Culture

Mulholland Drive is a film as mysterious and sinister as the workings of Hollywood. Do not be put off if you cannot quite figure out what exactly feels so off about it all the time

'The most thrilling moment so far was singing the opening ballad as a whole cast with the band for the first time. I’d never felt such a mix of excitement and nerves and awe all at once.'

"At best, I expected a night of mildly diverting entertainment – perhaps an audience member would heckle someone – and at worst, I was bracing myself for two hours of second-hand embarrassment. Anyone who is familiar with Jericho Comedy will already know how wrong I was: I laughed so much at this comedy gala that my face hurt."

"Reading for fun is not the same as reading a book to study it. This may be obvious to some people, but it took a while for me to realise that my love of Jane Austen books didn’t necessarily mean I would enjoy studying one of them."

It is an amazing skill to have such a carousel of worlds and people played by the same few actors, and yet the show never felt disjointed; it was almost as if the tennis players, the telly-tubbies and the young conservatives were all interconnected.

The world of foreign fiction is diverse and rich but often underrepresented, which is exactly what we are hoping to change! Our contributors have put forward a collection of some of their favourite books by authors from across the globe. So, enjoy a ‘tour’ through some great recommendations of world literature and maybe you’ll find your next read!

Don’t get me wrong. The album is upbeat, cheerful, maddeningly optimistic and, at least intermittently, catchy for most of us mortals. But something tells me it’s not quite the empyreal sound Pythagoras would have had in mind.

Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those articles about how superhero blockbusters are awful compared to classic movies. No, I’m here to explore the weird commonality between Ingmar Bergman’s The Magic Flute and modern blockbusters. Linking these different approaches to film will be a strange journey, but at its end lies an intriguing idea: that reality and fiction may be one and the same.

It is a thought that fills me with me with apprehension. A feeling so confusing that even my stomach does not understand whether to...

This is the time of year for promises we may not keep. And we’ve got plenty of movie-related resolutions, whether it’s something we always wanted to see but have never found time for, or a new aspect of film that we want to get into.

To blink a bloodshot world away And drink in rough, and burn, and heat Until she comes to kiss the dark.

There used to be three main reasons as to why I would read: firstly, for educational purposes, and as a historian, I can’t avoid this. I didn’t feel like I was even keeping up with the bare minimum of reading for my degree, and I was crossing off hardly any books on those ludicrously long reading lists. How could I allow myself the luxury of reading something for fun? 

CW: Mentions eating disorders and pedophilia. Lately, we have seen a return to hyper-feminine fashion which encourages all things “girly” and beautiful. Inspired by Paris,...

"Here is my list of hopeful reads for the new year. A few are recommendations from friends, whilst others have been sat on bestseller lists for a while. Some are yet to be released and are by new and exciting voices that I think will be popular. In the mix are also some classics that even I don’t know how I’ve avoided for this many years (looking at you, Sylvia)."

"Can we ever justify ticket prices of more than £200 given the theatrical experience involved – or are we just making theatre expensive and inaccessible?"

The well-established mix of humour and honesty that Sex Education brings to these themes is a refreshing approach, and enables an exploration of a huge variety of sensitive issues regarding sexuality, as well as more light-hearted everyday adolescent dramas.

Maintaining a non-academic hobby alongside an Oxford degree is a challenge. Pressures from tutors, friends and oneself conspire to clog up time that could...

The Green Knight is a medieval movie for the Internet age. I don’t mean that the titular Green Knight appears to King Arthur’s court...

"Out from the November night an easy orange glow invited me into the Sheldonian. I trotted up creaking stairs to the top floor, into the jaws of death – the jaws of death being an archaically unintuitive seating set up. The seats on the upper stalls are just three big steps – if you arrive late, sidling along the upper rows in front of those already seated requires deft footwork and a lot of 'excuse me's."

"While Rooney wants to make it clear that these characters are made by a complex process of personal and structural factors, the characterisation of these effects comes across as largely typical liberal nihilism: evident contemporary issues are discussed but focus by and large as background. Brexit, climate change, culture wars and fame form a seemingly endless indulgent discourse with no real direction or purpose. Instead, there seems to be an obsession with providing binary opposites within her characters, which comes across as a litany of cliché. Felix is both bad because he watches hardcore pornography but is good in the fact that he likes and gets along well with dogs. Eileen presents her vulnerabilities through the online-stalking of her ‘sad boy’ ex-boyfriend, her tiny apartment, and meagre salary, while Simon can promise his traditional Catholicism, do-gooder job in the Irish government. Alice’s sexual voyeurism is linked to her financial position in allowing Felix to come to Rome with her expenses paid. Felix’s working-class cliché borders on the offensive, or serious ignorance at best, presenting a character who has to literally defend his intelligence: “I can read by the way… I’m not great at reading, but I can read. And I don’t think you really care anyway.” When these minor power-plays slowly unfold and catalyse at the end of the novel, involving a major confrontation between Alice and Eileen, a knocked-over chair, and a wine glass smashed on the kitchen floor, we’re left wondering what the entire point of these relationships was in the first place."