Barbed-wired prairies, hot fudge milkshakes and blood on the snow: Tam Leach goes ice fishing on Devils Lake and learns that there's more to North Dakota than the widescreen vistas of 'Fargo' country

The Coens' latest, 'Burn After Reading', premieres at the Venice Film Festival next week. Geoffrey Macnab pays tribute to a pair of genre-defying, subversive mavericks

The pioneering publisher and activist John La Rose died last year, but his legacy to black British writing lives on. Kevin LeGendre celebrates a life devoted to political struggle and the arts

Con Air Today, 9pm FIVE

IT'S BEEN a good week for money and a bad one for my social life. The money I'm glad of, as I would have to emigrate to Saudi Arabia if I wanted to earn a crust to over the Great Shutdown. The social life - well. I don't really enjoy polite conversation, I can't afford to be dog- sick hungover with this workload, and anyway, no one ever asks you to their office party when you're a temp - not even firms you've worked for on and off for years. I probably wouldn't have had the time or energy: 12-hour days take it out of you.

EUROPE, ASIA and much of America are already in the clear. But, as you read this over breakfast, people are still crossing their fingers in Alaska, Hawaii and Tahiti. In that part of the globe, the world has not yet not ended.

JOHN MALKOVICH (right) has always impressed as a baddie - remember his insinuating seducer in Dangerous Liaisons, or his creepy psycho-killer in In the Line of Fire? He gets to play the villain again in Con Air (10pm Sky Premier), an exciting roller-coaster of an action-picture. The premise is quite straightforward - a single good guy (Nicolas Cage) attempts to wrest control of a plane from a group of desperate criminals (a top-notch bunch of actors led by Malkovich and featuring Steve Buscemi and Ving Rhames). But where Simon West's thriller scores is the sheer panache with which he handles the action sequences.

THIS LAST TITLE DISTRIBUTOR

SINCE James Cameron used this year's Oscars ceremony to proclaim himself King of the World, every Hollywood director has been dreaming of his own massively overlong, cash-harvesting blockbuster in which a group of poorly realised characters get the living daylights bashed out of them by an enormous heavy object. In Titanic, Cameron belted Leonardo DiCaprio with an iceberg. In Deep Impact, Mimi Leder chucked a comet at Vanessa Redgrave. And now, in Armageddon (12), Michael Bay sends Bruce Willis hurtling into a giant asteroid. One day - if we're really unlucky - all films may be as stupid as this.

LONDON TOP 10

1 (-) City of Angels (12) New pounds 1,141,654

1 (1) The Wedding Singer (12) 2 pounds 2,474,614

Con Air (15), Touchstone

My Best Friend's Wedding (PG), Columbia, rental, 25 Mar