Aside from survivalism, women were the other surprise of last year. It was not just that they emerged from behind the gigantic heads of toppling alpha males, but that Hollywood realised women were a lucrative audience. Young men increasingly stayed away, preferring to play video games at home. So Sex and the City became event cinema, attended by dressed-up gangs of women; the recent release Twilight , which features a Byronic vampire sinking his teeth into the ivory necks of quivering adolescent females, has been hugely popular with teenage girls; and then came the box-office super-smash Mamma Mia!

This year women will be targeted even more precisely. One sub-sub-genre to emerge is feature films adapted from self-help books, notably French Women Don't Get Fat, which instructs women they can stay slim while still scoffing the air in the éclair choux pastry, and He's Just Not that Into You , which proffers advice such as that if a man runs away from a woman he is not in love with her.