British cinema usually boils down to three distinct factions: Danny Boyle, Noel Clarke and Mike Leigh.

It’s a shame to admit it, but if it isn’t a mediocre Indian drama dressed-up as ‘the feel-good film of the decade’, a streetwise yuff flick, or some depressing bafflement of funding, then it usually doesn’t get made.

It then comes with some genuine excitement that when a stripped-down intense thriller comes along, proving that we can provide nerve-shredding adrenaline fuelled cinema at its best.

Exam rooms are a pretty intense setting as it is – especially when you forget your pen. The problem is, even if you had a pen in this room, someone will probably just try to stab you in the throat with it.

The exam in question will decide who will get a job with a mysterious company, all of which seems highly desirable in this dystopian vision of Britain that is only hinted at and described at the beginning of the film as ‘soon’.

Within this grey cell wait eight candidates, all a prestigious bunch of self-assured brown-noses, resembling a high-class set of Apprentice contestants. All apparently handpicked for their diverse backgrounds - and by diverse backgrounds we mean a collection of the most oddly aggravating accents put on celluloid.

As a slight homage to Reservoir Dogs, these prize pricks are all given code names by the alpha-male of the group, White. So, with White, Black, Brown, Deaf, Blonde, Brunette, Dark and the one we’ve forgotten already, it becomes a large dot-to-dot puzzle, filling in the blanks of these shadowy individuals.

Restricting itself to the one setting, an illusive room, simplistically futuristic and holds as much mystery as the people who are within it. Without spoiling the story, these applicants delve deeper into their surroundings to find out the one answer they need. KFC runs a similarly rigorous interview process.

Everything remains a mystery from start to finish: the past, the present and the future. Each tiny morsel of information propels the story forward at such a pace that it becomes a unique experience in taut direction that has shades of Hitchcockian ease.

Stuart Hazeldine directs with confidence, breathing life into concrete. If there is a failing, it’s that claustrophobia never creeps in, something that would had added some much needed urgency towards the climax. It’s a minor niggle, and the tiny torture chamber holds enough secrets to keep the audience guessing until the timer runs out.

The real test for this film is yet to come, given that it’s a low budget British movie, featuring a cast where the biggest name is Jimi Mistry and refuses to feature gangsters or Danny Dyer. If you do brave Exam, you’ll find yourself coming out aces.

Torture, mind games and that all important question, all wrapped up in a low-budget British indie? As a great newspaper once said, it sounds like the feel-good film of the decade.

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Amy Winehouse might look like a scab-covered drug addict on a misery-filled plunge into self-destruction, but really she’s just the new Sir Walter Raleigh.

It’s true – ask anyone from the 1570s what the big news of the day was and they’ll tell you it was Sir Walter Raleigh crawling round Camden on his hands and knees all shitfaced on Ketamine with a crazy Marge Simpson wig balanced precariously on top of his head. That’s why Amy Winehouse and Sir Walter Raleigh are so alike.

Oh, and also there’s a Cambridge University English paper asking students to compare Amy Winehouse’s lyrics to As You Came from the Holy Land by Sir Walter Raleigh. Students, here’s a clue – the one that breaks off in the middle to shout “Blakey! My BLAAAAAAAKE!” at nobody in particular probably isn’t Sir Walter Raleigh.

This is turning out to be quite a good week for rock stars in education. First Paul McCartney gets given a Yale doctorate because he wrote Yellow Submarine, and now it turns out that Cambridge University – one of the most prestigious centres of education in the country – is testing its students on what they think of Amy Winehouse.

We should probably point out that the Cambridge exam isn’t about what students think of Amy Winehouse as a person, because if that were the case then anyone who could write ‘Jesus Christ my eyes my eyes no my eyes oh God no’ would end up with first class honours. Instead it’s about Amy Winehouse’s lyrics.

Yes, Amy Winehouse does have lyrics. If you’ve seen Amy Winehouse perform live over the last 12 months you might just think that she just freestyles the sound of a cat getting its tail caught in a waste disposal unit over a Bontempi keyboard’s ‘horn-drenched retro soul’ preset, but you’re wrong.

Amy Winehouse has won Ivor Novello awards and Grammys and Brit awards all over the shop – and if a smug group of self-interested culturally bankrupt music industry insiders think she’s decent, then why shouldn’t the British educational system? BBC News explains in greater detail:

English students at Cambridge University have been asked to analyse lyrics by singer Amy Winehouse in a final-year exam. They were told to compare Winehouse’s Love is a Losing Game to songs by Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday and 16th century explorer Sir Walter Raleigh. They were asked to contrast aspects of the pop song with Bob Dylan’s Boots Of Spanish Leather, Billie Holiday’s Fine And Mellow and Sir Walter Raleigh’s As You Came from the Holy Land in an examination question.

It’s actually quite a hard task for the students to carry out. Firstly, you’ve got As You Came from the Holy Land by Sir Walter Raleigh – a stirring 16th century poem structured as a dialogue between a fearful lover and a pilgrim; and then you’ve got Love Is A Losing Game by Amy Winehouse – which is Amy Winehouse being all sad because she got hammered on crack and her boyfriend scarpered because he was probably scared of getting herpes. Or something. Easy.

But just because Amy Winehouse is figuring in Cambridge exams, it doesn’t mean that the standard of education in this country is dropping – if that was the truth then our recently completed 60,000 word PhD thesis entitled Chico Out Of X Factor: Haha He Did A Song With Some Kids And Everyone Danced LOL! wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on.

Bad luck perverts – just when you were getting around to thinking that there was something arousing about Jamie Lynn Spears being a pregnant schoolgirl, she goes and lets you down.

No, Jamie Lynn Spears hasn't given birth, instead she's passed her high school equivalency GED exam. So, freed up from the stigma attached to being a pregnant schoolgirl, Jamie Lynn Spears can now stretch out her horizons and become the plain old pregnant non-schoolgirl teenage strumpet with a bleak regret-filled future that she's always longed to be.

Congratulations Jamie Lynn. Live the dream.

Everything's going just dandy for the Spears clan at the moment, wouldn't you say? First Britney Spears gets to see her kids again and now it's revealed that Jamie Lynne Spears has passed her GED exam – if Lynne Spears somehow manages to go back in time and make sure that she never got pregnant with either of her disappointing children to begin with then the family will have its hat-trick. 

But, anyway, this is about Jamie-Lynn Spears. Despite having an unborn baby growing inside her that – if our grasp of pregnancy is right – does nothing but scream foul-mouthed orders at her and chews on her spinal cord whenever she disobeys them, Jamie Lynn Spears has passed her GED exam, as People reports:

The Zoey 101 star passed her high school equivalency exam about a month ago – scoring particularly well on reading comprehension – and is looking to take the ACT college entrance test, the friend says. "She's already got her diploma," according to the friend. "She wants to take her ACT. She's not wasting any time. People don't know her. When she gets something in her head, she'll make it happen. Everybody is so supportive of her."

Interesting how this is basically a news story that marvels at the fact that Jamie Lynn Spears can read, isn't it. Anyway, now that high school is out of the way, Jamie Lynn Spears is able to go ahead and try for college – but not until she's decided on a course to enrol on. Will she take the degree in Pretending That You Wanted The Baby All Along Even Though You Secretly Resent It For Stealing Away Your Youth Forever, or will it be something more like Media Studies? Who knows!

The important thing is that Jamie Lynn Spears soaks up this moment because, as someone educated to high school level, Jamie Lynn has now become the intellectual of the Spears family. And now she can look forward to being the go-to gal whenever any of her relatives have a difficult question they can't answer, like 'What's 14 multiplied by four?' and 'Me leg ouch. Why me leg ouch?'

Read more:

Jamie Lynn Spears Passes Her GED Exam – People