Breaking Baz At London Film Festival: Todd Haynes Trumps Tabloid Tale With Gripping Melodrama ‘May December’ Starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore & Hot New Star Charles Melton

There’s a soaring ambition but only a modest intent in Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya’s sober debut The Kitchen, a visually impressive depiction of things to come that simmers with all manner of protest but never hits boiling point. On the one hand, it’s a shame, ending on a quiet moment of understanding just as all hell is about to break loose. But on the other, it’s refreshing to see two young filmmakers trying to hone their storytelling skills rather than pour everything into a spectacular calling card. If Attack the Block hadn’t been so slavish in trying to siphon inspiration from much better cult movies to become a cult movie in its own right, it might have looked like this: a genuine vision of a nightmarish, dystopian future that will ring alarm bells for any city-dweller familiar with the depressing effects of gentrification.

System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian will publish his debut memoir, Down With the System: A Memoir (Of Sorts) in 2024. The book will be published by Hachette Book Group on May 14 and is described as "a memoir that is far more than just a rock’n’roll fable.

The Simpsons fans believe the show has predicted the bed bug crisis that is sweeping across France and the UK.The show has been credited with prophesising various world events throughout its run, from Donald Trump’s presidency, Disney’s takeover of Fox, to the existence of a three-eyed fish.TikTok user @curioususer3 has now posted a new theory connecting the show to the bed bug epidemic in Europe, sharing a clip from season 24 episode Pulprit Friction which aired in April 2013.In the episode, Springfield is hit with a bedbug crisis of its own, as Reverend Lovejoy is replaced by preacher Elijah Hooper (voiced by Edward Norton). The infestation is later thwarted via a horde of frogs.The TikTok clip, which has racked up over 1.4million views, shows the bed bug infestation across Springfield, with the caption: “The Simpsons Predicted It Again.”Bed Bugs Have Been Seen Crawling All Over Public Spaces In Paris As France Battles An Epidemic Of Insects.

Ellise Shafer Daniel Kaluuya world premiered his feature directorial debut, “The Kitchen,” at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday night, calling it “one of the best days of my life.” Kaluuya was on hand alongside his co-director Kibwe Tavares, producer Daniel Emmerson and several of the film’s actors, including “Top Boy” star Kane Robinson and newcomer Jedaiah Bannerman. Set in a dystopian London where all social housing has been banned, the film follows the residents of a community called the Kitchen who must fight to save their home. Speaking before the premiere, Kaluuya and Tavares explained that it’s taken nearly a decade to bring the Netflix film to the screen.

Ellise Shafer Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist” was named the best film in the official competition at this year’s BFI London Film Festival Awards. “Paradise Is Burning” by Mika Gustafson received the Sutherland Award in the first feature competition, while Lina Soualem’s “Bye Bye Tiberias” took home the Grierson Award in the documentary competition and “The Archive: Queer Nigerians” directed by Simisolaoluwa Akande won the short film competition. The jury presidents for this year’s awards included Amat Escalante (official competition), Raine Allen-Miller (first feature competition), Rubika Shah (documentary competition) and Charlotte Regan (short film competition).

Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi has clinched the best film award in the main official competition of the 67th London Film Festival with his latest feature, Evil Does Not Exist. 

EXCLUSIVE: The BFI London Film Festival closes Sunday with the world premiere of The Kitchen, a movie set in a dystopian London where an impoverished community is forced to fend for themselves in ramshackle apartment blocks. It marks the feature directorial debut of Oscar- winning actor Daniel Kaluuya and architect-turned-filmmaker Kibwe Tavares.

Kit Connor is enjoying a movie screening in London!

By any metric, 23 years is a long time to wait for a sequel to Chicken Run, even when you factor in the fiendishly slow gestation of Aardman Animations’ meticulous stop-motion process. Surprisingly, it still feels fresh, not just because of the spring-clean of the core voice cast — Mel Gibson being the highest-profile casualty, lopped off as the “lone free-ranger” Rocky — but because, in the hands of director Sam Fell and his writing team, Dawn of The Nugget delivers a cleverly modern kind of family entertainment that, while it works to a formula, never feels written by committee.

Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards and Features Editor Co-founder and CEO of the Newport Beach Film Festival Gregg Schwenk muses that there are several reasons the fest, which will run Oct. 12-19 this year, has grown in popularity over the last 24 years. There are, of course, the movies: over 300 films this year, including about 100 features and over 200 shorts from countries all over the world.

It’s not every day that a filmmaker will rise up during an interview and recite Old Testament tales and sing out their favorite hymn. Well, hallelujah, brother Jeymes Samuel for spreading the gospel’s good news.

Cailee Spaeny dazzles while promoting her new film Priscilla at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival on Monday (October 9).

Deadline kicked off movie-awards season Saturday with Contenders London, which featured creatives and key craftspeople from 13 buzzy films that will be at the forefront of kudos conversations leading up to the Oscars in March.

Dear Jassi arrives with echoes of Madonna’s 1989 hit “Dear Jessie” and its sugary promise of pink elephants and lemonade, but none of that turns out to be forthcoming in Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s beautiful and brutal sixth feature. Instead, we have perhaps the most disturbing bait-and-switch since George Sluizer’s original iteration of The Vanishing, a Punjabi Juliet-meets-Romeo story that’s much harsher that any so-far-filmed version of West Side Story and a whole lot funnier. This dissonance takes a while to reveal itself, but when it does, the shock is visceral. The fact that almost everything is true is the killer blow, and the shockwave of that reverberates through the poignant final credits, a static shot that forces the audience, or maybe just simply dares them, to think about what they’ve just seen.  

The first week of the British Film Institute’s (BFI) London Film Festival wrapped this evening with a rapturous onstage Q&A session with writer-director Greta Gerwig.

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall irrupted into a flurry of cheers this afternoon as filmmaker Martin Scorsese strolled on stage to take part in a career Q&A at the London Film Festival. 

May December director Todd Haynes said of first reading Samy Burch’s script, “I loved how disquieting it was for the reader and thought, ‘Wow, if there was a way to convey this on screen and ignite that sense of engaged questioning and uncertainty’… It reminded me of the kind of movies that I came of age watching. It made you question your assumptions going in, made you want to discuss them and think about them later.” Haynes was speaking at Deadline’s Contenders London event this afternoon.

“Theatres and streamers need to coexist,” Bill Kramer, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts, concluded during a keynote this morning in London when quizzed on his opinions about the future of cinema.   

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winning writer-director Emerald Fennell says that “if you’re prodding at something uncomfortable, that’s what movies are for.”

Marshall B. Grossman, a combative but well-respected Los Angeles power lawyer who repped the likes of Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, J.K. Rowling and Netflix during his career and litigated the first successful consumer class action in California, has died. He was 84.