Burn After Reading: 5/10

I had high hopes for the Coen Brothers latest creation. Sadly, they were dashed during the course of this nonsensical 96-minute caper. There were some humorous moments: I laughed out loud when George Clooney's character showed off his handiwork to Frances McDormand, whom he was illicitly dating. But the rest of Burn After Reading was just slapstick, masquerading as intelligent satire - and not very good slapstick at that (though Brad Pitt's turn as an idiotic, iPod-addicted personal trainer is enjoyable enough while it lasts). The violence is gratuitous and about as funny as Javier Bardem's assassinations in No Country for Old Men. And I emerged from the cinema feeling empty, disappointed and cheated by the sheep-like reviews that have followed this film ever since its debut. If only they'd burned this film before reading, then I wouldn't have lost an evening of my life.

Sigur Ros @ Alexandra Palace: 8/10

With their country melting down faster than an ice-cube in an Icelandic volcano, there was a certain poignance to Sigur Ros's appearance on stage at North London's Alexandra Palace last Thursday night.

They materialised on stage just after 9pm. Bashed out a track, before addressing the crowd in Icelandic. There were chuckles from the languid-looking, Viking-esque girls standing next to me. Perhaps Sigur Ros had just dissed the Brits for holding up their country's IMF loan? Perhaps I'll never know.

But words are kind of not the point when it comes to Iceland's aural diplomats. Their songs - mumbled to a level of incoherence that would leave Radiohead's Thom Yorke blushing - are not even sung in their native tongue. Instead, the genial foursome sing in their own-made up language, so haunting and spine-tingling, that it sounds like an extra instrument.

Unlike Radiohead, though, the Icelandic foursome isn't ashamed of its most popular tracks. They thrashed out Hoppipolla (used to death on the BBC's Planet Earth, and before that on Film4); the new album's opening track, Gobbledigook (where they brought their opening immitators on stage to bang their drums); and ending in a rousing rendition of E-Bow off the (-) almbum, bringing a tear to my eye and a feeling of such momentous joy that the come-down to reality never felt so depressing.

CNN's Hologram Reporting: 7/10

Whoever was going to win yesterday's US election, the country's Ambassador to Britain wasn't going to stick around. Robert Tuttle told me he and his wife plan to spend a few months in Paris, before heading home to his family-run car business.

Which is why it was so jolly sporting of him to throw such a lavish election night (or should that be, farewell?) party at the Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

There were celebs (real ones) aplenty, including Josh Hartnett, Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys, and a phalanx of MPs from all parties. Most of the guests, though, were probably journalists who'd blagged their way in, if the number of my colleagues was anything to go by.

The highlight of the evening - for me, at least - was not the free drinks; the Burger King & Subway in the basement; or the commemorative pen (okay, pens) I acquired as a memento of the evening's festivities.

The best bit was the in-house cinema that televised live coverage of the election results as the drama unfolded.

CNN was the channel of choice. I'm no fan of the cable network, but they certainly get full marks for effort and the stunning graphics they employed on the night.

And they surely deserve a prize for pushing the boundaries of broadcasting technology to the limit with what must be the first ever Hologram Report.



Yes, showing that content doesn't matter when you have space-age gimmicks to play with, they had Wolf Blitzer in the studio interviewing a reporter in Chicago - beamed, 3-D, into the same studio as the Wolfman.

It bore an uncanny resemblance to Princess Lea's first appearance in Star Wars. You know, when she's projected holographically from R2D2's head.

It was pointless and extravagent on so many levels: why have a reporter in Chicago if all you're going to do is show her in your studio as a hologram?; why, when CNN's advertisers are presumably scaling back, would they spend a small fortune on this (oh for the days when two-camera shoots were ruled out because of costs)?; and why, when the reporter is being beamed into the studio, is it necessary to spend half the interview explaining to the audience what the hell is going on?

I have to admit, though, that an awe-inspired hush swept through the room when the Hologram made its debut. It was, indeed, oddly beguilling. I just can't remember what the reporter was talking about.

Alan Greenspan - The Age of Turbulence: 7/10

"Creative Destruction". That's the oxymoronic buzzword at the centre of Alan Greenspan's autobiography-cum-assessment of the global economy past and present. Students of financial history will find it essential reading. For the rest of us mere mortals, it's worth knowing that The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World is a book of two halves.

Part I is Greenspan at his best. He charts his rise from sharing a cramped apartment with his working-class mother in Manhattan's Washington Heights to the most powerful central banker in the world.

Alan Greenspan was chairman of the US's Federal Reserve for 18 years. His gnomic utterances were surgically-dissected by journalists and traders scouring for any hints as to where interest rates might be heading. He coined the term "irrational exhuberance" when the dot-com bubble inflated. And slashed interest rates when it burst, to protect the US economy.

He had the ears of Presidents Ford, Reagen, Bush (Senior), Clinton and Bush Jr. What he said mattered. And it makes for fascinating reading. In part I.

Part II, where he muses on everything from China, to Russia to how America will pay social security for its ageing population, is the opposite. Gossip-laden anecdotes of meetings with Mikael Gorbachev aside, his thoughts on the new world economic order belies his ignorance. His musings on Medicare will be of interest to nobody outside of the Unites States.

And the one question he fails to answer - even in the Epilogue added to the paperback edition - is the role or blame he ought to assume for the current financial mess the world finds itself in.

Many analysts and commentators blame Greenspan for keeping interest rates far too low for far too long. And that the cheap money this created caused an asset-price bubble, and a borrowing binge that the world will take years to recover from.

To be fair to Greenspan, on October 23 of this year, he did admit to Congress that he'd made a mistake in thinking that the markets would be able to regulate themselves and that governemnts could leave banks and hedge funds to their own devices.

But he's yet to accept the blame for the flood of cheap money that caused a bubble to form - perhaps because he still believes that you only know when a bubble's a bubble in hindsight.

Even so, this is a meaty book, rich with anecdote and name-dropping. And although the second half disappointed (I wish I'd skipped straight to the Epilogue), part I alone is worth the cover price.

Quantum of Solace: 6/10

When I go to the cinema and I gorge on a family-sized pack of Maltesers, I come away feeling full yet oddly empty. The same feeling came over me after sitting through Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond film, at a packed North London cinema last night - and not just because I ate too many chocs.

It's not that the action sequences weren't up to scratch (though some were clearly enhances with CGI). Or that the locations weren't glamorous (Mexico/Panama/Chile). Even the Bond girl - Olga Kurylenko - was appropriately gorgeous.

The trouble, right from the opening credits and the unBond-like song, was that this felt just like any other Hollywood action flick. Gone was the wit; absent were the gadgets; and, perhaps most worryingly of all, was the dearth of any solid plot.

So 007's nemesis this time is faux-environmentalist-cum-coup-mongerer called Mr Greene. But given that was billed as a sequel I was hoping that there would have been a deeper exploration of some of the twists and plotlines introduced in Casino Royale.

Instead, the story revolves around the dated concept of the US fomenting regime-change in its South American backyard so long as it gets a cut of the natural resources. One wonders what Bolivians will make of it when it plays in La Paz. A more believable story might have involved Congo, uranium and French complicity in a coup. But then that would mean no US-bashing for director Marc Forster.