It was inevitable that the Lions for Lambs world premiere would be the largest event of the festival, and so it was, wiping out interest in anything on either side of it for at least three hours. With Robert Redford at the helm of a thoughtful Afghanistan politico everything seemed to indicate that this was going to be All the President’s Men for the War on Terror generation.

Tickets for the event were rarer than pink unicorns, so Box Office has yet to catch up with the film. However, The Times, the official sponsor of the festival, who seems to have unlimited press access did report, sliding an extremely negative review under a larger puff piece -- emphasising the sheer star power of the paper. James Christopher described the film as “a series of animated arguments that look desperately staged,” and goes on to say that “not a single character feels real and rounded,” concluding that “the film has an almost autistic lack of personality.” So that’s one you can skip.

Memories of a prankster squirting Cruise with a water pistol at the 2005 London premiere of War of the Worlds still seem to be rather sore. Whilst Cruise shook hands and signed autographs for two hours, The Daily Mail reported that bags were searched for water pistols and TV crews were not allowed to carry out live interviews with the actor who clearly does not like getting wet.

Being the only Hollywood film getting its world premiere, and substantially the only major release on the global level, it was always fairly clear that Lions for Lambs was going to take the proverbial lion’s share of attention for the evening. That was a shame with events like ‘Is the internet killing film critics’ and City of Men running on the same night.

The former featured a host of film journalists debating the impact of the online amateur field on the professional market, with the blurred lines of commercial blogging sitting somewhere between the two. Box Office is proud to report that blogging is emphatically a very, very good thing.

The latter, City of Men is a return to the favelas of the 2002 international hit City of God, and comes from the same creators. Guaranteed to be something very different from the standard Hollywood fare.