Hollywood: the cinematic capital of the world, where billions of dollars are poured into making stories come to life on the big screen! With all the glamour, the money, the razzmatazz, you’d think it’d be pumping out classic after classic, creating finely-crafted masterpieces of cinema every year with only the occasional film which is merely above-average. The problem, of course, is that everybody who isn’t from the 1930s knows that this isn’t exactly what happens.

What we get instead is usually an uninspired remake of a better film, yet another sequel in a franchise whose shambling corpse should’ve been bludgeoned to death aeons ago, or something based on a particularly popular book, TV show, short story, comic book, cartoon, toy, video game or cereal packet. And when we do get something original, it’s usually something like Zach Snyder’s latest turgid offering, Sucker Punch. It’s shit. Consider that the official Cherwell review. He can put it on the poster if he likes.

But all this really makes you wonder – how? How on earth can a film with a bad script get funded for many millions of dollars, and worked on by hundreds and hundreds of people? In March, director Michael Bay admitted that Transformers 2 was ‘crap’, blaming the writing strike. So this was a script that even Michael Bay – Michael Bay, the man behind Pearl Harbor – realised was awful. You’d think he’d send his script-writers back to whatever Neanderthal cave they’d lurched from in the first place and tell them not to return until they’d come up with something a year 11 film studies student wouldn’t be embarrassed to submit as coursework. Instead, he made it into a movie, and it cost $200 million.

It’s oddly perverse, when you think about it, that the best writing these days can usually be found in small-budget indie films. Of course, in an indie flick, the writing is really all there is to hold up the film – it can’t rely on special effects, set-pieces and A-list actors to wow audiences into grovelling submission. But this isn’t an excuse. All that money and star power should be backing something of genuine quality, and if indie films can find good script-writers, mainstream movies have no excuse. Why, then, has Hollywood yet to get to grips with the groundbreaking idea of actively trying not to make movies which are embarrassingly bad?

Part of the reason is to do with the way Hollywood works. Script-writers may write the actual dialogue, but seldom are they behind the essential plot of the film – that’s up to the producers. And producers are also the people in charge of budgeting and finance. Not the creative type, in other words. With the best will in the world, there’s little chance of a script-writer producing a masterpiece when he or she’s handed a plot written by two glorified accountants trying desperately to appeal to their market demographics (‘we need a hot girl and an explosion, but also a bit of lovey-dovey stuff for the ladies’).

That’s a problem, but it’s not the real reason Hollywood keeps pumping out rubbish. The real reason is simple: Transformers 2 was the 23rd-highest-grossing film of all time. Films don’t have to be good to make money, they just have to have vaguely impressive special effects, be part of an established brand, and/or have enough money behind marketing. Writing simply doesn’t factor. Audiences don’t find out if the writing is crap until they actually start watching the film, and by that time, their money is already spent. Never mind that writing makes or breaks the quality of a film – good reviews don’t a fortune make.

This is why films like last year’s Inception are important. Inception showed Holywood that big blockbuster films, filled with special effects and action sequences, don’t have to be aggressively stupid. Films which require an ounce of thought on the audience’s part can still be fun and can still make money. Hopefully, now that good special effects are so commonplace that audiences are growing increasingly blasé about them, Hollywood will stop trying to push that boundary and pay attention to writing instead.

Of course, first that’d require it to stop trying to turn 3D into a cash cow. But that’s a rant for another day.

There was a moment when I thought Spurious was Waiting for Godot. Then I realised that it’s really Lucky Jim, without the women. It’s a philosophical novel about thought, but really it’s an academic novel about failing to think, about all the things we do instead of thinking, and about – well, you know, what is thinking anyway?

Sure it’s definitely Beckettian. The action is two anonymous guys talking to each other and about each other, lamenting, pitying, vacillating. ‘When did you know you weren’t going to amount to anything?’ Lars’s problem, or his great good-fortune, W. says, is that he doesn’t know. Maybe he still thinks he’ll amount to something, that he’s not as stupid as W. insists he is.
‘Of course we’re never really depressed, W. says. What can we, who are incapable of thought, understand of what the inability to think means for a thinker?’ At other times, they say they are ‘essentially joyful.’

Lars has a grotty flat in Newcastle. It is deeply, inexorably damp. Soon, the damp will be everywhere: ‘Yes, it will be everywhere. The flat will be made of damp, and spores will fill every part of the air. And I will breathe the spores and mould will flower inside me. And I’ll live half in water, like a frog.’

There is nothing to be done about the flat. It doesn’t really matter. Here is why this is more of an academic novel than an existential novel: the lives of both Lars and W. are the vessels for careers. It is career that drives them and drives their depression. However, the meaninglessness of that drive is, of course, the existential point.

The academic is always Max Brol, the fat executor of Kafka’s literary estate (‘Kafka was always our model, we agree… At the same time, we have Kafka to blame for everything’), the friend whose only meaning was to proclaim his friend’s genius.

‘He can picture me, W. says, working at my desk, or attempting to work… surrounded by books by Schelling and Rosenzweig and Cohen, and books that explain Schelling and Rosenzweig and Cohen, and then by still other books with titles like The Idiot’s Guide to Jewish Messianism and Rosenzweig in Sixty Minutes.’

This is the sum of academic thought. It is not real thought. It’s not real. ‘It’s all shit, it’s all going to shit. It will always have already been shit,’ W. says.’ No, this is not a hopeful novel, it’s not that kind of messianism. But it’s funny. That’s all we have, isn’t it? Redemption through laugh-out-louds.

 The book is also (of course) about writing, trying to write. W. and Lars are writers. It is mysterious, like thought, like greatness… like damp. ‘His book is better than him, W. and I agree. It’s greater. What’s it about?, I ask him of a particularly difficult section. He’s got no idea, he says.’

Stepping into the first of three rooms of this exhibition, the King’s Room, the visitor encounters an intimate and understated space, designed in deliberate contrast to the exhibition’s archaeological importance. With a focus upon Philip II and his famous son Alexander the Great, on display are hundreds of objects from the Temenid dynasty of Macedon, which ruled from the 7th to the 4th century BC. 

Near the entrance of the King’s Room stands a small statue of Heracles, from whom these kings claimed descent – hence the exhibition’s ambitious-sounding name – and images of the legendary hero crop up on various other objects, symbolising strength and power.

For those such as myself with limited knowledge of the classical world, it is easy to walk through archaeological exhibitions seeing no further than the aesthetic beauty of the artefacts. However, on the day of my visit I am lucky to hear Professor Robin Lane Fox and Dr Angeliki Kottaridi introduce the exhibition and speak of its huge significance. Their excitement is palpable as they enthuse about the only first-hand image we have of Alexander the Great, found on an innocuous looking hunting frieze in one corner of the room, and fragments of a palace from Philip II’s time, the building’s importance comparable to that of the Parthenon.

Beauty in itself is not forgotten; Lane Fox does not try to contain his emotion when relating the discovery of an impossibly intricate gold wreath of myrtle leaves, thought to have belonged to one wife of Philip II, the Thracian princess Meda. Such craftsmanship is found throughout this exhibition, on objects ranging from tableware to shield decorations, and rewards close scrutiny.

The Queen’s Room, the largest of the three in the exhibition, holds a particular highlight – the Lady of Aegae. Gold funeral jewellery dating from around 500 BC has been arranged in the shape of the woman it once adorned; placed at the end of the room to face the approaching visitor, she stands just as her living counterpart would once have done. The effect is impressive, and in a way touching. It is possible that this was the mother of Alexander I, but for many her identity will be of less concern than her value as an embodiment of the elevated position of Macedonian women, who were spiritual symbols as well as respected mothers.

From such lavish jewellery to a scattering of broken pottery and bent nails found in funeral pyres, ‘Heracles to Alexander the Great’ brings many aspects of this distant past to life. It is the product of decades of excavations from Aegae, and many of these objects will not yet have been seen anywhere else in the world. It is certainly not to be missed.

At a time where ‘post’ seems to be the prefix on everybody’s lips when describing current music, Portico Quartet’s ethereal tunes have never seemed more relevant. With two stellar albums under their belt  and a third one in the pipeline, the guys who started busking on the Southbank four years ago might just be taking their ‘post-jazz’ title to new heights. The recent departure of hang player Nick Mulvey, has been ‘the catalyst for loads of crazy stuff’ says drummer Duncan Bellamy, as they’ve sampled the hang onto drum pads allowing much more creative versatility. ‘When it’s pitched down it sounds like a big gong’ says Jack Wylie the saxophonist.

Although Nick’s decision to explore the guitar instead of the hang has rendered the band’s name slightly redundant it also seems to have opened up creative channels for the group as electronic sounds and samples take on a bigger role than they did in second album Isla.  ‘There’ll definitely be a few tracks without the hang at all,’ says Jack, hinting at the sound of the forthcoming album which they’ll hopefully be recording in August.

Their relationship with the distinctive instrument – which sounds something like a steel pan – has been a complex one: it liberated them from the constraints of any specific genre but also threatened to ‘back them into a corner musically and conceptually’.

Having recorded their heavily praised second album Isla with the prestigious John Leckie in Abbey Road, the group’s creative process seems to have returned to its humble origins as they go into their East London studio individually to lay down compositional ideas. Discussing their influences it becomes apparent that diversity and eclecticism nurture their music.

Naming people such as Arve Henriksen, Radiohead and the experimental Steve Reich, Portico Quartet seem to draw their influences from everywhere and filter it down into their own distinct sound. The melodic and hook-based aspect of their music makes them wonderfully accessible and enables them to play gigs like Bestival and more traditional jazz concerts without any conflict.

There is however a feeling that at more upbeat festivals programmers ‘get confused with where to put us’, says Duncan, although the promise of ‘a bit more punch’ on the forthcoming album may change this.

Their assertion that ‘none of us wanted to make a repeat of Isla’ implies a further change of musical direction for the group and one can’t help but presume that their beat making flatmate Jamie Woon might have had a little influence in their decidedly more electronic escapades. Duncan and Jack and their friend Will Ward are also currently working on a side project called Circle Traps which fits the current surge of synth based electronica – albeit with inescapable jazz undertones – and have just released their EP on Opit Records.

As well as exploring different soundscapes, Portico Quartet have toured Europe and the States and have been met by devoted fans of all different age groups, although according to Jack, ‘inland America was pretty barren’. Out of their one hundred and seventy gigs last  year seventy were in Europe, and ‘everything’s just happened quicker over there’ says Jack about their rise in popularity.

Let’s hope that this speed translates itself to the rate of their production, as I’m not sure I can wait till next year for their next instalment. In the meantime Portico Quartet will be performing at Cheltenham Jazz Festival on May 2nd bringing the bank holiday to a beautiful close. When you coming to Oxford guys?

It’s not often you get to see the premiere of a lost Shakespeare play and, whilst that might be overdoing it a bit, it has to be said that this production has generated a lot of merited excitement. Of course the original Cardenio is unlikely to ever be rediscovered and the text as presented in Gregory Doran’s new play is not that penned by the Bard and Fletcher at the start of the 17th century. However, sitting in the audience at the newly reopened Swan Theatre in Stratford, it is easy to forget the ‘literary archaeology’ which has lovingly gone into restoring the only surviving possible adaptation of the 1612 original, Theobald’s The Double Falsehood, into a performable piece able to stand alongside those other tales of cross-dressing lovers so familiar to the RSC.

The plot is straight out of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. At the start Cardenio is on the verge of marrying his first love Luscinda. Everything is arranged but before he is able to obtain his father’s needed consent he is summoned to court. His role there is to be a check to the excesses of the Duke’s wayward son Fernando who has been relentlessly courting the modest but socially inferior Dorotea. Thus the two pairs of lovers – along with their fathers who, as always in Shakespeare, manage to upset everything through their folly – are introduced to the audience along with the oppositions of love and lust, trust and betrayal which drive the play.

With such serious themes as rape and a plot driven by forcibly parted lovers there are moments when it seems unlikely that order will triumph over the chaos of Fernando’s making as he attempts to defile virgin daughters and nuns. However, a laugh is always soon provided by the indignant Don Camillo played by an excellent Christopher Godwin.

Amusement may also be found in the indoor fireworks which represent the consummation of Fernando and Dorotea’s ‘marriage’ – not particularly subtle but rather impressive none the less. Also very impressive is Oliver Rix (a graduate from Oxford) in his first major role as the eponymous Cardenio who manages to be engaging throughout – even whilst providing his lusty friend with practical (but rather boring) advice on the nature of love.

I immensely enjoyed Cardenio and found myself caring less and less about the authenticity of the text and the cleverness of its resurrection. Some of the views expressed may not find favour with modern youth or third wave feminist society but that just exemplifies how far this new re-imagining has been able to control those subtle anachronisms which could be generated not so much by ignorance but by intervening history and ideological change. It was beautifully staged and offered the viewer everything from fiestas to funerals, dances to disguises, along with one moment which made me jump out of my seat.

It may not be Shakespeare, it doesn’t seem to be able to attributed to any single playwright, but it is good fun. Forget the academic debate, Cardenio is pure entertainment.

Packed into the cosy lower levels of the Sheldonian Theatre, we welcome Anthony Grayling with a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’, a simultaneously awkward and spirited moment he accepts with great stoicism. Known for his impressive canon of philosophical writing, Grayling today is talking about his latest work, The Good Book: A Secular Bible, a book offering the knowledge and understanding of non-theistic traditions from all over the world.

However, this is not simply a collection or anthology of disparate stories from these traditions. In his rewriting, defending his methods as ‘exactly how the Bible itself was compiled’, Grayling made them into a coherent whole. The ‘Parables’ especially are cleverly interconnected, while the longest section, the ‘Histories’, rewards being read as a continuous narrative of ‘the great war between the East and the West’ but can also be dipped into for individual tales. Grayling has also taken into account the importance of language, in the spirit of the composition of the King James Bible in its day. This is particularly apparent in the poetry of the ‘Songs’, which focus upon human relationships and those between man and nature in a way that is affecting, though unsentimental.

The Good Book, offering a secular vision of how the good life could be lived, is Grayling’s ambitious contribution to what some have disparagingly classified as the ‘New Atheist’ movement. But, as he is keen to point out, ‘it has no direct mention of atheism, or God’ in its 600-odd pages, in keeping with his belief that all books should be ‘positive’ and ‘offer some message of value’. Thus it appears on the other side of the atheist coin, as it were, offering an alternative to works such as Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great with its diatribes against all religious practices. Perhaps this approach is why Grayling has not yet been denounced as a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse – in addition to the more often condemned foursome of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens.

The structure of The Good Book itself is drawn from the Judaeo-Christian Bible, with chapters and verses within sections, and even begins with the story of an apple – the one that falls upon the head of Sir Isaac Newton. It has been, as Grayling himself is quick to declare, a ‘hubristic undertaking’, and its daring, its silent yet deliberate challenge to the major religions, could fall uneasily on some readers’ eyes. But there is nothing arrogant, only confident and quietly energetic, about the man himself. From the down-to-earth humour of his anecdotes about sceptical cabbies to the reflective allusion to David Hume and John Stuart Mill as important influences, every word Grayling speaks is full of intelligence and conviction. Moments of cheek, such as the joke of the apple, must be forgiven.

While answering questions from the enthusiastic audience, Grayling offers two pieces of his own wisdom. The first is that happiness ought to be a product of our actions, and not the intended target; the second is that the worst falsehood that has ever been told to mankind is that there is only one truth. The Good Book embodies both of these ideas in its wide-ranging content, offering example rather than commandment, and insight in place of injunction.