Things that are good and things that are not

- The Bourne Ultimatum
Despite the fact I find myself physically incapable of calling it anything other than the Bourne Ultomato, it was anything but thoroughly stupid. Moving from one beautifully choregraphed and outlandishly plotted chase after another, the action was so snapped down it felt like Matt Damon had been taking dance lessons. The Guardian must be in absolute bits as well - Paddy Considine plays a hardhitting one of their number who Bourne has to mastermind through Waterloo station. My home departure lounge never looked so interesting - Bourne twats a bad guy outside the big Smiths! Amazing!

The sad thing Bourne has to contend with is that every assassin other than him seems to double as a Hot Model. Desh, the guy who trails him around Morocco (and Paul Greengrass certainly includes a lot of nice tourist shots from helicopters) is so pretty you almost forget your're not really supposed to be looking at him as much as you are. Oh yes, and Bourne kills someone with a towel. A TOWEL! And there's no chauvinism! And Joan Allen is the most fabulous nutcracker this side of the real CIA. Move aside Bond, this really is the greatest action franchise of the last 30 years. Even if there's no actual spying in it.

More than that, I haven't been to a screening like it in years: the audience was constantly breaking into applause after setpieces, laughing and wincing and collectively going "Ooh" and "Aah". Now that's amazing cinema. Helen couldn't make it because she was interviewing Josh Hartnett (a phoner! Not even a face to face, the poor lamb) and they're not screening it again for two weeks or something obscene. Yet despite this extremely generous gap between screening and release date, we didn't have to go through the usual rigorous security checks to ensure all phones, cameras and professional recording equipment had been removed. That's Sprite levels of refreshing, seriously.

- The Bratz Movie
Less about the film itself, more about the fun in the foyer. Despite the fact I'd been to an incredibly good party the night before and was thusly still dressed as the Industrial Zone from The Crystal Maze, I was still allowed to have some of the chocolate crispy cakes the PRs had got in, and watch as the little girls and (for reasons known only to the parents) boys got to mess around with the fun.

This is one of the nicest things about multi-media screenings: for the kids films, the PR company organises lots of nice activities for them before the film starts to get them in the mood. Bratz had glitter face painting (I fitted right in - my hair was still vaguely silver), cheerleading classes downstairs and those cake things. Little girls clutching pom poms and spelling out "F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S!" while dancing around might be the sweetest thing you'll ever see.

- Elopements
A friend from university sent an email round yesterday announcing the fact that he and his longterm fiancée had eloped to New York and were getting married on Friday. In Elvis style. How is that not the best thing ever? Now Matt gets to put his cherished brown cord flares in the limelight where he thinks they belong. Bless! Also, elopements. Brilliant. Apparently the average wedding costs £18,000. This is rubbish, surely - all you want is a nice summer day, some flowers, a garden and all your friends around you. That and enough gin to drown a city of Dickensian orphans.

- Cultural interchange on Radio 4
Zane Lowe talking about Mark Ronson's Bob Dylan remix on the Today programme. But mostly James Naughtie talking about "fattened up" music.

...and not

I downloaded a French artist before I moved house, namely because I love Camille and Sybille Baier and thought that someone called Katerine must be pretty alright. That and she shared my name and had an album called Robots Aprè Tout which just sounded like the sort of quirky quant fey crap I go nuts over. Fuck no. It's an ageing man with longstanding pretensions to electropop and it makes me want to rampage. Back to Cat Power, Catatonia, or Skatalites if we're being particularly tenuous.

- Coelacanths
Specifically fishing for them. So someone in Asia's picked up the first one in ages - doesn't that basically mean there's one less?

"He took the catch back to the port where it remained alive for 17 hours in a netted pool outside of a restaurant. It was then frozen and is now being examined by scientists."

Wow. They're examining a fish that barely exists to find out why it barely exists and how. Oh come on, seriously.