Very little schmaltz on Time Out's 101 ten best romantic films

Comic Matt Lucas is to star in a silent comedy-style show for BBC1 - his first new character series without sidekick David Walliams.

All the nice girls love a sailor. But so do the mad girls and the bad girls. Exquisitely bored by the monotonous hum and click of sewing machines and knitting needles in a snowbound fishing village, Senta annihilates herself for love of the cursed hero of The Flying Dutchman. Enraged by rejection, and pressed on all sides by the complex politics of an uneasy military alliance, the sorceress Medea slaughters her children and poisons her rival to wring hot tears from the cold eyes of unfaithful Jason.

A Catholic priest known for his theological scholarship, Ronald Arbuthnott Knox single-handedly re-translated the Latin Vulgate Bible into English, and often wrote on religious themes. But he was also an editor, literary critic, and a humourist who wrote six decent mystery novels and three volumes of short stories, starting in the late 1920s. According to Evelyn Waugh, Knox saw his mysteries as "an intellectual exercise, a game between reader and writer, in which a problem was precisely stated and elaborately described."

1. The Crystal Palace.

Taking the temperature of travel

Paul Sirret has a long creative association with the Theatre Royal Stratford East where his works include the Olivier-nominated Ska musical The Big Life. This, though, is his first ever pantomime, a tricky mixed form that can defeat even the most seasoned scribe, and he rises to the challenge with a show that's a lovely, warm and very funny blend of traditional elements and quirky original twists.

A piano used in the classic Bogart and Bergman film Casablanca sold for just over $600,000 yesterday, falling far short of predictions that it could fetch $1 million or more.

1. A 6-0, 6-0, 6-0 score

Q. Why is it, if you book a one-week flight, the fare is a certain amount; if you book the same departure date but for two weeks' duration, the price goes up £20 or £30; if you book again the same departure date but for three weeks, the price increases by almost £100? I am looking at flights from Birmingham to Chania on Monarch. Do the airlines think that if you can afford a three-week holiday, you can afford to pay more for your flights? David Bailey

The instrument is being auctioned by Sotheby's on the 70th anniversary of the film's release

Not all of these 14 gems are masterpieces but at least three of them are: Rear Window, Psycho and, best of all, Vertigo, Hitchcock's finest and most unsettling achievement, in which the portly auteur twisted clean-cut James Stewart into an obsessive lunatic.

Turhan Bey was a screen heart-throb of the 1940s, whose slick black hair and exotically handsome features (often with a pencil moustache, which gave an added touch of suavity), made him a popular romantic lead.

George Hurrell gave the Golden Age of Hollywood its glossy sheen and soft-focus seductiveness. He was the foremost publicity stills photographer of the day - a man responsible for creating icons.