It's official, and there'll be no escaping it: The Olympics are really coming.  In the event, an unlikely partnership has been forged between BBC Films and Film 4, who have commissioned short films from four of the country's most innovative and exciting directors.

Lynne Ramsay, director of We Need to Talk About Kevin; Asif Kapadia, director of the masterful documentary Senna; the venerable Mike Leigh; and (somewhat incongruously) Max & Dania, directors of the StreetDance films.  Each present a searingly different vision of the city.  These commissions are showing as part of the London 2012 Festival.  The directors were given an open brief.  They could make whatever they wished under the theme 'inspiration', and they didn't even have to mention the Olympics.  A film director will rarely, if ever, have that kind of freedom: to make a film entirely to his or her own specifications and have it play at cinemas.

Unsurprisingly, the films vary wildly.  Max & Dania have Noel Clarke acting as guardian angel to Joe, a West London boy in need of inspiration from those around him.  Ramsay takes us swimming in a river with a young man, followed by a cavalcade mash-up of iconic British soundtrack.  Mike Leigh gives a day in the comedic life of an East End used car dealer; a wonderful Eddie Marsan worried by the Mayan prediction of the end of the world in 2012.  Kapadia makes a portrait of London, and a film about Londoners.  In a throwback to the announcement of London winning the Olympic bid in 2005, and the tragedies of the following day, the city has taken a battering over the past seven years.  Kapadia asks us to realise just what it is that makes it so wonderful, the greatest city in the world.

The London 2012 Festival films opened this week at selected Picturehouse cinemas and will be broadcast on Channel 4 and the BBC throughout summer.

Regardless of anyone's opinion of Great Britain on the international stage - in any capacity - there can be no denying that we are among the world leaders in art and design.  A benefit of being besieged by visitors over the summer for that quadrennial event is the Cultural Olympiad, an opportunity to show off the very finest of British arts and culture to the world, in the spaces before, during and after the Games.

As part of the London 2012 Festival is Britain Creates 2012: Fashion + Art Collusion.  Led by the British Fashion Council/Bazaar Fashion Arts Foundation, iconic British designers have been paired with contemporary artists to collaborate on specially commissioned, unique works.  These exclusive pieces will be unveiled at a VIP Gala fundraising event tonight, before going on display at that most glorious of venues, the Victoria & Albert Museum.  The aim of the fundraiser is to provide bursaries to support emerging artists and designers, providing opportunities for future collaborations.

And the artist/designer pairings could not be more alluring: Hussein Chalayan + Gavin Turk, Giles Deacon + Jeremy Deller, Stephen Jones + Cerith Wyn Evans, Mary Katrantzou + Mark Titchener, Nicholas Kirkwood + Simon Periton, Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos + Francis Upritchard, Jonathan Saunders + Jess Flood-Paddock, Paul Smith + Charming Baker, and Matthew Williamson + Mat Collishaw.

Following its exhibition at the V&A, the pieces will be installed in the windows of Selfridges.  An accompanying book has also been produced, with texts by Lucy Yeomans and Iain R. Webb.  The book provides insights into all aspects the collaborative process, featuring proposals and sketches, exclusive photographs, specially commissioned portraits and a set of posters.  Sure to be a highlight of 2012 in and of itself, this event is one of the first to celebrate Britain at its creative best.

Britain Creates 2012: Fashion + Art Collusion is at the Victoria and Albert Museum between 06 - 29 July, and at Selfridges from 30 July to 19 August.

Top: A preliminary sketch from Matthew Williamson + Mat Collishaw

Middle: from Stephen Jones + Cerith Wyn Evans

Bottom: Jeremy Deller + Giles Deacon

David Cronenberg trades in body horror.  Those late night nasties that you used to watch on Channel 4 when you were a kid, only to find years later that these cult classics that made the name of one of the most unique Hollywood minds.  Videodrome, The Fly, Scanners, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash…There's been a period, of about seven years now, where he has turned his hand to more traditional narrative drama - and to great acclaim with films such as A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and last year's A Dangerous Method, the psychological love triangle between Michael Fassbender's Freud, Viggo Mortensen's Jung and their protégé Sabine, played by Keira Knightley.

His new film is an uncomfortable - and uncompromising - amalgam of the two.  Less body horror and more brain horror, it proposes the question, 'What do you do when your fears are realised?'  Those intangible thoughts that trip through your mind before you have a chance to capture exactly what they are?  This is the currency that this film lives on.

Robert Pattinson is Eric Packer, a 28 year old billionaire - a master of the money markets.  He wants a haircut and insists on travelling across the city, despite there being in his way the funeral for a slain rap star and a presidential visit.  Why would this stop him?  Packer is, what Tom Wolfe would describe as 'Master of the Universe'.  In the 1980s, we were given Tom Hanks, but this is the 21^st century and the song might remain the same, it's Don DeLillo's source material we're playing with here.  Humanity is as rabid as Cronenberg's film of the same name.  Back to his surreal best (in this reviewer's humble opinion, there are many that would disagree), Cronenberg presents us with his version of downfall and excess; a thoroughly postmodern bonfire of vanity.

Cosmopolis is on general release now.