Seminal Cinema
As I walk into Grove auditorium to watch Battleship Potemkin, I'm not quite sure what to expect. I know little about the silent film era it derives from, and even less about the Soviet revolution it's based on, yet I'm sure this isn't an opportunity to be missed. Tony Smith - President of Magdalen College and an established film historian - introduces the film which begins playing to a transfixed audience....
Features: Unlocking the treasury of ideas
AC Grayling is, unmistakably, a philosopher. He has a hairstyle so outlandish that it makes Melvyn Bragg's look like a military crew-cut. He speaks like we'd expect a philosopher to; in carefully phrased sentences enunciated in a slightly effeminate voice.
Features: Notes from a small pie-man
Bill Bryson is, he says, an outsider. Perhaps that's surprising, as he has lived in the UK for the majority of his adult life. However, he counters, "in a legalistic sense, I am an American. To pretend to be British would seem fraudulent, and it's great to enjoy a society but not be responsible for it. But then, who do I cheer on at the Olympics? The British."
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Features: It's only skin deep...
Erik Sprague, known professionally as The Lizardman, has performed a sideshow-style act for over a decade. In addition to his full body transformation project, he is adept at fire performances and enjoys working with American flesh hook suspension group TSD (Traumatic Stress Discipline). His aesthetic project has so far included over 650 hours of tattooing, teeth filing and extensive subcutaneous implants. He was also, in 1997, one of the first people to undergo voluntary tongue splitting: there are now estimated to be around 500 selectively split tongues in the world. He is, however, unwilling to rely on just his looks to make a living. "Today's audience demands more, I only survive by offering it." His sideshow skills include weightlifting with his pierced body parts, escapology, sword swallowing, and a traditional 'blockhead' act where concrete blocks are smashed on his groin and six inch nails hammered into his nose with a powerdrill....