I had originally intended to fill this space on Wednesday with some excited words on the first of this week’s three shows by The Rolling Stones at the O2 Arena, but I had urgent business in Birmingham with a former rock god whose new album may be the best thing he’s done in nigh on 30 years. But more on that later, let’s get back to the Stones. If I’d had the chance to write about Tuesday’s show, I would have said unequivocally that it was one of the best I’ve seen them play, so good in fact in parts that I could barely imagine anything better – and this despite moments of wholly endearing sloppiness and an inclination towards the ramshackle that makes for hugely spontaneous entertainment: a version, for instance, of Rocks Off that Jagger thinks has ended, only to realise the band are carrying on without him, and an intro to an otherwise fabulous Beast Of Burden that seems like three or four different things being played simultaneously. Elsewhere, however, the Stones are in formidable form and the big set pieces are delivered with peerless aplomb, Jagger’s sensational athleticism a wonder to behold and Keith and Ronnie Wood absolutely on fire – appropriately enough, as most of the headlines the next day are about the pair flaunting the smoking ban by lighting up on stage, for which briefly the venue is threatened with a paltry fine. Anyway, I was back in North Greenwich again last night, for the second show, the end now in sight for the record-breaking Bigger Bang tour, an amen to which will be said on Sunday, a little over two years to its start in Boston and a year after they last played London, at Twickenham Stadium, shows that were an absolute masterclass in the presentation of stadium rock and how scale and spectacle doesn’t always reduce the music to an onerous irrelevancy. As great, in other words, as the shows looked, the Stones sounded even better. And so to last night, the lights going down, a familiar excitement in the air, Keith suddenly there, centre stage, a grin as big as a bus, the tectonic opening chords to Start Me Up inspiring huge cheers as Jagger, limber as a cheetah, sashaying into the fray with gleeful exuberance. What follows over the next two hours, amazingly, is even better than what had seemed definitively thrilling on Tuesday. There’s an early outing for a totally rambunctious Let’s Spend The Night Together, an entirely unexpected All Down The Line and Shine a Light, a ferocious Midnight Rambler, with much incendiary work from Keith, including at least one solo that threatens to blow the top off the former Millennium Dome. The next thing you know, Keith is threatening to bring down the house when before a charmingly wrecked You Got The Silver, he very deliberately lights up a fag, takes a generous puff and chuckling hoarsely declares: “So go ahead and bust me, man.” Whenever I write about them these days, I can fully expect a certain amount of grumpy correspondence from people who dourly and hopelessly refuse to believe that my enthusiasm for the Stones is not somehow misguided, evidence, I suppose, in the opinion of these dowdy agnostics, of an unstoppable decline into critical senility. To which point of view, I can only politely demur. The Stones tonight are simply peerless – the B-stage performances of “Miss You”, “It’s Only Rock’N’Roll”, “Satisfaction” and “Honky Tonk Women” unbelievably exciting, but still outdone by rampaging versions of “Sympathy For The Devil”, “Paint It Black”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and the closing, single, encore of “Brown Sugar”. Anyone got a ticket for Sunday they can spare? The Stones’ set list for Thursday at the O2 Arena was: Start Me Up Let’s Spendd The Night Together Rough Justice All Down The Line She’s So Cold Shine A Light Midnight Rambler I’ll Go Crazy Tumbling Dice You Got The Silver I Wanna Hold You Miss You It’s Only Rock’N’Roll Satisfaction Hionky Tonk Woemn Sympathy For The Devil Paint It Black Jumping Jack Flash Brown Sugar

Regular readers of UNCUT will recall that Cronenberg's last film, A History Of Violence, was our Film Of The Year in 2005. This, set among the Russian mob relocated to London's East End, is something of a companion piece, and further proof that Cronenberg is enjoying a third act revival in his fortunes. The film's written by Steve Knight, who also wrote the script for Stephen Frears' film, Dirty Pretty Things. It's located in a roughly similar milieu, of immigrants in London. Eastern Promises also finds Cronenberg re-teaming with his A History Of Violence leading man, Viggo Mortensen, here playing Nikolai, a driver for the Russian crime organisation, Vory V Zakone, who're headed up by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his son, Kirill (Vincent Cassell), who's apparently channelling the same levels of volatility and belligerence last seen in Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. Our entry point into this world comes from Anna (Naomi Watts), a second-generation Russian who works as a nurse. She assists the delivery of a baby to a 14 year-old Russian girl, who dies giving birth. Anna takes it upon herself to trace the girl's relatives, via her diary, which eventually finds her encountering the Vory V Zakone. If A History Of Violence was a commentary on role of violence in American society and culture, an exploration on shifting identity and a cracking thriller, Eastern Promises riffs on similar themes. But it says something about the population churn in the capital that, 10 years ago, an East End crime thriller would have starred Vinnie Jones and a bunch of bullet-headed Krays wannabees. Now, it's the Russians. And they're pretty fearsome. Anna finds herself confronting sex trafficking, drugs and murder. Watching the poor teenage Russian girls, dead-eyed and listless, who're paraded in front of Kirill and Nikolai in one scene, I'm reminded of Lukas Moodysson's unforgettably bleak Lilya 4-Ever. Both A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises explore the impact of violence on the family unit -- here, it's the relationship between Anna, her mother and uncle, as well as Semyon and Kirill. Cronenberg and Knight also address notions of loyalty -- Vory V Zakone means thieves-in-law but, typically, there's very little honour to these men, and what binds them seems very easy to unravel. Viggo, of course, is excellent, as Nikolai -- stoical, calm, emotionally disengaged. As with a Cronenberg film, things are a little tricksy, so I won't explain further. There's moments of extreme violence -- throats are cut, a corpse has its finger tips removed to avoid identification, one poor unfortunate has a knife stabbed into his eye -- levened by some cruel, dark humour. In one scene, naked and tattooed, Nikolai has to fight off two hitman in a Turkish bath, which borders on the camp. Cronenberg shoots the whole thing in a grainy, understated palette, showing a hazy, nocturnal London, both frightening and strangely alluring. After faltering with Spider, he seems to have found his feet again. And that he seems to be happy proding and poking around the crime movie genre is no bad thing. After all, if it stops Guy Ritchie making another Right Royal Barrel Of Cockney Monkeys, we can only applaud. Eastern Promises opens this year's London Film Festival before it gets a full release on October 26.