How do you best map the cultural year? The conventional way is a kind of aesthetic Mercator projection, in which the irregular realities of the arts are smoothed out on to a single flat plane. Some of the resulting realms and territories are very large. Film has a landmass all to itself and Theatre and Books command imperial stretches of space. And, just as a Mercator projection stretches and squeezes in variable ways, the act of year-end summary means that some regions loom larger in diagrammatic form than is consistent with their heft in the real world. This is a moment for the Iceland of contemporary dance to expand its newsprint real estate.

I don't regard the Guardian article as revelatory but as more of what we know, plus scuttlebut. There are serious omissions. The impression is given that Julian Assange refused to attend a meeting with the Swedish director of prosecutions on 14 October. This is false. Assange offered to attend on the 15th and 16th. When these days weren't suitable, he offered a complete week instead.

The director, writer and producer Blake Edwards made such durable films as Breakfast at Tiffany's, starring Audrey Hepburn as the entrancing Holly Golightly, Victor/Victoria, the amusing musical farce about sexual identity starring hiswife, Julie Andrews, and perhaps his most famous triumphs, the Pink Panther films, starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling French detective Clouseau.

Blake Edwards, the prolific film director, producer and screenwriter who made his name with Breakfast at Tiffany's before managing, via the Pink Panther films, to create a hugely lucrative comedy franchise which jollified Hollywood for almost four decades, has died at the age of 88.

What makes a cult film? It's a question to get cinephiles spluttering over their popcorn. Should the definition be confined to the midnight-movie set that embraced El Topo and The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the 1970s, or do films such as John Hughes Breakfast Club count?

John Godber has written the country's most frequently performed plays, but for audiences in Hull, they have appeared one too many times. The playwright has ended his 26-year formal association with one of the city's theatres in typically dramatic style after accusations of "cronyism".

Forensic evidence is slim to non-existent. They have few credible witnesses or obvious lines of inquiry. And, as if to add insult to injury, detectives investigating the high-profile murder of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen last week managed, quite by accident, to prompt their only potential suspect to kill himself.

Mario Monicelli, often called "the father of Italian screen comedy", was one of the Italian cinemas greatest craftsmen, a director whose prolific output (over 70 films) included several masterpieces, such as the superb caper comedy I Soliti Ignoti (1958), and the biting satire La Grande Guerra (1959), which won him Venice's Golden Lion award.

The British Film Institute (BFI) is to become the new champion for British film, inheriting the funding responsibilities of the UK Film Council and ending a period of uncertainty for the industry.

What then, exactly, is a kook? According to Sam Wasson's engaging book, Fifth Avenue, 5am (Aurum, £15.99), which recounts the making of Breakfast at Tiffany's, it is a very particular thing indeed.