The ‘90s were a time of dreams, a time when anything could happen, when social hierarchies could be torn apart… if you were in a high school movie. In which case, you have probably had or will have a ‘makeover’ before your time is up.

Congratulations! Becoming Queen Bee of your school and usurping the provider of your salvation a la Clueless, getting the hot guy who made a bet he could turn you into prom queen like in She’s All That – all this and more could be yours! Things are looking up for ugly girls everywhere…

There are, of course, some caveats to this statement – I’d rather we didn’t mention my namesake (the nicknames, the ugliness) who didn’t get a makeover at school; she even had to return to high school to banish her demons, oh, and bag the hot teacher. There’s also the possibility you might stumble into a non-makeover teen film like Bring It On.

Oh yes, and one final point – you can’t actually be ugly. Applicants for ‘ugly girl’ parts in teen films should still be at least twice as attractive as the average person. In some cases you might be required to be better in every way than your ‘hot girl’ counterpart. Come on, was anyone fooled in 10 Things I Hate About You? Bianca was like Pizza Hut to Julia Stiles’ cleverer, funnier, prettier Pizza Express.

So really the ‘90s teen film gave awkward teens hopes of romance and fulfilment before shattering them to pieces. So, got that? No ugly chicks allowed. Even in Coyote Ugly. Especially in Coyote Ugly.

Have you ever been watching a film in the cinema when suddenly you realise that you’ve seen it before? Watching Eagle Eye, that feeling of déjà vu will probably come over you again and again.

There are shades of Terminator, Wanted, 2001, A Space Odyssey, I Robot, indeed practically every film I’ve ever seen, and while such a concept is hardly surprising with director D.J. Caruso’s record (last year’s Disturbia was a complete rip-off of Hitchcock’s Rear Window), it does get a little annoying.

What is one man’s theft, however, is another’s homage, so it is perhaps too harsh to judge it on this alone. A mix of mystery, action and thriller, Eagle Eye is a well-executed, if silly, comment on politics and the threat of surveillance.

So far, so 1984, but with some genuinely exhilarating chase sequences and a very dangerous trumpet (don’t ask), Eagle Eye gives Big Brother a twenty-first century makeover. When lay-about copy-boy Jerry Shaw (LaBeouf) receives a call from a mysterious woman who seems to be watching his every move, his first instinct is to ignore her communications.

When this voice on the other side of the phone breaks him out of jail by demolishing it, however, he begins to think otherwise. Forced to meet Rachel Holloman (Monaghan), whose son will be killed if she does not also listen to this faceless woman, the two must assist in what seems to be a terrorist plot.

Hot on their tails are cops Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson, who must stop these risks to security at all costs. But how do you catch two criminals who are informed via telephone what’s around every corner, helped by an assailant who can turn red lights green, derail trains and, in a particularly Transformers-esque scene, make unmanned cranes destroy every police car on the duo’s trail?

It may be ridiculous, but it makes good popcorn viewing. No strangers to the Hollywood blockbuster, the film’s leads shine in roles which explore the depth of what normal people will do when faced with no other option.

LaBeouf (the worst thing about Indiana Jones 4) and Monaghan (the best thing about Mission Impossible 3) work excellently together, bouncing off each other’s turmoil to create a duo thrust together by circumstances. Best of all, the scripting (almost) completely resists the temptation of the romantic subplot.

Also, while there is a slightly infuriating Hollywood ending, this is a film which knows not to take itself too seriously, making up for a dubious principle with highly impressive special effects and performances which truly justifies LaBeouf and Monaghan’s places on the new Hollywood A List.

Three stars

Sex, nerdiness and mindless violence mix with ab-toning and stupidity to make a heady cocktail of unforgiving black humour in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading. After last year’s Oscar success for No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers are at the top of their game.

Joining them in their latest endeavour is an ensemble cast of Hollywood royalty – Coen regulars George Clooney, Richard Jenkins and Frances McDormand, along with first-timers Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich. At the headquarters of the CIA, analyst Osborne Cox (Malkovich) arrives for a top-secret meeting only to find he is about to be sacked for a drinking problem.

He does not take the news well, and returns to his whisky and memoir writing at his Georgetown home, where his wife Katie (Swinton) is embroiled in an affair with a married federal marshal, Harry Pfarrer (Clooney). Elsewhere in the Washington, DC suburbs, and seemingly worlds apart, Hardbodies Fitness Center employee Linda Litzke (McDormand) can barely concentrate on her work.

She is consumed with her life plan for extensive cosmetic surgery and confides her mission to can-do colleague Chad Feldheimer (Pitt). And all the while, the gym’s manager Ted Treffon (Jenkins) pines for her even as she arranges dates via the Internet with other men.

When a computer disc containing material for the CIA analyst’s memoirs accidentally falls into the hands of Linda and Chad, the duo are intent on exploiting their find. Unfortunately for them, they go about it in a not particularly intelligent way.

And it is this lack of even common sense in the lead characters that the relentlessly dark comedy exploits to make a script that is at once a heartwarming and chilling. Brad Pitt delivers a cleverly timed and nuanced performance as the gratuitously annoying and ingratiatingly idiotic gym assistant who bumbles merrily through life.

Frances McDormand, as his colleague and accomplice in the botched blackmail plot, succeeds in making her character aggravatingly pathetic, yet pitiable, whilst Tilda Swinton does bitchy ice queen like no one else – clad ever so stylishly in pearls and pastels.

Carrying on their on-screen partnership from the immensely successful Michael Clayton is George Clooney and his Harry Pfarrer, with an incredible nervous energy that can only spring from an actor who is very much at ease with himself and the directors. It is a well thought out and masterful performance.

But the best screen time without doubt is occupied by John Malkovich, who is the real crux of the film’s comic power, hurling obscenities indiscriminatingly and soaking himself in whisky. ‘I have a drinking problem? Fuck you. You’re a Mormon. Next to you, we all have drinking problems.’

Aside from the stellar performances, the two real winners for me were the perfectly paced script and Carter Burwell’s excellent score that brings out the structure of the seeming scattered stories with brilliant intensity. Oh, and watch out for a small appearance by Vladmir Putin.

This film is without doubt an excellent watch. Its savage humour and touching detail leave you with a sense of warmth – as well as dismay: that there may well be a Linda Litzke lurking in all of us.

Four stars

Let’s get one thing straight: I am no animal lover. In fact, that’s an understatement. The truth is that I have a singular hatred of all things nonhuman, be they prickly, feathery, furry or scaly.

I am disgusted by the way animals don’t use the toilet. I am terrified by the fact that, in San Francisco, dogs outnumber children. Most of all, though, I am horrified by the irrational affection that animals inspire in human beings.

That term itself, ‘animal lover’, is abhorrent to me. Please don’t tell me they’re ‘better friends than people’, that ‘animals never start wars’, or that your cat ‘loves you back’. He doesn’t. If you supplied me with a warm house and free food I’d purr contentedly and let you stroke me too, but I’d still think you were an idiot.

You see, when I was growing up we couldn’t afford a television, so we had to make our own entertainment. My dad discovered that he and I could amuse ourselves for hours by taking long drives around the winding country roads of the Scottish borders. We weren’t there for the scenery; we were there for the sheer joy of running over as many jaywalking pheasants as we possibly could.

Nowadays I’m deprived of the satisfying squelch of bird head beneath Astra wheel, but whenever I purchase cosmetics, I take great care to ensure they have been tested on animals. So, whenever I wash my face, I think of a thousand pairs of little monkey eyes, bloodshot and burning in the name of my personal hygiene. Perhaps I’m exaggerating. Perhaps I’m not. Perhaps I really am a complete monster.

The central point, however, remains: I was never going to be one to give A Prickly Affair, a book by a man obsessed with hedgehogs, an easy ride. In truth, I wanted to hate it. I had a burning desire to rip out its still-beating little hedgehog heart, chew it up, then spit it back out, spewing tasty vitriol all over this very page.

Sadly, though, I can’t. As much as it pains me to say it, this book is, well, rather decent. It succeeds almost in spite of itself, its author and publisher.

It’s billed as a cutesy tale about how lovely hedgehogs are, sold with the assumption that the whole world finds the spiky little blighters completely adorable, but really A Prickly Affair isn’t anything as awful as that. This is because its emotional heart lies not in that oh-so droll title, but in the subtitle, ‘My Life with Hedgehogs’.

That ‘with’ is important, because the hedgehogs of A Prickly Affair really are the book’s secondary concern. The real story here is that of a classic English eccentric with a bizarre passion that he pursues with relish and vigour and without ego or self-possession.

Unfortunately for Hugh, probably, it barely matters that the book is about hedgehogs. For much of the book Warwick could just as well be writing about his love of turnips, crabs, or vintage cars. Much like those ‘personality’ TV documentaries, which are not about hills, but about how Gryff Rhys Jones loves hills, not about breast milk but about how much Kate Garraway loves breast milk, Warwick himself is the star of his book.

He does not mean to be; he is utterly unselfconscious – and all the more engaging for it. He tries to keep his hedgehogs to the front and centre of the reader’s consciousness at all times, but in doing so only heightens a sense of just how powerful and all-consuming his passion is.

I will never understand or share Hugh Warwick’s fascination with these animals, but his near-obsessive dedication, and the eloquence and humour with which he explains it are endlessly admirable.

It’s hard to say which I find more offensive: Gary Glitter, or Ian McEwan’s ‘masterpiece’ Atonement.

When it comes to intellectual stimulation, I would willingly choose a Hollyoaks omnibus over rereading 371 pages of formulaic, contrived and empty-headed posturing. If there is one thing I can’t stand it’s lazy literary navel-gazing masquerading as a historical novel.

For those lucky few who are unacquainted with this dubious stain on McEwan’s otherwise spotless record, Atonement is a bog-standard war-story romance with all the twee trimmings and typical pseudo-intellectual literary references that plague McEwan’s works. The story is standard Booker-fodder: you don’t really need to know the plot because it’s establishmentera McEwan, who writes to a really shoddy formula of repression, innocence, and poignant twists of fate.

Come on, you know the story because you saw the film. It’s a deep insight into the vagaries of the human condition, remember? Anyway, if the flimsy excuse for a narrative twist doesn’t put you off, the sheer hype surrounding the book surely will.

How one miserable little tale of some posh bird and her sexual inhibitions can generate almost as much hysteria as Princess Diana’s funeral is testament to the sad fact that ‘dumbing-down’ is becoming an cultural institution. This is Tate Modern for people who can be bothered to read.

I don’t find all of McEwan’s work such a dull insult to my intelligence. The Cement Garden, The Innocent and Amsterdam were all competent studies of guilt, envy and sexual tension, but McEwan is no Margaret Atwood.

Atonement tarnishes a decent reputation. In 2006, McEwan was accused of plagiarising Lucilla Andrews’ autobiography No Time for Romance. Predictably, the British literati jumped to McEwan’s defence, but the truth remains that Atonement is essentially a derivative rehash of the life of a less than minor literary figure.

Why McEwan insists upon marring perfectly average narratives with fawning references to Oxbridge, the class system and other people’s work is a mystery to anyone who has even looked at a book recently. However, there is one thing I can say in defence of this self-consciously convoluted postmodernist waffle: at least it’s not as bad as the film.

Damien Hirst has never played by the rules. Known as a joker at school, famously receiving an ‘E’ on his art A-Level, he channelled his rule-breaking instinct into shocking and lucrative art early on. He showed his entrepreneurial skills while still at art school by running the momentous Freeze exhibition in 1988 with fellow art students from Goldsmiths College, which subsequently changed the face of British contemporary art.

Not much has changed. This summer saw an event described by Hirst himself as ‘probably the most amazing show I’ve put on’. In a move that shocked the art world he disregarded the accepted rules and took 223 of his works straight to auction, without going via a dealer. It had never been done before, and considering how much the stood to gain financially from this (the dealer can take 50%), Damien demonstrated that his business skills are still well ahead of the game.

Sotheby’s on Bond Street housed the Beautiful Inside My Head Auction which one might describe as a ‘best of’ Hirst’s work. There were a handful of sharks, vitrines, spot and spin paintings, works with butterflies, skulls and diamonds – all Hirst trademarks – with more unusual pieces included. It was like a retrospective of a scale never before seen, and indeed was treated like one by the public.

More than eight thousand people came to see what was effectively a free exhibition, doing Hirst no end of good in terms of publicity. Most famous was the Golden Calf, a bullock that wore golden shoes and a golden orb above its head, a biblical reference. It sold for £9,200,000.

Financially this was particularly interesting because this was not a collection of Hirst’s past works. All the pieces were dated 2008 and had been produced over the last two years by Hirst’s six studios, working flat out. The result was a vast collection of pieces which filled both floors of Sotheby’s and comprised the largest exhibition it had ever put on.

Such mass production in his studios is not new for Hirst – he employs approximately 160 people in his empire – but it does raise questions of authenticity. When all it takes is a signature to make the work authentically his, is Hirst seeing just how far he can push buyers and just how much money he can make?

This isn’t a new thought though; the conceptual artist Piero Manzoni signed people’s bodies in the 50s and declared them works of art. He later canned and sold his own shit.

What is unusual is Hirst’s openly mercurial manner of avoiding the dealer and churning out works in the vein of his most famous, and most expensive, greatest hits. Traditionally a dealer is an artist’s route to sales as negotiator and advertiser, but here Sotheby’s did all the advertising and drew huge crowds.

The auction itself was spread over two days; the evening of 15th September and the next day. It was filled with everyone from Bianca Jagger and Jay Jopling (owner of the White Cube), and Hirst’s art dealer (until now), to yours truly. Everyone wanted to see what would happen; would Damien make the £50 million he was asking for and how would the art world respond?

That evening alone made £70.5 million, with many telephone bids across the world. The costliest items were the infamous Golden Calf, a shark in formaldehyde and a huge medicine case of diamonds. The whole auction sold a spectacular 98% of works over the two days for a total profit of £111 million, breaking the record for a single artist auction.

Hirst is playing a game with his buyers; his works have frequently tripled and quadrupled in value after they’ve been sold; his famous shark is worth $8 million, having originally been sold for £50,000. The advance estimates he set for works at this auction showed that Hirst was trying to anticipate this jump in value and reap the profits himself.

Cunning, but that’s Hirst for you. He is the artist who simply cut a shark in half and pickled it. That shark is now worth $8 million. Hirst himself is worth several billion. The man is no fool. He is an acute manipulator of his media, not to mention the viewing public. Of course, he is open to the accusation of making art for money, rather than money through art.

What he creates is so far beyond the reach of the average wallet, yet the public lap it up with glee. So, what next for the man who can make £70m in one night? According to him, he’s taken up painting in his shed.

I’m more accustomed to seeing Kevin Spacey’s figure whirling across a cinema screen than standing nervously beside a lectern, but I gradually get used to this odd displacement of film star in an antiquated Oxford setting. Well, not that antiquated; his lecture took place in St Catz.

Spacey has taken the position of Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre, a role previously played by thesps such as Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Thelma Holt. It’s a professorship which is associated with the innovation and excellence which Oxford drama, and indeed Oxford University, prizes itself. A lot rests on his performance this year. Indeed, a lot rests on his entrance.

As I take my seat, the dulcet tones of three nasal American girls drift into my ears. They are trying to track the professor’s progress up to the lectern. The clamouring whine rises in pitch as their goggle-eyed expressions fix enviously on a group of students who have occupied the centre column of seating. They resemble over-eager meerkats – with digital cameras.

The audience is a diverse bunch. Walking through St Catz on the way in, you could be forgiven for thinking there was a high-profile charity event on, so large are the hordes of suited and booted city sorts piling towards the theatre.

An elderly gentleman examining his paper is seated next to an elegantly dressed young woman, while, in the row behind, a collection of dons hold a quiet discussion. There’s a horde of photographers seated in front of me, and an eager-looking chap murmuring something into a dictaphone across the aisle.

Spacey is clearly in demand. He is introduced by the Master of St. Catherine’s as a ‘towering figure, a Goliath in the world of drama’. It is hyperbole of the grandest sort, which, despite appealing to my poetic imagination, is superfluous.

Spacey is uncomfortable. He half-listens to his own credentials, turns and smiles at the Catz students seated to his right. Later he tells us, ‘I would so prefer to have been out of the room while he did all that’, and requests to be called not ‘Professor’, but ‘plain Kevin’.

His credentials imply that he is far from just ‘plain Kevin’. Having pursued an illustrious career in theatre and film for over 20 years, he took the post of Artistic Director at the Old Vic in 2003. Since then he has pioneered a series of projects including the Old Vic New Voices scheme, which aims to encourage theatrical involvement amongst young people.

He is humble. Stressing how ‘I hope that by the end of my tenure here, I will be worthy of the title of professor’, he repeatedly stresses the primacy of the students’ views and ideas, deflecting questions about his own intentions with the response that they will discuss it and work out exactly what it is that they want out of the programme.

To the cynical in the audience, this may seem like a lack of conviction, a lack of direction. To me, it seems like the thoughts of a man who is not here for the fame or publicity, but for the young people his role is designed to aid: ‘It’s not about me anymore’. His lecture is interesting and amusing.

Focused primarily upon development of his own career and what it has taught him, he praises ‘people who took a chance on me’, such as Jack Lemon and Joseph Pap, and emphasises his desire to give the same back, to honour and preserve a ‘cultural landscape’ which seems increasingly threatened by the current economic climate. There are the odd few clichés. I particularly enjoyed the ‘endless mystery of the Mona Lisa’s smile’. It’s clearly a speech from prompt notes.

A little reticent, he shuffles. But, with the accidental destruction of the microphone, laughter, and the unprompted, ‘Note to self: don’t lean on the lectern’, he warms up. In the question time at the end, he is exuberant, when, without script or prompts, he is free to express his delight in the ‘great, humanising force’ of drama, and the ‘new work of today which will become the classics of tomorrow’.

I originally intended to rail against the fame complex with which the appointment to this position seems to be associated. Why Stewart and Spacey? Why not any one of the equally qualified thesps without the famous name? But Spacey, with his remarkable gentleness, the honesty of his manner, and his clear love for what he does, will, I have no doubt, prove to be a wonderful professor.

Personally, I liked him best for dressing down the Master of St. Catz. Getting the name of his first Shakespearean play wrong (it was Henry IV, and not Henry VI), the Master was caught out by Spacey’s quip that ‘You can’t trust everything you find on the Internet’. He’ll be a fresh force in Oxford, to be sure.