Ssh, nobody mention how much better Saoirse is!

No vampires or werewolves, but girl-on-girl fighting and lots of angst. Guess who?

When you think of film soundtracks what sort of names do you come up with? John Williams? Danny Elfman? Ennio Morricone, maybe? Well get with the times, guys! It’s all about the pop-star built soundtrack these days. Directors seem to be head hunting big name musicians – ever looking to fill their time in between throwing TV’s out of windows and stealing your girlfriends – to take over the musical reins of their films. They’re doing pretty well too.

An eclectic amalgam of Cold War thriller, girl’s-own coming-of-age yarn and superhero origin story, Hanna could have easily wound up resembling a cinematic patchwork of half-baked genre constituents. It’s a great relief, then, that Hanna is much more than the sum of its (many) parts.

First R-Patz, now this. Dammit, Stephenie Meyer, leave our actors alone!

For his first film since Master and Commander, Peter Weir has taken on the challenge of a road movie unlike any other – the protagonists travel 4,000 miles on foot and offroad, with not nearly enough food and far too many creaking Russian accents. There are dozens of things waiting to go wrong with just such a film, but most of them don’t.

How do you tell a tale about the grisly rape and murder of a 14 year-old girl, whilst making sure it can be released a PG? By getting rid of that pesky rape and muder part, of course! Peter Jackson’s take on Alice Sebold’s novel is certainly beautiful to look at, but it has to be asked, is that really the point?

When published in 2002 The Lovely Bones was an instant success, climbing to top of the UK as well as US book charts. So how do you tell a tale about the grizzly rape and murder of a 14 year-old girl onscreen, whilst making sure it can be released a PG? By getting rid of that pesky rape and muder part, of course! Peter Jackson’s take on Alice Sebold’s novel is certainly beautiful to look at, but it has to be asked, is that really the point?

Imagine if Steven Spielberg directed Twilight or James Cameron the first Harry Potter. That’s the level of hype we’re talking here, when one of this generation’s best-selling books joins forces with one of the biggest directors of our time in this month’s The Lovely Bones.

Nominations for BAFTA 2010 are in, and it’s a pretty mixed bag. Despite the much-hyped domination of James Cameron’s Avatar for a million trillion weeks running at the box office, the epic is sharing its lead position of eight nominations with two other films – acclaimed drama The Hurt Locker and 2009’s standout British work An Education.