Unabashedly commercial, outrageously predictable, this blockbuster French rom-com, is also irresistibly self-confident.

The small, superb story has become a talisman in the author's Italy. Since its publication there 15 years ago, it's won plaudits and prizes and been made into a Mastroianni film.

Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Hours, was in debt to both life and literature. His new novel, By Nightfall, also displays a strong allegiance to both.

Bruno Mars' enamoured young crowd sings his lyrics right back at him, but none with more conviction than "I think I wanna marry you".

E.T.: The Extraterrestrial and the funny-looking aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind have been given a run for their money in the peculiar guise of Paul, a potty-mouthed ode to Steven Spielberg's sci-fi epics.

Mixing reality and fantasy with little help given to the reader makes an odd book - but it's no lemon.

It would be very easy in these economically grim times to write novels casting bankers in the harshest of lights - simple moustache-twisting pantomime villains.

Chomet's follow-up to his idiosyncratic The Triplets of Belleville is a wistful animated valentine to the days of the variety entertainers that is also a kind of love story.

In the liner notes Elvis Costello says this album should be counted alongside the finest of Simon's career (now reaching almost 50 years).

Aaron Neville saying he's been changed is hardly news and nor is his soulful, vibrating falsetto, which is given a florid showcase in the long intro to the gospel-cum-R&B opener Stand By Me.

Somehow Dave Grohl's second famous band went from his post-Nirvana solo outing to stadium giants.

With some of the momentum of the Clean, urgent droning vocals and pure psychedelic guitar jangle, this debut EP by Auckland-based three-piece Ghost Wave touches a lot of familiar places.

An extremely enjoyable period drama that speculatively fills in the gaps in the ignored life of a sidelined sibling, this independent French production achieves miracles on a reportedly tiny production budget.

Copenhagen in the early 1990s. Bernardo Greene is a patient at a Clinic for Torture Victims. In his native Chile, he'd been tortured for two years by the Pinochet regime.

Julie Orringer’s first book, a stunning short-story collection entitled How To Breathe Underwater, was a New York Times notable book.

Sometimes you get the feeling that some contestants think they know better than the producers and the judges. And then those people aren't there any more.