Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Image Description: May Morning celebrated by revellers costumed in leaves and greenery Oxford’s May Morning is a tradition which has contributed to the unique mythology and mysticism surrounding Oxford. The ancient festival of spring has been celebrated on 1st May for at least 1000 years—and crowds have gathered beneath Magdalen’s Great Tower for at least […]
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Image description: a silver lining I think coronavirus is most usefully thought of as an uncontrollable act of nature. Like all natural disasters, it is a great reminder of both the fragility of human life and the fragility of our social infrastructure. We find the tragedy of death and illness paired with the loss of […]
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Oxford It was around 6th week. My home country, South Korea, was being ravaged by this new coronavirus. But I tried not to think of that – in Oxford, my new second home, there was so much work to do and so much life going on. Each time I’d submitted another essay I went on […]
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Image description: bridge graffiti reading “GIVE PEAS A CHANCE” For some, it might be a slightly unorthodox way of recognising the NHS and fighting back against the social disruption which has descended upon the country. But the graffiti message on an M25 bridge close to my motorway exit reading “Thank you NHS” is a big […]
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Staying at home has been onerous for many, and we’re all starting to miss the once ostensibly small but now perceivably luxurious activities that would assumedly come with the return home for the vac. There are many parts of the pre-COVID-19 world for which we all feel saudade; activities as futile as a stroll around […]
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Coronavirus, leaving us cooped up in our homes, has predictably also left many of us bored. We’ve been forced to rebuild our daily lives into some semblance of a routine. Once it became clear I had fewer hobbies and interests than I thought, I succumbed to downloading Houseparty to stay connected during lockdown. It was […]
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Sheltering from the midday sun, I was grateful for the shade provided by the Phoenix Picturehouse’s second screen. I sank down into the seat and felt my shirt cling to the upholstery. Two became one, as I did my best Comic Book Guy impression, minus oversized beverage and ponytail. Collecting my thoughts before the Oxford […]
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If you’ve heard anything about Zootropolis (Zootopia in the U.S.), you’ve probably heard how ‘timely’ it is. In the wake of #BlackLivesMatter, Disney has released a kid-friendly film addressing racial profiling, pseudo-scientific racism and other issues of racial – or ‘species-ist’ – bias. Although I’m not sure what these critics would call an ‘untimely’ time […]
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Why the Beatles Still Deserve our Attention On 24th December last year, the Beatles released their back catalogue onto several major streaming platforms; they now sit in the 50 most listened-to artists on Spotify. Although they’re by no means threatening to challenge Justin Bieber’s hegemony over the charts, that’s an impressive figure for a band […]
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A British flag flutters in the wind against a grey sky. It is weary, but resilient, and in the face of everything, it is still flying. This image appears towards the end of both the last two James Bond films, Skyfall and Spectre. Of course, the Bond franchise has always been suffused with British patriotism. But in their latest […]
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From the first frame of Robert Zemeckis’s cult classic, time is of the utmost importance. Doc Brown’s room full of clocks offers stark imagery, and though the eerie feel belies the fun tone of the following two hours, intrigue pervades the opening. But although Back to the Future may have been an intriguing premise, the […]
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Personally, I would never choose to pick a fight with someone carrying a 19,950 ton weight advantage. And then even if somehow I overlooked the fact that they towered 139ft above my head, the scorching atomic fire breath running down the back of my neck would probably cause me to think twice. King Kong, therefore, […]
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War has been a staple of the cinema since its very earliest days. Indeed, it was with the controversial war film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), that D. W. Griffith pioneered the basic cinematic vocabulary that established the first set of parameters for all future filmmakers.
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Anticipation has the power to kill movies. Overly hyping that blockbuster that won’t hit our screens for months and months creates such a bubble of excitement that even the smallest of flaws in the film itself bursts it. Case in point, Star Wars I, II & III. The original trilogy left such a cultural imprint […]
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What makes a movie ‘foreign’? Is it the financing, or the location? The language of the performers or the ethnicity of the director?
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For the past fifteen years or more, the European art cinema scene has increasingly come to be dominated by one outstanding and frequently controversial director: the Austrian Michael Haneke. Other directors have produced films just as distinctive and just as widely praised – Lars von Trier and Béla Tarr spring easily to mind – but […]
Continue ReadingImmersive, overwhelming, and bizarre- Emily Parker investigates the flourishing world of postmodern theatre.
Continue ReadingThe musical in Oxford has a long and established tradition – with three or four fantastic productions being produced, choreographed, and in some cases even composed on a termly basis. Last term brought Oxford students the incredibly well received Chess, Sweeney Todd and the original musical In Her Eyes. Each offered something that pushed […]
Continue ReadingA cliché opening to this article would be to claim that literary adaptation for stage is currently ‘in vogue’, both in Oxford and (gasp) outside of it, on the evidence of recent high-profile productions of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Headlong’s 1984 alongside student performances of Gawain and the Green […]
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