2010 begins with a worldbeating blockbuster capable of breaking all attendance records – and it ends with another. It’s more than 40 years since Britain saw a major exhibition of the work of Vincent van Gogh; 40 years in which the tormented Dutch genius has gone from being merely an extremely famous and influential painter to, by common consent, the world’s favourite artist, the man who sacrificed himself for his art, whose light-filled canvases tell us most about what we think art should be – never mind that many of them are of dark, rain-drenched Dutch fields.

Last night I was drinking cappuccino with Britain's answer to Robert Redford in a Soho coffee bar. Elliot Grove and I go back a long way: we first met in 1993 when Grove launched Raindance, London's version of Sundance, the premier American independent film festival founded by Redford. Since then Sundance has increasingly been attacked for selling out to Hollywood. By contrast Raindance, now in its 17th year, is still going strong and retains an air of authentic independence.