Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation, has been described as Sylvia Plath with the ego of Madonna. Neglected, misunderstood, unlucky

No 78: ADIDAS

Sing-a-long-a-Dorian

THE FART, throughout history, has been the fanfare of the common man. First there was flatulence, then comedy. From Aristophanes to the Carry Ons, the ordinary bloke's wind has blasted at society. But as a rule such incontinence rarely disturbs the genteel fantasy of Hollywood (the camp-fire scene in Blazing Saddles is the exception that proves it). Alan Parker's The Road to Wellville (18) redresses the balance with a vengeance. In the story of Dr John Harvey Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins), cereal inventor and crackpot health-theorist, Parker takes us back to basics: to bottoms, enemas and "stools". Given the anal fixation, you might term it humorous fundamentalism. Par-ker's Road to Wellville is paved with broken wind.

EVER since Erich Von Stroheim, cinema has grossed out on greed. Greed fed a whole avaricious genre: film noir, with its lust for money, lust for power and just plain lust. Von Stroheim's 1924 Greed is more topical than ever: it told of a friendshi p blown apart by the windfall of a lottery win. Many will read the new Brit- ish thriller Shallow Grave (18)

LEWD, bad and dangerous to view, Quentin Tarantino is the least categorisable, most troubling director in cinema today - too talented to dismiss, too volatile to embrace. The hype that greets his every move hardens you against him; and yet his films, for all their gleeful triviality and wanton violence, have a way of winning you over.

Unexpectedly, the scene in Quentin Tarantino's astonishing film Pulp Fiction that astonishes more than any other is not decorated in torn body parts, dripping in ketchup or draped in a thick fog of expletives. It is the one where a low-rent LA gangster's moll has been taken out for the night by a heroin-sodden hit-man employee of her boyfriend's. The pair pitch up at a theme restaurant, where all the staff are lookalikes for dead stars: there, waiting tables, are a Marilyn, a Buddy Holly, a James Dean.

The Independent photographer points to the girls he has just photographed for our cover, looks me over and says sternly, 'I'd take your jacket off before you speak to them, if I were you.'

It is time to review the Cannes predictions we made last week. Some look set to be proved wrong: there has barely been a peep from Mr Golan - or even the exuberant Troma team - in a fest which, so far, is unnaturally short on hot air.

Films about the blind make as much sense as musicals about silent movie stars. But Sunset Boulevard is a hit, and Madeline Stowe (below, with Aidan Quinn) stars in the demented Blink as a blind woman who 'sees' a serial killer at work - eyeless in gaga. Stowe's sight has been surgically restored but it keeps flashing back. Unfortunately, it doesn't flash back to Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark or Mia Farrow in Blind Terror so Stowe can study how blind heroines should behave when confronted with mass murderers - pluckily, with lots of crashing into walls until they remember they have 'heightened senses' and can turn the tables. (Hepburn smashes all the lights in her flat, forcing the psychopathic Alan Arkin to function on her terms. . .only she forgets about the light in the fridge).

UMA THURMAN has always been 'awestruck' that her father speaks Tibetan without an accent. Not many actresses can say that. Not many Nordic-looking blondes were named after a Hindu goddess, either, but Uma Thurman is one. It may not be essential to have a glamorously distinctive background in order to stay ahead of the Hollywood wave, but it helps. Or helped. The need for such props is passing now.

You wouldn't exactly say that John McNaughton's films were sleazy but . . . The Borrower was a sci-fi thriller about an alien whose head keeps exploding and who has to 'borrow' a series of new ones from his human hosts. The Chicago Tribune wrote of it, 'McNaughton has emerged as the most spectacularly pessimistic film- maker to come along since the heyday of the film noir masters in the Fifties.' Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll showcased Eric Bogosian (he of Talk Radio fame) and his glorious cavalcade of scumbags.