Don't write it off without checking whether it suits your own circumstances,'' he says.. Film critics love to moan about the parlous state of the art for which they give up hundreds of hours of daylight each year, which perhaps helps explain why they have been near-unanimous in denouncing 2000 as one of the worst years for film in living memory. Film critics love to moan about the parlous state of the art for which they give up hundreds of hours of daylight each year, which perhaps helps explain why they have been near-unanimous in denouncing 2000 as one of the worst years for film in living memory. True, the box office was dominated by overblown, vacuous blockbusters like Mission Impossible 2 and The Perfect Storm. True, there was nothing out of Hollywood coming close to last year's remarkable crop of innovative, refreshingly original films like American Beauty and Being John Malkovich.But with awards season upon us, and some of last year's most interesting work yet to be released in Britain, it now appears that 2000 was not as bad as all that.Commentators who just a few weeks ago were urging the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences not to award an Oscar for Best Picture at all are now eating their words, as films like Traffic, Steven Soderbergh's multilayered expose of the international drugs trade, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee's breathtakingly beautiful reinvention of the martial arts genre, vie for critical hyperbole and a place on the list of official Oscar nominees."The year 2000 was actually an excellent year for films - it just wasn't a good year for what Hollywood had to offer," says Damien Bona, a leading historian of the Oscars.

"If you were lucky enough to live where they were being shown and then smart enough to seek them out - films from Iran, France and that subculture known as independent American cinema - you found yourself richly rewarded at the movies in 2000."Furthermore, 2001 - one of those strangely blessed years, like 1984, which had a film named after it - seems to be bursting with cinematic promise, even if the industry is bracing itself for a season of deep corporate blues. Looking at the list of upcoming goodies - film versions of Bridget Jones' Diary and Captain Corelli's Mandolin; Hannibal, the long-awaited sequel to The Silence of the Lambs; and A.I., Steven Spielberg's takeover of Stanley Kubrick's great unmade project - you know there will be plenty to talk about, even if none of the above turns out to be any good.Depending who you believe, A.I. will either be the ultimate meeting of two of cinema's most inventive minds, or a sort of ET for the cyber-generation, or - just possibly - a sentimental travesty of Kubrick's original intentions. The story, about a boy-robot (played by Haley Joel Osment of Sixth Sense fame) who yearns to be human, has strong echoes of Pinocchio as well as a Terminator-style preoccupation with the borderline between men and machines; according to technicians who worked on the film, now in postproduction, Spielberg has milked the material for every emotion he could wring from it.This year is also shaping up as a renaissance of sorts for some of the sacred monsters of cinema who had seemed to disappear off the screen altogether.A.I.

marks Spielberg's return to the director's chair after a hiatus of three years, the longest fallow period of his career. Jack Nicholson, last seen in As Good As It Gets, also three years ago, is re-emerging for star billing in Sean Penn's latest, a cop drama called The Pledge.Even Leonardo DiCaprio, mourned by teenage girls everywhere since his chilly demise at the end of Titanic and only briefly - and disappointingly - resurrected for a thawing in the tropical Thai sunshine of The Beach, will be back thanks to Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. Shot in Rome over the summer, it will take DiCaprio back to his Italian roots and test his ability to match Pacino and De Niro's legendary performances as young mafiosi.Whatever the critics make of the coming year, though, the next few months are likely to be tough for everyone working in the industry. Both the actors' and the screenwriters' guilds are due to renegotiate their contracts before early summer, and there are widespread fears that they will both go on strike, effectively closing down production for weeks, or even months.Studio executives have been so glum about the prospects of averting a strike that many people are beginning to suspect they want industrial action as an excuse to slash their overheads..

Early this summer, Ann Widdecombe is due to take a break from front-bench battles when she launches her second novel, set in occupied France It bears the piquant title An Act of Treachery (Weidenfeld). By July, it's quite feasible that the author will have plotted just such a deed against her hapless party chief. I doubt that she will want any strategic advice from another hardcore cult figure with a book out at the time: Irvine Welsh with Glue (Cape). Yet surely some enterprising festival should hire this pair to stage a... joint event? Early this summer, Ann Widdecombe is due to take a break from front-bench battles when she launches her second novel, set in occupied France It bears the piquant title An Act of Treachery (Weidenfeld). By July, it's quite feasible that the author will have plotted just such a deed against her hapless party chief. I doubt that she will want any strategic advice from another hardcore cult figure with a book out at the time: Irvine Welsh with Glue (Cape).