We’ve already had a Clinton movie, the superb Primary Colors (1998), so I think it’s time the members of the Bush administration took their turn on the silver screen.

Just thinking about W.’s cast makes me excited: Josh Brolin (yup, one of the kids from The Goonies) will be playing Dubya himself, and Ioan Gruffudd and Thandie Newton have been pencilled in as Tony Blair and Condoleeza Rice (respectively). And who better than James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn to play Bush’s ma and pa, Barbara and George Sr.?

If they could get James Earl Jones to play Colin Powell, my happiness would be complete (maybe they could even get him to provide the voice of Dick Cheney?).

I have high hopes for W., as I thought Stone’s Nixon (1995) was one of the most entertaining historical biopics since Franklin J Schaffner’s Patton. Anthony Hopkins’ barnstorming turn as Tricky Dicky had a similar energy to George C Scott’s portrayal of the maverick general.

(Ironically, Stone disliked Schaffner’s film intensely, claiming it inspired Nixon’s decision to bomb Cambodia)

With a 200 minute running time, Nixon was a tale of political tragedy told on a grand Wagnerian scale, with powerhouse performances from the likes of Joan Allen, Ed Harris, James Woods - and a deliciously seedy turn from Bob Hoskins as J Edgar Hoover.

My main issue with Nixon is its occasional tendency to descend into tin-hat conspiracy-theory territory, and I really hope W. doesn’t follow suit.

You would think that, with Watergate and Deep Throat, Stone would have had plenty ‘nuf intrigue for one movie, but he also made a hamfisted attempt to implicate Nixon in the Kennedy assassination.

Maybe Nixon shot JFK himself. I don’t know. But it all seemed a bit clumsy.

So I dread to think what charges Stone is about to level against Dubya, who must surely be one of the most guileless politicians of modern times. I really don’t think it counts as a conspiracy if someone tells you what they are going to do, attempts to do it, and then publicly falls flat on their face.

Any attempt to weave some kind of Machiavellian plot around Bush’s two terms would not only over-egg the pudding, it would subject it to some kind of reverse-liposuction. I am getting tired of conspiracy theories - and, I think I’m not the only one:

9/11 Conspiracy Theories ‘Ridiculous,’ Al Qaeda Says

Anyway, an ‘Election Year’ edition of Nixon is out later this year on Blu-ray, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it - I think the film is a real testimony to just how compelling Oliver Stone can be when he gets the bit between his teeth.

In the meantime, here’s hoping that Stone decides to keep his imagination (more or less) in check with W..

I love George Romero and Dario Argento. Together, their work represented some of the best of what pure horror could achieve if it put its mind to it.

Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and its sequels were smart, satirical slow-burning frighteners, suggesting that mankind was doomed long before the dead took to their feet and started to lurch.

Argento’s films were technically brilliant and morally corrupt, like Hitchcock on crack. His peculiar brand of mad-axe misogyny is redeemed only for the fact that, like Hitchcock, he gave his actresses all the best roles.

Well, the pair are back with two new releases: Romero with Diary of the Dead, the fifth in his series of Dead films, and Argento with The Mother of Tears, the concluding part of his Three Mothers Trilogy, which began with Suspiria and Inferno.

I would never have wanted to have to choose between Romero and Argento, but recent events have forced my hand.

Diary of the Dead is a bold departure for Romero, ‘resetting’ the storyline by relocating the zombie uprising to the present day. Bolder still, the entire film is told using ‘found footage’ - yes, the Blair Witch Project shakey-cam is back! - shot by a troupe of film studies students.

The first point Romero is trying to make is that, in the age of Fox News, when disaster strikes, the truth will be revealed to us by a plucky army of YouTubers and cameraphone-wielding bloggers.

Romero’s second point is that the MySpace generation’s obsession with documenting every aspect of their lives dehumanises the way we relate to one another, making us no better than…. zombies?

Unfortunately, these two points are hammered home with about as much subtlety as a baseball bat to the braiiiin.

For some reason, Romero thought it would be a good idea to have the entire film narrated by a character who is a film studies student, who explains, as film studies students are wont to do, each and every one of the points the film is trying to make as and when they happen.

To make matters worse, two thirds of the film are set aboard a winnebago.

The result is excruciating, and other than a smattering of brilliantly conceived zombie deaths (one involving a deaf/mute Amish, another featuring a jar of acid), Diary of the Dead is only worth pencilling in for curiosity value.

Romero deserves credit for trying something new, but with forced dialogue and an unlikeable cast of characters who make Cloverfield’s protagonists look like Aung San Suu Kyii, he needn’t have bothered.

By contrast, The Mother of Tears takes all Argento’s old indulgences, gives them a new lick of paint, and sends them out into the world as if the last thirty years hadn’t happened.

When a mysterious urn is unearthed, a powerful witch is re-awakened and spreads chaos and murder throughout Rome, and a young woman must discover her latent powers to confront this ancient, bare-tittied evil.

Needless to say, lesbians are mutilated, skulls are crushed, and - in the film’s opening murder - an unfortunate individual is throttled with their own intestines.

Oddly, the visual bombast of Suspiria and Inferno is absent - stylistically, Mother of Tears is far closer to giallo detective thrillers such as Tenebrae or Profundo Rosso, complete with sardonic cops and a fish-out-of-water Englishman.

Touchingly, Mother of Tears is evidently something of a family affair: Argento’s daughter, Asia stars as our plucky heroine, and her mother (Argento’s regular leading lady, Daria Nicolodi) makes a cameo appearance as… her mother.

Okay, so the film itself is utter nonsense, but unlike Diary of the Dead, it left me entertained, flecked with small droplets of spit, and craving more.

Comparing the two films side-by-side, I came to a sudden realisation: Romero has inspired so many successful films, we don’t really need him anymore.

If you need a zombie fix, there is plenty to choose from: the unexpectedly non-terrible Dawn of the Dead remake and the 28 Days/Weeks later films, to mainstream stuff like I am Legend and Shaun of the Dead.

By contrast, Argento has inspired no-one outside of a lunatic asylum, and if he wasn’t still making his kind of films, nobody else would.

So if you are feeling nostalgic and you fancy a fright, I’d pick The Mother of Tears everytime.

If I had my way, the latter would have their strangled bodies stuffed into potato sacks, and if you didn’t realise that was a reference to Frenzy, I am probably talking about you.

Well, Frenzy (quite understandably) didn’t get featured in Vanity Fair’s Hitchcock Portfolio, a photoshoot which saw top stars, including Javier Bardem, Julie Christie, Marion Cotillard, Keira Knightley, Eva Marie Saint and Naomi Watts recreate iconic scenes from some of Hitch’s best known films.

It’s a fantastic collection of photos, which hold out a tantalising, if not terrifying prospect - what if someone dared to remake a Hitchcock film?

Well, it’s happened already, of course - Gus Van Sant’s odd but underrated shot-by-shot remake of Psycho, not to mention TV movies of classics such as Rear Window. And Hitchcock wasn’t averse to remaking his own films if the mood took him.

But the magic of the Vanity Fair photos suggest the unthinkable - that a new, all-star, big budget Hollywood remake of a Hitchcock classic might not be a total disaster. I think that contemporary cinema is lacking glamour and perversion, and maybe an injection of Hitchcock is just what the doctor ordered.

And the beauty of a remake is, if it turns out to be a bloated, overlong, overblown disaster, you can just pretend it never happened.

I think The Birds would be a good testing ground for this concept. The feathered critters themselves could be realised via the magic of computer graphics, supplemented by actual wildlife photography.

For the leads, George Clooney would be a solid but unimaginative choice for rugged Mitch Brenner, as he has spent his career perfecting his Cary Grant impression (the role of Brenner was originally written for Grant; Rod Taylor was a poor substitute). So why not skip a generation, and cast Jake Gyllenhaal?

But who on earth could replace Tippi Hedren?

Naomi Watts would just be too obvious, and anyway she’s much too likeable. I think the public would much rather see Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton get their comeuppance in a bird-stuffed attic.

But perhaps Scarlett Johansson or Jessica Alba would be more acceptable choices.

Those are my nominations, but let’s have a look at some of Vanity Fair’s. For the full pictures, you’ll have to check out their March issue, but here are some glimpses of my favourites.

Can you guess the films they are depicting?

For the full story, go to the Vanity Fair website, where they also have a video showing how they put the Hitchcock Portfolio together.

Well, it turns out that Heath Ledger’s night was much, much worse.

Of all the young actors in the world, Ledger had so much going for him - he was making bold career choices and delivering flawless performances.

The world, it seemed, was his oyster, and the only question that remained in my mind was whether or not his bookcase would be wide enough to hold all the Oscars that were certain to come his way.

Following Ledger’s death, aged only 28, there has arisen a cacophony of speculation and muck-raking, much of which reads like a bad film script, casting Ledger in a part that, in his career, he would never have chosen to play.

Talk of rolled up $20 dollar bills, heroin addiction and stints in rehab came and went, but to the disappointment of redtops everywhere, nothing illegal has turned up; the cause of death remains inconclusive [edit: the cause of death has been confirmed as a cocktail of prescription (ie, entirely legal) medication].

The New York Times’ Sarah Lyall claimed to have conducted Ledger’s last interview, in which the actor complained of insomnia. She speculated his death might have been an accidental overdose of sleeping pills caused by a desperate attempt to get some shuteye.

But that interview was all the way back in November, so who knows.

Fox News’ John Gibson opened his radio show with funeral music, played the “I wish I knew how to quit you” quote from Brokeback Mountain and quipped, “Well, he found out how to quit you!”.

According to Gibson, Ledger was a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem”.

Jack Nicholson, the actor who last donned the Joker’s lipstick, had one comment for the waiting press: “I warned him”. Warned him about what, exactly? It’s hard to picture Jack Nicholson as the voice of moderation.

But if Ledger was really such a hellraiser, how come the world missed it for so long? Do we need new paparazzi? The last time Ledger registered as a blip on the gossip columns was when he split from his fiancée Michelle Williams last September after a three-year relationship.

Since then, nothing.

That’s why these belated attempts to paint Ledger as just another Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse simply won’t wash. In his life, he made headlines for one reason: his performances - and these were truly newsworthy.

After graduating from Home and Away, the hunky young Australian made his Hollywood debut in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), an adaption of The Taming of the Shrew, before slipping into solid action roles in The Patriot (2000) (in which he played Mel Gibson’s son), and as the lead in the medieval swords n’ sackcloth epic A Knight’s Tale (2001).

But it was Ledger’s cameo as Billy Bob Thornton’s tragic son in Monster’s Ball (2001) that landed him the role of Ennis Del Mar in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005).

Annie Proulx, who wrote the story on which Brokeback Mountain was based, marvelled at Ledgers uncanny ability to get inside her head (I believe the septuagenarian author actually described the experience a “mindfuck”, but the original source of the quote eludes me).

After his Oscar-nominated performance in Brokeback, Ledger was a surprise choice to play the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman sequel, The Dark Knight.

Talk that the role might have pushed him over the edge is surely misplaced: filming finished months ago, and Ledger had already started work on Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

The status of that film remains unclear - will Ledger’s scenes be reshot with another actor? Will the film be re-written to allow different actors to play the same role? Or will Doctor Parnassus join Don Quixote as another doomed Gilliam project?

Either way, Ledger will be missed. Think of all the great performances he had yet to deliver. I think it’ll be some time before we learn how to quit him.

Bug is about a couple who lock themselves in a motel room, convinced that they have been infested with blood-sucking aphids.

Cruising has Al Pacino as a cop who must go undercover in the New York gay leather scene to act as bait for a serial killer.

Well, if it’s a choice between watching people scratch themselves for two hours, or the chance to see Al Pacino in leather trousers, my money’s on Cruising.

Like Basic Instinct, another serial killer tale which used gay subculture as a backdrop, Cruising was met with controversy on its release.

Gay groups were furious: The Village Voice described it as “the most oppressive, ugly, bigoted look at homosexuality ever presented on the screen”.

For their part, the studio removed 40 minutes of footage and added strategically-placed fog over some of the racier scenes.

Almost three decades later, the fog has dissipated, as has most of the outrage (though, in this DVD release, the 40 minutes are sadly absent)

When it was shown in theatres, Cruising ran a disclaimer saying:

THIS FILM IS NOT INTENDED AS AN INDICTMENT OF THE HOMOSEXUAL WORLD. IT IS SET IN ONE SMALL SEGMENT OF THAT WORLD, WHICH IS NOT MEANT TO BE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE WHOLE”

Back in the dark days of 1980, it’s entirely plausible that Joe and Josephine Public could be fooled into believing that all homosexuals dwelt in a quasi-nocturnal world of subterranean bars, peepshows and railway arches.

In the enlightened Noughties, we have Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Alan Carr and Brokeback Mountain, and we know that perception is almost certainly not true.

Above all, it was the link between sexuality and violence that caused most offence at the time of the film’s release.

Again, it’s possible that, back in the day, Cruising’s body count might have convinced people that all gays are one bad latte away from becoming crazed psycho-killers.

Today, we know that this is fairly unlikely (though if you’re immediately ahead of me in the line for the tube barrier and fail to get your Oyster Card out in time, I can’t speak for your safety).

Both Al Pacino’s hollow-eyed protagonist - and the killer he is trying to snare - are shot through with self-loathing; both are participating in the S&M scene because they are compelled to, the former by his boss, the latter by his overbearing ‘father’.

By contrast, their fellow revellers in the clubs, bars and bushes (many of whom were played by non-actors going about their normal routine) seem to be having a ball.

And I had a ball watching it - Cruising is challenging, thought provoking, and Friedkin’s take on the serial killer genre is genuinely unsettling. It also has moments of very strange humour - why on earth does Pacino’s character pick a yellow handkerchief to put in his back pocket?

And why do the police keep an enormous black gentleman wearing a cowboy hat in a side room?

Rather than debate the film’s agenda, I think it’s best to sit back and enjoy[!] Cruising for what it is: a bleak, disturbing, misanthropic thriller which gives fascinating glimpses into a subculture few mainstream films have dared - or bothered - to put on screen.

The Host is darkly comic, coldly gruesome and unexpectedly bittersweet. And I loved it to bits.

The film contrasts the family’s desperate need to nurture and protect their lost child with the dead-eyed hunger of the beast itself. As rain and mist descends, the creature lurks contentedly in the bone-chilling concrete of the sewer system while its warm-blooded victims huddle together for warmth.

I was thinking about The Host because the buzz has been building around Cloverfield, the new film produced by Lost creator JJ Abrams. After a teaser trailer, which even managed to keep the film’s title under wraps, it soon became apparent that Cloverfield is a monster movie in the classic mold: something large and angry is attacking New York, people will die in their thousands, and it won’t be pretty.

Re-watching the trailer for Cloverfield, it struck me that, apart from The Host, there hasn’t been a decent monster movie in years, if not decades. Godzilla (1998) was a big, scaly disappointment, not least because the beast itself looked like a cross between a turkey and a Labrador. And don’t get me started on King Kong (2005).

What these films missed was that a monster is not a monster per se, but an embodiment of urban panic. King Kong (1933) was not about a big monkey (you hear me, Peter Jackson?!) but about a quasi-racist fear of the primitive, lusty and violent beast lurking within the heart of man.

The original Kong wanted to take Fay Wray somewhere quiet and subject her to some monkey-lovin’ - not take her ice-skating - and that’s why people with blonde daughters found it so scary.

And Godzilla’s 1954 radioactive rampage through Tokyo famously expressed Japan’s experience of mass urban destruction in World War II, as well as that country’s baptism of fire into the atomic age.

American distributors understood the metaphor all too well, and had the anti-nuclear message cut out, and Perry Mason inserted in its place.

Whilst The Host touches upon themes of anti-Americanism, government distrust and environmental peril, it is at its heart a very modern film about child-abduction, with a tadpole in place of a pedophile.

Cloverfield hits cinemas in a couple of weeks, and I can’t wait to see it.

Any film made after 2001 that involves the destruction of New York must be intended to evoke our fears of terrorism, but if it is to become an instant classic, it will need to do so much more.

Fingers (and tentacles) crossed!

Like many of my generation, Martin Rosen’s Watership Down (1978) remains an indelible part of my formative years, second only to birth and pubescence in terms of its impact on my psyche.

It’s difficult to pin down exactly what elevates a cartoon about rabbits to one of the best children’s films even made, and what must be - along with Animal Farm (1954) - the pinnacle of British feature animation.

Probably it’s the result of painstaking animation, painterly backdrops, intelligent storytelling, and a top-tier voice cast including John Hurt, Richard Briars, Ralph Richardson, Michael Hordern and Zero Mostel(!).

But let’s not forget Rosen’s direction, which uses animation as a means to tell the story, not as an end in itself. The careful composition of each scene, and the way the camera moves effortlessly from the grass-height world of the rabbits to the endless rolling hills of the English countryside is truly masterful.

Like the best Pixar films, Watership Down reinforces my belief that animation is one of the purest expressions of cinematic language.

Well, Rosen went on to make one more feature animation, the criminally underlooked Plague Dogs (1982), also based on a book by Richard Adams.

If you thought Watership Down was a bit hard going, you ain’t seen nothing yet - incredibly, Plague Dogs ups the ante with a tale so bleak and disheartening it could have caused a generation of kids to slit their wrists with sharpened Crayola.

This time, the story is about of a pair of adorable dogs who escape from an animal testing facility, only to find that the outside world is just as brutal and uncaring. Snitter, a terrier, has survived invasive brain surgery and suffers constant hallucinations; Rowf, a labrador, was subjected to a series of drowning experiments and is terrified by the sight of water.

Together they hunt sheep on the bare hills of the Lake District, but when rumours spread that the pair have been infected with the bubonic plague, the army is called in to exterminate them.

As you might expect, the animation and the backdrops are exquisite, the voice cast (featuring John Hurt, Nigel Hawthorne and Patrick Stewart) is top notch.

Thankfully, the new DVD release from Optimum contains the longer, ‘uncensored’ version of the film (distributors chopped 20 minutes off Rosen’s original cut). This is the first time the longer version has been available in the UK (albeit in unrestored form), and by golly, you can see why it was cut.

Fans of animation, animal lovers, and budding Animal Liberation Front suicide bombers would be well advised to check it out - we’re only in January, and Plague Dogs is already one of my top DVDs of the year.

People have criticised Stanley Kubrick for his cold, emotionless reading of the human condition, but I thought his films - lovingly crafted bundles of Asperger Syndrome they may well be - are designed to offer a gateway (a star-gateway, if you will) for the audience to feel and express emotions of their own.

Kubrick once wrote:

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

Well, if you re-read the above quote, and replace the phrase “the universe” with “Stanley Kubrick”, you will understand how I see his films.

I suspect that Kubrick was dimly aware that his audiences possessed emotions of their own, and so perhaps that’s why he didn’t feel the need to have them pouring out of the screen like blood out of an elevator.

My own reaction to 2001 was is largely one of wonder, tinged with sympathy for the plight of everyone’s favourite faulty computer.

Well, I was able to revisit these emotions the other weekend when I got my sticky paws on the Blu-Ray release of 2001, which should be arriving in the UK in the new year (like most Warners titles, it’ll also be available on HD DVD).

There’s already a perfectly respectable DVD release of 2001 (I got the version which came with the soundtrack CD for Christmas a few years ago), so what’s the point in shelling out for it all over again?

Well, not to sound like a stuck record, but the detail and clarity is stunning. 70mm films, which look great on DVD, come into their own in High-Definition, and watching 2001 again reminded me how well Kubrick’s superlative sci-fi has stood up over the years.

When I was a young ‘un, I was fascinated by the scenes of astronauts aboard the Discovery, roaming around the giant, rotating control room. I poured over stills from the film trying to work out how this cunning piece of optical trickery had been achieved.

Little could I have suspected that the entire set had been constructed, for real, and that the petrified actors were running at the bottom of a huge, multi-ton hamster wheel.

I also loved the opening Dawn of Man sequences, showing a band of Australopithecines and their monolith-augmented struggle for survival. Again, it never occurred to me that these scenes were shot in a studio, and not in the planes of Africa’s Rift Valley (On Blu-Ray, you can just about make out the texture used to project the backdrop against).

And the effect shots of space ships moving through the void still look magnificent today. This is partly due to the scale of the ‘miniatures’ used (the Discovery model was around 30 foot long) and also due to the complete absence of matte lines.

‘Travelling mattes’ are used in optical effects where two objects overlap, to prevent the background object from bleeding through to the foreground. That’s why moving objects in special effects shots sometimes have black lines round them.

Kubrick got round this in the space shots by never having two objects overlap. So the elaborate choreography of the famous Blue Danube space-station docking sequence is even more elaborate than I first imagined.

So far, so Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but the real fun of 2001 is working out what it’s all supposed to ‘mean’, and that’s why I find myself re-watching it again and again.

What’s with the floating baby? What does the monolith actually do? And just why does HAL go barmy? It’s all very strange, all very ambiguous, and I think that why 2001 has aged far better than Peter Hyams‘ far-too-tidy-by-half semi-sequel, 2010 (1984).

Well, I’ve heard lots of explanations for why HAL tries to kill the astronauts, and I haven’t liked most of them. So I’ll offer my favourite one here, sort of as an early, unwanted, Xmas present.

First of all, I think HAL makes a mistake, pure and simple, in predicting a fault in the ship’s communications module.

So when HAL uncovers the astronauts’ plot to disconnect him, his duty to the Discovery’s mission (the true importance of which he is forbidden to reveal to the astronauts) combined with a very sentient sense of self-preservation, leads him to snuff out the meddling apes one by one.

This leads to the film’s most memorable, and for me, most affecting confrontation, as the surviving astronaut executes the slow and excruciating murder of the troublesome computer by disconnecting HAL’s memory, block by block.

It’s the same struggle for survival that opened the film. But this time the setting is the computer room of a spaceship rather than the plains of Africa. And this time the murder weapon is not a bone club, but a tiny screwdriver.

Connections like that really tickle my funnybone! What’s your favourite 2001 moment?

Well, I recently stumbled across the American Film Institute’s 100 Years, 100 Songs list, which they compiled back in 2004.

The AFI’s list only covered American films, alas, but they also considered songs that didn’t originate in the movie in which they appeared (unlike the Academy, who only recognise Best Original Song).

The AFI’s top 10 was predictable, but not, I think, wholly unreasonable:

#1 Over the Rainbow, from The Wizard of Oz
(Synopsis by the Marin Independent Journal’s Rick Polito: “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again”)
#2 As Time Goes By, from Casablanca
#3 Singin’ In The Rain, from Singin’ In The Rain
#4 Moon River, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s
#5 White Christmas, from Holiday Inn
#6 Mrs. Robinson, from The Graduate
#7 When You Wish Upon A Star, from Pinocchio
#8 The Way We Were, from The Way We Were
#9 Stayin’ Alive, from Saturday Night Fever
#10 The Sound of Music, from The Sound of Music

Well, that all seems fair enough, but I would like to offer my own, personal list of top 10 movie songs.

They are presented, for your pleasure, in no particular order. I do hope you like them:

#1 Bright Eyes, from Watership Down.

(Art Garfunkel’s cherubic tones herald the arrival of the Black Rabbit of Death. And this was supposed to be a kids film…)

#2 I’m Through With Love, from Some Like It Hot

(Marilyn Monroe’s best film? As Sugar Kane, she is sweet enough to sink a diabetic into a coma)

#3 If You Believe, from The Wiz

(Lena Horne’s nose may have looked a little suspect, but her voice was the real deal)

#4 Springtime for Hitler, from The Producers

(”Don’t be stupid! Be a smarty! Come and join the Nazi Party!”)

#5 Trust in Me, from Jungle Book

(”Slip into ssilent sslumber… Sail on a ssilver misst… Slowly and ssurely your senses will cease to resisst….”)

#6 Rebekah Del Rio’s rendition of Crying, from Mulholland Drive

(Lord knows what the film was all about, but whether you like Lynch or loathe him, few directors use sound so effectively)

#7 In the End, from the, erm, climax of Shortbus

(Joyful, dreamlike, and - best of all - it features a brass band)

#8 Stonehenge, from Spinal Tap (Thanks, Roger!)

(Especially the bit where it goes all folksy, and the midgets start dancing)

#9 I Could Have Danced All Night, from My Fair Lady

(It’s just a great song. I sing it in the shower*)

* this is actually true

#10 Gently Johnny, from The Wicker Man

(Pretty much every song in this film was solid gold. I think The Wicker Man has one of the finest, and most unique soundtracks ever)

I am pretty sure the above list contains every major significant musical accomplishment cinema has ever produced. But, just to be sure, here are my See Alsos:

- Pretty much any song from Labyrinth
- Pretty much any song from South Park The Movie and Team America: World Police (these count as one selection)
- The o-EE-o marching song, from The Wizard of Oz
- The Yub Yub song from the end of Return of the Jedi
- The Om Namah Shivaya song, from Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. Oh yes, and that bit where Kate Capshaw sings Anything Goes in Cantonese
- New York, New York, from Gremlins 2
- The song the little blue parasite sings in Brain Damage

Well, those are my choices.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t missed anything out. But perhaps you would care to add your own suggestions?

Well, several readers came to my rescue with a short-list of short-films that are as sweet as they are brief.

So sit back, prime your stopwatches, and enjoy our list of films that can be watched in one sitting - even after drinking a litre vat of non-brand Cola!

These bijou beauties are all arranged - for your pleasure - in order of filmic length (if not artistic girth). To kick off with, Dan and Peter came up with a trio of great films hovering around the 90 minute mark:

Night of the Demon (95 mins) - Dir. Jacques Tourneur

(Occult thriller based on M.R. James’ Casting the Runes)

Good Night and Good Luck (93 mins) - Dir. George Clooney

(Monochrome McCarthy-era political drama)

Brief Encounter (86 mins) - Dir. David Lean

(Brittle train-side romantic encounter)

Next, at just a touch over 80 minutes, comes mine very own suggestion:

The Wild Blue Yonder (81 mins) - Dir. Werner Herzog

(Bonkers sci-fi monologue with Brad Dourif as a homesick alien)

Bobbing under the 80 minute mark, we have a cluster of Val Lewton horror classics, suggested by Neil Snowdon - and don’t you love their titles?:

Bedlam (79 mins)
The Bodysnatcher (77 mins)
Cat People (73 mins)
Curse of the Cat People (70 mins)
I Walked with a Zombie (69 mins)
The Leopard Man (66 mins) (says Neil: “it’s barely a feature! runs out of steam part way, but it’s got a great first half”)

(Incidentally, those of you with Multi-Region DVD players might want to check out the fantastic Val Lewton Horror Collection, available in Region 1)

Neil adds:

Elsewhere, Eyes Without a Face clocks in bang on 90 mins, though if you’ve got a UK VHS, it might run a little shorter, what with the PAL conversion… you might try The Monster Squad which clocks in at 79 mins. Or in classic noir Pickup on South Street 77mins or Detour at just 67 mins…”

William Sleet suggested a pentet of films with running times peaking (not unlike Clint Eastwood) in the mid 70s:

Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (76 mins) - Dir. Jean Renoir

(When an unpopular publishing boss gets bumped off, a workers’ collective takes over)

The Bride of Frankenstein (75 mins) - Dir. James Whale

(shock haired she-corpse turns down Boris Karloff)

The Red Badge of Courage (69 mins) - Dir. John Huston

(American Civil War yarn)

She Done Him Wrong (66 mins) - Dir. Lowell Sherman

(Mae West. Cary Grant. Do you need a third reason?)

Zero de Conduite (41 mins) - Dir. Jean Vigo

(Surreal take on life in a French boarding school, sort of a Gallic If…)

Mr. Sleet adds:

I would like to include the stupendous Dekalog by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Although, strictly speaking, it was a TV series, each of the ten stories is a mini masterpiece of cinema - two of the stories of course had been released theatrically in longer versions but even they were both still under 90 mins!”

And finally, at a mere 30 minutes (and, therefore in some loose, unofficial sense, the winner) comes this suggestion from colinr:

Night and Fog (30 mins) - Dir. Alain Resnais

Do documentaries count? If so, I would vote for Night and Fog, which manages to condense all the salient information about the holocaust into just over thirty minutes - I don’t think I’ve seen anything more perfectly concise!”

I think Night and Fog makes the point admirably, for if a subject as weighty as the holocaust can be addressed in a mere half an hour, then there is absolutely no excuse for Hollywood to presume that its blockbusters are worthy of more - whatever their budget.