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This week: Mental...it’s OK to be funny. Director PJ Hogan’s new comedy not only questions the odd behaviour we accept as 'normal' but confronts an even larger taboo: that one shouldn’t make jokes about mental illness. Better to treat the mad either as victims or heroes overcoming suffering. But surely it’s a lot more complicated than that? And sometimes funnier? Plus: clampdown in Iran. Last week Iran pulled its entry from the Oscars; blocked Google and YouTube, and arrested the head of the House of Cinema, the 20-year-old independent cultural organisation (like the BFI and the AFI) which brokers relations between filmmakers in Iran and the rest of the world. Iranian film has been one of the great national movements in cinema of the past twenty years. How will its filmmakers continue to work as the screws tighten?

On Movietime this week we meet Toni Collette, star of the upcoming PJ Hogan comedy Mental, and Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries), the Brazilian filmmaker whose screen version of Kerouac’s On The Road opens here this week. In Trash and Treasure Peter Bishop discusses utopian visions in cinema, and in particular the film Lost Horizon: part of RN’s exploration of utopia and a brace of programs called 'Perfect Worlds'.

Film News. Hotel Transylvania. Ruby Sparks. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days. Bait 3D. Lore. Interview with Cate Shortland. Last Will (Web only).