If you like your stereotypes broad, if you love poorly written soap opera, if you are desperate to proclaim to the world how "right on" you are without ever actually meeting anyone - in short, if you are a judge for The Oscars - then this film is for you.

If you are a normal person with normal worries, a mix of friends from wherever, an open mind and an ear that "jars" at unconvincing dialogue in films - then please save yourself two hours of being preached to, bored, and ultimately insulted.

Not just a bad film - this an actively *dreadful* film. Oscar-hunting, box-ticking, drivel. Comfortably thick people will love it.

Nah. Didn't do it for me at all. The opening scenes with the young boys in Kabul are intriguing enough - with the father figure (sadly the only good actor in the film) charismatic and unreadable. Everybody else is a stereotype - good, neutrally-compliant, or bad.

The older Amir has all the presence of a forgotten lettuce leaf near the bin, his one-note performance grates long before the film descends (and it does descend) into some schlock melodrama about him rescuing his "old friend's son" from "Woooar Toooarn" Afghanistan. The trite portrayal of the Taliban as the weak bullies of (supposedly) weak people borders on the offensively simplistic as our (by now) all-American hero rescues the hapless child from his inexplicably "familiar" tormentors.

Middlebrow box-ticking with nothing to say. Can't say I'm desperate to read the book either.

The Oscars will rain in.

Watched this after recording off Film4. Quite simply one of the worst films I've ever seen. Frankly it's a bit insulting to see genuinely important issues such as racial and class divisions beiung given such a trite and shallow treatment. Not a single story thread in the film has any internal consistency - let alone plausibility. Apart from Don Cheadle (thankfully not in "Cockney" mode) - who manages the odd intense stare - the acting is uniformly dire, but given the sixth-form first-draft quality of the dialogue they're probably not wholly to blame.

Needless to say it won a few oscars. Writer/director "Paul Haggis" presumably didn't dare put his real name to it.

Some reviewers (not too many, most have been kind) pick on the lyrics. They are naive, gauche - the music is derivative - the reviewer is somebody whose heard of the "manics" and bought into some kind of story, courtesy of a music mag.

Richey-some-mad-Curtis-genius - Richey dies after the Holy Bible - Manics become some sort of tribute rock outfit - a la Pink Floyd. Everybody respects them. Nobody's actually into them.

Actually if you can kick that tabloid drivel into the side, they are a brilliant band. Yes it's James Dean Bradfield, and "his mates" - who give him the confidence to sing and play.

But then again they should - James Dean Bradfield is pretty seriously damn brilliant.

First discovered Ivor when I was 14/15. As is usual (after that) I sought out everything he'd ever done. His bizzare gift is on full display in this album.

Once saw the great man in Edinburgh when I was a student there. He delivered some hilarious songs and poetical anectdotes - and also a poem about time and ageing that was so stunningly perfect that an awful lot of people in the audience, I kid you not, started crying.

The question isn't whether this is a weird branch that Miles Davis wandered off into in the 70's, and do only pseuds like it.

The question is whether this is the best album ever made.

Pharoah's dance knocks most modern orchestral music into a much-needed hole in the ground - its atonal genius - only Stockhausen could even get close to this match of mood and insane key combinations - is unsurpassed.

Bitches brew has a groove so deep that when you really hear it (maybe second listen, maybe third) you almost salute it - its dark, african and american - city and jungle - jesus its superb.

And if you don't like Spanish Key you are very likely dead.

"We laughed, knowing that better men would come,

And greater wars; when each proud fighter brags,

He wars on Death -- for lives; not men -- for flags."

Like another reviewer I first heard this when I was quite young, and despite its tritonal and sometimes arch intonality, it stuck like glue. Each time I hear it (and I'm 35 now) I hear something in it that moves me. Britten was a master of orchestral effects as the Dies Irae testifies but, exhilirating as these are it's the profound humanist anger of Wilfred Owen's poetry that first grabs you.

But then after that excoriating expression of the madness of war - set in a way that orchestrates the beauty of a male voice like nothing I've ever heard ever before, it's the quite stunning, stunning, soprano parts that stay with you. Absolutely hauntingly, disturbingly beautiful.

Arguably the finest composition of the 20th century.

I listen to this about once a year - just so I don't take it for granted. This album means quite a lot to me - whether that's because it's truly great or gives me a nostalgic shiver I can't tell. All I know is it makes me look at the world differently - it's such a good album, Van's voice is amazing - worldly and grizzled - and yet somehow he can sing lyrics about his spiritual take on life without being a pain in the arse.
Van's a funny one - I know about two people who like him as much as I do - but if you get it it's pretty fabulous.