While Christmas is the season of good telly as much as goodwill, there's never usually enough time to catch all those great movie premieres on the box, and that five-pack of blank videos will no doubt stay wrapped in cellophane until February.
Which makes film books the perfect present - they're ready when you are, they don't require batteries, and they're ideal for people who are always "difficult". The only thing you really have to consider is the age of the recipient.
For teenagers, for example, Kevin Smith's slacker-friendly Clerks and Chasing Dogma graphic novels (£7. 99 and £8. 99, Titan) should set the right tone, providing a new vocabulary as well as lovingly drawn stories based on Smith's parallel movie universe. The latter even has an introduction by Alanis Morissette.
For the DVD-owning demographic, Your Face Here (£14. 99, Fourth Estate), by Simon Wells and Guide contributor Ali Catterall, has a healthy perspective on the British cult movie, examining 12 of the best in detail, from A Hard Day's Night to Lock, Stock ..., and unearthing a mine of new information on their origins. No pictures though.
Broader in appeal, easier on the eye and most impressive in price-to-weight ratio, Taschen's Movies Of The 90s gives a pictorial rundown of the decade - over 150-odd films and 800 colour pages, all for just £20. With minimal text, maximum breadth, negligible practical value and a striking cover, the book is the ideal gift for someone you don't really know very well.
In a similar just-look-at-the-pictures bracket is the self-explanatory James Bond Movie Posters , (£20, Boxtree) which reproduces the graphically distinctive early Bond posters and interesting foreign versions, as well as the inferior recent efforts.
For those interested in actual reading, BFI Modern Classics (£8. 99, bfi publishing) make excellent last-minute gifts. In the latest, African-American academic Ed Guerrero dissects Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, and Seven Samurai is on the horizon.
Meanwhile, reference freaks will salivate ver Wallflower's Contemporary British And Irish Film Directors , (£17. 99 paperback, £50 hardback)and for creative professionals The Animator's Survival Kit (£30, Faber &Faber) is the new bible. Written and drawn by Oscar-winning animator Richard Williams (responsible for Roger Rabbit and the Pink Panther), it offers friendly, universally applicable advice on everything from spacing telegraph poles in backgrounds to making a character walk drunkenly.
Moving on a generation to those old enough to remember Hollywood's Babylonian prime, Thames & Hudson's beautiful Marlene Dietrich, Photographs And Memories (£29. 95) is the exemplary film book. Thoroughly researched and handsomely presented, it brings together studio portraits, personal snapshots, letters and pictures of virtually everything the screen goddess ever touched, from her flamboyant costumes to her US army dog tags.
Less impressive visually but more informative textually is Damien Love's Robert Mitchum: Solid, Dad, Crazy (BT Batsford, £15. 99). The star's exploits have been well documented in the past but the author concentrates on the films, for once, and then only his most interesting ones - like Night Of The Hunter, Out Of The Past, Ryan's Daughter and Dead Man.
And finally, for the grandparent who gave up on the cinema when Errol Flynn died, Simon Louvish's Stan And Ollie: The Roots Of Comedy (£25, Faber & Faber)is one of the year's best film biographies, providing a thorough, fluent account of Laurel and Harry's professional and (largely unknown) personal lives.
