Who are the most baked, caned, hopped-up or tripped-out characters in movie history? Here, in the sort of order which can only really be dreamt up through a haze of quaaludes, mescaline and Night Nurse, are our top ten.

Hurrah for knowledge-based lies! Beginning today, we’ll be giving you a weekly low-down on a cinematic figure you really should know your way around. After all, not only does epic film know-how make you a better person, but it improves your blood-pressure, freshens your clothes and makes you irresistible to foxy humans of your preferred gender. This week: Danny Boyle.

Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle has expressed an interest in resuming the top role for forthcoming zombie thriller 28 Months Later.

Kick-Ass writer Mark Millar’s directorial debut Miracle Park is moving ahead, bringing the writer’s dark take on superheroes to his homeland of Scotland! It’s Trainspotting meets X-men! Though hopefully with fewer toilets…

If you thrilled to the charming bumblings of M Hulot and gazed spellbound at the visual feast of Belleville Rendez-vous, then brace yourself. Based on a Jacques Tati script adapted by director Sylvain Chomet, The Illusionist has the best of both directors’ vision.

The Walt Disney Company has sold Miramax Films for a reported $660m.

As we’re all painfully aware, London’s got a lot to compete with in terms of our Olympic opening ceremony. In Bejing, the opening ceremony was a sheer hallucination of fireworks, lights, mind-boggling drum-shapes and undulating bodily sex-beasts. I mean, what have we got, exactly? Peter Kay in a funny shirt?

Considered by many to be the last great British film of the ’90s, Human Traffic is an endearingly honest depiction of a weekend in the lives of five pill-popping twentysomethings. Credited with launching the careers of John Simm (Life on Mars) and much-maligned ‘mockney’ Danny Dyer, Human Traffic manages to capture the zeitgeist of the rave scene to perfection.

The acclaimed director of Slumdog Millionnaire, 28 Days Later and Trainspotting has announced today that he plans to return to his theatrical roots having been, as he says, “distracted for 15 years by the movies.” He has decided to direct a theatrical adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at the National Theatre.

There’s generally only one type of Christmas film, or at the very least, a very identifiable type of film that always seems to get a festive release, year after year…