According to figures released today from the UK Film Council, 2009 had the highest cinema attendance in the last six years, with over 170 million people visiting their local theatre. This means that contrary to popular prediction, the film business is alive and booming.

The British talent for satire is brilliantly displayed in In the Loop. This film spin-off from the BBC series The Thick of It chronicles the life and times of several US and UK government figureheads in the days before the invasion of Iraq. The cracking script and brilliant cast keep the laughs coming hard and fast, while director Armando Iannucci’s hand-held camera techniques create an almost uncomfortably close-to-the-bone sense of realism. If you missed this film at the cinema, it’s well worth grabbing on DVD for the best laughs you’ve had in ages and one-liners you’ll be repeating for weeks.

Once you find what it is you’re good at then just go with that, right? There’s no need to try your hand at anything else. Take the warblers and crooners for example; mainly the ones that sing about love, relationships and all that romantic crap. They should just stick to their day jobs. There’s absolutely no need for them to attempt a career in acting because quite frankly, it’s embarrassing for everyone.

Looking for a box office blast, or avoiding a bomb? We look forward to all the upcoming releases including Edge of Darkness, Invictus, Precious, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, Adoration, Youth in Revolt and what looks like the utterly terrible Astro Boy. You can’t go wrong with our patented anticipation-o-meter!

Ever wondered how films really should have ended? Like if Bruce Willis hadn’t been dead all along, or that chick in the Crying Game really was, y’know… a chick? Yeah, we lie awake at night worrying about that stuff too. So much so, in fact, that we found a bunch of animations that just might answer those burning questions and cure that chronic insomnia…

Yesterday the States celebrated the national holiday of Martin Luther King Jr, and so it’s fitting that Dreamworks has chosen today to announce the writer for the official biopic of his life. The lucky fellow? Ronald Harwood, writer of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Australia, and The Pianist.

Marc Webb has been confirmed as director for Sony’s Spider-Man reboot. The studio stated in a press release yesterday that the 500 Days of Summer director is officially signed on for the film.

Captain America is coming to our screens! Joe Johnston, the man responsible (and we use the world “responsible” in the same sense as when we say “Stalin was responsible for some pretty awful stuff”) for films such as Jurassic Park III, The Rocketeer and Hidalgo reveals he’ll be helming 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger and the upcoming Jurassic Park IV.

You could be forgiven for thinking this film was another brutal gangster flick. But despite the somewhat misleading title and dramatic black and white posters currently lining tube stations to promote its release, it’s actually as for from the shoot-em-up genre as you can get.

Paramount is going ahead with a Paranormal Activity sequel. Seemingly deaf to the film world’s exclamations that the only reason why the first one worked was because it had a 50 quid budget and wasn’t at all commercialised, the studio now has a definite director attached to the sequel, and plans to release it just before Halloween 2011.