Three wide openers rung up less boxoffice on Friday than "Alice in Wonderland," which took in $9.9 million on its 15th day of domestic release.

Disney's 3D fantasy "Alice in Wonderland" fetched $9.9 million on the day for $241.2 million in cumulative b.o. at the start of its third session.

Hollywood might be run by Scientologists these days, but the Catholics once called the shots, John Patterson reminds us

Jessica Hausner's new movie Lourdes, which revolves around what may or may not be a "take up thy bed and walk" kind of miracle, is the kind of movie about religious faith that you don't see coming out of Hollywood any more in these days of The Passion Of The Christ, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.

Hollywood hasn't developed an anti-Catholic bias; it's just that the church was once so prominent in Hollywood it almost had to come to grief sooner or later, with or without the aid of its retrograde teachings on birth control and ongoing sexual abuse scandals.

The old canard goes that the Jews run Hollywood. And certainly the industry was founded by immigrant Jews, barred from the more salubrious professions by anti-semitic Wasps. But for three decades, from the early-1930s until the late-1950s, it was Catholics, in the form of the Breen Office, that implemented and maintained the Production Code Administration, and signed off on every last item of studio product, from A-features right down to newsreels. (Meanwhile, the Church's own Legion of Decency could ruin a movie's chances with a single 'C for condemned' rating.) In short, the nervous Jewish moguls handed over the moral invigilation of their product to Catholics before distributing it to a lumpen Protestant audience.

The Catholic audience, swelled by Mediterranean and Irish immigration over the previous 50 years, was equally well-served in those days of greater religious adherence. Catholic directors were legion: Capra, Hitchcock, Ford, and Leo McCarey, who made Going My Way and Christmas perennial The Bells Of St Mary's. Spencer Tracy, devout and guilt-ridden, played Father Edward Flanagan in Boys Town, which, like most Catholic movies, stressed the Church's commitment to a social gospel. Handsome, heroic, self-abnegating priests taught young hoodlums to box (Boys Town), to recant (Angels With Dirty Faces), to fight for their integrity of their union (On The Waterfront), or just to sing-along-a-Bing (Going My Way). Pat O'Brien made an entire career out of playing priests, and Jimmy Cagney, well, he wasn't no Episcopalian. Nuns looked like Ingrid Bergman (Bells Of St Mary's), Audrey Hepburn (The Nun's Story) and Debbie Reynolds (The Singing Nun). And Loretta Young was so much the evangelist Catholic on set she was nicknamed Attila the Nun – even though she slept with the married Tracy and secretly bore her co-religionist Clark Gable's love child.

The abolition of the Breen Office in the mid-1950s, the drift towards secularism and the Church's own iniquities all contributed to the decline of this lost parallel universe of Catholic movies. I don't really need it back, or miss it even. It just fascinates me (and cheers me a little) that a phenomenon once so omnipresent has now so utterly vanished.

John Patterson
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The Iranian indie band talk about life as outlaws in their homeland, as documented in their new film No One Knows About Persian Cats

At first glance, Take It Easy Hospital look like any other aspiring indie duo. Dressed in impeccable Shoreditch chic – plaid shirt and skinny jeans for him, cute vintage dress, black tights and brogues for her – their teenage epiphanies came on copied cassettes of Nirvana and Pink Floyd, while these days they're more into Sigur Rós and Foals.

Their ambition for next year, once they find a drummer, is to get on to the bill at Glastonbury or Reading. The difference is that Take It Easy Hospital originally formed in Iran, where rock music is banned. When the local music industry is non-existent, gigs and recording studios are regularly raided by police and even MySpace is monitored, simply finding someone who shares your love of guitars and plaintive vocals is fraught with difficulties.

Ash Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi, the twin songwriters of Take It Easy Hospital, are the stars of a new Iranian film by garlanded Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi, called No One Knows About Persian Cats (so named because pet cats, like rock musicians, are outlawed in Iran). The film is a fictionalised account of the duo's attempts to recruit a rhythm section in order to play a local underground gig and ultimately escape to the rock-friendly west. As the two indie innocents are taken under the wing of music-loving wide-boy Nader (Hamed Behdad), the film becomes a Linklater-esque romp through Tehran's clandestine rock underground. All the bands and musicians featured are real, but whether hairy blues rockers, jazz singers, class-war rappers or indie kids, they exhibit a love for making music that overrides the fear of being arrested the moment they switch on their amps. "If you were discovered playing rock music, you'd get arrested, you'd have to pay a fine," reveals Ash, matter-of-factly. "Sometimes you'd go to prison."

The film gleans affectionate humour from the various bands' ingenuity when it comes to hiding their rehearsal spaces from the authorities in diligently-soundproofed underground caverns, shacks constructed on the roofs of tower blocks or, in one case, in a working cattle barn (much to the cows' displeasure).

By coincidence, there is a British film out this month which also documents the struggle of a couple of indie dreamers to form a band – except 1234 is based in London, so the only obstacles are their own musical inadequacy and weedy sexual tension between bandmates. Persian Cats makes 1234 look rather pathetic.

In Iran musicians are forced to behave like fugitives, even though the charges invoked against them are vague (Ahmadinejad imposed a ban on "western and decadent music" soon after becoming president in 2005). "It's a not a written law," complains Negar. "There isn't this red line. You never know when you're crossing it. [The authorities] don't even really know what they're opposing. They don't see that music brings energy and good nature to society."

In 2007, Ash's former band Font staged an open-air gig in a private garden in a suburb of Tehran. Armed police arrived en masse to shut it down, arresting everyone in the audience, and slinging the band in prison for 21 days. "They didn't have any law that said what they should do with us, so they called us satanists. They said we were against the moral law and disgracing the face of society." Ash chuckles wryly at the memory. "It was an odd experience, sleeping next to a serial killer for three weeks. But it made me believe even more in what I was doing."

Font and Take It Easy Hospital are rarities: most Iranian wannabe rockers never even get further then their bedrooms, due to the subtle pressure exerted within families. "Under this regime, you don't have any opportunity to make a living from being a musician, so families prevent their children from learning music in the first place," Ash explains. "Families are a small example of big government. They don't trust the young generation."

When Ash and Negar were kids, the only opportunity they had to hear western rock music was when somebody from their community travelled abroad and brought back CDs. "They'd be copied on to a tape over and over again," says Negar. "We used to write the track names in class when the teacher wasn't looking and take it home with such excitement to listen to it." Even so, whatever they got depended on the tastes of the traveller; often hoping for something similar to Nirvana, they'd end up having to make do with ABBA.

The advent of the internet changed everything for Iranian teenagers, who were suddenly able to participate in global youth culture, employing their technological nous to stay one step ahead of government censors. The fact that the bands in No One Knows About Persian Cats wear Strokes T-shirts and pass around copies of the NME shouldn't seem that strange. But what is the attraction to Ash and Negar of the kind of fey indie music that even within its countries of origin is often considered a bit insular?

"Well, we are indie!" declares Ash. "We had to do it ourselves in bedrooms because if you step out into the streets, you cannot even tell anyone you've just written a song. We would make our own imaginariums in our rooms."

If they'd grown up in England, Take It Easy Hospital's wan, organ-driven indie-pop, topped with earnest observations about the "human jungle", might stand accused of being a little bit twee. But once you learn how hard Ash and Negar have had to fight just to get their songs heard, they take on a whole new complexion. And despite their ugly experiences in Iran, they are determined not to make rebel rock. "Me, I don't care about politics," says Negar. "The value of art is a lot more than politics. Politics is something that passes, but art stays for years."

Ash picks up the thread: "Politics is a tool to solve a situation at one moment. We believe that art is pure and always depending on human nature, so we've always kept ourselves far from politics. Our music is not dangerous, but the current regime in Iran feels that it has to keep people away from honest expression because if they face up to the reality they will soon find out what they are missing."

Ash and Negar agreed to star in Persian Cats not to make a political point, but to try to show the older generation, including their parents, that music is a force for good. But while Ash has received some positive feedback from older Iranians – "I've heard that they walk away after seeing this film to remember what they had before the revolution" – Negar is despondent that most of them haven't been able to overcome their prejudices. "I guess that when people decide to close their eyes to something, you can't force them to see the truth."

In the light of last year's post-election protests, the police crackdown on young people involved in music and the arts has intensified. When Take It Easy Hospital's old drummer went back to Iran several weeks after the election, he was arrested and beaten. Last January, the film's co-writer, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, was arrested in Tehran and handed an eight-year jail sentence on trumped up charges of being a US spy (she was eventually freed following a global outcry).

Reluctantly, Ash and Negar decided it was unsafe to return to Iran and have successfully applied for asylum in the UK, where they've been living since coming over to play at Manchester's In The City festival in 2008. In the film, the duo never make it to London, so in this case, truth is happier than fiction. However, Negar is at pains to point out that they never viewed England as the promised land, despite our rather more relaxed laws regarding the public airing of Farfisa-driven jangle pop.

"Some people say we've run away," says Negar. "But there is no running away. Moving from one country to another doesn't necessarily solve all the problems that are on your mind." Proof that indie introspection truly is an international language.

No One Knows About Persian Cats is out Fri; it previews at Brixton Ritzy, SW2, Tue

• World cinema

Sam Richards
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Thumbs up for hoods, Oliver Spencer at Topman and Monoprix; thumbs down for bell bottoms, hair buns and big shades

Going up

Hoods The Scottish Widow look is all over Paris

Britain Yes, big up to us – Gaga loves our fish'n'chips and SJP is moving here for a stint. Jolly good, etc

In The Land Of The Free Cheerful? No. Amazing? Yes.

Monoprix The real Parisian go-to label for the fashion crew

Oliver Spencer for Topman shoes Oh you lucky boys. Desert-style boots and shoes with a hefty rubber red sole. Loving the navy

Going down

Ladurée macaroons Love them, but it's all about Ladurée ice-cream now

Bell bottoms Halston for men is coming, though early news is it's a no to the flares revival

Oversized shades No – 90s circular now, please. See Jean Reno in Léon or Meryl in Postcards From The Edge for ref

Bun maintenance Love Prada's catwalk hair, but who has got the time?

Chain handles on bags Too gaudy. This season we love plainness. Thank you, Céline

• Men's shoes
• Women's trousers
• Handbags
• Women's sportswear
• Fashion

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Emma Thompson is as unstarry a film star as you will find. She lives in the street she grew up in and her extended family is the core of her life. She tells Joanna Moorhead how it all works, and about the young Rwandan who joined this close clan as her son

An unremarkable row of Victorian houses, a quiet suburban street, parked Fords and Vauxhalls. Nothing remotely fancy, which is why it seems incongruous to be suddenly face to face with not just one but two famous actors: Emma Thompson, and her mother, Phyllida Law. The person I'm here to see is Thompson; but I've pressed the wrong doorbell and disturbed Law, who lives next door. Thompson, though, has heard the noise, guessed at my mistake, and seconds later is opening her front door too. Which is how I come to find myself, on a mundane grey morning in north London, sharing a giggle with two film stars over the bathtub in Law's front garden, complete with a pair of mannequin's legs sticking out. "It is extraordinary," agrees Thompson, as she ushers me through the correct front door. "That was the tub in our house when I was growing up – I had all my adolescent baths in it."

The vignette seems to sum Thompson up: ordinariness laced with the right amount of glamour (without makeup in the harsh daylight and at 50, she's looking great), a good helping of wackiness and oodles of family references and family history. In fact, family is her metier. As well as having her mother as a neighbour, her younger sister Sophie (another actor) lives a mile or so away with her husband and children. Thompson's daughter Gaia, 10, skips to and from her granny's house, much as Thompson herself did in this very street as a child: she grew up just down the road and her grandparents also lived on the same street.

"Family is the centre of everything for me," agrees Thompson. "But family is about connection, not necessarily about blood ties. It's about extended family – and extending family."

What's important to her, she explains, is a wider, welcoming, nurturing group of people who have put down roots together – and here in her west Hampstead nest, she's surrounded by her family and its extensions. As well as Gaia, her husband Greg Wise (yet another actor), her mother and sister, there's Tindy (Tindyebwa), a 23-year-old former child soldier from Rwanda who Thompson and her actor husband Greg Wise welcomed into their family via an informal adoption seven years ago: he is now a postgraduate student in London and has his own flat, but is often around at weekends. Then there's her PA, Viv, in the office: she used to be Gaia's nanny and clearly feels part of the clan too. It's this idea of the welcoming family, accessible to outsiders, that lies at the heart of the new Nanny McPhee film too – as with the first, Thompson has written the screenplay and plays the leading role.

The Nanny films, which she adapted from Christianna Brand's Nurse Matilda books, are the passion project of Thompson's life – she has spent a massive chunk of time on it. "It goes back 15 years – I started work on Nanny McPhee long before I had Gaia, so everyone who thought I was writing a children's film because I'd had a baby was wrong."

As a character, Nanny McPhee is devoted to caring and enabling: and this, I reckon, is the role Thompson most wants to play in real life. In the film, she dispenses goodness, wisdom and life-enhancing support: in reality, she is as aware as anyone that her influence springs from being a famous film star. Though she's happy to use this, as she strides into battle against everything from human trafficking to the proposed third Heathrow runway, what she hopes is that people will see her for what she is, rather than who she is.

Motherhood, says Thompson, has grounded her. Gaia is in many ways her miracle child; conceived via IVF, born as she was nearly 40. She gave birth without drugs, and says she can't imagine why any woman would ever elect to have a caesarean. "Even now, when things are bad I go back and I remember the birth process. I can transport myself back to that moment when Gaia was born – it's like a well from which I draw strength."

After Gaia there were three more gruelling years of IVF. Its eventual failure was a particularly poignant blow to Thompson: her father and a much-loved uncle had died young, casting a shadow across an otherwise idyllic childhood, and she had always vowed to "bolster the numbers" for the next generation. "I grew up in an incredibly happy family, but it was damaged by this physical trauma."

Giving up on future pregnancies was, she admits, tough: but looking back now, Thompson can see it in a positive light. "I couldn't have more children, and that was hard; but perhaps if I had [had more], I'd have missed out on this extra act of mothering that I've had with Tindy. Because there was space in my life for him, and I don't think there would have been space if I'd had another young child around."

Thompson met Tindy when he was 16 at a party organised by the Refugee Council. His father had died of Aids when he was nine, and his mother and sister had disappeared during the Rwandan genocide. Tindy himself had been press-ganged as a boy soldier, before fleeing the country with the help of an aid agency. Once in Britain he was homeless and friendless, and at one point was forced to sleep rough in Trafalgar Square. But the Refugee Council helped him, and Thompson and Wise were so struck by his story that they invited him to their home for Christmas. After a while, he became an unofficial member of the family.

In the early days, Tindy was prone to nightmares, and he has written about his "on and off depression". But it's clear that Thompson has played a crucial role in helping him to turn his life around, and even though he's now an adult, Thompson hints that at some point in the future, she and Wise might become his official parents. "The important thing, though, is that he is in our life and we are his family, and that's an absolute truth."

From Tindy springs inspiration for her work campaigning for the world's disadvantaged (she is an ambassador for Action Aid) because it has enabled her to make a far bigger commitment than money. Adopting disadvantaged babies from other parts of the planet, Madonna and Angelina-style, grabs the headlines but it takes real guts to welcome a traumatised teenager from another culture into the heart of your family. And having Tindy in her family makes a difference to her work on behalf of people who do need help. "It makes the things I talk about real – I talk about them, and then I come home and there's this other dimension to what I've been talking about. It's all connected: Tindy and I may work together, one day."

On a mother-son level, their relationship is, she says, complete bliss. "He's serious-minded but very funny too. We laugh a lot. And we talk a lot – we go for long walks to chat, which is lovely." He and Gaia are very close – Tindy has been to Gaia's school to teach her class Rwandan songs, and they love spending time together. "Gaia was nearly three when he arrived," she says. "He became her big brother very quickly – she adores him."

Though their backgrounds could hardly be more different, Thompson says she and Tindy are on the same wavelength. "We're so alike … it's as though we were related." This is evidence, she says, of the unexpected joy that can come from exploring an unlikely relationship; she feels that human connections can spring from bonds that are far from obvious, and that we all enrich ourselves by being open to exploring those connections.

Another well in her life is her relationship with Wise, whom she married seven years ago when Gaia was four. He is, she says, hands-on as a parent. "He can do everything I can do. He loves home life – he loves carpentry, he loves making things. But he's not entirely domestic – he loves acting too. I'm the main breadwinner, but in a marriage like ours there has to be constant role negotiation. It can't just be that the person who earns the money does what they want to do. You have to learn respect, and you must have that for the other person's needs and desires."

She's not starry-eyed about marriage, saying it's "like a vessel you have to sail in for a long time. You can't afford not to do the upkeep required, and sometimes you have to give it some attention – as in, we've sprung a leak, what are we going to do to solve the problem?"

She knows what she's talking about: her much-publicised partnership with the actor and director Kenneth Branagh lasted five years before ending in divorce in 1994. This time, though, Thompson gives every impression of being on a long-term voyage.

Wise, she says, did the bulk of the childcare during filming of Nanny McPhee, though Gaia did sometimes join her on set. But this summer, she plans to be at home. "I always knew I'd want to be the sort of mother who would be properly around. What I most wanted was for Gaia to take me for granted – I couldn't bear the thought of being that 'special' kind of mum, I wanted to be an everyday kind."

There are obvious parallels between her daughter's childhood and her own: her father was the originator of the much-loved children's TV programme, the Magic Roundabout. "It was a hidden kind of fame," she says. "We really enjoyed it, we watched every episode. With Gaia it's different, because she doesn't really like watching me in other movies – though she doesn't mind Nanny McPhee, because I'm in disguise."

Today, Wise is away in York. "So," says Thompson, "I'll collect Gaia from school and I'll be with her this evening." Then she realises something and her eyes shine at the idea of it. "In fact, Greg will be away overnight so Gaia and I will be able to have a girly evening together. I think we'll watch a movie and then she can sleep in my bed." The idea sounds so appealing that she claps her hands together.

Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang opens in cinemas on Friday 26 March

• Family
• Emma Thompson
• Adoption

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I Love You Phillip Morris (15)
(Glen Ficarra, John Requa, 2009, US) Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor. 97 mins

Jim Carrey doesn't just play gay here, he plays flaming, in-your-face, heels-and-hotpants gay. And it kind of suits him. A police officer-turned-con man, his character is led even further astray when he falls for a fellow prison inmate (McGregor), and their courtship is treated like a traditional Hollywood love affair – albeit one full of prison breaks, audacious deceptions and outrageous accessorising. Gleefully trashy, at times exhaustingly unpredictable, it's certainly a brave move.

The Scouting Book For Boys (15)
(Tom Harper, 2009, UK) Thomas Turgoose, Holly Grainger, Rafe Spall. 93 mins

High hopes have been pinned on this, with Skins scribe Jack Thorne and plenty of young talent on board. Set in a Norfolk caravan camp, it's the tale of a boy-girl friendship developing into something else – quite what is up for grabs when they hatch a fake-kidnapping plan. Sadly, it stretches credibility too far and ends up a near-miss.

The House Of The Devil (18)
(Ti West, 2009, US) Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov. 91 mins

If the golden age of horror for you was the mid-80s, then welcome home. There's retro chills and cast members to go with the period setting here, as a student babysitter finds herself in a creepy homestead, with no baby.

The Bounty Hunter (12A)
(Andy Tennant, 2010, US) Gerard Butler, Jennifer Aniston. 110 mins

He's a bounty hunter; she's his ex-wife and his latest target. As a romcom set-up, you can kind of guess where it's going, can't you? But what with the lazy comedy and predictable buddy action, you won't need to see it get there.

Dirty Oil (U)
(Leslie Iwerks, 2009, US/Can) 76 mins

If you thought "regular" oil was bad, this environmental documentary mounts a case against extracting oil from Canada's tar sands – an even more inefficient and destructive practice.

Happy Ever Afters (15)
(Stephen Burke, 2009, Ire) Sally Hawkins, Tom Riley, Jade Yourell. 101 mins

Happy-Go-Lucky's Hawkins adds charm to this very average nuptial farce, in which two weddings at one venue overlap chaotically.

My Last Five Girlfriends (12A)
(Julian Kemp, 2008, UK) Brendan Patricks, Naomie Harris. 87 mins

A Brit romcom based on a book by Alain de Botton, but with its listy structure and over-clever surrealism, it's really channelling Nick Hornby, (500) Days Of Summer, Eternal Sunshine … and other, better, stuff.

Old Dogs (PG)
(Walt Becker, 2009, US) Robin Williams, John Travolta, Seth Green. 88 mins

Almost perfectly misjudged comedy involving children, wild animals and hilarious testicular injuries.

The Spy Next Door (PG)
(Brian Levant, 2009, US) Jackie Chan. 94 mins

Chan plays childminder and action hero in this predictable kids' adventure.

Sons Of Cuba (NC)
(Andrew Lang, 2009, UK) 88 mins

Documentary following three young contenders at a state-sponsored Havana boxing academy.

OUT FROM FRIDAY

The Blind Side

Did Sandra Bullock deserve her Oscar? Find out here.

Not The Messiah

Python-related comic opera from the Albert Hall. Out on Thu.

Perrier's Bounty

Lively Irish gangster comedy.

Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang

Emma Thompson sorts out more spoilt brats.

Extract

Mike Judge's light industrial comedy.

Nightwatching

Peter Greenaway deciphers Rembrandt's painting.

Lion's Den

Life as a single mother behind bars.

Lourdes

Drama following pilgrims to the French town.

Shank

Teen gang thriller set in a near-future London.

Storm

Kerry Fox tackles a Bosnian war criminal.

In The Land Of The Free

Doc on black US prisoners.

COMING SOON

In two weeks … Comic book vigilante action in Kick-Ass … Now in the obligatory 3D, effects epic Clash Of The Titans …

In three weeks … Roller derby sisterhood in Drew Barrymore's Whip It … Steve Carell and Tina Fey put some action into their marriage in Date Night …

In a month … Ricky Gervais's 1970s comedy Cemetery Junction … Ewan McGregor leads Roman Polanski's The Ghost …

Steve Rose
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Paranormal Activity
DVD & Blu-ray, Icon

One of the things that keeps the movies interesting is that there is no set formula for success. Which means cheap films like this can compete with the expensive Hollywood blockbusters and win. Of course, being picked up by Paramount, who lavished an extensive ad campaign upon it, didn't exactly hurt, but it's not as if the public were suckered into seeing this: it's a great scary movie. It's set entirely in a suburban home, where couple Micah and Katie are hearing things go bump (and bang!) in the night. Katie has a history of such supernatural incidents. Micah buys a video camera to record any occurrences. That's it in a nutshell. Most of the scary bits are delivered in the static shot of their bedroom the camera records every night. It's a very smart move as the viewer becomes so familiar with the room, whenever something changes, however slightly, it gets noticed. Don't think that the camcorder images mean this looks like something off YouTube, though. The sound design and editing are also superb, and the acting is deceptively skilled too. They behave like regular people – even Tom Cruise can't do that. If anything, it's far scarier to watch this at home than in a cinema. Even the menu screen, featuring the same locked-down bedroom shot, is pretty harrowing. Extras include eight of the winning entries from a tie-in competition to make a two-minute fright film – a good spread of styles shows there's plenty more untapped talent out there.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Vampire sequel stuffed with fan-friendly extras, including a preview of part three.

DVD & Blu-ray, E1

The COI Collection: Design For Today Volume Two

Great design-releated documentaries from the 1940s to 1970s, with new music by Saint Etienne.

DVD, BFI

Skins

Season four of the top teen series, or a box set of all four seasons.

DVD, 4DVD

Twin Peaks Series 2

The final 20 episodes of David Lynch's cult TV show.

DVD, Universal

It's Garry Shandling's Show

The complete first series of the ahead-of-its-time meta-sitcom.

DVD, Fabulous Films

• DVD and video reviews
• Twilight
• Skins

Phelim O'Neill
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Ahead of the release of Shank, which was met by protests from locals during filming, a look at some other location shoots that went bad

Question: if you peaked out your window, and noticed a ragtag gang of knife-wielding teens storming past, what would you do? Call the police, of course. That's exactly what residents of the Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle did, only to find their estate was actually the film set of dystopian thriller Shank, where knife-wielding gangs roam free, starring Kaya Scodelario (Effy from Skins), Kidulthood's Adam Deacon, and oddly, Tim Westwood. "I can see," offered the director Mo Ali, "how residents might get the wrong impression".

Long gone, of course, are the days of parking your entire film in the MGM lot and making do with a plastic tree and the contents of the fire bucket to make Elvis look like he's in Hawaii. But with the credit crunch, more places than ever are eager to take the film companies' dollar. David Boice – who runs BeforeTheTrailer.com, a fansite that tracks location shoots – points out that previously unlikely locations are now tripping over themselves to give generous tax breaks and entice film crews, with Michigan leading the way. The result? "In the past year the city of Detroit has filled in for Washington [for Red Dawn]. Rather than filming 'on location', they just film where there's the best incentives."

Last April, the LA Times reported that LA-based location shoots had fallen to their lowest level since records began. Put another way: everywhere is anywhere now. But with more locations, come more problems. The films that have been protested about because of the nature of the film are too numerous to mention – from Brick Lane due to perceived prejudice against the Bangladeshi community to Basic Instinct, which, well, take your pick – anti-woman and anti-gay were the main ones.

But, like Shank, what about the effect on the locals? And what, more importantly, about the house prices? You can forgive the residents of London's Kentish Town (Zone 2, tube, nice pubs), for instance, for being concerned when filming commenced on Nick Love's hooligan film The Firm, as they prepared for a brawl scene involving 140 actors, stuntmen, extras, and with dire warnings of "noise and swearing". That wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all. With Timmy listening! The locals protested, and filming was soon moved to Hackney. "Residents of Hackney were happy for the fighting to take place on their streets," reported a London freesheet, who declined to mention if the residents actually noticed the difference.

Still, brawling in the UK is one thing. When location shoots go global, it can be far worse. Of course, we all know the foreign shoots that went south – Terry Gilliam's aborted crack at Don Quixote, Coppola going cuckoo during Apocalypse Now – but at least those two can say one thing: they didn't bar people from the Almighty. Last September, Julia Roberts was on location near Dehli filming the Brad Pitt-produced Eat, Pray, Love, in which she plays a woman who finds God via food and Hindu spirituality. All well and good. The only problem was, no one else could find God, as their temple was shut. Villagers hoping to celebrate the beginning of Navratri – a nine-day Hindu festival of worship and dance – found their temple sealed by Roberts's security team, which featured the small matter of 350 guards, bulletproof cars, and a chopper. It was a security detail that essentially said: We have your God now. He's shooting a movie. And he's not available for comment. One villager threatened a break in: "I am going to barge in for the evening aarti [ritual]. Let's see who stops me. What is it that they are shooting that we cannot even enter our own temple?"

Of course, upsetting the faithful is one thing. But won't someone, please, think of the dangerous criminals. Not, it seems, Mel Gibson. For his latest, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, in which he'll star as a career-criminal sent to a harsh Mexican prison, 300 real-life inmates were made to relocate from their prison in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz this January to make way for the film crew, causing not just demonstrations by relatives, angry at having to travel further to visit their incarcerated ones, but a full-scale prison riot. "Mel Gibson, it's your fault they want to take away our relatives," read a banner of one of protesters, who clearly wasn't big on irony.

Yet if you can't find it in your heart to feel for the muggers and murders crushed under Hollywood's unfeeling foot, at least spare a thought for the prostitutes. When Ed Harris-starring drama The Third Miracle was filming in Ontario, Canada, in 1998, they unwittingly became the third consecutive production to shoot in the red light districts of Sherborne and Carleton, causing out-of-pocket street workers to protest about lack of earnings.

Yet sometimes, it's not even that their home has been disrupted, trampled on and destroyed. It's that they're not getting enough credit for it. When filming A Quantum Of Solace in the small town of Baquedano, Bolivia, local mayor Carlos Lopez took matters into his own hands by jumping in his car, nearly hitting two police officers as he sped through the barricades, storming the set, and coming to a skidding halt between Daniel Craig and the cameras. The reason? Bolivia was being used to represent local rivals Chile, and that wouldn't do at all. He was swiftly taken into police custody. But as for Bond himself? Not just shaken or stirred it seems, but, according to Lopez, a full-scale pants disaster. "He fled in terror!" he said after being released. "When he saw me, James Bond ran off!" 007, really …

Still, protests from the locals are what you expect. While filming Australia – the Baz Luhrmann multimillion pound movie/tourist board infomercial – the protests came from closer to home. Extras were appalled when actors climbed upon a first world war memorial in the tiny town of Bowden during a cattle stampede scene, and lobbied to ensure the actors stood their ground and took the marauding 2,000lb beasts like men. Rumours that another memorial was needed for the fallen thesps are, as yet, unconfirmed.

There's even been the odd occasion where it wasn't the filming itself that caused the disruption, but what those filming asked the locals to do. When a crew was about to film aerial scenes for The Dark Knight in Hong Kong, they sent letters to building residents requesting they keep their lights on to present the city in its full illuminated glory. For six days. From 7am to 11pm. Unsurprisingly, they declined. "Producers are able to create the same effects through post-production," argued Gabrielle Ho at Green Sense, "but instead they are asking us to turn on so many lights, wasting so much energy."

Though there is one thing to be said about all these disruptions: they ended once the filming did. The crew of The Beach not only got permission to film in what was part of a protected national park in Thailand – Maya Bay on Phi Phi Le island – in 1998, but also to make it even "more" of a paradise, uprooting trees, removing natural vegetation that held the sand formations together, levelling sand dunes, and adding 100 non-native coconut palms. Fox promised to put everything back the way it was, but there was erosion, and in 2006 Thailand's Supreme Court upheld an appeal court ruling that the environment had been harmed. Still, Leo had had a look, and it seemed OK to him. "From what I see with my own eyes, everything is OK," the self-described environmentalist said in a statement. "I have seen nothing that has been destroyed or damaged in any way – I cannot tell you the reasons why people have been saying the opposite. It is beyond me." It's beyond us too, Leo. Those inconsiderate, unfeeling bastards.

Shank is out on Friday

• Julia Roberts
• James Bond
• Terry Gilliam
• Skins
• Mel Gibson
• Baz Luhrmann

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John Crace on on the people hitting the headlines this week

Oscar curse

Michelle McGee

The curse of the best actress Oscar struck again as this year's winner, Sandra Bullock, found herself in the company of Halle Berry, Julia Roberts and others whose red carpet glory coincided with their private lives going belly-up. Michelle McGee, a tattoo model (a line of work which will shortly dry up as there seems precious little blank skin left to ink) claimed that she had an 11-month affair with Bullock's husband, Jesse James.

Thankfully, Hollywood's tawdriness seldom disappoints and McGee has a secondary career as "Avery" in a strip club – she was fired from another two years ago. But what makes her media gold is that she was reportedly raised Amish. It's only a matter of time before someone remakes Witness.

Notes on a scandal

The pope

Within days of the Vatican announcing that the pope was to make his first visit to Britain since 1982, more than 28,000 people have signed a petition objecting to its state funding. At issue is the Catholic church's role in covering up child abuse by its clergy, with Pope Benedict XVI in the dock after claims emerged of a cover-up while he was archbishop of Munich in 1980. Catholics have denounced the reports as "anti-Catholic" smears.

But some senior clergy have done little to help. On Wednesday, Cardinal Sean Brady, primate of All Ireland, apologised for failing to notify the authorities after he was present 35 years ago when two boys signed letters agreeing not to tell the police that a priest had abused them. In December, Brady said he thought he would resign if he was implicated in a cover-up. Now he says he'll only go on the pope's say so. And the pope is hesitating; après moi le déluge and all that. There must be days when he must wish the conclave smoke had never turned white.

Literary truth

Daisy Goodwin

With just under three months to go before the Orange prize is announced, it's normal for the chair of judges to try and stir up a bit of early media interest by saying how wonderful this year's books are. Daisy Goodwin has instead rubbished most of the entries for being grim stories of "Asian sisters" (a new sub-genre of literary misery, perhaps) and rape. This hasn't gone down well with the literary establishment, but has got a thumbs up from everyone else who thinks she has nailed a universal truth: publishers realise book prize judges don't want to be accused of dumbing down so only submit gloom. Let's hope Goodwin puts her tick where her mouth is when the winner is announced.

What they said

"I do accept that in one or two years defence expenditure did not rise in real terms"

Gordon Brown corrects part of his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry

"I think it would have been better to use the phrase 'economically useless'"

Lord Turner, FSA chairman, revises his comments about investment banks being "socially useless"

"And it was sport, not war, his charmed foot on the ball ... But then his heel, his heel, his heel"

Closing words of Carol Ann Duffy's premonitory poem about David Beckham.

What we've learned

• Tony Blair has made £20m since leaving No 10

• National Anthem is too noisy to play at the end of the day on Radio 4

• Ethical consumers are more likely to cheat and steal

• Kate Winslet is being helped during her split from Sam Mendes by Leonardo DiCaprio

• Ugg-style boots are causing foot problems

… and what we haven't

• What William Hague knew of Lord Ashcroft's tax status other than what he has said already

• Orange prize for fiction
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Sandra Bullock
• Catholicism
• Child protection
• United States

John Crace
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With knife crime high on the political agenda, a film called Shank featuring scowling teens set against a grime soundtrack could have been a case of repetition as far as British urban dramas are concerned. The past decade has seen film-makers preoccupied to the point of obsession with exposing the harsh realities of today's youth. But where Kidulthood set a controversial precedent with its coarse portrayal of violence, sex and drugs, Shank emerges as as a well-executed, urban action film with the intent of making the Government's crackdown on knife crime that bit more achievable.