No two films by John Boorman, the veteran British director of 'Deliverance', are quite alike. Up next, he tells Geoffrey Macnab, is a $25m animation of 'The Wizard of Oz'

A second banana is not merely a straight man, though being a straight man is part of the job. For 30 years, as Johnny Carson’s foil on The Tonight Show, Ed McMahon, who has died aged 86, defined second banana, and, with Carson, remade the talk-show format.

In the 1960s Jack Good, known in the United States as an academic working in statistics and mathematics, used to drive around the campus of Virginia Tech University in a car which sported the personalised number plate 007 IJG. It was his oblique way of referring to what for decades he could not speak about – his important wartime role as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, where he and colleagues did work which is credited with shortening the war.

First released in 1975, and now showing at the BFI, this is Kubrick's most beautiful movie, and his most touching.

The legendary director dreamed of making a Holocaust film. But Spielberg beat him to it. Now, a new exhibition will show us what we missed.

No wonder Peter O'Toole looks shocked: the prestigious <i>Cahiers du Cinema</i> has revealed its list of the 100 greatest films of all time &ndash; and not one of them was made here. John Lichfield reports

Hardy Amies, the Savile Row tailor, was on the brink of bankruptcy yesterday after a collapse in consumer demand for its range of womenswear. The company announced that it has filed a notice of intention to appoint an administrator, while the search continues for a rescuer.

The street violence in Bernstein's version of 'Romeo and Juliet' gives added power to its high-energy mix of danger and romance

There's no need to go overboard

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Arthur C Clarke, the science fiction author of over a hundred books including 2001: A Space Odyssey, has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

When Charlie Chaplin set up his own studio, they said it would never work. Ninety years on, owned by Tom Cruise, United Artists is still going strong, says Geoffrey Macnab

The ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova was exceptional for her beauty and her dance technique. With her long, fragile lines and big eyes, she had the lyrical grace of a Russian icon; with her high, lilting jump and expansive arcs of movement, she had a versatility recorded in many videos and DVDs of ballets as diverse as Giselle and Spartacus. The choreographer of Spartacus was Yuri Grigorovich, who directed the Bolshoi Ballet for 31 years and was her second husband.