This week I watched Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s latest invitation to an hour or so of light pseudo-intellectual engagement, and enjoyed every bit of the movie. Gil Pender, the protagonist played by Owen Wilson in this modern fable, is a Hollywood scriptwriter who happens to be in Paris with his fiancée while struggling to write his first novel. We witness Pender’s attempt to write his novel while trying to satisfy the needs of his rather shallow and socialite fiancée. There is no real depth to Woody Allen’s characters in the movie but this is probably because he is busy eagerly exploring psychological themes. “Midnight’s”...

The Statue of Liberty turned 125 last Friday. Back in 1896, the French government donated the statue to the people of America and “Liberty” soon became an iconic symbol and gateway to the land of opportunity for thousands of migrants that reached the shores of the United States in the last century. Events closer to home this week made me wonder whether we should have our own statue in Malta. Actually, make that two statues − you know how it is in this country − you need to have a black and a white side to every opinion… so you probably will need two statues too. This week we had the Independence Day celebrations. It had not...

Do you have Independence day hangover? Are you still reeling from the injection of pride in our country and its achievements – especially in its delayed reincarnation as the potential Florence Nightingale of the Libyan Spring? Or are you still feeling rather indignant at the “divisive” call for AST’s resignation? Better still, are you still clutching your aching sides after laughing all night at Labour’s non sequitur style reponse that “if my ex-Foreign Minister was an arsehole then your ex-Leader /PM / President played host to a flurry of arseholes in the early nineties”? However you may have woken...