It might be a canny web marketing move. It might be a genuine call to arms. Whatever the truth of the matter, American space agency NASA is advertising for the next generation of astronauts, aiming to boost its current rank of 59 – a total which has fallen by nearly 100 over the course of the last ten years.

The salary is competitive to say the least, with the accepted new starters getting around $65k minimum and perhaps as much as 140. The flip-side is that successful applicants will likely need to be equipped with some fairly serious qualifications and credentials. A solitary GCSE in woodwork is unlikely to cut it (sob!).

The new spaceguys and gals will also find themselves with a serious wait on their hands before they get into space. Basic training takes the better part of three years, including a half-year stint in Russia learning the lingo, and even when all that's out of the way, an average of just five astronauts are sent to the International Space Station each year.

Still, getting paid 65 grand to sit around twiddling your thumbs doesn't seem so bad to this writer... which is probably a manifestation of the complete absence of drive that will prevent me from ever becoming a NASA astronaut. Oh well. Whether the uptake is healthy or not, the recruitment drive seems a terrific web marketing ploy for an agency increasingly forced to justify its existence.

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Filmmaking, or lack thereof, is boiling this authors blood once again. So, this is what we have come to. We live in a world in which even the prequels and remakes have run dry in the multiplex, a world in which nostalgia value is now chanced upon and gambled away by the creatively-parasitic, morally invidious organisms known as Hollywood. When will they learn that nostalgia value is only so if it remains in the past?

 If they could pluck your medulla like a banjo and ransom you toward the theatres with the threat of vomit-inducement, believe me, they would. But for now, people like James Cameron will have to suffice with re-releasing Titanic in 3D.

Firstly – 3D didn’t work a century ago, it didn’t work in the eighties and, regrettably, it’s not working now. But the people who hold the cashish have spent enough on the technology to decide that you’re having it whether you like it or not. Is there truly not a thing to rebel against here?

Secondly – Titanic was terrible the first time around. A shallow, cynical, sensationalist vinegar sandwich which serves only to trivialise the agonizing betrayal and eventual deaths of over a thousand working-class people.

Solution – A treaty must be erected forthwith, whereby each of us donates a sum to the tune of double the ticket price to James Cameron. In return, he should get it into his brain that this isn’t just harmless fun. This is retrograde to any concept of progress in cinema and damaging to something far more profound than anything his film, or indeed - entire body of work - has to offer.

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Can Filmmaking ever do justice to such a culturally volatile figurehead? Though early screenings of The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep, has garnered enough praise to warrant attention, things did not go down so well in the nest of some former conservative party members who look wistfully upon that time.

Norman Tebbit, one of the former prime minister’s most fervent advocates, had this to say…"You might think that if you were setting out to make a so-called 'biopic' about such a dominant figure on the political stage of the late 20th century, your researchers would have sought out those who were closest to her in those years and asked them,"

He went on to say that “she was never, in my experience, the half-hysterical, over-emotional, over-acting woman portrayed by Meryl Streep.”

The Telegraph also reported that former PR adviser to Thatcher, Tim Bell, dismissed the film, remarking…"Its only value is to make some money for Meryl Streep and whoever wrote it. I have no interest in seeing it. I don't need a film to remind me of my experiences of her. It is a non-event."

We get it; the Tories don’t like the film. Maybe it’s too close to their hearts, if they have such a thing. But if Tim truly did think of it as such a non-event then maybe he shouldn’t be broadcasting his thoughts on the film in a national newspaper.

The Iron Lady is released on 6 January 2012 in the UK following a 30 December opening in the US. The parent Film studio of the film are already hoping for Oscars success, with William Hill naming Streep their 5/4 favourite to win the best actress award in the wake of these early reviews.

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THE blockbuster television production to emerge from the UK in the last few years, it is with mild embarrassment this writer must admit that what they don't know about the 21^st century revival of Doctor Who could likely fill the TARDIS itself. Still, you don't need to be an expert on the show to know that a proposed movie version which ditches the small screen creative team is likely to be sailing in choppy waters.

David Yates is the big shot Hollywood director who is beavering on a big screen incarnation of Doctor Who – an incarnation which in his own words will be “quite a radical transformation” from the flagship BBC television production.

Yates, a Brit himself who plied his trade in TV with the likes of State of Play before striking gold when Warners signed him to helm the later episodes in its Harry Potter franchise, reckons that the project is still two to three years away from coming to fruition but that a writer is currently being sought.

However neither of the two lead writers to guide the small screen Who revival, Russell T. Davies not Steven Moffat, are apparently in the running. Says Yates of the Davies and Moffat-penned visions of what has gone before: “We have to put that aside and start from scratch.”

With the main Who scriptwriters apparently ruled out of the motion picture reckoning, fans of the show have inferred that this apparent fresh start also precludes the possibility of either of the last two actors to play the doctor, David Tenant or Matt Smith, taking the character onto the big screen. Cue online howls of outrage.

It would not, though, be the first time that the character has been played by a different actor in cinemas than on television; Peter Cushing starred in a brace of Doctor Who movies in the mid-60s, despite never filling the role in the BBC series. 

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Fans of the original anime video production of Akira have certainly had something to moan about recently, the remake that has been talked of for years has finally been given the green-light much to the dismay of the films ardent fanboys.

For many, the filmmakers’ recent courting of Kristen Stewart for the role of Kei might be the final nail in the coffin, but is it all that bad? I seem to remember when Disney’s Zack Efron was attached to the role of Kaneda...[shudder]. The part is now reported to belong to Garrett Hedlund who fresh from Tron Legacy will once again be riding a massive motorbike in a eighties remake.

Other talent requested by the filmmakers includes heavyweights Gary Oldman and Helena Bonham Carter who will hopefully bring a bit of a gravitas to a project skirting dangerously close to the teen remake market.

The re-imagining set in Neo-Manhattan has been scripted by Steven Kloves (Harry Potter) and will be directed by Jaume Collet-Sera with a release date of 2013 on the cards. Fingers crossed they will take care of this dystopian manga classic and it won’t end up on the 80s movie re-hash scrap-pile like the recent Footloose catastrophe.

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