At times haunting and at others riotously enjoyable, Mr Kitano’s excellent new film is a step down from his last, the triumphant ‘Zaitochi’, but it is also inarguably a step forward.

I hate this sort of thing. I should probably be disqualified from commenting on comics this year on account of only really reading ‘Astonishing X-Men’. Likewise my lit reading is woefully behind with only ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ and ‘The Da Vinci Code’ being published in 2004. I very nearly [...]