Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Columns Archive

Behind the Screens: the thankless job of editing

CW: Mentions of suicide In a previous Cherwell column, I wrote that cinematographers manipulate an audiences’ viewpoint. If that is the case, then editors are the Thanos to the cinematographer’s...

Will Neill’s Real Deal: The Decline and Fall of Boris Johnson

This has been a bizarre week for Boris Johnson. I appreciate that this is...

Auntythetical: The pressure of the dreaming spires

Everything that I thought made me worthy of being here, that I fought to read and learn alongside my studies, feels insignificant

Auntythetical: Being stuck in the middle

The ostracism I felt had forced me to choose between my identity and the chance to have friends.

WATCH3WORDS: The Father – Moving.Bleak.Blue

'The take is an original one, but the result is often jarring. At times, the film feels more like a subdued horror with the jump-scares replaced by time-jumps, time-loops, and figures mysteriously appearing from previously empty rooms.'

The Undercurrent: Student Union election time!

One lucky candidate will become our new supreme leader on Thursday night, assuming charge of a groaning bureaucracy that claims to run everything that happens in Oxford while giving off the unnerving impression that it does absolutely nothing

Cher-ity Corner: Jacari Oxford

"Jacari's vision is a society where young people from all backgrounds have the confidence and language skills to achieve their full potential."

Out of the Frame: Holbein’s The Ambassadors

Just as the modern media exploit images to convey particular themes and rouse responses, the painters of the past were careful in choosing what...

The Undercurrent: the ‘Leaders of Tomorrow’ look suspiciously like the ‘Arseholes of Today’

In light of this week's political debacle, perhaps it's time to stop pretending that Oxford’s obsession with producing ‘the leaders of tomorrow’ is in any way healthy.

The Map to Happiness: Sweden and ‘Lagom’

Our version of wild swimming was more Butlins than Bear Grylls, but that was what made it lagom. It was enough but not too much. A perfect balance. 

WATCH3WORDS: Black Bear – Funny.Stifling.Psychodrama.

'Claustrophobic, erratic, and prickly all at once, Black Bear is an experiment in film which entangles its audience deep in its intellectual web.'

“Well-behaved women seldom make history”: Hills, Poetry and Protest

At Joe Biden’s inauguration I, along with the rest of the world, watched Amanda Gorman reignite a marriage of unparalleled power: poetry and politics....

Cher-ity Corner: KEEN Oxford

"One of the most important lessons I have learnt, as I imagine many others have too from this pandemic, is the value of offering up our time to help others"

The Undercurrent: Fun – a vital ingredient for optimising your performance?

Only Oxford could turn the delicate process of divulging a mental health issue into a sick version of Britain’s Got Talent that’s all sob-story and no singing

“Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History”: Freedom Fighting, Queen Jezebel and India

Christina Rossetti’s poetry is often coloured with feminist insights, as she handles conditions ranging from that of the unmarried Victorian women to so-called ‘fallen...

WATCH3WORDS: Palm Springs – Exuberant.Poolside.Mayhem.

'By taking the well-known Groundhog Day storyline and injecting it with a healthy dose of sun, fun, and drug-fuelled nihilism, Palm Springs makes one of the dullest formats in the book suddenly enjoyable.'

The Map to Happiness: Hilary Term and The Atlas of Happiness

I realised I slipped slowly into equating “productivity and achievement” with “happiness”, but in actual fact, there was so much more to it than that.

Out of the Frame: Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos

As long as humanity has existed, art has followed in its wake. Whether to tell a story, send a political message, decorate an environment...

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