Ben Affleck. Who'd have thought..? I remember going to a sparsely attended screening of Jersey Girl, Kevin Smith's laugh-free 2004 romcom with Affleck cast alongside his then girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, and wondering what had happened to derail such a promising career.

Allan’s off today – something about a cat in the well, I think – so he’s asked me to write this week’s newsletter blog. It’s not an especially difficult task seeing as a new issue of Uncut goes on sale this week. You might have already caught some of our recent news stories on http://preprod.uncut.co.uk, in which case you’ll already know that our cover stars this month are the Rolling Stones.

In 2009, Uncut spoke to The Wire’s creator David Simon, shortly before the broadcast of his follow-up series, Treme. The show was set during the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, a city that Simon felt had effectively been abandoned by the rest of America since the storm. “The only thing that brought this city back was the people who understand its unique culture and who participate in that culture refused to give that up,” he told us.

For those who are disappointed not to have scored a ticket to see the Rolling Stones in 2012, then there is some slight consolation.

James Bond at 50 seems in pretty good shape.

Roscoe Beck and others remember touring with the singer-songwriter

Tim Burton's kid friendly Frankenstein opens this year's London Film Festival...

Stoker arrives with some heavy expectations. It is the English language debut of South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, the architect of the nerve-shredding Oldboy.

I interviewed James Murphy in late 2006, for a preview piece about The Sound Of Silver, the second album by his band, LCD Soundsystem.

It’s a pretty auspicious day, according to my Twitter feed. No, it’s not just that Neil Young has joined Twitter – 21,300 followers and rising.