world has come to a very unfortunate end which no power can possibly revoke! Well, believe you me, you know nothing about disasters unless you see this film!

La Vie en Rose (or La Mome) is the biopic of Edith Piaf, perhaps the most sensational French singer, who in her surprisingly short life of 47 years lived through a litany of misfortune and maleficence. She was abandoned by her singer-mother at a very early age, raised in a brothel, almost went deaf and blind during her childhood, did menial jobs in a circus as a teenager while her father worked as a contortionist, became addicted to the enetertainer's diet of drink and drugs, and ... the list goes on.

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For someone who didn’t watch many cartoons as a child, I’ve begun to acquire a taste for them in recent years – especially if they’re bankrolled by Disney or DreamWorks.  Marvel comics try too hard to live in the real world.  I like my escapism straight up and with lots of bright colours.

Which is why I love Shrek.  Unhappy endings in Far Far Away?  Highly unlikely.  Beautiful Princess Fiona ditched when she  takes ‘love’s true form’ and turns into a gross green monster?  Probably not.  Even the death of the king is more melodramatic than tearjerking.  Of course, after a series of false ends, I was still half-expecting him to bound back across the lake.  You just don’t know.

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La Mome/La Vie en Rose

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