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Question and answer sessions with the cast of a play following its performance have become a common event in theatre these days. As someone who takes an avid interest in the behind the scenes aspect of plays I’ve attended quite a few, although I can safely say none have been quite like the fictitious version […]
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Change is the watchword for American politics right now, whether that means Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. The 2018 midterms were no exception, with an unprecedented wave of diverse candidates crashing into Congress. In Knock Down The House, documentarian Rachel Lears tracks the primary campaigns of four such candidates running against the establishment. The candidates […]
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Overlooking Doha’s sea front, The National Museum of Qatar appears as a mirage in the desert. The highly anticipated museum, designed by Atelier Jean Nouvel, held its glamorous opening ceremony on March 27th 2019. The building is an avant-garde structure made with 539 intersecting vertical and horizontal disks of multiple diameters, curvatures, and inclinations. Nouvel’s […]
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Back in 2008, a new era of cinema was dawning, with Marvel, having finally shaken off the shackles of mistakes thirty years in the making. The Howard the Duck film was one such mistake, as while enjoyable, it didn’t exactly set the box office alight. Another was the collapse of the comics industry in the […]
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Leaving the Jeff Koons exhibition at the Ashmolean, I was left with the mixed feelings of gladness and repulsion; gladness that I had seen an exhibition that is intriguingly complex, if only for how problematic it is, and disgust that was born of the realisation that his work was both artistically unoriginal and sexually regressive. […]
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Part of me loves going to lectures that I know are not 100% relevant for my papers. Perhaps the lecturer will talk about an author I’m not going to be examined on in finals, allowing me a few guilt free minutes of ecstatic freedom to scribble dresses. I don’t sit too close to the front, […]
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The ‘science’ component of the social sciences is often the subject of jokes, with the idea that disciplines included in this label are not ‘real’ or ‘hard’ sciences. Their defenders are often quick to argue, however, that the quantitative tradition is a prevalent one among disciplines such as economics, demography, or political science. In my […]
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‘Sometimes I drive around the country and talk to people. There’s no law against it.’ And with that, Scott Carrier begins the first episode of his podcast Home of the Brave, an artful, meandering series which gives intimate glimpses into the lives of people you never thought existed. Scott Carrier started producing stories for the […]
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The trademark image of the Française lives on to this day. And we Brits have been fascinated for decades, ever since the heyday of the (non-)Parisienne par excellence: Jane Birkin. The French have a joke: how do you spot an English girl? By the length of her skirt. Or her level of intoxication. Their wit […]
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The lecture theatre at Balliol college was bustling with enthused students on 6th February, as a plethora of exciting poets graced the room with undeniable vivacity and artistry. Among these poets was Stephen Romer, a talented orator and personality who selected a range of short poems to read, from thoughtful musings on love, to summers […]
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With the chills of British winter in full force, the cinema should have a prime position in your weekly schedule. Our love for the cinema has frequently translated into the worlds of movies themselves, with main characters attending the pictures during their journeys. The closed-off space has been utilised to create sinister, tense and foreboding […]
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As Oscar Wilde declared in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Grey, ‘All art is quite useless’. Wilde’s statement falls on deaf ears in Dan Gilroy’s tale of pretentious art dealers and material greed. After taking paintings from the apartment of a deceased artist, Josephina (Zawe Ashton) is cajoled by boss Rhodora (Rene Russo) […]
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In September 1980, 19-year-old Robert Shafran arrived for his freshman year at Sullivan County Community College in upstate New York. Immediately, he was greeted by classmates all around campus: “Hey, Eddy!” they said. “Glad to see you back, Eddy!” Shafran was baffled. “I’m like, my name’s not Eddy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” […]
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CAKE Night, a brand new scratch night organised by Oxford students Anushka Chakravarti and Bea Udale-Smith, was an event that exuded cheerfulness and energy. Cocooned in Summertown’s North Wall Arts Centre, a rather miserable walk in the rain was well worth the intimate, relaxed geniality and entertainment. The sketch-show setup made for delightfully easy viewing […]
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When I first saw the trailer for the four-part Netflix original, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, one sentence put me off. In Bundy’s own voice, “I am looking for an opportunity to tell the story as best I can” makes it ominously clear that this is Ted’s moment, his last chance at […]
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Made in Dagenham is alive and, most prominently, relevant. At a time when theatre seems to lean towards the escapist, this musical provides us with a (true) story about the issue of equal, or unequal, pay. Everything in this production is well thought out. The musical itself, set in 1968 and concerning the troubling pay […]
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Simon Upton and Marceline Bresson are 2nd year undergraduates at Teddy Hall, studying PPE and E&M respectively. They have recently set up their own University Society, Oxford European Forum, as a space to discuss Europe holistically rather than in the context of any political agenda – and they are now recruiting for members. I met […]
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Frog’s Legs, by Hughie Shepherd-Cross, is not a play for everyone. Jokes about paying Egyptian slaves in cocaine while they build a pyramid for your wealthy, dead, French heiress wife are not for everyone. Nevertheless, this four-man play manages to walk a thin line between offensive and funny, resulting in an absurd but oddly endearing […]
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Warning: Spoilers ahead. The sequel is a difficult beast. Few directors manage to equal the quality of the original, let alone surpass it. There are some occasional cases of the former (The Godfather Part II, Toy Story 2), and even the latter (Austin Powers 2, The Dark Knight), though these examples are rare specimens. In […]
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