The following notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Has ever a fictional character been so mistreated and maligned? The novelist Will Self (above) defends the reputation of King Kong

PETER JACKSON'S Heavenly Creatures (18) is a film that slips the surly bonds of genre. It's a murder story without a mystery, a romance that lacks a single clinch, an airy fantasy that ends in wrenching brutality. With wit and daring, Jackson whisks us around two adolescent girls' minds, on a guided tour of their most garish fantasies and deluded, delirious dreams. Imagination is both the film's subject, and its strength.

Adam Mars-Jones reviews Heavenly Creatures, a poetic portrait of two te enagers whose fantasies led to matricide

Prom frocks and arch glamour from the Fifties are returning to the forefront of fashion and to the cinema screen. Marion Hume reports

Ian Hart We know Ian Hart as John Lennon, whom he played in last year's Backbeat, and again in The Hours and the Times, a low-budget drama all about the never-quite-consummated love between Lennon and Brian Epstein. Both performances were stunning, (and each show ed a different side of the rogue Beatle) but in 1995 Hart will show that he has other strings to his bow (or guitar). He appears in no less than three British features: with Hugh Grant in The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain; in Clo ckwork Mice, Gary Sinyor's follow-up to Leon the Pig Farmer; and as the lead in Ken Loach's Spanish Civil War drama Land and Freedom.

If you thought this was the year of touchy-feely Forrest Gumpness, think again. Whatever you choose from this year's selection of 180 new features at the London Film Festival, there's bound to be a corpse hidden in there somewhere. When Reservoir Dogs played at the LFF two years ago, the concern about, and lust for, violence had just begun to stir with films like The Living End and Benny's Video. Now, with Pulp Fiction in town, not to mention Killing Zoe and Sleep With Me , it's all become too much. With that in mind, and with telephone booking opening today (071-928 3232), here's a preliminary guide to 10 films you shouldn't miss.

This is an edited version of last night's talk on Radio 4, which will be repeated at 9.10pm this Saturday on Radio 3. Next Wednesday's lecture, 'Cannibal Tales: The Hunger for Conquest', will be published in the 'Independent' the following day.

Yemeni tribesmen freed a Briton and a Canadian working for a US oil company yesterday after holding them hostage for nearly two weeks, a senior company official said, Reuter reports from Sanaa. Briton Peter Jackson, 49, was reunited with his wife Valerie in Sanaa.

Peter Jackson, 49, a British oil worker kidnapped by tribesmen in Yemen as a protest against their government, sent a message to his family assuring them he was being treated well.

Peter Jackson, 45, a British computer engineer who lives in Saudi Arabia, was among a group of five oil company employees kidnapped by tribesmen in North Yemen as they inspected a damaged pipeline.

Leolo (18) Jean-Claude Lauzon (Can)

Stephen King, who ought to know about such matters, proposes the following little experiment in elementary psychology. Find yourself a multiplex cinema which is showing a notoriously frightening horror movie and a hit comedy on the same evening. Linger outside the entrance to each screening and listen to the sounds made by the audience. You will rapidly discover, he maintains, that they are virtually indistinguishable.