Even without costumes, a stage, or the entire cast, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s tale of Eighteenth Century convicts staging a play in an Australian penal colony comes to life. The rehearsal space of Wadham’s “theatre” has more vibes of a school gym than a place of performance, but for a few minutes it becomes a space owned entirely by the actors. I’m sitting in on a scene near the end of the play, when rising tensions come to a head between Officer Ralph and convict Wisehammer in their fight over Mary Brenham.

It becomes evident almost instantly how sympathetic each actor is towards their character. Dom Pollard, playing Ralph, vocalised what was already evident, “the lines are not just lines, but an overriding subtext”.

The actors have clearly not just memorised the words, but allowed them to filter into their consciousness to form a character that can live outside the pages of a play script. Each run-through of the scene uses a different approach to the characters, and it is invigorating to see theatre’s versatility of play being used to its fullest extent. Furthermore, it is refreshing to see actors who thoroughly understand their characters as people and not just textual constructs.

Playfulness aside, a conversation with director Fay Lomas on why she chose the text reveals a deeper poignancy and cultural relevance. Despite being written thirty years ago, for her the text reflects cultural and social issues that are present in our own society.

“For both the characters in the play and prisoners in our own prison system, art and literature are important means of expression. If such materials are taken away, as is being questioned in our own society now, people become devoid of any creative outlet and means of expression. They become more isolated than they already are.”

It also becomes clear how ambitious, and how successfully so, Lomas’ production is. For her, the largest challenge is the sheer amount of action in the play. Actors are not only playing characters, but characters playing other characters on a stage where “people are sets; sets are people”.

Everything becomes either a prop or an actor. Set plans reveal how the unusually laid out blocks on the stage become a representational hierarchy of the colony’s social divisions, held together by decorative ropes, and show their unified isolation at the edge of the British Empire. The audience themselves are laid in a huddled fashion around the corner, in a sense temporarily becoming the speechless other members of the colony, gazing at the spectacle of convicts in dirty clothing and finely attired guards.

Although I only saw a snippet of the play, I can’t wait to go back to the Keble O’Reilly to see more. From the conversations that I had, I gained a sense of deep investment and involvement in the project of both cast and crew, nurturing the text into a living, breathing colony on stage that thrives off the attention of an audience. Don’t let this creative child starve — go and see it.

★☆☆☆☆
One Star

I am old enough to have hazy recollections of watching — on VHS cassette — the old cartoon episodes of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (as it was then called), and playing an equivalently named computer game on the original NES console. Neither experience recalls particu­larly warm memories, but they were enjoyable enough ways of procrastinating at the time. The Turtles franchise has since then been through several film iterations. The one I remember from the early ‘90s consisted of actors in rath­er camp-looking costume suits, which, for all their artistic foibles, had a certain charm. This review is of 2014’s effort.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) is an at­tempt to reboot, à la Batman Begins, an oth­erwise tired franchise. As with Nolan’s effort to make serious the camp crusader, this film attempts to make darker, more serious and edgier our heroes in a half-shell. In the direc­tor’s chair is Jonathan Liebesman, of whom I must confess to never having heard of before. IMDb tells me that his previous outing was at the helm of Wrath of the Titans, which, I am assured, was insufferably awful. Before that he churned out Battle: Los Angeles, which, I can assure you, was insufferably awful. Sadly, Turtles adds to his growing canon of undistin­guished output.

The plot? April O’Neil (played by Megan Fox, with zero panache) is a hungry young journal­ist, tired of producing puff-pieces, hungering for her big break in churnalism. Then along comes the dream story she’s always wanted — four six-foot-tall vigilantes combating crime on the streets of the city. April has the exclu­sive.

The only caveat she faces is that these vigilantes are all giant mutated turtles, that “speak English” (April’s words) and their ring leader is a worryingly wise giant talking rat (Splinter). Unsurprising­ly, April’s editor (Whoopi Goldberg — who knew she was still acting?) disobligingly refuses to broad­cast the discovery, and April begins a personal quest for proof of her claims. Before long, she and said turtles be­come embroiled in a vast terrorist conspiracy (with a plot un­nerv­ingly similar to that of Batman Begins) led by a martial arts expert in a titanium suit (Shred­der!). Can they save the day?

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%10342%%[/mm-hide-text] 

One can understand how drivel like this gets made. There is a pre-existing franchise, which guarantees access to a ready-made fan base, however threadbare. There is already a plot and well-defined set of characters, so writers have to do little more than adapt an existing mythology to a screenplay. It is easy to storyboard, and producers can exercise a high level of control over the final prod­uct (historically the preserve of a director). Chances are that box office returns will be healthy.

But as artistic output, or even light entertainment fodder, Turtles is simply dread­ful. The heroes themselves are completely devoid of charm or humour. The ‘banter’ be­tween them is cringe-worthy, distinguished by its pre-eminent quality of farce. Less than twenty minutes into the running time, the film resorts to flatulence jokes. The computer generated imagery is unusually bad, so one cannot even suspend disbelief (as if the plot premise were not challenge enough). Splinter looks particularly absurd.

Can I say anything positive? The camera is held steady. The stunts are reasonably compe­tently handled. The plot, though lacklustre, is easy enough to follow. In mitigation to Me­gan Fox, she appears to have spent most time on set exchanging dialogue with imaginary creatures, later inserted through CGI in post-production, so she had little to ‘act’ against. I have considered whether I am simply judg­ing Turtles by the wrong standard, and should instead speculate on whether a child would enjoy it. Perhaps so, but I am not aware of children ma­triculating at Oxford or, gener­ally, reading Cherwell. Unless you seek an exercise in nostalgia, or need to entertain a tasteless child for a couple of hours, avoid this film at all costs.

If I were to ask you what the highest selling album of this year was so far, thoughts of Ed Sheeran, Coldplay or Sam Smith might enter your head. But no. The most successful album of 2014, so far, is the Frozen soundtrack, a film that was catapulted to being the highest-gross­ing animation and the fifth highest-grossing film of all time by its music and songs. Be­yond just financial success, soundtracks have always played a vital role in the popularity and effectiveness of cinema. And so, inspired by this, we decided to look back on the best soundtracks from the annals of film’s history.

The first distinction between the great soundtracks of cinema’s history is between or­chestral and non-orchestral scores. Within the purely instrumental oeuvre, canonical land­marks like the haunting harmonica melody from Midnight Cowboy, The Godfather’s swell­ing symphony, or the piercing violin staccato of Psycho all stand out. Not only were these fantastic musical constructions themselves, but also integral to the story-telling and at­mosphere creation of their respective produc­tions. The ethereal and poetically moving use of classical music in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Od­yssey was, in many ways, the apogee of demon­strating the impact that these instrumental soundtracks could have.

The 2000s saw a mini ‘Golden Age’ for or­chestral movie soundtracks, begun by Gladi­ator’s heroic musical backing. Created by mu­sic impresario Hans Zimmer, creator of the soundtrack for any film worth mentioning over the last twenty years, the score was not only Oscar-nominated, but went on to inspire the music for Pirates of the Caribbean as well. Zimmer also wrote the score for Inception, that boomingly menacing mélange that includes the track Time, an utterly entrancing and in­vigorating piece. And of course, The Lord of the Rings won two Oscars for its brilliantly com­posed, and now iconic, music.

On the compilation side of soundtracking, Quentin Tarantino is often credited as the con­temporary master of movie music. It speaks volumes that Reservoir Dogs is as well-known for its use of ‘Little Green Bag’ as anything else, just like Pulp Fiction’s opening credits can im­mediately be recognised by the surf-rock ma­nia of Dick Dale’s rendition of ‘Misirlou’. Equal­ly, Paul Thomas Anderson’s who’s who of disco classics that scored Boogie Nights is a feel-good trip, which culminates in the truly awesome scene of Alfred Molina’s chrome bathrobe-clad coke addict singing along to ‘Jessie’s Girl’. Obviously, when talking of disco soundtracks it’s impossible not to mention Saturday Night Fever, with its Bee Gees dominated playlist, so adored that it reinvigorated the sales for disco albums.

Many of these soundtracks were so great because they were put in the hands of prodi­gious musical talents. The truly frightening and ominous tone of the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood, which perfectly complimented the demented protagonist of Daniel Plainview, was the brainchild of Radiohead guitarist Jon­ny Greenwood.

There’s also The Lion King, with a soundtrack famously written by Elton John and so well known it’s hard to imagine a cinematic world without it. Even last year’s The Great Gatsby, though critically divisive, was roundly praised for its cracking soundtrack, which was execu­tive produced by Jay-Z.

What makes all these few examples, or any other fantastic film score, so emotive and ex­emplary is that they are intimately tied to the films they accompany. Far from being mere compilations of amazing music, they become integral parts of the plot development, atmos­phere creation or scene-setting of their respec­tive productions. Just imagine The Magnificent Seven without its galloping, brassy theme, or Darth Vader without the marching band drumming and horns blaring in the back­ground. And lucky for us, as the Frozen and The Guardians of the Galaxy soundtracks, which went to the top of the Billboard chart in the US, attest, modern cinema clearly hasn’t lost sight of the value of a brilliant movie soundtrack.

Political autobiographies must be one of the most uninteresting literary genres, principally populated by authors with sufficiently large egos to have believed themselves capable of fixing their country and, even more impressively, after failing to do so, to explain why they believe themselves to have been successful. Perhaps surprisingly however, John Major: The Autobiography succeeds where so many others failed.

At present, the author is enjoying something of a resurgence in his newly-found role as an elder statesman, regularly commenting upon issues as his words are gratefully received by a once vicious press. As Major enjoys a renaissance hopefully many will be drawn towards his autobiography as it is a genuinely absorbing read.

Despite being popularly regarded as a stopgap between the premierships of the variously hated Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, John Major’s was a uniquely eventful seven years. In that time New Labour emerged, the first Gulf War was fought, the pound fell out of the ERM, Bill Clinton was elected, the Northern Ireland Peace Process began and the Conservative Party ripped itself apart so comprehensively that the damage still shows. Major was at the helm during this period of changes and his observations, critiques and analyses are fascinating.

Such works can so often descend into vain justifications for failed policies and spiteful attacks upon enemies. Major, to his credit, does not indulge in either of these. His anger at those rebels who sought to derail the Maastricht Treaty in Parliament is palpable but not spiteful. This work does not read as the product of someone sharpening his knife but rather as a politician reviewing his career with a certain sense of wonder that things could have gone so spectacularly wrong.

In addition to his time as Prime Minister, Major was a leading light in Thatcher’s government and his book is invaluable to one looking to gain an insight into this most controversial of premierships. As Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Major was privy to much of her private decision making and, in parts, is openly critical of her. He bemoans her dogmatism and heavily criticises her acts of sabotage upon government legislation after her fall from power.

When you find yourself on the third inevitable pub trip of Michaelmas with people you barely know and ought to impress, there’s one traditional fail-safe that every Oxford student has fallen back on; wanking on about the books you’ve read (or heard about). Here’s our bluffer’s guide to sounding well-read.

On The Road — Jack Kerouac
An obligatory read for anyone who has taken a gap year and everyone who wished they did. Full of Benzedrine and ‘tea’ this can make you sound worldly, beatnik and interesting without even needing to rip your trousers.

Das Kapital — Karl Marx
You don’t actually need to read this; Sparknotes The Communist Manifesto and you’ve basically got all you need to convince your first fresherfriend that you’re going to spearhead the global revolution.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce
If you’ve ever been disappointed by the incompetence of everyone around you, then this is your book. Superiority oozes out of its very name, and this handy little name-drop will elevate you (and your tortured poetry) above any non-humanities student. Beware of being over-ambitious and claiming to have read Ulysses.