A biopic exploring the darker side of the late French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent is to represent France as a possible contender in the Best Foreign Language Film category at next year's Oscars.

"Saint Laurent", directed by Bertrand Bonello, will be France's nomination for the category, the country's National Cinema Centre said Monday.

Bonello's film shows the designer, who pioneered tuxedos for women and ready-to-wear, cruising for sex and taking cocaine and pills.

Concentrating on a few episodes between 1967 and 1976, it vividly conjures up the hedonistic pre-AIDS days of the early 1970s, with gay sex parties and drinking and drug-taking in nightclubs -- where Saint Laurent's muses Betty Catroux and Loulou de la Falaise are on hand.

A team from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will watch all the selected films from each continent before announcing a shortlist of nine films in December. That will be whittled down to just five in January 2015.

The Oscars ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on February 22, 2015, with nominations announced on January 15.

France last won in the Best Foreign Language Film category in 1993 for the film "Indochine" starring Catherine Deneuve.

Belgium, which has scored seven noms — including two in the last three years, with Bullhead (2011) and The Broken Circle Breakdown (2013) — but never has won, entered Two Days, One Night, the latest neorealist work from the brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne. Starring Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, a Frenchwoman, the gutwrenching, High Noon (1952)-like drama has been among the most widely acclaimed films on this year's festival circuit. The Dardennes' three previous films that Belgium submitted for Oscar consideration — Rosetta (1999), The Son (2002) and The Child (2005) — did not even make the shortlist, but that seems likely to change this time around. 

Wild Smiles will release their brilliant debut album, Always Tomorrow, on Sunday Best Recordings on 27th October. The fast-rising trio, comprising brothers Chris and Joe Peden with drummer Ben Cook, will tour throughout the summer, taking in festival dates.

Sat 6 SEPT Bestival Festival, Isle of Whight

Sat 18 OCT Psychedelia Weekend, Southampton

Hailing from Winchester, Wild Smiles were amazed when their first forays made such a splash. Their 2013 7”, Sweet Sixteen/Tangled Hair, took in elements of Beach Boys surf pop, Velvet Underground drones, Wall Of Sound beats, Jesus & Mary Chain low-fi garage clatter and Nirvana filth. A dazzling stew of sound, it was simultaneously classic, timely and forward thinking – it seemed amazing no one had smashed such sprawling decades of music together before.

A five-track Wild Smiles EP followed on Geoff Barrow’s Invada label that summer, led by the MBV-flecked Take Me Away, and, in that song’s spirit of escape, the band hit the road for much of the rest of the year, earning their touring chops before going on to sign with Sunday Best.

Wild Smiles then took time out to concentrate on honing their songwriting, determined that every track on their debut album would be a classic. Their sound expanded – the likes of The Ramones, Pulp and Dinosaur Jr crept in. And Chris Peden blossomed as a lyricist. Tracks like the thrash-pop The Gun hark back to past traumas with a previous band; while the free download single Fool For You is “a simple love song.” The album traces a thematic arc of growing up and getting out, the struggles of the debt-heavy, priced-out youth generation.

Indeed, many of the songs on the album tackle issues that most other young bands are too scared or ignorant of to approach. Hold On was inspired by a friend of Chris’ who sadly killed himself, and faces up to the hopelessness of British youth in 2014. “People my age can't get a job,” Chris sings. “Nothing to do, it’s so fucked up/People my age can't get a job/Get a house, get a car, get a life… who’s there for us?” While I’m Gone and the single, Never Wanted This, are bold rejections of the mundane sort of life we’re expected to settle for: “I could get a job I could wear a suit/A monkey in a suit to make some money”.

“It’s our perception of life,” says Ben. “Not the voice of a generation but just how we three see it.”

Always Tomorrow was recorded and produced by Chris Peden. The debut album’s tracklisting runs as follows: Fool For You; Never Wanted This; Always Tomorrow; Everyone’s The Same; Hold On; The Best Four Years; The Gun; Figure It Out; Girlfriend; See You Again; I’m Gone.

There is no cure for Apocalypse, no reason for redemption – the end is incoming and we should embrace it as a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Coming from the band that brought us “Total Nihilism” in 2012, the philosophical conceit behind NITRO/NOISE’s stunning second album “No Cure For Apocalypse” should hardly come as a surprise. Neither really should the sheer power and quality of the tracks on offer.

Mixed and mastered in its entirety by Jan L at his X-Fusion Music Production studios in Germany, “No Cure for Apocalypse” is an album that not only lives up to the promise of “Total Nihilism” but goes greatly beyond it.

No nonsense, no mercy, “No Cure For Apocalypse” is simply 10 relentless anthems for the end of days – as uncompromising and unstoppable as the Armageddon it suggests we all deserve – topped off with a collaboration with long-time champion of NITRO/NOISE Thomas Rainer/NACHTMAHR, and an atmospheric coda.

Describing it as ”fantastic” and “the album COMBICHRIST wanted to make after What The F**k Is Wrong With You People”, MODULATE’s Geoff Lee was moved to write “It's going to be a contender for Album Of The Year 2014, no doubt…there isn't a bad/weak track on it….the best harsh aggrotech album I've heard in a very very long time!”

Thanks Geoff – we owe you a pint.

From the opening assault of “The Revelation” through to tenth track “Wake Up Call” - dedicated to groupies the band ran into over the course of their first American tourdates last year, and boasting a lyrical refrain that is probably guaranteed to give offence to some – “No Cure For Apocalypse” surpasses “Total Nihilism” in both its intensity and danceability, beat-driven and lyrically bleak.

And if that were not enough, in a move that will no doubt court controversy NITRO/NOISE then proceed to join forces with Austria’s infamous agent provocateur Thomas Rainer to deliver a tongue-in-cheek riposte to criticisms levelled at NACHTMAHR – the cheekily-titled “We Demand Better” – before finally ending the album with (for NITRO/NOISE) the very atypical vocoded vocals and melancholic refrain of “Don’t Be Afraid (Piano Rework)”.

Tracklisting:

01. The Revelation

02. Want Some

03. If We Stop Breeding

04. God Game

05. Censorshit

06. All Shall Perish

07. Don’t Be Afraid

08. Spit It Black

09. Unchained

10. Wake Up Call

11. We Demand Better (feat. NACHTMAHR)

12. Don’t Be Afraid (Piano Rework)

Limited Edition CD2 - 10 Ways To Doomsday:

01. The Revelation (FGFC820 Remix)

02. Want Some (MODULATE Remix)

03. If We Stop Breeding (C-LEKKTOR Remix)

04. God Game (DIE SEKTOR Remix)

05. Censorshit (ROTERSAND Rework)

06. All Shall Perish (BLAKOPZ Remix)

07. Don’t Be Afraid (GRENDEL Remix)

08. Spit It Black (THE.INVALID Remix)

09. Unchained (Sidechained by SIRUS)

10. Wake Up Call (RAVE THE REQVIEM Remix)

Sequential Access is an Old school EBM collaboration between Marco Defcode (Decoded Feedback) and Claus Larsen (Leæther Strip/Klutæ). Fittingly titled "Sex Addicts Anonymous", the resultant album is 13 tracks of pure golden era electro-industrial. Percussive dance rhythms and arpeggiation are overlaid with catchy lyrics and melodies. "Sex Addicts Anonymous" finds Marco and Claus cranking out a brand of EBM that stomps one foot firmly in the present, one in the halcyon days of the old school European EBM movement of the 80's and 90's

01. Contagious
02. Du tog min tid
03. The Walls Come Tumbling Down
04. Where Are You
05. Grow Some Balls
06. Seig Oder Tot
07. The Ghost Of Me
08. Der Musik
09. Black Mirror
10. Let Me Abuse You
11. Sleepless
12. Restrained
13. We Belong Dead

You may not know the band yet but you know many of the players. Prude is a vicious agglomeration of disparate talents working together, fronted by legendary loud mouth and conceptual terrorist Jared Louche from the seminal Machine Rock band CHEMLAB. Industrial agitator Matt Fanale from the sarcastic CAUSTIC brings blistering noise, white light guitar star Marc Olivier from London's PLASTIC HEROES is the essence of rock'n'roll, electronics guru Phil DiSiena (Infocollapse/Cyanotic) provides sleazy grooves, and producer supreme Howie Beno (13mg/Ministry/Blondie/DM) weaves it all into a merciless Molotov.

Prude's debut album 'the dark age of consent' is a wild, acid-tripped puree of 1970's New York punk and glam retrofitted with a harsh, damaged electronic edge. It's a late night, post-rock, electro-experimental punk record of distorted proportions. It's Iggy and The Stooges, Nine Inch Nails, The New York Dolls, T-Rex, 1000 Homo DJs, Roxy Music, George Bataille, Salvador Dali, and Robert Mapplethorpe all filtered through Louche's blast furnace writing. The album was recorded and produced over three years and three continents and mastered at London's legendary Abbey Road Studios by Sean Magee. It's going to blow your skull in two and have you begging for more.

Get ready to ride the radiation rocket buzz

01. PLUSism.
02. great eraser (in the sky).
03. darkroom.
04. plague star (black light returning).
05. cigarette burn heart.
06. airlock.
07. brief history of fire.
08. scatterbrain.
09. knife on mars.
10. sniper (at the gates of dawn).
11. kings of the republic of nowhere.