Underpayments amounted to pounds 6.2m.David Davis, the chairman of the Commons’ committee which oversees NAO reports, called for urgent action to tackle the legacy of error in the CSA.Although some progress had been made in the last year, the proportion of absent parents paying the wrong amount had actually risen, he said. Four out of five also had their payments recorded inaccurately once they had been made.Out of pounds 409.8m received from absent parents, Sir John said pounds 23.8m was overpaid. ABSENT PARENTS’ payments to the Child Support Agency are wrongly recorded in four out of five cases, the Government’s spending watchdog said last night. Sir John Bourn, the head of the National Audit Office (NAO), refused to pass the agency’s accounts for the fifth year running because of inaccuracies.
One-third of absent parents were paying the wrong amount, he said. Heaven help them if they ever do Macbeth.It is better to forget the marketing and enjoy a first-rate, sexual thriller, full of menace, right up to the last suggestion of Kidman to Cruise on how they can find a cathartic solution to their problem: a final four-letter word – the last word ever in a Kubrick film.. Cruise, who is plagued by constant visions of his wife having sex with the stranger, has less range of expression Yet the film is his. Rarely off screen, he cannot quite engage an audience or suggest mental and emotional trauma as well as his co-star.The couple said this week that doing the film had made them talk about their own marriage and face some of its problems.

This is the case here, though it is a great pity that, in contrast to the hype, Kidman’s role is so small.Long appreciated in Britain as a fine actress, she is excellent in the first scenes where she is drunk and overtly flirtatious at a party, followed by her dark dreams of infidelity and her inability to come to terms with them. Even with Frederic Raphael’s taut script, the party sequence departs rapidly from reality.But the director of The Shining and A Clockwork Orange can combine fantasy and reality, eroticism anddeviancy without losing his audience. When she confesses to him a fantasy she had for a stranger, he is provoked – rather too easily it must be said – into indulging and exploring his own fantasies, visiting a prostitute and later a masked party where the 65-second multi-position sex scene takes place.The film might have been stronger if Cruise and Kidman continued to explore their fear of sexual fantasy and obsessions against the humdrum of their lives, as the first half hour of the film does. Kubrick’s last film is a fitting end to his career: a charged erotic thriller, funny, suspenseful, disturbing, provocative and utterly compelling.Cruise and Kidman play a New York doctor and wife. Could an audience’s appetite be further whetted? Apparently yes. Even before the title sequence, Nicole Kidman disrobed.Kidman has spoken about the film’s “voyeurism” and one wondered if Kubrick’s lingering shots of her in the opening minutes would have him joining the ranks of menopausal male critics who became so excited by her on-stage nudity in London last year It proved an unworthy suspicion.

A Warner executive stood in front of critics before the screening to denounce the amended sequence as “looking ridiculous”. STANLEY KUBRICK’S over-hyped swan-song came over here yesterday – albeit briefly. In advance of the UK opening in September, Warner Brothers rushed out a press screening, angered that Internet buffs in America were already giving away the plot.
They were angry too with US censors for outlawing a 65-second group-sex sequence with the result that it was “digitally amended”. They have also had a chunk of publicity for passing the $100m mark in the US.Snow White and The Seven DwarfsThis was another example of a film everyone thought would fail. No one could believe the public would want to see a full-length animated film and it was dubbed `Disney’s folly’. The fact that people loved it became the story.The next Star Wars filmLast week an American magazine ran a story about who is supposed to be lining up to play Anakin Skywalker in the next film. This is a film that is light years away from release and hasn’t even started production but already its started.Selected by Brian Sibley, presenter of Radio 4’s film programme `Talking Pictures’.

They had a highly publicised trawl around the world for the actress who would play Scarlett and it was all driven by the huge success of the book.Notting HillThe hype for this is going into a second phase by now promoting Rhys Ifans as a star for the men to like. Its perceived failure probably prepared the ground for the Titanic hype.Gone With the WindAlthough few people are left who can remember the fuss it caused, the expectations of this film were massive. But in the end it sold on its level of spectacular effects, but was still a disappointment.WaterworldThis was another over-puffed watery flop where the publicity was driven by the money being spent Unknown to most people it actually turned a profit. In the end it was probably worth the hype.TitanicThe money and the hint of failure seemed to be used to promote this – could this be an example of double-negative hype? People thought it would be a flop and knew it was massively over-budget. It did not live up to its billing.Shakespeare in LoveI saw this months before the hype had begun and it started to trail its glittering array of Oscars Then I thought it a pleasant, amiable little film But I didn’t recognise it from the publicity it generated.