Village loves a good competition

Like any child of our times, Village loves a good competition – from Best Film Ever Made to Worst Number One of the Century, you can consider us ready and willing to voice our opinion. When it comes to polls of books, Village is never happier than when elbow-deep in Man Booker longlists or Waterstone's vote for the 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. However (and we blame Channel 4) round about the turn of the century, some lazy marketing executive or salesman changed the rules, and took all the fun out of these polls. Instead of letting us vote unfettered for our favourite we now have to choose from a pre-selected list and if our favourite isn't on the list, it doesn't count. Take Vintage's modern classics vote, their much publicised poll to find the modern books which we will still be reading in a century. A great idea and one that generated lots of interesting opinions on BBC and in the papers last week. Except that we can't vote for just any book, presumably lest we select one Vintage don't publish. They gave a list of 100 books to 50 British reading groups who selected the most likely 15 that will be viewed as classics in 2105. Many books anyone might choose were on the list, from Sebastian Faulk's Birdsong to Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. But 2004's Star of the Sea or The Time Traveller's Wife – have we really got enough distance to judge them? Margaret Atwood probably deserved to make the list, but we preferred Cats Eyes to The Handmaid's Tale. The thing is, we didn't really get to choose and suddenly a brilliant pub discussion becomes a well disguised marketing tool for the publisher.

So Starbuck's have raised the hackles of the CWA (Concerned Women of America) by printing extracts from Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City on their coffee cups. The CWA fear that the cups will lead impressionable children down dark paths and are urging all Christians to register their dismay with the worldwide franchise. Sadly, no-one has gone on record to complain about the cup featuring New Age guru Deepak Chopra. We live in hope. One can only imagine the horror the CWA would feel with Manchester's Big Gay Read, a project being run on the lines of 2003's Big British Read. They hope to find Britain's favourite homosexual novel. The list is notable by it's familiarity – few of the works on the list could be described as niche, leftfield works, which is presumably the point. Most will be familiar to all readers with Alan Hollinghurst's Man Booker winning The Line of Beauty taking on Jeffrey Eugenides Pulitzer winning story of the hermaphrodite gene, Middlesex. Also on the list is the aforementioned Tales of the City, Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and Michael Cunningham's At Home at the End of the World, filmed last year with Colin Farrell. Of Irish interest is Colm Tobin's The South but the pick oh the bunch is undoubtedly Annie Proulx's marvellous novella Brokeback Mountain.

The collapse of the big summer picture has been well documented in theories this season after underperformers like Stealth and The Island managed to recoup only a fraction of their costs. Anyone interested in the vision and greed sewn up in the making of the movies will enjoy Tom Shone's Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer although the title appears silly after their holidays of Titanic proportions (the ship, not the movie) A knock on effect of this profligacy will be the inevitable downsizing of budgets and an attempt to make smaller movies, often based on reliable literary sources. Ralph Fiennes has just debuted at No.1 in the box office, starring in an adaptation of John Le Carre's African set The Constant Gardener. One of a number of "never filmed" books (The Catcher in the Rye, The Satanic Verses) is to finally be made with Francis Ford Copolla set to finally commence work on Jack Kerouac's On The Road. Many fans of the counter culture work will be nervous to see what kind of job he does but it is sure to send another generation into their cars in search of America.

Anyone who heard George Galloway's hectoring speech to the US Senate in May will be in no doubt as to his formidable talent for oratory, argument and self-fenced. In his razing of all opponents it was impossible not to admire his skills regardless of your stance on his politics. We pity the fool brave enough to take him on. Two famous writers have done just that this month – Salman Rushdie on BBC2's Newsnight and Christopher Hitchens in a public Debate in New York. Salman was defending his religious views in promotion of his new book Shalimar the Clown, Hitchens defending himself in part response to Galloway's suggestion that he was "drink soaked former Trotskyite popinjay". We feel the ceaseless self-publicist will be victorious.