Divines - Winner of Best Debut Film Cannes 2016

"Divines"  a film a portraying the young disenfranchised immigrant population by French Moroccan director Houda Benyamina, won the Camera D'Or prize at Cannes 2016 for Best Debut Feature film. With a feel reminiscent of Céline Sciamma's Girlhood from 2014 and a gritty realism seen in films such as La'Haine, you might be thinking this is  a carbon copy, but Divines is as much about, friendship and femininity as it is a spotlight on the systemic racism and sexism in France. Inspired by the Paris riots and what fuelled them, much focus was on the male immigrant experience of oppression, without necessarily critiquing the nuances that moderate a female immigrants lived experience. Having recently watched Les Gangs des Antillais, which was very much from the male perspective, Divines and Girlhood place females front and centre, unpacking their particular brand of struggle.​
One year after the Paris riots, Houda Benyamina founded 1000 VISAGES, an association that scouts and nurtures young talent from ethnic minorities  - "I founded the association because I found cinema white, bourgeois, and misogynistic," she says. "Even when you graduate from one of the grandes écoles, it's complicated imposing yourself without a network, especially if you're black, Arab, and a woman on top of it all."

It looks a though you may be able to enjoy it soon as Netflix  has picked up distribution rights.!

NEWS! NEWS! NEWS! - The Girl with all the Gifts

Mike Carey's apocalyptic thriller novel has been adapted into a screenplay and is due to hit our screens this September and it's zombies zombies zombies, but not in the way you'd expect. Not since 28days later have I been so excited to see a movie about zombies!! It seems like we have another genre defining movie in the pipeline, just as 28days later kinda flipped things around (never before had we seen a zombie move quite so fast) ok ok so technically they were infected with a virus rather than being the undead, but zombie is a broad term these days, basically encompassing any human that goes nuts and tries to eat people, the mechanism by which this happens reflects our changing society - no longer are we worried about witchcraft, but a pandemic virus that wipes us all out, now that's more 21C.
The Girl with all the Gifts is another infection style zombie thriller, this time it’s a fungus, but the human race is still basically effed!! Living in small highly protected camps or roaming around in small gangs, the remaining survivors of the human race are dwindling. In a heavily protected military base are children who are infected, but somehow manage to maintain their humanity - and herein lies the mystery of The Girl with all the Gifts, why are these children different and do they hold the key to saving the human race?.....We'll have t wait until September to find out.

NEWS! NEWS! NEWS! - Samurai Jack is Back!!


Yes and double yes!! Genndy Tartakovsky’s Samurai Jack is coming back to Adult swim this year!!
First aired in 2001, the original series had 52 episodes and was in a style that blended anime and soviet era animation into a show that defied any rules you thought there were about cartoons - it had me hooked. When it ended I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go from there, because there really wasn't anything else like it at the time.

But all is well again, the show is back, Samurai Jack is older and Aku is still as sinister as ever.

What I loved about this show was the atmosphere is generated, its basic palette was mostly red, white and black, which focused you in on the characters and constructed an oppressive other worldy dimension.
Aku was deliciously evil and Samurai Jack gloriously stoic and unrelenting in his mission to destroy him.

I'm so excited to see Samurai Jack return, back when it first aired, each episode brought the possibility of something completely surprising visually, there was one particular episode, that takes place in black and white, and quite frankly scared the shit out of me - genius! (Jack vs the Haunted house demon).

Anyway, the trailer isn't very long, so you can't get much from it, but there are plenty of screen shots and some interviews with Genndy to get us started!