Sunday, May 11, 2025

Culture

Adolescence: Can TV spark radical change in young men?

Adolescence is just another example of art acting as a conversation piece. The recent series has inspired much conversation after it has highlighted how harmful online misogynistic and ‘incel...

Hand over Heart

"So bite the heel that walked you home in the rain"

Oxide Radio is a breath of fresh, musical air

"This free station is worth a listen"

Exhibition 004: Oxford artistry across all mediums

When I first walked into Exhibition 004, my gaze was immediately met with Magda...

In conversation with Elaine Hsieh Chou

Sonya Ribner interviews author Elaine Hsieh Chou.

‘Beckett on speed’: In conversation with Nocturne Productions

"[...] they descend into paranoia, and carnage unfolds in a network of marvellously-layered backstabbing."

The Godfather and the Thrill of Cinema

A film that rests so prominently in the public’s psyche can be difficult to watch subjectively. The Godfather is nonetheless a masterpiece in its own right.

Father John Misty’s “new world of old characters”

"In Chloë and the Next 20th Century, Tillman succeeds spectacularly at creating a new world out of old characters."

Upcoming cultural events in Oxford

Season Two of Bridgerton has given me a newfound desire to grab life by the mallet, so this term I have decided to sign up for Croquet Cuppers.

Whistler at the Musée d’Orsay: An American in Paris

Whistler orchestrates a symphony of colors, symbols, and gestures that takes art beyond the canvas.

Review – Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention

a review of the book 'Stolen Focus' by Johann Hari

“To this I put my name”- Review: Casterbridge

If Thomas Hardy had blessed his female characters with more than an “ephemeral precious essence of youth,” perhaps he would have produced something along the lines of Dorothy McDowell’s Casterbridge, an adaptation of Hardy’s 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Review: Intimacies, after Vallotton

"Against the backdrop of Majek’s enigmatic blue-toned figures, Spencer, with the help of a multi-roling, all-Black voice cast playing a broad spectrum of characters, reveals tantalising glimpses of these figures’ lives."

Bringing Oxford theatre to London via a garden shed: an interview with the cast and crew of Casterbridge

"It’s a bit of a mad play, and a lot of quite mad things happen, because that’s what happens when you translate Victorian characters into the modern era."

‘Uninhibitedly comical’ – Review: The Improv Squeeze

"The performers [...] delivered a cohesive, entertaining and – dare I say it – heart-warming musical which was received with barrels of laughter."

‘Heartbreaking and beautiful’ – Review: Brain Freeze

"From the play’s beginning, this immensely talented cast of Oxford students captured my imagination, and I was swept up by the story they had to tell."

In Conversation with Katie Melua

Where do we come from? I mean, where does it all come from, all this? – the books that we read or skim; the...

The Hegelian Dialectic of James Gunn’s Peacemaker

What links the superhero show Peacemaker with the work of 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel?

The Meaning Of Motherhood: Spencer and Parallel Mothers

Life, death, and birth are all present in Pablo Larraín’s Spencer and Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers. Both films address, in different ways, what the meaning of motherhood is.

Rubbish representation in schools, syllabuses and beyond

But it’s not good enough to leave it to often privileged tutors, canon-compilers and Education Secretaries to dictate which texts we study. Time and time again, they have failed to achieve even the remotest degree of representation, a damning outcome in a subject which is so linked to identity and the self. The texts we study at school and beyond should be chosen and shaped by the diverse populations reading them.

‘A wildly enjoyable ride’ – Review: The Importance of Being Nihilists

"We’re left with a simple truth: not everything has a deeper answer, and perhaps we shouldn’t be looking for one."

The fairest of them all? Hollywood’s problem with visually represented villainy

We know that we ought to validate and cherish visible difference. Why is cinema struggling so much to catch on?

From Emperors to Crystal Skulls: The highs and lows of the sequel

It’s no wonder that sequels have a, let’s say, less than stellar reputation when films like Grown Ups 2 exist.

‘Stirred to breathless heights’:  Wolf Alice Concert Review 

"This was the second of three successive sold-out nights for the four-piece at the London venue, and it proved one for us and the remaining five thousand people in attendance to remember."

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