It’s not uncommon in today’s film industry to see A-list actors try their hand at writing or directing; many music videos seem more like mini-features, with introductory sequences and outros longer than the song itself; the line between artist and filmmaker has been all but erased. Last year saw Steve McQueen, winner of the Turner Prize in 1999, collect an Oscar for Twelve Years a Slave. In short, these days it appears almost as if anyone can be a filmmaker.

With this in mind, here are a few individuals from across the spectrum of the arts whose directorial debuts would set hearts beating that much faster.

First up, how about Haruki Murakami? Imagine, if you will, a film in which a real-life version of Johnnie Walker (the whiskey mascot) harvests the beating hearts of talking cats and uses them to build a flute the size of the universe. Or one in which the softly-spoken narrator spends weeks cooking pasta, listening to Brahms and wondering why his wife has left him, before eventually beating her brother to death in a dream to win her back.

You have just pictured the potential film adaptations of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

So far, the only film adaptation of the seminal Japanese writer’s work has been Norwegian Wood, a Japanese-made version of Murakami’s 1987 novel of the same name. Dealing with nostalgia, sexual experimentation and adolescence, both book and film are strong offerings, but Norwegian Wood is the least typical of Murakami’s writing, lacking his trademark flair for magic realism. The immense creativity that pours from the pages of all of his other work would lend itself to films that were engaging, moving and utterly puzzling, and probably between three and four hours long.

When the Japanese publisher of Kafka on the Shore opened a website to deal with questions about the novel, over 8,000 were submitted to the author. If Murakami were to find the means to translate his unique vision into celluloid, the results would undoubtedly mean more of the same. Think along the lines of a Japanese-language David Lynch movie with more humanitas.

My second dream film-maker would be Kanye West. If you are still one of those people who thinks of Kanye West as the guy who interrupted Taylor Swift onstage at the VMAs, or the guy who gave Kim Kardashian a naked painting of herself as a wedding gift, then you probably haven’t listened to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. If you haven’t listened to MBDTF then you probably haven’t seen the short film that was made to accompany it, Runaway. And if you haven’t seen Runaway, then you are, unfortunately, unaware of the brilliance that a feature-length conceptual movie based on a Kanye West album could hold.

It would have to be a musical, of course. With Kanye doing the soundtrack and the storyline, there would be guaranteed excess – he’d have to top what his short film already covered, which included supermodel Selita Ebanks playing a fallen phoenix who he nurses back to health, and a giant papier-mâché tribute to Michael Jackson paraded by a marching band. Only Kanye West could cite Federico Fellini and Karl Lagerfeld as influences on the same piece of art. Any film he made would be part fashion show, part ego-worship and part misinformed political statement, and all controversy.

Kanye’s not necessarily alone in having this idea. Childish Gambino did something similar recently, with his album Because the Internet doubling as a screenplay and a short film Clapping for the Wrong Reasons released alongside it. Ultimately, though, Kanye’s ambition, arrogance and ability to set tastes would see his directorial debut unrivalled.

Like Yeezy, South African hip-hop artists Die Antwoord have already starred in their own short film, Umshini Wam (the name means ‘Bring me my machine gun’ in the Zulu language). Directed by Harmony Korine of Spring Breakers fame, it is a horrendously low-budget affair in which Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er spend most of their time rolling around in wheelchairs wearing onesies and arguing.

Nonetheless, the duo manages to display fleeting moments of untapped big-screen potential and within the sixteen-minute runtime they draw significant sympathy for their characters. After all, Die Antwoord have spent their entire careers building up devil-may-care personas for themselves which must – at least partially – be an act. Surely no-one can truly tell where the white trash swagger ends and the real Die Antwoord begins?

Their case is helped by the fact that every DA song is improved by about 1000% when watched with the music video. Fatty Boom Boom and Pitbull Terrier are particularly good examples, and one needs only to imagine two hours of this kind of thing to picture the total insanity that a film directed by these iconoclastic and maverick individuals would represent.

Dan Harmon could be considered part of a trinity, along with Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams, of the best cult filmmakers of the past ten years. However, the creator of Community is the only one of the three yet to transition from TV to feature films. Following the successes of Abrams’ Lost and Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and the cult status of Firefly), the two have ended up directing the Star Trek reboot and the Avengers movies respectively. Harmon, however, has reached nowhere near the status of the other two despite working with big names including Sarah Silverman and Jack Black. His writing credentials more than justify a movie; one which would be irreverent and full of brilliant self-parody.

Harmon is also the most likely person in this list to actually end up directing something. Despite looking at one point as though it was consigned to history as the show that was too smart for mainstream television, Community has found a second wind, with Harmon returning to the show for a markedly improved fifth season and a sixth commissioned by Yahoo Screen. With rumours abounding of a big-screen adaptation, it would be hard to imagine anyone other than Harmon at the helm. #SixSeasonsAndAMovie!

Artist Damien Hirst at the helm of a blockbuster is difficult to imagine, but bear with me. Anyone who has seen Ben Wheatley’s Civil-War-meets-mushroom-trip film A Field In England will remember a scene in which the sun, a huge swirling mass, terrifyingly black, expands and engulfs the sky. The effect is both mesmerising and paralysing. Damien Hirst’s Black Sun is not dissimilar for obvious reasons. At first appearing a simple black circle painted onto a wall, the piece draws in the unwary viewer in until their face is inches away from the canvas. It is only then that they realise the sun is composed of the bodies of thousands upon thousands of dead flies. Nihilistic and all-consuming, Wheatley’s cinematography could almost be an animation of Hirst’s static artwork, and offers a vision of what the latter’s oeuvre could lend to the silver screen.

Hirst was once the enfant terrible of British art. Now he is part of the establishment, and has slightly faded out of public consciousness. A film could be the perfect way for him to burst back onto the scene. Following his £111m sale at Sotheby’s in 2008, there would be no need for him to compromise or tone down his ideas in order to secure funding – it would be a pure vanity project. Dead cows and sharks, butterflies, pills and skulls would be the visual media, and the downfall of humanity and inevitability death would be the subject matter. Hirst’s movie could be like an ultra-stylised Melancholia.

“Thanks, Bestival,” mumbles one of the identikit Disclosure brothers, gazing dourly at the seething main stage crowd, “you’re the… Best Festival”. To my astonishment, there is a roar of delight. I imagined him penning this bon mot in the mansion bought by the sales of Latch, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth while Sam Smith gives him a backrub. Theirs is the first set I see and it is as uninspiring as this witticism suggests.

Thankfully, the contrast between this painfully forced crowd interaction and the dazzling showmanship of headliners Outkast, Foals and Chic was painfully evident. I’ve never actually met anyone who knows the lyrics to the chorus of Latch (the crowd’s rendition runs something like “now I’ve got you in my face/I wun ger berberder- fner! fner!”). The drippingly middle-class crowd makes a similarly poor stab at many of Outkast’s numbers other than ‘Hey Ya’ and ‘Miss Jackson’, but Andre 3000’s stage presence is so great that it literally doesn’t matter at all. He and Foals’ Yannis Philippakis are two incarnations of the same frontman god. One is snake-hipped and chain-smoking, one ebullient and clad in a t-shirt reading ‘My Dad Owns Good Records’: both are more than capable of controlling 30,000 ecstatic worshippers.

As with Outkast, the crowd floundered a little during the mid-afternoon performance of Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde. “Any reaaaaaaaaaaaaaal hip-hop heads out there?” the reunited hip-hop legends demand, to which the honest response of a Sunday audience nursing their comedowns with four-pound orange smoothies is “not really, no, although I quite enjoy the music of Vanilla Ice”. It’s a good set but you can sense their relief to get off stage and escape an audience whose response to their earnest injunctions to “smoke weed till you dieeeeee” is little more than polite applause. Clean Bandit’s mum-friendly electro-pop is more warmly received but far more forgettable than the Dilla-dedicated ‘Runnin’’ or the superlative ‘Passin’ Me By’. This unexpected combo is followed by the gutting combination of a cancellation by Busta Rhymes and a frankly distressing set by Major Lazer, replete with garish graphics of bouncing booties. Once they dropped ‘I Like to Move it Move it’ with no apparent sense of irony I headed demurely for the exit.

Away from the main stage, it was pretty much all good news. Setting aside a personal revulsion for fancy dress (does it really improve your festival experience in any way whatsoever to wave a parrot on a stick around for nine hours while wearing a banana suit and a zombie mask?) and the inexplicable presence of 13 trillion nos canisters underfoot in all the dance tents (making it impossible to dance without skittering around like Wile E Coyote on an oilslick), then the vibes were good, the festival was well-run and the stages were thoughtfully organised.

CHVRCHES invigorated the crowd on Sunday evening as the sun set for the last time over the gorgeous cityscape of the campsites, inviting us to turn and gaze back at an array of kitsch including a Ferris wheel, the biggest glitter ball OF ALL TIME and what must presumably have been the world’s biggest collection of bucket hats and wavy sports jackets. There was no hassle (apart from a year-nine style kerfuffle at the entrance when the organisers inexplicably and abruptly started preventing over-18s from bringing their own alcohol into the event). People were there to have a good time, and though there was an upsettingly large number of wizened steampunks and cyberhippies in attendance, there was also a merciful dearth of lairy sixthformers.

The stand out set was from the soon-to-disband Darkside, who sounded even better live than on wax. Their work was given a thick intensity by the understanding between instrumentalist Dave Harrington and electronic programmer Nicholas Jaar, with their set evolving from a song-by-song experimental rock gig to a roaring, continuous ambient performance. Sonically, Caribou amongst others suffered from stodgy mixing on the same stage: this was a complex set which was not best suited to a lock-jawed 4AM crowd. Public Service Broadcasting handled the same dodgy mixing somewhat better, building what can best be described as a modest wall of sound (a garden wall of sound, perhaps) beneath clipped upper-class vocal samples which sounded exactly the same as on record. Eschewing the by-then passé ‘Best festival’ gag, they opted for the moderately wittier ‘enjoy the Restival’ to close their moderately witty set. Late evenings saw the usual suspects from Ram Records, Black Butter and so on doing their thing, with my personal highlight being a chance to see Skream in his increasingly discofied incarnation.

On Sunday evening, I stumbled to the top of the main stage, flaccid sack of stolen perry flopping soggily in our pants as we shuffled guiltily through security. I expected Chic to perform with a little of the weary resignation to an ignorant crowd betrayed by some of their contemporaries. Stimulated by the death that afternoon of a long-term guitar technician, Nile Rogers wept as he led his disco ensemble in an astounding display of technical proficiency and love for the music. The final half-hour combo of Let’s Dance/Le Freak/Good Times, replete with fireworks, stage invasion and noodling slap bass solos, was a distillation of the disco spirit, and thus of the festival spirit too; a relentless onslaught of fun.

South Parks is famous for its views over the spires of the city (as well as being the bane of any cross-country runner) and later this month, from the 26th to the 28th of September, it will play host to a brand new festival: OxfordOxford, one that promises to be so good, they’ve named it twice. It’s the brainchild of E11E entertainment director and Oxford Brookes alumnus Owen Kent, who was inspired by the vibrancy of Reading and Electric Picnic festivals to work in the events industry. The key difference with OxfordOxford is that it hopes to celebrate the community of the city hand in hand with culture.

Like many students old and current, he is familiar with the Oxford music scene, recalling the highs of gigs at “Zodiac, Pub Oxford, Jericho Tavern, Bullingdon and Wheatsheaf” and the lows of “DJ Luck and MC Neat at Park End… and an incredibly awkward experimental music half hour on the Cowley Road”. He is thrilled to be finally going live with a project which has been years in the making: “I lived on Cowley Road while studying music at Brookes and became infatuated with Oxford and its music scene. As a student I wanted to develop an event for the City and after nearly 10 years of planning it’s amazing to have this opportunity”. As for the name, Kent explains that “my business partner, Anthony Norris, was the brain behind it, basing on the concept of New York, New York”. 

In its inaugural year, the ambitious programming promises a soaring start to what might, with support from the people of Oxford, become a regular feature in the city’s already hectic schedule. Of course, to stand out among the many events already out there, something new has to be introduced to the stage, and this festival promises to uniquely dedicate each of its three days to film, music and community.

The flavour of the festival’s Film Friday is indiscriminate interactivity, with the programme headed up by a sing-along version of Grease and a dance-along version of Dirty Dancing (it hasn’t been confirmed whether fancy dress is recommended in order to add to the effect). Some will jump at the chance of singing along to the lyrics of ‘Grease Lightning’, and for those who are apprehensive that any attempt to emulate the moves of Patrick Swayze will result in nothing but embarrassment, the screenings of Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, or of 80s classics Top Gun and The Goonies might make preferable viewing on the 32-foot cinema screen. 

Electonic groups Tuung and Pixel Fix (an act tipped for great things by the festival’s directors) are amongst the healthy line up of acts with Oxfordshire links set to make an appearance on the music Saturday, and in the spirit of this, the BBC’s Introducing stage will host local acts and Oxford circuit regulars Flights of Helios, Balloon Ascents and pop rock trio Robot Swans. Well established names from beyond the county make an appearance too, having been won over by the concept behind the festival. Klaxons, fresh from the release of album Love Frequency and making an Oxford exclusive appearance for 2014 will headline the Saturday, with support from Katy B and Gaz Coombes (the former Supergrass frontman and Oxford local, with a host of solo accolades under his belt). There’s also a set presented by Movement Records, featuring Michael Kiwanuka and Celeste in what the directors hope will be a “house-band style showcase of the label’s talents”.

A cornerstone of the festival is its important partnerships: official charity partner, Oxfam, Oxford City Council and of course the local community and small businesses (residents of the city and beyond with an OX postcode get a special discount for the entire weekend). As an all-encompassing festival, its organisers promise it will bring out the best of Oxford’s cultural pedigree (G&Ds, Missing Bean and the Oxford University Quiddich team all make an appearance on Sunday) within a line up worthy of larger festivals in even larger fields, but brought alive in the surroundings of a unique city (without the camping). And while it has been a event which has remained relatively under the radar until recently, the entire billing, from Film Friday to “something-for-everyone Sunday”, is definitely something to get very excited about before the start of term. 

★★★★☆
Four Stars

Marion Cotillard stuns as a woman fighting for her job, her mortgage and her sanity in the Dardenne brothers’ latest, Two Days, One Night,  a socially conscious drama of one woman’s struggle to return to work after a bout of depression. The film is terrifically acted and astutely observed, a morality tale pitting empathy and human connections against the pursuit of profit in a tidily constructed capitalist critique.

Cotillard has always excelled at playing characters caught between extremes – the professional highs and personal lows of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, the loss and recovery of her amputee whale trainer, Stéphanie in Rust and Bone – and here she excels herself, her Sandra capable of summoning a fierce determination which can collapse into a hopeless abyss without hitting a false note. It is a testament to Cotillard that Sandra’s polarised emotions never feel like two separate characters, with the performance anchored in a captivating brittleness. She holds the screen with every flicker of the eye, every twitch of a finger. We watch for any indicator that she’s about to break. It’s an incredibly restrained performance which somehow manages to tell us everything.

The film’s repetitive structure – Sandra must see her 16 co-workers individually throughout the weekend to convince them to sacrifice their bonus for her job – is systematic, designed to subject our protagonist to the same cruelties and social humiliations over and over again. Whilst this could have easily made for an unengaging narrative, the Dardennes turn the repetition into a virtue, with the film’s tapestry of repeated phrases and familiar arguments reappearing in new ways, showing us the gathering strength of our protagonist through their different applications.

Furthermore, the structure rarely feels too forced, as the richly drawn characters and human stories at the forefront of each interaction are so believable and engaging. Unfortunately, the truthfulness of the human stories fails to save the plot’s final twist from proving a contrivance too far. Whilst the twist engineers a satisfying resolution to Sandra’s emotional journey, its tidiness undermines a certain amount of the previously created realism by laying bare the machinations of the script.

The Dardennes wisely keep these blue collar character’s arguments pragmatic; the immorality of their decision is almost never debated, with the characters instead attempting only to weigh their needs against Sandra’s.The film’s naturalistic style, lacking a musical score or elaborate camerawork, provides little insight into Sandra’s internal life, instead offering us only the emotions Sandra allows to play across her face.

The depth of her emotional concealment often wrong foots the viewer, whose connection with her can be easily upended by an erratic turn in her behaviour, and yet the Dardenne brothers offer just enough to make Sandra engaging – she loves her children, needs to keep her house and wants to stay off the dole. This combination of distance and intimacy allow us to empathise with Sandra without viewing her bonus favouring colleagues as adversaries.

The almost faultless supporting cast use their scenes to flesh out the multitude of responsibilities pulling at their characters, even if a few actors fail to take us on a believable emotional journey.Through these people we experience the constant distractions of modern life. Everyone’s existence  is divided, their loyalties, their multiple jobs, their families. It’s there in the constantly ringing phone, in the blaring traffic, in the bass line of a distant radio, in a car’s wailing seat belt alarm. We feel these people’s exhaustion, even as we will them to endure more hardship.

The film is ultimately an examination of the human costs of a financial system which doesn’t account for them. It’s a hopeful portrait of a bleak situation. It’s wonderfully acted and delicately told. It’s a simple film about big things. It’s a film of highs and lows, and it’s absolutely worth the journey.

News that a touring production of Othello will usher in this year’s winter programme at the Oxford Playhouse is hardly a bolt out of the blue. Shakespeare’s verses gracing our stage once more is about as predictable as death at the end of a tragedy, while any buzz surrounding this performance’s ‘unique’ selling point – lo and behold, it’s a modern adaptation! – is likely to be the portentous murmur of disgruntled audiences, threatening,Oth “So bloody help me if it’s another all-female cast!”

Of course, it wouldn’t be the Playhouse, or perhaps any other self-respecting UK theatre for that matter, if a slice of Shakespeare weren’t on the menu from time to time. Despite the debates and dissertations about the ethics of adaptation, it appears as if our favourite tragedies and comedies without all that Elizabethan malarkey, are as much part of our staple diet as they are in their original performance conditions. But, in the case of Frantic Assembly’s six-year-old production, is our bellyaching about a surfeit of Shakespeare truly warranted? 

Both the qualms about too much Shakespeare and those protesting his disappearance into the mists of 21^st century re-workings are shortly to be silenced. Bringing to the fore both adapted and original scripts, Frantic Assembly is a leading physical theatre company whose founding directors and choreographers, Graham and Hoggett, are devoted to a practice that incorporates movement, design, visuals and storytelling, pushing each element to its limit. I first saw Frantic’s Othello when it toured in 2008, and the stubborn purist in me was seduced by this dynamic style of theatre from the word, ‘Tush!’

It would be no great feat to gush about the visual compulsion of the performance, the intensity and brutality of the conflict that unfolds amidst the warmth and vibrancy of a northern English pub, as top-dog Moor (a not so subtle nod to the Moor of Venice) takes on his rivals, the Turks. High-paced bar-room brawls are punctured by moments of balletic tenderness, underscored by streams of electronic dance music and the spinning lights of a slot machine. The production is a hot-blooded feast for the eyes, ears and heart, but what else would you expect when a dance-based company takes on a drama that pulsates as much in verse as in raw emotion?

Those who recoil from the likes of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar will be comforted to learn that Frantic’s Othello has an Iago-like mastery of deception in its manipulation of the original text.  Trickery and deception is there in every touch, every shape, every push and pull: seduced by the sheer immaculacy of the piece, enamoured by death and tragedy, against our will brutality becomes beauty. This is an attraction that disturbs our moral compass, and one that Shakespeare knew well to play with. His original wit and insight is still there, and somehow in action speaks louder than words.

Maybe Frantic’s modern adaptation isn’t all it’s predicted to be. Of course, surprises in Shakespeare are somewhat hard to come by, and debates surrounding his theatrical dominance are customarily heated. However, this October’s Othello has the potential to remind us of that blind passion from which ignorance is born. 

Frantic Assembly’s Othello will be performed at the Oxford Playhouse from the 21st to the 25th October.