Arkin's producer, recruited by the CIA to launch the film, are hilarious, a kind of Mel Brooks/Zero Mostel double act. The facial hair is commendable: Affleck looks like the male lead in a Marilyn Chambers porno. Meanwhile, the actors playing the six diplomats all bear a slight resemblance to 'real' actors of the day -- one looks a little like Meryl Streep, another like Diane Keaton, a third like Keith Carradine. It's the kind of film Clooney has been championing for years: a witty and suspenseful thriller, with a contemporary political subtext bubbling away beneath its handsome surface. The publicity machine is cranking up talk of an Oscar nomination for Affleck, which might prove to be more than just PR guff. But as a director, Affleck's future finally seems assured, and the movies can only profit from his experience of failure as well as his determination to succeed. Editor's Letter Hunter Davies, who in 1968 wrote the first authorised biography of The Beatles and now more than 50 years on has compiled and edited The John Lennon Letters, admits in his introduction that he has for the purposes of the book 'rather expanded the definition of the word letter', which immediately...