Saudi Arabia's only film festival has been cancelled, dealing a blow to hopes of an easing of clerical control over culture in a country where cinemas had been banned for almost three decades. Mamdouh Salem, one of the organisers of the Jeddah Film Festival, said yesterday:

In The Loop, the eagerly anticipated big screen extension of political TV comedy The Thick Of It, will open in cinemas on April 17th. Already seen at Sundance, I caught another opportunity for a sneak preview before the general release at a screening last night in London.

With Dogme 95, four Danish directors reduced film to its powerful best. And more than a decade on, they’re still winning awards. By Kaleem Aftab

I spent this morning at Odeon West End in Leicester Square, where the press launch for the 52nd London Film Festival (15-30 October 2008) was held.

It is time, my children, that you learned to tell a Passion from a Beating, and the Holy Spirit from a Good Body

Sound of music

David Lynch's new film, Lost Highway (18), fills Adam Mars-Jones with dread and wonder whileLiese Spencer eavesdrops on a transatlantic intervie w with the director at the Edinburgh Film Festival

`What is this garbage about music being the highest art form?' The Independent's comprehensive coverage of this year's 51st Edinburgh Festival begins in the broadsheet on Monday when American choreographer Twyla Tharp explains her philosophy of dance to David Benedict.

I can't vouch for everything in the coming week of the London Film Festival, but there is at least one modern masterpiece on show: Safe, the new film by Todd Haynes, the American independent director best known for his 1991 film Poison.

There have been a few last-minute additions to the London Film Festival, which starts tonight with Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days. The most controversial is Kids, the first feature by the American photographer Larry Clark. It focuses on a bunch of disaffected teenage boys whose idea of safe sex is to bed a virgin. The film has been christened a masterpiece in some quarters but Premiere's Libby Gelman-Waxner was stinging in her denouncement of the film, claiming that it heralds "a whole new fad of paedophile chic". See for yourself at 9.00pm on Saturday, at the National Film Theatre.