By the time she was created a Dame – on the same day as Julie Andrews in 2000 - Elizabeth Taylor’s significance to the film industry had long since passed. She died today at the age of 79. For years she has been of interest to the headline writers only as the wife of Larry Fortensky, the seventh man to put a ring on her finger (Burton famously did it twice) and her intriguing and possibly co-dependent friendship with her fellow child star Michael Jackson. But let us remember on this day, that at least where actresses are concerned, she stands proud as this country’s most glamorous export to Hollywood.

By the time she was created a Dame – on the same day as Julie Andrews in 2000 - Elizabeth Taylor’s significance to the film industry had long since passed. She died today at the age of 79. For years she has been of interest to the headline writers only as the wife of Larry Fortensky, the seventh man to put a ring on her finger (Burton famously did it twice) and her intriguing and possibly co-dependent friendship with her fellow child star Michael Jackson. But let us remember on this day that, at least where actresses are concerned, she stands proud as this country’s most glamorous export to Hollywood.

By the trail of dead shall ye know Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd, who bounces back irascibly for a ninth and final series of Waking the Dead. For once, British TV has the edge over its American counterpart. While Jerry Bruckheimer's US series, Cold Case, always feels dragged backwards by its clunking reconstructions of ancient crimes (especially the device of using young actors to impersonate now-elderly perps in their prime), Waking the Dead manages to catapult its back-catalogue felonies vividly into the present.

It is regularly cited as quite the grossest moment in the Top 1000 gross moments in gross-out comedy. Flooping out of Ben Stiller, dangling off his earlobe, whence Cameron Diaz takes a pinch to stiffen her hair flick: the world-famously icky spunk-gel sight gag. The Farrelly Brothers have never been ones to duck a gross-out challenge, and in Hall Pass they may have just knocked their own There’s Something About Mary off the Number One slot.

The credits unfold against a backdrop of a tall, exotic plant, down whose length the camera slowly pans. The African Queen, in glorious Technicolor, based on a novel by CS Forrester, directed by John Huston, shot by Jack Cardiff, starring two of the great names of the cinematic age. Katharine Hepburn, the female face of the screwball comedy, and Humphrey Bogart, the hardbitten star of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. If you’re reading carefully, you’ll note that the credit for continuity goes to Angela Allen. Sixty years later, I sit in a cinema in Soho with Angela Allen and watch The African Queen.

“I’ve never been intimidated by them. I don't suffer from thinking, that person is a star. They’ve got their job. I’ve got mine. If they’re pleasant so much the better.” Angela Allen’s lifetime in film has found her working closely with some of the most iconic figures in 20th-century entertainment, from matinee idols to gnarled silverscreen pros. Of the 75 pictures on which she was script supervisor, this selection of photographs from her personal album gives some sense of her long and distinguished contribution to cinema, including the occasional bit of body double work when no other appropriate female was around.

The King’s Speech survived a faltering start at the 83rd annual Academy Awards – think of it as an Oscar-night stammer – to emerge victorious with four trophies, three of them in the last 30 minutes of the (seemingly endless) ceremony. But long after this cinematic Cinderella’s final domination of the gong-giving season just gone is forgotten, 2011 will be remembered as the year that the Oscars dropped the F-bomb.

From that moment in 1903 when audiences fled screaming from the Lumière brothers’ L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, convinced they would be crushed under the wheels of the oncoming train, 3D cinema staked its claim as the genre of sensation and sensationalism. The format has spent over a century circling quietly in and out of favour; then came Avatar and everything changed. Overnight 3D film went from technological curiosity to mainstream innovation. Suddenly everyone was talking. With Sanctum currently oozing gore all over our screens, the first 3D opera screenings looming and no self-respecting child accepting animated 2D substitutes, the conversation is buzzing louder than ever – but is it ever going to get to the big questions?

Of the other Best Picture Oscar nominees, David O Russell’s The Fighter has seven nominations, Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan six apiece, the animated Toy Story 3, directed by Lee Unkrich, has five, and two indies, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right and Debra Granik’s Winter's Bone, have four each.

Just to fill in that blank left by the title, how do you know when you’re in love? It’s the question posed by every romantic comedy ever made, satisfactorily answered only by the good ones. James L Brooks, who wrote, produced and directed Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets, has spent a lifetime in film looking at the problem from a variety of Oscar-winning angles.

The Facebook film The Social Network and TV's Glee were the big winners at the Golden Globes last night, though much attention has focused on the best acting awards to Colin Firth for The King's Speech and Natalie Portman for Black Swan. Not to mention Ricky Gervais's British sense of humour as host. Christian Bale was another eminent British actor who won an award, for his supporting role in The Fighter, but Helena Bonham Carter, Judi Dench and Romola Garai missed out despite nominations.