Bad Movie Club: The 10 Worst Films Ever according to the UK Times

"The major studios spend astronomical sums on even 'low budget' movies. A film like 2007’s ‘I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry’ cost a reported $85,000,000. Blockbuster projects like James Cameron’s forthcoming space epic Avatar are budgeted at sums in excess of $250,000,000. You might think, then, that producers would take great care to ensure that they only released films that were at least halfway good.

10: The Fifth Element

I have an immensely high tolerance for sci-fi piffle. That this is the only film I’ve ever walked out on is testament to its awfulness. Starting as a promising action romp filled with futuristic eye-candy it takes a sudden turn for the worse when Chris Tucker turns up as some sort of 22nd Century DJ. Time Out said ‘Besson's futuristic fable is flawed by a messy narrative which strains to incorporate far too many grotesque and eccentric characters’ Specifically, I would suggest, one character too many in the person of Mr Tucker’s Ruby Rhod.

9: Catwoman

In the long history of Batman comics there are at least half a dozen enthralling adventures pitting Catwoman against the Caped Crusader, as well as a number of perfectly enjoyable stand-alone stories featuring her as an amoral anti heroine, rather than an out-and-out villain. It’s the work of a troubled mind, then, to throw all that heritage away and just strap a nonsensical generic superhero yarn with vaguely mystical undertones to a well-established title. Dressing the delectable Halle Berry in that costume just made a terrible film worse. That Ms.Berry had the grace to turn up to collect her Razzie award for the film was her one good decision regarding this movie.

8: AI - Artificial Intelligence

As one viewer put it: "Neither Spielberg nor Kubrick knew how to end a movie, so all told this one has about 5 endings, just in case. I had my coat on & off about half a dozen times...” Still a couple of nice robots.

7: Out of Africa

A personal choice, this. Perhaps I was just tired but my only clear memory of watching this film is waking up to find that it was the intermission. Glacially slow, and marred by yet another selection from the Streep catalogue of improbable accents.

Find out the others and what is the worst one here.

Amaz on denies discounting charge

The UK Bookseller has a feature on Amazon and its impact on the book trade in Britain. "Amazon.co.uk has denied that it is responsible for declining book prices and anticipates that retailers in 2009 will be "very competitive" on value. In recent weeks, retailers have been criticised for excessive discounting after it was revealed that almost half a billion pounds was slashed off the price of books in 2008.

However, Kes Nielsen, head of book buying at Amazon.co.uk, denied that internet retailers, who had discounted some titles by more than 60% in the run-up to Christmas, were solely responsible for declining average selling price. He said: "I don’t think you can single out a particular channel as in some way leading the charge [for discounting]. It’s a very competitive environment and everybody is doing their bit to offer value and that’s what we are doing as well."

Last week Amazon.com revealed a 29% increase in sales to $19.17bn (£13.3bn) for the year ending 31st December 2008. Net income was up 36% to $645m (£447m). For the quarter ending 31st December, the retailer’s international segment sales, which includes its UK, German, Japanese, French and Chinese sites, jumped 19% to $3.07bn (£2.13bn). Amazon.com does not strip out figures for individual territories but Nielsen said of the UK books category: "It was a good performance in the context of challenging economic conditions."

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer 'can't write worth a darn', says Stephen King

Stephen King has stirred up a horror "Rumble in the Jungle" by taking on best-selling Vampire author, Stephenie Meyer. According to the UK Guardian Meyer "dreamed up Edward Cullen, a vegetarian vampire who sports a beige jacket and polo neck, while Stephen King gave us Kurt Barlow, the ancient master vampire who wreaks havoc on the town of 'Salem's Lot. The two bestselling authors were never going to see eye to eye over their portrayal of bloodsuckers, but this week King went so far as to rubbish Meyer's writing abilities in an interview.

King compared the Mormon author to JK Rowling, saying that both authors were "speaking directly to young people". "The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good," he told an interviewer from USA Weekend.

King also drew a comparison between Meyer and Perry Mason mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner. "He was a terrible writer, too, but he was very successful," he said, going on to criticise prolific thriller author James Patterson - "a terrible writer but he's very successful" - and fellow horror author Dean Koontz, who although he "can write like hell", is sometimes "just awful"...

The Latest Issue of the Times Literary Supplement has a fascinating article by Richard Dawkins on Charles Darwin

"Two hundred years after Darwin's birth, and nearly 150 since the publication of The Origin of Species, evolution is still not universally accepted: indeed, recent opinion polls in the US and the UK suggest that creationism is far from extinct, and may be on the rise. So Richard Dawkins is delighted by Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True: "The need was great. The execution is superb". On the subject of execution, we also learn how honeybees can effectively microwave a predatory hornet." More here.

Also see an article on the myths of Gabriel García Márquez

"Philip Swanson enjoys a new Life of Gabriel García Márquez, a "masterful and sensitive account - balanced, judicious, yet clearly also a stirringly enthusiastic labour of love". Swanson identifies dignity as a key theme in García Márquez's extraordinary novels; "the sense of the unswerving endurance and resilience of the ordinary Latin American people as their social hopes repeatedly fall foul of grim reality".

The Latest Issue of the New York Review of Books (Feb 26th) is now up online

With articles by Zadie Smith on "Speaking in Tongues"

"Hello. This voice I speak with these days, this English voice with its rounded vowels and consonants in more or less the right place-this is not the voice of my childhood. I picked it up in college, along with the unabridged Clarissa and a taste for port. Maybe this fact is only what it seems to be-a case of bald social climbing-but at the time I genuinely thought this was the voice of lettered people, and that if I didn't have the voice of lettered people I would never truly be lettered. A braver person, perhaps, would have stood firm, teaching her peers a useful lesson by example: not all lettered people need be of the same class, nor speak identically. I went the other way. Partly out of cowardice and a constitutional eagerness to please, but also because I didn't quite see it as a straight swap, of this voice for that.

My own childhood had been the story of this and that combined, of the synthesis of disparate things. It never occurred to me that I was leaving the London district of Willesden for Cambridge. I thought I was adding Cambridge to Willesden, this new way of talking to that old way. Adding a new kind of knowledge to a different kind I already had. And for a while, that's how it was: at home, during the holidays, I spoke with my old voice, and in the old voice seemed to feel and speak things that I couldn't express in college, and vice versa. I felt a sort of wonder at the flexibility of the thing. Like being alive twice."

And Tim Flannery on Ants as the Superior Civilization

"Ants are so much a part of our everyday lives that unless we discover them in our sugar bowl we rarely give them a second thought. Yet those minuscule bodies voyaging across the kitchen counter merit a closer look, for as entomologists Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson tell us in their latest book, they are part of a superorganism. Superorganisms such as some ant, bee, and termite colonies represent a level of organization intermediate between single organisms and the ecosystem: you can think of them as comprised of individuals whose coordination and integration have reached such a sophisticated level that they function with some of the seamlessness of a human body. The superorganism whose "hand" reaches into your sugar bowl is probably around the size of a large octopus or a garden shrub, and it will have positioned itself so that its vital parts are hidden and sheltered from climatic extremes, while it still has easy access to food and water.

The term "superorganism" was first coined in 1928 by the great American ant expert William Morton Wheeler. Over the ensuing eighty years, as debates around sociobiology and genetics have altered our perspectives, the concept has fallen in and out of favor, and Hölldobler and Wilson's book is a self-professed and convincing appeal for its revival. Five years in the making, The Superorganism draws on centuries of entomological research, charting much of what we know of the evolution, ecology, and social organization of the ants."

John Mullan in the UK Guardian picks out the best ten Prime Ministers in fiction

These include:

"The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst

Nick Guest, Hollinghurst's parasitic hero, is staying with new Tory MP Gerald Fedden. Everyone is aflutter when Mrs Thatcher descends on the Feddens' party. The fawning is memorably rendered, and naturally Nick, the ingénue, gets on with her most easily.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by JK Rowling

The story opens in the company of the PM, who is working late. Cornelius Fudge appears out of his grate to warn him of Voldemort's nefarious schemes. He is more philosophical about the visitation than his predecessor (Mr Major?), who apparently tried to throw Fudge out of the window.

Saturday, by Ian McEwan

Henry Perowne, McEwan's neurosurgeon protagonist, attends the opening of Tate Modern, where he is introduced to Tony Blair. "To Perownes surprise, Blair was looking at him with recognition and interest." The PM expresses admiration for his work. "In fact, we've got two of your paintings hanging in Downing Street." The episode is said to be autobiographical: Blair once mistook McEwan for a painter."

The most borrowed books of 2008

The UK Guardian notes that "James Patterson looks set to become the new Catherine Cookson. Though his top-ranking novel only takes sixth place in the chart, the American thriller writer - known for his staccato style and prolific output - has retained the crown of the UK's most borrowed author for the second year running. He follows in the footsteps of former library queen Cookson - who topped the charts for 20 years - and children's author Jacqueline Wilson, deposed by Patterson last year after four years at the top.

Patterson's books, the best known of which feature black detective and single father Alex Cross, were borrowed more than 1.5m times between July 2007 and June 2008, according to the latest figures from the Public Lending Right (PLR), and took four of the top 10 positions on the "most borrowed books" chart. In a year when libraries nationwide were battered by falling book stocks and multiple closures, Patterson was one of only four writers to clock up more than 1m loans, alongside Wilson, fellow American Nora Roberts and Daisy Meadows, creator of the Rainbow Magic children's series.

Although at first - and possibly second - glance the former advertising executive looks a million miles away from the publicity-shy, historical romance novelist, Patterson and Cookson have in common both their prolific output - more than 50 novels to date from him and more than 100 from her - and their predictability: borrowers know what they're going to get.

It's the same with the former children's laureate Wilson, who came in second. From The Story of Tracy Beaker to Double Act and Vicky Angel, her output of around 90 books continues to satisfy her young readers' yearnings for an accurate picture of troubled modern childhood, whatever their individual rankings."

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries

"Curious Expeditions has attempted to gather together the world’s most beautiful libraries. Everyone has some kind of place that makes them feel transported to a magical realm. For some people it’s castles with their noble history and crumbling towers. For others it’s abandoned factories, ivy choked, a sense of foreboding around every corner. For us here at Curious Expeditions, there has always been something about libraries. Row after row, shelf after shelf, there is nothing more magical than a beautiful old library."

Quote of the Week

"Advice is always dangerous, but good advice is fatal". Oscar Wilde

Odd Book Title

Knife Throwing. A Practical Guide. By Harry K McEvoy. Charles Tuttle. 1973. Obviously popular in Australia as available in 11 Australian libraries, click here.

Pun of the Week

Garbage truck motto: "Always at your disposal"