Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
STAGE – SCREEN – MUSIC
Image description: A poster for one of Godard’s films on the walls of an underground station Even at the age of 89, Jean-Luc Godard hasn’t stopped being revolutionary. Whilst many directors would have quietly retreated to some mansion far away from the world of film-making, Godard continues to make films which challenge the watcher even […]
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Image Description: Illustrations of scenes from each film This is the year of Parasite, but it is also the year in which Donald Trump declared that a film like Gone With The Wind should have won Best Picture instead. No, Gone With The Wind shouldn’t win Best Picture in 2020, in fact, it shouldn’t have […]
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Image description: video call rehearsal of Richard II “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this [virtual] England” Not the Way Forward’s production of Richard II, directed by Dorothy McDowell and produced by Juliet Dowley, moves Shakespeare from the stage into the homes of its cast. With the pandemic and lockdown, a new way of […]
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Image description: An illustration of two hands with one holding an ink pen Though much has been said about our abbreviated attention spans during these days, if you find yourself unable to concentrate even on the latest book of essays by the corrosively delightful Samantha Irby or enjoy that ribald, irreverent biography of Princess Margaret […]
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With the lockdown affecting practically everything, many of us have turned to binge-watching Netflix or catching up on shows that we never quite got round to seeing. As nice as this is, the other week I got a bit bored with getting through all ten series of Benidorm. Instead, I felt the impulse to watch […]
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Image Description: Contestants gather together in a moment from the series Lockdown is really getting to me. A few days ago a new show popped up on my Netflix recommendations and, like a fool, I decided that a new reality programme where some oiled-up Instagram wannabes are banned from having sex with each other sounded […]
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Whilst most of the world is in lockdown, literature is still free to comfort, entertain and let you explore different cultures. Here are my favourite books from around the world, to be read whilst our world is a little further away from us. Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (originally in Spanish) An underrated book […]
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Image Description: A illustration of a scene from Mulan Oh, glorious CGI! We are a slave to your technicolour dreamscapes, your larger-than-life monsters. It seems remarkable to me to re-watch the first Harry Potter film and realise that I am expected to be gripped by terror, watching that magnificent blue troll before me. It looks, […]
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Image description: An Kindle on top of a regular book I’m not old enough to pull the whole ‘back-in-my-day-I-read-by-candlelight’, and I certainly can’t relate to the youngest generation of readers who grew up reading in the dark. That last bit I don’t mean figuratively: Kindle’s, iPad’s and other self-lit electronic devices have made it so […]
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Image Description: The Hollywood sign “Terrible things were happening all around us. Right next to me a huge reptile was gnawing on a woman’s neck, the carpet was a blood-soaked sponge – impossible to walk on it, no footing at all. ‘Order some golf shoes,’ I whispered. ‘Otherwise, we’ll never get out of this place […]
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Image description: A stack of books on a shelf Quarantine has left us all in a constant state of unease. Now more than ever, books serve as a compelling source of comfort and companionship. Here, I present three meaningful selections that may offer readers a sense of solace, appreciation and motivation through these trying times. […]
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Image Description: Poppy flowers in a field When it comes to war films, there are, broadly, two schools of thought for the modern Hollywood studio executive and producer, both of which result in the production of dull and deeply unsatisfying pictures. First of all, and perhaps the most irritating, (although the less troubling) is the […]
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Image Description: A scene from the production featuring two actors either side of a clock face Transported into a sixteenth-century erudite set consisting of eight old bookshelves, each tightly packed with ancient books of various sizes, a singular wooden desk with a matching chair, and a large blackboard detailed with complex equations and sketches, the […]
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Isolation sucks. Gone are the much-anticipated vac plans, the long overdue meet-ups with school friends, and days of lying in parks with no work-burden that many of us had anticipated for this week. Instead, talk is only of the Draconian measures imposed on us; not going out, not seeing friends, weeks trapped with no one […]
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Content warning: this article contains brief mentions of sexual abuse and substance abuse. Last week, I was fortunate to have a ticket to a private performance of ‘People, Places, and Things’, held in the kitchen of a student house in Cowley. With the playwright – Duncan Macmillan – having not yet released the rights to […]
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There is an assortment of emotions one experiences when finishing a profound novel that has spoken to one’s soul. Without warning, you have become attached to a voice you have never met. You have found friends, lovers, or even enemies among its finest characters. You may have even become a part of ‘The Happy Few’ […]
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In the words of Ben Kenobi, “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together”. The magical force (no pun intended) of Star Wars has been an object of mystification and fantasy by many young […]
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I was reading an article in the third week edition on whose stories have value. The article uses the critical and awards reception of 1917 and Little Women to argue that stories about women are perceived as lesser than stories about men. I don’t seek to contend the central point of the article, however, I […]
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Taylor Swifts latest documentary, Miss Americana, premiered on the 23rd January on Netflix, and makes for an hour and a half of distinctly odd viewing. Swift has released one previous documentary in 2008, Journey to Fearless. This first offering was a celebratory look at the process of creating and performing her record-breaking world tour, which […]
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