Susan Elkin reviews the best children's and young-adult fiction to help keep your darlings entertained over the spring holidays
DVD: Tower Heist (12)
Friday 16 March 2012
This uneven crime caper is full of plot-holes and clichés, but it's redeemed by a perky script, Alan Alda's convincingly shady banker Arthur Shaw, and a lovely performance from Matthew Broderick as a disgraced financier.
From Beverly Hills Cop to perfect flop: critics rate Eddie Murphy movie at 0%
Tuesday 13 March 2012
Even the most dreadful films are usually able find one or two positive reviews that film studios can selectively quote to display on promotional posters.
Brian Grazer to produce the Oscars
Thursday 10 November 2011
The Hollywood filmmaker - who won a Best Picture Academy Award in 2002 for 'A Beautiful Mind' - has been drafted in to oversee the prestigious event after original producer Brett Ratner quit following his use of a gay slur at a screening his new movie.
Win for pub landlady but Premier League may take second leg
Wednesday 05 October 2011
A pub landlady appealing against her conviction for using a foreign decoder to show football matches without paying BSkyB has won a landmark European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling that threatens to undermine the financial position of the Premier League and other TV rights holders.
Doubles in the movies
Wednesday 27 July 2011
Album: Mann, Mann's World (Mercury)
Friday 22 July 2011
With his singles "Buzzin'" and "The Mack" built around familiar borrowings from Nu Shooz and Mark Morrison, young R&B blade Mann would appear to have his heart stuck firmly in the more recent past.
Nature Studies by Mike McCarthy: Worth being awake at 3am to hear this sound
Friday 17 June 2011
Of all our imaginings, one of the most resonant is the idea of transformation. We are instantly fascinated by people changing identities, by things becoming different things, by frogs which turn into princes. Perhaps it's because one of our principal holds on reality is our instinctive belief, so hard to dislodge, that form is fixed, not fluid, and so to encounter any fundamental shift in form or nature gives us a jolt. Not that we do come across such shifts much, in the real world – the caterpillar changing into a butterfly is the prime exception – but our myths and legends and stories are chock-fullof them.
First Night: Shrek The Musical, Theatre Royal, London
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Video: Prince Charles meets Shrek
Thursday 09 June 2011
The Prince of Wales has been to meet the cast of Shrek the musical in London.
Katy Holland: Why the Barbie hotel suite has made me a nervous Shrek
Sunday 15 May 2011
Am I imagining things, or has the world been taken over by kids' fantasy icons?
Gabby Sidibe shows her Precious mettle
Friday 01 April 2011
The workshop that changed the world
Wednesday 23 March 2011
The room measures 6m by 5m, and could almost be a hyper-quaint visualisation from an animatronic version of a Dickens novel starring an orphaned fish with Eddie Murphy’s voice. And yet it was in this attic workshop - restored and open to the public from today at London’s Science Museum - that James Watt, inventor of the modern steam engine, presided over the industrial revolution.
Big Mommas: Like A Father, Like Son (PG)
Friday 18 February 2011
DVD: Shrek 4: Forever After – The Final Chapter (U)
Friday 10 December 2010
"I'm just a jolly green giant," moans Shrek at his son's birthday party.








