Scarlet Johansson has slammed Hollywoods ageist attitude towards women, saying that men are appreciated more as they get older while career opportunities for women tend to dry up.

She told Hello!: "Women kind of wilt as men sort of achieve as
they get older, like wine or whatever. It's like, 'Oh, she's past her
prime and she can't play a sex symbol'.

"It's just a preconceived notion about women in general and particularly in this industry. It's a very vain, vain industry."

George Lucas

George Lucas has insisted that his Star Wars movies cannot be placed in the Sci-Fi genre and says that science has no place in the world he created in the films.

You would think that Britney Spears would learn from her mistakes! That after last years MTV disaster, the young mum would avoid the awards ceremony like the plague.

However, word is that Britney intends to make yet another comeback on
this years MTV Awards and even appeared in the promo video with new
host, Russell Brand.

It's a question the bereaved have been asking themselves for years - what would you do if you could have one more conversation with a loved one who'd died?

That's what Mitch Albom investigates in For One More Day. The main character, Chick Bennetto, is a down on his luck drunk. He traces his downfall back to his mother's death nine years previously. Following her death, Chick descends into alcoholic dependency and manages to alienate and lose his wife and daughter.

Finally, at the height of his desperation, he decides to return to his hometown and end his life. However, an accident en route to the house severely wounds him, and he staggers to the old family home. However, when he enters the house, his mother is there, seemingly alive and unaware of the fact that she was buried years ago!

Oh Lestat, what have you done now? At the end of The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice's beloved Brat Prince has incurred the wrath of vampires across the globe and somehow managed to awaken the vampire Akasha from a slumber of a few thousand years. And such is her fascination with the fanged Frenchman that she grants herself a quickie divorce from her 6,000 year old husband, Enkil. By bleeding him dry (in a vampiric sense - lawyers would have only slowed things down).

Anyhow, having read quite a number of Anne Rice's vampire chronicles, I'm inclined to say that The Queen Of The Damned is one of the best. For a start, it's not totally devoted to Lestat. We finally get a chance to look around at other vampires and see the colour and variation of their characters.

It's a joy, for instance, to see Marius spurned by the ancient vampire he's protected for a couple of thousand years. To see Marius's assumptions shattered and the utter disdain of Akasha for him. And his resulting bitterness is something you never expect to see from one of the most self-assured immortals in Rice's savage garden.

This was my first reading of a Jeffery Deaver book, so I only went in expecting a series of short stories.

Twisted is a collection of short stories, all with a twist (hence the title). It's a book full of double-crossing, untold intent and intrigue. The cool thing about short stories is that you can pick them up at any time, which makes them ideal bathroom reading.