★★★★☆
Four Stars

“See. You felt everything. Fear, worry, blurred vision, dizziness, shaky legs. That’s the full experience.” These are the words of Lea Seydoux’s Karole to Tahar Rahim’s Gary after their first romantic encounter, making explicit the central conceit of Grand Central, a French romantic drama which explores the toxicity of love through a forbidden affair forged in the shadow of a nuclear power plant. Gary is a migrant worker who joins a team of labourers led by Karole’s fiancé that works in the innermost sections of the reactor. Here, tensions mount as loyalties are tested and lives put in danger, lending the film an unexpected claustrophobia, even whilst the disparate tones of Rebecca Zlotowski’s film never entirely connect. 

Whilst the film’s title ostensibly refers to the name of its nuclear power plant setting, its ironic bent becomes clear within minutes of the film’s opening, as we observe that little about these character’s lives is either grand or centralised, with their time divided between minimum wage work at the plant and a mundane existence in an impoverished trailer park. It is here that the lovers’ secret affair occurs, but it is in the plant where it threatens to unravel tenuous but vital bonds of loyalty. Compounded by the divisions of class and gender inherent in the film’s setting, the film develops an escalating sense of peril which sustains into the film’s credits. Zlotowski’s interest in the peripheral existence of the cast of migrants, gypsies and criminals imbues the film with social realism and capitalist critique, as the disadvantaged characters sell their health, identity and futures to the plant’s toxic operation.

For all these poetic and academic ambitions that distance Zlotowski’s directorial voice from that of the characters, both are deeply preoccupied with the properties of skin, particularly how it is displayed and concealed. An early flirtation which sees our lovers’ bodies trapped behind white work overalls cuts to a later scene of his arm pressed tightly against her naked leg in a secretive and sexually charged exchange in the back of a car. These juxtapositions of concealment and exposure show how these lovers find comfort and sexuality in each others skin, even as they view their own with increasing paranoia.

Zlotowski’s camera lingers over the characters’ bare flesh as they go about their days, capturing glimpses of the eroticism they find in their forbidden liaisons. The recurring shots of manic scrubbing and relentless showering combine the tension of the plant with the tensions of the affair; the lovers struggle to scrub the traces of radiation from their bodies, but also traces of each other. This constant eroticism effectively foregrounds the simmering romance at the story’s core, even whilst the elements of social realist drama occasionally threaten to overwhelm it.

However, the film operates as a strange mix of genres and ideas, with the saturated blues and greens of the excruciatingly tense scenes inside the plant reminiscent of science fiction, whilst around the trailer park the film shifts between gritty drama and romanticised sex scenes which unfold in sun dappled fields. These varying tones capture the conflicting moods of the film, and illuminate the fractured relationships at the core of the narrative, but the shifts between them feel uneasy, and consequently the film never coalesces into an entirely satisfactory whole.

Furthermore, the film’s attempts to balance its lyricism with its realism results in several overwritten scenes that sacrifice consistency of character to the film’s larger points about the destructive power of love. This imbalance is also felt in the predictable ending, where the film’s poetic sensibilities overpower the narrative, leaving the emotional arcs of the characters feeling somewhat incomplete.

With regards to the film’s performances, Tahar Rahim makes for a likeable protagonist, playing his undereducated labourer with a sweet innocence even as he knowingly jeopardises the safety of himself and those around him for his own selfishness. Meanwhile Lea Seydoux brings her usual intensity to the part of Karole, filling the screen with a confidence and barely suppressed rage which is gradually stripped away to reveal some of the actresses’ most delicate and affecting work to date. Seydoux uses her aggressive femininity to challenge the male character’s dichotomous sexual identities and machismo, bringing an added dimension to the film’s social exploration. The ensemble cast also deliver affecting work in supporting roles, particularly Denis Ménochet as Karole’s fiancé, who adds shades of sadness and jealousy beneath his character’s macho facade.

Ultimately, Grand Central‘s themes and performances are interesting enough for the film to remain compelling even as it struggles to decide on its identity.  Rebecca Zlotowski has crafted a poetic examination of forbidden love which is grounded in a fascinating exploration of marginalized workers, and in which the potent setting creates a consistent tension that elevates the film over other contemporary romances.

★★☆☆☆
Two Stars

A lot of people were breathless in anticipation of the release of the new Transformers, but perhaps none more so than me, as I panted through the Odeon lobby and sat down ten minutes into the showing. I was late and deathly afraid that I had missed key plot points, character exposition and scene setting.

I had purposefully waited to see Michael Bay’s latest contribution to cinema, in order to let all the hype die down. I didn’t want to be influenced by talk of how it will breeze past a billion dollars at the box office, how it was the biggest ever film to open in China or that it had received dreadful reviews. I tried to go into Transformers: Age of Extinction with an open mind.

To my credit, I’m not a card-carrying member of the ardent ‘Michael Bay is cinema’s Antichrist’ lobbying group. The previous Transformers didn’t rile me; they just melded into an orgiastic montage of bright colours, sparks, and unnerving numbers of up-skirt shots. And to be honest, I didn’t really hate this one either. I wasn’t left angry or annoyed. I was just left dazed and confused and with a mountain of questions.

I’m going to leave out the story synopsis, because it’s exactly the same as the previous three films. In a nutshell, aliens arrive and the robots fight each other. It’s more interesting to notice what’s new about this latest edition to the growing Hasbro canon. For one, gone is charisma-vacuum Shia LaBeouf, replaced by hard man Mark Wahlberg. An interesting switch? No, not even slightly. It would be interesting if Bay paid attention to his human characters. But he doesn’t. So it doesn’t matter who the actors are. There are also now robots than can transform into dinosaurs. They’re called Dinobots. Obviously.

But the most interesting change for the franchise as a whole, in terms of marketing, is that more than half the film is set in China. It’s a change not driven by artistic intent, but one to try and crack the single largest cinema audience in the world. That’s why Bingbing Li, one of China’s most famous actresses, features prominently.

It’s probably also why it seems like the film was paid for entirely by the Chinese Tourism Board, flitting as it does between snazzy urban metropolises to picturesque ruins and idyllic valleys. And why the Chinese government gets some cracking positive publicity, where they valiantly and completely free of any agenda pledge to protect Hong Kong. And why Optimus Prime now has ‘Visit China’ lasered onto his face (that’s not true).

Acting wise, it’s pretty non-existent. Mark Wahlberg frowns occasionally. And to give him credit, it is a good frown. Stanley Tucci shouts and swears. Kelsey Grammar is hideously miscast as the villain. He has a naturally smiley face. That’s not frightening. And he’s the voice of Sideshow Bob, who is far more villainy than the cack-handed bad guy role he’s landed here. Nicola Peltz, playing Walhberg’s daughter, is so wooden she makes a scarecrow look like a rhythmic gymnast. And Titus Welliver, playing another villain, has a great name. Safe to say, the acting is pretty thin on the ground. Thin in the air too. Just generally pretty trim.

If I could level one original aspect of criticism at Michael Bay, it’s that his understanding of head injuries and casualty counts is suspect at best. Near the beginning, Optimus Prime whacks a man in the head with a gun the size of a vending machine, and does the victim’s head explode like a melon being hit with a sledgehammer? No. He gets a bruise.

Let me remind you that Optimus is a 28 feet tall robot, who weighs 4.3 tonnes, and can flip cars with a finger. A few minutes later, there’s a slo-mo sequence where a rally car hits a man in the face. Does his head explode? You don’t seem to be getting the pattern here. I don’t really have a choice but to dock some points for that. Poor show Michael. 

But on the bright side, it’s revealed that in the battle at the end of the last film that levelled the entirety of Chicago, apparently only 1300 people died. In a battle that destroyed an entire city. A city that hadn’t been evacuated or had any shelter system of even the most rudimentary kind installed. So that’s a plus.

One thing that didn’t bother me was the 2 hours and 45 minute running time. That is almost a lethal spell to be in a cinema for. A period of time so extended that there should be adverts beforehand warning of DVT. 2001: A Space Odyssey was just over 2 hours long, and that goes from the origins of man to the birth of a new species. Transformers doesn’t. In 2 hours and 45 minutes you could fly to Malta, or Romania or Iceland. But I was so engrossed in trying to keep a mental list of all the plot holes that I didn’t notice the running time at all.

It’s like they used the first draft of the script that no one had re-read; it was more full of holes than the Titanic, a packet of Hula Hoops and a colander combined.

Why is Optimus in an abandoned cinema at the beginning of the film? You would expect to find a lot of interesting stuff in an old cinema, but not a mortar-shelled HGV lorry. How does Wahlberg’s character, a jumped-up electrician, have the requisite skill and knowledge to repair an alien transforming robot who even says he needs his robot friends to fix him? Why, when Optimus is on the run from the government and needs to be covert, does he repaint himself in the gaudy red and blue that he is globally infamous for looking like? How does Wahlberg, a man wanted by the CIA, walk through the front door into a top security arms-production plant? Why does a ship designed for 28 feet tall robots carry guns that are human-sized? Since when can Optimus fly? Wouldn’t that have been a useful thing to crack out, oh, I don’t know, in any of the three preceding films? Where do all the new Autobots come from? Why are the dinosaur robots left to randomly roam across China at the end of the film? Why do all the characters insist on using lifts when it is manifest that collapsing buildings are regular occurrences? 

But if counting that isn’t entertaining enough, then you could also try and keep track of the number of product placement scenes in the film. What with the contribution by the Chinese Tourism Board and the breathtaking number of crass advert moments, this could well be the first blockbuster film to have no budget at all.

It is nice that the product placement scenes are made to seem almost coincidental. So now, when the robots transform, it just happens that the car logo stays on their chest. Or that Stanley Tucci really did want a carton of Shuhua milk after being chased to the top of a building by government assassins. Or that a bus with Victoria Secret emblazoned on it just happened to be in the middle of an extended panning shot. Or that the alien ship just happened to crash into a Budweiser Light truck. Or that there is now a transformer that turns into a Beats speaker. But then again, what else would you expect from a film franchise that has to have a mandatory trademark insignia in the title?

In the end, the film is exactly what I was expecting. It was like meeting an old acquaintance, whom you were never very fond of to begin with, and asking them to urinate into your eyes. All you’re left with is a warm stream of sterile repetitiveness marinating your retinas. 

★☆☆☆☆
One Star

If there’s one thing to be taken away from Sony’s latest theatrical comedy, Sex Tape, starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, it’s that you probably shouldn’t drink and film—yourself having sex. And if you absolutely must, avoid documenting technically comprehensive acrobatic tutorials with the runtime of Dr. Zhivago. The reason being: someone might see it. Like your boss. Or your parents. Or the mailman. I’m inclined to reserve judgment—since depending on one’s proclivities this may or may not be such a bad thing—but in Jay (Segel) and Annie’s (Diaz) case, it’s a very bad thing.

Annie’s blog about motherhood is in on the verge of being purchased by Hank (Rob Lowe), Chief Executive Officer of Piper Brothers. Hank praises Annie for embodying, in the opinion of his ultra-family-friendly corporation, the ‘ideal mother’—a saintly, chaste creature. Astute readers will here see Annie’s dilemma, opaque and cloudy as it may be, when she and her husband Jay realize their ‘personal time’ was automatically synched via an online cloud to various other devices that Jay so charitably bestowed upon those closest to him: his mother-in-law, his twelve-year-old son, his best friend Rob (Rob Corddry), the mailman and yes, Annie’s boss, Hank. After Jay receives a mysterious text message expressing an unknown sender’s approval of the recording, the couple realizes they have only hours to wipe the devices clean to save their reputations, and, as Sony would have you believe, their very livelihood. 

Married right out of college, Jay and Annie laid their way into the foundation of something vaguely resembling a relationship. The first objection viewers might have to this is the visual implausibility of Jason Segel (thirty-four) and Cameron Diaz (forty-one) playing college-aged adolescents. This conspicuous little logic question sets the tone from the opening sequence onwards; it also seemingly takes forever for Jay and Annie to actually make the tape, considering the couple in the back of the theater were, quite impressively, able to make two and a half tapes themselves before the end of the first half.

Jay and Annie’s quest to locate and destroy all extant coital copies leads them on an evening filled with equally ridiculous moments of intra-relational ‘clarity’, where the couple ruminates on why they made the damn tape in the first place. Yet, since their relationship is constructed almost entirely on physical attraction, the night is more revelatory than anything else. At times it seems that if these two thought about sex as much as they profess to, they wouldn’t have time to hold employment, walk in a straight line or even remember each other’s names.

Is Sex Tape funny? At times, very much so—Rob Lowe steals this film. But beyond intermittent episodes of crude, slapstick humor, the story offers little more than the noisy antics of two people whose situation is hardly as dire as they inflate it to be. Even more detrimental is the uncomfortable inclusion of children into this arena—not just on the periphery, but as active players. The head of a major porn website rattling off the litany of his competitors (Youjizz, etc.) in front of a five-year-old is, to me, morally indefensible.  Call me old-fashioned. 

If you have any preconceptions about what a student film set would be like, I can imagine it’s something like a chaotic melee of handheld cameras, improvised costumes, bewildered actors and enough creative enthusiasm to power a small rocket. Like Passolini trying to co-ordinate the Battle of the Somme. But the set we visited was as far removed from that amateurish stereotype as could be imagined. There was order, clear direction, a sizeable production team and professional equipment. It was a student film set, but one that screamed skill and proficiency. 

We spent an afternoon on the set of two student films being shot in Oxford, called Waterbird and Catkins; a double feature exhibiting the best that the local amateur film scene has to offer. Professionalism seems to be the watchword of the project, from production to acting. Ryan, playing one of the protagonists for Waterbird, went to lengths in explaining how high-calibre this was in comparison to his other experiences; “It’s far more professional. I’ve done a few things before this, but nothing of this sort of calibre with such a strong team. From head to toe of the project, everyone knows their role, everyone’s got a fantastic relationship.” To get a better sense of just where this professionalism comes from, we sat down with producer Ksenia, head of marketing Owen, and Ryan to better understand the project.

Waterbird, the one we saw being filmed,follows two friends, one partying to forget, the other a keen sportsman, who have a falling out that leads to a tragic accident, and how the surviving friend reminisces by a river on the loss. Catkins follows a man arguing with his wife, who is convinced to not divorce her after an ethereal encounter with a young woman on a river bank, caressing a bunch of the eponymous flowers. Ksenia explained how “the one big project is how people use nature to come to terms with their grief, and how nature symbolises the pain they’re going through.” And as Owen pointed out, “it means you get to film in some really beautiful places, like these lovely rivers”, referring to the banks of the Cherwell where the crew was filming that day.

And although being shown together, the films had very separate conceptions. “Waterbird was an amalgamation of things Alex (the director) had come across, the tragic death story is something that’s happened to a friend. Catkins came from a Turgenev short story, where there’s a very similar plot and Alex has decided to put it into a modern context. So very different, and we’re intending on making them very stylistically different”, Ksenia elaborated. Indeed, in terms of style, the films have a very clear aesthetic intent. “The outdoors shoots appear very dreamy, less realistic. Based on what we’ve seen so far from Catkins, the outdoor bits almost seem like a dream and very idealised. The indoor scenes are much more realistic”. Owen also explained how the visual aspect affects the structure of the story telling. “All of the present day stuff is outdoors and dreamy, all the indoor stuff is a year ago, dreary. It’s all very enclosed and suffocating.”

Sound also plays a key role in both shorts, where substantial aspects of the story telling are shifted to the soundtrack. “The sound adds an atmospheric quality. Both films feature folk songs that are being reworked, and we’re improving with the actors to get some folk songs as well. The songs also represent the idea of nature being solace, as they come on when the characters find contact with nature and I think it adds a romantic touch.” Owen went further, “Alex has always seen sound as a purer way of expressing emotion; as soon as a song begins it’s something different, dreamier.”

Such a thoughtful and in-depth attitude to all aspects of the filming is something extremely striking about the production. All aspects of the visuals and the sound represent something and further the story, even down to the importance of individual props in the scenes. There is very little sign of thoughtlessness in any aspect of the films. The actors are all plugged in to what is going on and the artistic intention, as James, playing the other protagonist in Waterbird, explained when we spoke to him. “The rehearsals have been extremely helpful in bringing emotion out in the performances, especially the darker emotions. It’s been really professional in how everything’s been explained to us, and how we’re meant to approach it from an acting point of view.”

So, these were student films that bore, perhaps, little resemblance to the ramshackle stereotype attached to amateur productions. It was slick, well thought-out, well funded, with financial backing of the Vice Chancellor himself, and was consistently directed by clear artistic intent. Even the equipment we saw would not look out of place on a professional film, with top-of-the-range cameras, lenses and sound equipment. No home movie handheld cameras here. But more than just impressively snazzy, the quality of equipment spoke volumes about the care and attention that pervaded the set. Clearly, these were films intended to be pieces of art, not just distracting side-projects. 

Both films are being entered in a host of films festivals, both domestic and international, from Tribeca to Southampton, and whilst we can’t tell what the finished products will be like, based on professionalism alone, Waterbird/Catkins certainly have a fighting chance. And don’t worry, you’ll be able to watch the end result for yourself, as the team intend to put on a showing in Oxford some time at the end of Michaelmas or the beginning of Hilary. 

Regis Philbin is best known for his twenty-eight years hosting the popular morning television program Live!, as well as the American version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? He is a multiple Emmy Award-winner, Life Time Achievement Award Recipient and Broadcasting Hall of Famer. To Americans he is a national treasure—the televisual equivalent of the Statue of Liberty. Cody assures us that he is the only non-President carved on Mt. Rushmore. Google disagrees.

Regis Philbin has spent more than 17,000 hours on television. If you’re curious, yes, that’s a Guinness World Record. To put it in perspective, it’s also the equivalent of spending the entirety of two years of one’s life on television.

“What do you wanna know baby?” Aside from everything, I ask the man who’s done it all—partly out of reverence, partly out of diffidence—about his own childhood shyness. Was he of all people, as he’s gone on record publicly to say, afraid of performing?

“Oh, very shy. For a while there I thought it was going to hold me back. I really, never told anybody what I wanted to do. Because I didn’t think I could do it. I mean I wanted to go into some type of entertainment—radio, whatever. But then television came along and I thought maybe I could do something there; I didn’t know what it was. 

“As a matter of fact, I had to do two years in the Navy after Notre Dame because we were at war with Korea. After it was over and I was all packed up and ready to leave, one of the Marine Majors that I’d been hanging around with where we lived—in San Diego Bay—was a very tough guy, and he said to me, ‘what are you going to do with the rest of your life?’ I said, ‘You know, Major, I really don’t know. I would like to go into television. I see it now. But, I don’t know if I can do it.’ He said, ‘don’t you know you can have anything you want in this life? You’ve only got to want it bad enough. Now do you want it?’ And I said, ‘well, yeah, but you don’t understand, Major. I have no experience. I have no talent. I don’t know what I could do.’ And this guy, this Marine Major was a tough, tough guy, he looked at me right in the eye and he said, ‘I said do you want it?!’ I said, ‘Yes, Sir (trembling), I want it.’ And that was the first time that I was able to tell anybody yes, that’s what I want.”

The Major’s clairvoyance is not particularly shocking, considering Regis spent his Navy days “yelling and screaming and getting laughs”. His was the unwavering smile; he transcended the drudgery and inevitable monotony of armed service by playfully voicing his dissent, flirting with insubordination but saying what was on everybody else’s mind. It did not go unnoticed by his men—perhaps, his first true audience. My mind lingers on what court marshaling Regis Philbin would have looked like.   

After the Navy, Regis wound up in Los Angeles running errands for the local news station, KCOP, in Hollywood. His chores included “carrying furniture from the prop house to the studio where they were making the show and then cleaning up the show after it was over.” Though his duties were certainly beneath the qualifications of a commissioned officer in the United States Navy, Regis began to feel some degree of validation working for Channel Eight in San Diego. Half journalist and half comedian, Regis was tasked with “coming up with something every hour on the hour for eight hours, so (he) spent a lot of time at the San Diego Police station.” He was entirely on his own without any writers for support. Not only did he survive unscathed, and without any serious communicable infections. He received a call from Channel Ten. They wanted Regis’s witty remarks and singular enthusiasm. 

The rest is television history: The Regis Philbin Show, The Joey Bishop Show, Live!, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?—to name a few. I’m eager to know what’s been the one indispensible aspect of his personal life. “Joy,” he tells me, without the slightest hesitation.

“You know my baby, Joy? She’s been a tremendous help in my life. I’m so happy that I met her and that we’ve spent forty-five years together. And that is really, as you say, indispensible for me.”

He tells me that he’s no stranger to the evolution of comedy. Unfortunately, with the internet came evil incarnate, anonymous bloggers stewing in the their parents’ basements lusting after the crude, irreverent mockery so ubiquitously employed by a contemporary generation of younger comics. “That’s not for me,” he tells me with almost religious conviction, and I propose his continued successes might have something to do with the ratio of those he entertains to those he offends, or to his maintaining only loose affiliations with several prominent bicoastal gangs.

“I’m happy to hear you say that. Because that’s what I’ve tried to do. I’ve tried to get the laughs without offending anyone. And, that’s the way it’s always been I think. And I hope, even with my cohosts or just people who were in the audience, I don’t offend anybody. Just get them on your side.” Get them on your side—something he’s been doing for the last sixty years. But who would Regis Philbin be had he never stepped on a television set?

“I might still be a page at NBC,” he laughs. “It’s just, one of those things that I kept working at and working at and finally it came to me.” I start to get the sense he’s never once envisioned an alternative. And of that childhood shyness? Is that gone?

“It’s tough because you always have your doubts about yourself. And then you get out there and for some reason it comes to you and you make it happen. And you’re on your way. But yeah, I think about it a lot. I think success to somebody is overcoming their doubts about what they really want to do, and at least taking a try at it. Don’t overlook that. He thinks, you can’t do it. You can do it. It depends on how well you do it, of course, but still you must give yourself that try.” 

Regis is a great sport and he consents to a game of word association wherein he must only reply with one word describing my successive promptings. 

Tabloid Journalism—

“Tabloid journalism…well, I think it—one word?”

If you would, please.

“Terrible.”

 Oxford—

 “I’d have to say the best.”

I tell him how much Cambridge will enjoy that. 

Gelman (his longtime producer on Live!)—

“I still see Gelman to this day and we reminisce about the old days. Let me pick out a word for him: indefatigable.”

Kelly (his most recent co-host on Live! of eleven years)—

“I rarely talk to her since I left. She seems to be doing fine with Michael Strahan. They seem to be a good team together. They’re getting along as far as I can see. Who knows what’s happening behind the camera, but no—(laughs) I would say she’s doing just fine.”

Out of respect I refrain from reminding him about the fine print of word association.

Kathie Lee (his former co-host on Live! of fifteen years)— 

“I gotta yell ya, I’m going to pinch-hit for Coda. Is that her name?”

He’s referring of course to Hoda Kotb, Kathie Lee’s current co-host on the fourth hour of NBC’s The Today Show, but something tells me there’s a conscious jab somewhere in there for me, though I know not where.

“I keep calling her ‘Coda’ and Kathie gets mad at me. Anyway, I’m going to pinch-hit for her with Kathie Lee. And I guess—I’m up in my attic in Connecticut. Going over some pictures that I want to bring and reminisce with her. She’s a very, very special character and someone who never gives up. And if she wants something she goes out and she makes it happen. I admire her tremendously.”

Your career—

 “Lucky (laughs).” What about blessed?

He takes a second. “Blessed, too. No doubt about that. That’s a much better word. Thank you. Thank you for the help.”

I remind him that the USC Trojans play the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 29 November 2014. As one of the more vocal Irish fans on television, how come he never tried out for the team when he was at university? As a Trojan myself, I’m merely being facetious; I know full well that Regis is five-six on a good day and has, at best, only coachable footwork.

“Oh, I did think about it. But as soon as I got there and I saw Leon Hart and “Jungle” Jim Martin and Emil Sitko and all those guys that were there when I started as a freshman, I knew it wasn’t for Regis.”

I think it worked out for Regis. 

Njal’s Saga, ‘100 years of Solitude’ in Iceland – Penguin Classics 2001, translated by Robert Cook

Magical Realism? Check. Blunt sexuality? Yup. Impassive narration in translation? Absolutely. Reams of characters requiring family trees and indices? You betcha. Generational shifts? Oh yeah. Fatalism and prophecy? All the time. A cultural shift to Christianity? Check.

This may sound like 100 years of Solitude, but in fact it predates Marquez’s novel by about 700 years. This is Njal’s Saga, written anonymously in Icelandic in the late 13th Century, and it’s pretty great.

Njal’s Saga is a mixture of the awe-inspiring and the horrifying, epically spanning multiple generations and perhaps a hundred or so deaths. Newly developing Icelandic culture is caught between the need for vengeance and the desire for peace, and time and again it is the masculinity of the characters that pushes them from accepting settlements for offences to violence. This is not simply a chronicle of murders, however. Njal and Gunnar, two of the many central figures, attempt to maintain a stable society while all around them men and women call for death.

Central to Icelandic law was the idea that offences could be paid for; so killing a man could result in either outlawry, or having to pay a certain sum of money. Another option, though, was simply for the relatives of the victim to head out and retaliate. The feud between Njal and Gunnar’s families puts on display all the emotions and options surrounding family enmities, as the heads of the families struggle to keep peace while their wives and children wage war behind their backs. It is here that Njal’s Saga becomes a legal drama, as the prosecutions are more exciting than the battle-scenes. This aspect becomes even more crucial later in the Saga, when a great tragedy leads to great court-scenes between the two greatest Icelandic lawyers, Eyjolf and Thorhall.

There are hurdles to enjoying the Saga, such as the endless numbers of characters and the complicated family lines, but you can safely skip over the geneologies without missing out on the plot, and just occasionally check an index if you’re unsure which Thorgeir is currently killing which Glum. More upsettingly Njal’s Saga, like most literature of its time, is almost entirely a documentation of masculinity, and so women get bit-part roles. They can be wives, mothers and daughters, married for the profit of their male relatives, but they can also be the harshest proponents of blood-vengeance, and their urgings often lead to the deaths of their sons and brothers.

Once you’ve got the hang of it Njal’s Saga is one of the most fascinating books you’re likely to read. Throughout the Saga heroism is thoroughly explored and weighted against stability, while the legal and societal realism retains its power despite enchanted axes and singing corpses. This is a story of men killing each other, but it is by no means a straight-forward treatment. These are complex characters, no simple Vikings, and they deserve a read.

Oxford University a cappella group Out of the Blue’s take on ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ by Shakira has been endorsed by the Columbian musician after it was released earlier this week.

The single, released on Tuesday in aid of Oxford children’s hospice Helen and Douglas House, also includes excerpts from the Shakira songs ‘Waka Waka’ and ‘Whenever, Wherever’. The single has so far received over 1.4 million views on YouTube.

Shakira Tweeted her approval at the single on Wednesday, after Gay Times ran a piece on it.

Hey @ootboxford, we LOVE your a capella Shak medley! ¡Nos encanta este medley que han hecho @ootboxford! http://t.co/wzNCLruDYq ShakHQ

— Shakira (@shakira) July 23, 2014

Out of the Blue member Marco Alessi told Cherwell, “The staff at Gay Times really kicked it all off for us, so we’re incredibly grateful to them, and Shakira’s tweet is crazy. Unfortunately it’s not so simple, but if 0.5% of her followers donated fifty pence we would make £65,000 for the charity!”

Alessi continued, “We chose to make a video for ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ because it’s one of the sillier, more upbeat songs from our set, and has always been a hit at Helen and Douglas House when we’ve performed it there.”

He remarked, “Although we wish children had no reason to be at Helen and Douglas House, unfortunately this is not the case and so it’s great that the prevailing atmosphere is immensely optimistic and the staff there are tireless and wonderful. Our Shakira medley definitely reflects that best.

“We chose Helen and Douglas House because the work they do is absolutely incredible. They offer free respite and end-of-life care to children and young adults with severely life-limiting illnesses, and bereavement support for their families. We visit regularly so we’ve got to know the staff and we’ve spent time with some of the families staying there and we’re constantly overwhelmed with how positive and high-spirited they all are. The work the hospice does is really extraordinary.” 

Likewise, Out of the Blue singer Ollie Nicholls commented, “We tried to be quite unexpected. You wouldn’t expect a load of Oxford boys to start becoming Latina dancers. We tried juxtaposing the location of Oxford and dress with the song.”

Ollie Nicholls added, “All the hype feels weird. When it gets so widely shared, it’s quite nerve racking, but we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive reaction. I think people are more forgiving when it’s for charity; they can overlook the fact we can’t dance. That’s something I’ve not stressed enough actually. I don’t want the fact that it’s for charity to be lost in all the hype about Shakira. The charity is Helen and Douglas house, who we’ve been supporting for over eight years.”

Out of the Blue have raised £35,000 for Helen and Douglas House since they began supporting the charity in 2006.

The single is available to download from Bandcamp.