For many months the safe prediction about Mexico's presidential election in July 2006 was that the winner would come from Tabasco, a sleepy, oil-rich state on the Gulf of Mexico whose politics are as redolent of spicy corruption as the eponymous sauce.

ECONOMIST: A restoration of the old order in Mexico?

Still, however big these changes, one prediction is safe: Hollywood will not succumb quickly, if at all.

ECONOMIST: Star wars