Darren Aronofsky, director of critically acclaimed The Wrestler (2008), has returned with another intense portrait of an individual; but this time it’s not a sweaty Mickey Rourke but a porcelain doll Natalie Portman gracing our screens as we turn our focus away from the ring and towards the New York City Ballet.

The film follows top ballerina Nina Sayers (Portman) as she comes to grips with the role of both the White and the Black Swan in a new take on Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Nina inhabits a depressingly empty world and yet is smothered by the small group of people who surround her: her mother (Barbara Hershey), a ballerina who had to stop her career short when she had Nina and clearly now expects to fulfil her dreams through her, her boundary-blurring boss (Vincent Cassel) who puts her in increasingly compromising positions and forces her to question herself deeply and her rival (Mila Kunis), who threatens to be not quite as laid-back and lovely as she has first appeared. All of these people become increasingly suspect and their intentions increasingly ambiguous as we follow Nina through her high pressure but desperately dull daily life and become further and further enmeshed in her neuroses.

On paper, the film looks fascinating and there are some truly interesting ideas behind the film, but unfortunately these only really come clearly into play towards the end. The last half hour of the film is fast-moving, visually stunning and genuinely compelling. Up to this point, however, the film is vague and unengaging. Watching her banal daily routine is, rather predictably, uninteresting. A sense of eerie discomfort and the promise of a storyline does keep you wanting to watch but unfortunately, it gets going too late and for such a short time that it remains, on the whole, disappointing.

All the performances are good, especially Mila Kunis, whom you may know as Jackie from That ’70s Show, whose character remains infuriatingly charming and ambiguous throughout. Do not watch this for Winona Ryder, as she features very little and is always playing hysterical when she does. Natalie Portman is much-tipped for an Oscar for this and her performance is convincing, intense and nuanced but does not allow her to show all of her range.

To put it bluntly, this is a strange film. ‘Strange’ is, of course, not always a bad thing. It is interesting in subverting certain clichés and getting us to root for a technically brilliant professional who lacks the necessary passion for her role, as opposed to a maverick lacking technical training, as is the norm in these sorts of films. The film certainly manages to be original and, in terms of visuals, almost hypnotic. However, this much-hyped film is ultimately underwhelming.

Superhero stories are unquestionably powerful, and the fact that they have bled so profusely into Hollywood is testament to this. The 2000s saw a furious spate of superhero movies being released, and even Bollywood managed to get involved, with the brilliant and highly-entertaining Krrish. So why does anyone watch these comic book movies, with their outlandish characters, improbable scenarios, preposterous villains and ridiculous costumes? Quite simply, it is because the superhero stories are like a mythology of our time.

From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Greek myths, all societies have their traditional stories of heroes fighting villains and the moral messages these entail. Superhero stories are no different. Unlike classical storytellers, comic book writers are contractually obligated to write continuous stories, so characters don’t die quite as often as in the Greek myths. The themes contained in the pages of comics are often indicative of the major social issues of the time.

For example, X-Men was first published in 1963 amidst the Civil Rights movement. The comic demonstrates the horrors and injustices of racism and xenophobia, with mutants being persecuted by evil government authorities. Green Lantern and Green Arrow dealt with issues of heroin addiction and Spider-Man was created to be the kind of hero that the brand-new ‘teenage’ social demographic could identify with.

But why do we need to learn about these themes through the medium of men in bizarre costumes? The answer lies in the rich symbolism found in comics. Symbols serve as a shorthand, perhaps a way of ‘dumbing down’ themes, helping young audiences to better identify who the ‘good guys’ are; the men and women clad in ‘heroic’ costumes. Ultimately, overuse of a symbolic or stylistic device resulted in a cliché, and comic books became stagnant, with hundreds of characters and back-stories all vying for the readers’ attention. This led to DC Comics publishing the 12 part series Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, which drastically reduced, simplified and re-ordered the DC universe. The 80s marked the end of the so called ‘Silver Age’ of comics, and with Alan Moore’s re-imagining of Swamp Thing in 1985 and Watchmen appearing a year later, the ‘Graphic Novel’ had been born. Comics had become ‘dark’ and left the mainstream forever.

Films are undergoing a similar process. Iron Man 2 was less successful than its predecessor and barely anyone bothered watching Scott Pilgrim vs the World. This and other recent movies such as The Green Hornet and Kick-Ass are already pastiches of the genre, serving to subvert it with light-hearted B-movie themes and with camp undertones. Cinema-goers will soon face a glut of superhero movies, such as the new adaptation of The Green Lantern, a brand new Spider-Man, Thor, The Avengers, another Wolverine, and a Deadpool spin-off. Nolan’s upcoming The Dark Knight Rises will, in my opinion, be both a paean to and requiem for the costumed hero. After that, it will all be over, with the debris of trampled capes and shattered masks swept out of an Odeon near you.

With two weeks until the Oxford Playhouse opening of Chekhov’s The Seagull, director Chloe Wicks is giving line readings in rehearsals. The line reading, probably the biggest no-no for a director, takes the form of a director stopping the action of the play in rehearsal and saying something like, ‘No, darling—try it more like this…’ and proceeding to say the line in all her directorial wisdom. The general risk associated with this faux-pas is that you put the actor in the impossible situation of trying to replicate the director’s delivery of each line, and in the worst case scenario, leads to general confusion and frustration for all.

However, confusion and frustration are nowhere in sight in the word-perfect run of Act I of Chekhov’s play. Despite the ensemble’s uniform dress in black and the set-less space of the Moser, the play runs as captivatingly as it promises to do on opening night. Laura Nakhla’s embodiment of ageing actress, Arkadina, is utterly convincing in her indulgent laughter and fluttering hand gestures. Henry Faber perfectly evokes the Hamlet-esque melancholy of aspiring playwright Konstantin, and Alfred Enoch’s few lines are enough to convince us that Trigorin is the mysterious and misanthropic writer he is reputed to be. There are still two weeks for final touches to be put on this production. The time would be well spent in helping the character of Medvedenko rely less on the psychological gesture of nervously touching his glasses. And for all of Ruby Thomas’ husky voiced, frustrated sensuality, the character of Masha runs the risk of being a bit too reminiscent of the frustrated sensuality of a certain heroine in a Tennessee Williams play.

But this reviewer must come clean: I have always disliked Chekhov. Having seen various productions by the doctor-turned-playwright, ranging from The Cherry Orchard to Three Sisters, I have a hard time getting past characters that seem to jump effortlessly in and out of self-reflective, philosophical discourse on topics like Art, Russia, and The Past. Maybe things were different in 19th century Russia but when I see Chekhov done it always strikes me that no one is actually listening to each other and yet they seem familiar enough to shout ‘Leave me alone!’ regularly, while running from the room. It is not difficult to make Chekhov awful. But in despite of, or perhaps because of, Chloe Wicks’ line readings, this production has taken characters that I’ve always had a hard time swallowing and made me deeply curious about each and every one of them. I left this preview having to resist the urge to run home and reread The Seagull to remember what happens to Konstantin and Masha, Trigorin and Arkadina. Despite myself, I’ll have to be there at the opening to see and maybe begrudgingly start to appreciate Chekhov after all. And let me assure you, that in itself promises to be a theatrical feat well worth seeing.

Statements tells the true story of a white woman and a coloured man, arrested during the apartheid era because of their forbidden love. What inspired you to write about this incident?

I opened the newspaper one morning and there were pictures [of the two naked lovers] actually printed in it. And I just felt that at some point I had to deal with those photographs. It’s an awful story. The evidence in court included a piece of a blanket which the policeman had cut out with a pair of scissors because it had semen stains on it.

Are the characters in the play the same as those in real life?
No, I made up my own story. I didn’t want to write a documentary. I wanted to write a play. They call me political, they call me this, they call me that – but above everything else I am a storyteller. I want freedom to go wherever my imagination wants to go. I don’t always rise to the challenge and allow my imagination to go as far as it wants to go. But I absolutely demand that as the first principle when I sit down to write.

And that allowed you to move away from complete realism?

The monologues, the words I give the actors in the flash scenes as the police break in, are in a sense the subtext of what must have happened to the poor victims in their minds as the camera was photographing and going off. The camera happens just in an instant but time is very relative and in an instant a human being can live his whole life. But then you have the opening where the two of them have been making love and are just talking quietly. The [naturalistic] writing in there I’m very proud of. It’s terrible to talk about being proud of something that you did but I am incredibly proud of what I did in that scene. Then if you look at the writing in [the second half of the play], it’s more adventurous, bolder, more experimental than anything else I’ve ever done. It uses language in a way that I don’t think I’ve really succeeded in using it again.

You’ve tried later on to write in a similar way?

I’ve tried but nothing of mine is quite as adventurous and imaginative as that. For those reasons Statements for me is a very, very special play.

Have there been productions of any of your plays that you didn’t like?

Many, many, many. I usually try to do anything I can to avoid going along and seeing a production of one of my plays that I myself wasn’t involved in. I’ve had a few very good experiences. But for every good experience I’ve had three or four bad ones. Bad isn’t the right word. Disappointing. They didn’t ‘get it’. They were looking at the wrong things in the play. They tried to make the play do what the play didn’t want to do. The first thing to do as a director is always to ask, what is this play trying to do? What is it really talking about? What is the story? And then tell the story.

What is in your opinion the worst mistake I could make directing Statements?

I suppose to make it a political play instead of a personal play. Focus on the sense of exposure. That’s what you got to look at. The horror will make its own statement. The horror of that experience. Of intruding like that. Putting handcuffs on two innocent people.
[You must recognize that] the stage is an incredibly free medium. That is what is so magnificent about it. I think that I explored the freedom of the stage more with Statements than I did with any other play.

Are you ever angry with yourself that you haven’t been able to write with that same freedom as before?

Yes, of course. Any writer who doesn’t end up with frustrations and a sense of not having

done their best is most probably fooling themselves.

It sounds like in the past Yvonne [Bryceland, his actress and muse] gave you that freedom. She helped you discover it.

Oh, she was wonderful. She was absolutely amazing. There is an interview I once heard with Yehudi Menuhin in which he talked about when he got his Stradivarius. He had been playing with good violins but when he got his Stradivarius his music took on a new dimension. It was such an exquisite instrument. It challenged him to go further than he had ever gone before. And Yvonne was my Stradivarius. She challenged me, but all she ever asked me is: ‘Show me the way to get to the edge.’ I believe good performances are made right at the edge. Where there is no safety, no security, no safety nets. You really have to risk everything. An actor must be prepared to live dangerously.

The world-famous pianist, Mitsuko Uchida, gave a breath-taking performance on 11th January, in a concert at the Sheldonian Theatre in aid of Oxford’s Music Faculty. Uchida delighted a packed audience with some of the most captivating works in the Romantic piano repertoire. Her tiny frame, bent protectively over the keyboard, as if it were some precious object, belied her powerful playing in the opening bars of her exquisite interpretation of Beethoven’s Sonata in E minor Op 90. The typically Beethovenian dramatic contrasts in this work were surpassed in musical audacity by the next work in the programme, Schumann’s somewhat bipolar collection of eighteen dances, known collectively as Davidsbündlertänze. Uchida imbued each short ‘character’ piece with its own colour and vitality, balancing the more fierce and ferocious dances with restrained, graceful gestures in the calmer pieces. Not once did she lose her remarkable poise and sensitivity.

The second half of the programme allowed Uchida to reveal her gentle touch and emotional depth to its full capacity. The piano sang out in Chopin’s rhapsodic C# minor Prelude, its dream-like, tender qualities giving rise to a warm intimacy in its performance, which was unattainable in the more overtly dramatic repertoire of the first half. Squeezing as much tone as possible from each note of Chopin’s melodic lines, and leading a firm path through the composition’s chromatically wandering passages, Uchida addressed every note of this piece with meticulous articulation. The final work of the evening, Chopin’s Sonata in B minor Op 58 confirmed her virtuosity. Uchida’s slender fingers seemed simply to graze the keys, so soft were the cascading scalar passages in the finale. This was a wonderful evening, and it is an honour to have such a distinguished musician support the Faculty of Music.

Recorded on the edge of the Sussex downs, amongst the ‘interstellar clouds’ sung of on ‘Luna’ but far from the apocalyptic, hedonistic Valhalla Dancehall of the title, this is British Sea Power’s fifth album, marking almost a decade together. In the past ten years, BSP have built up a steady reputation as one of Britain’s most oddball, but also most-loved indie bands. The former has been established by their penchant for performing in unexpected corners of the British Isles and for their oft-eccentric lyrical subject matter. The latter is proved by consistent critical acclaim, including a Mercury Prize nomination for their 2008 release, Do You Like Rock Music?

Valhalla Dancehall opens with rather a surprise: ‘Who’s in Control?’ is a rallying battle cry, complete with shout-along chorus and a clearly terrestrial focus, marking a change from the band’s usual lyrical star-gazing. The song’s wish – that ‘protesting was sexy on a Saturday night’ – is politically on-topic, but in the context of the more graceful, more traditional BSP of the tracks that follow, the album’s opener feels rather out of place, as if it has been momentarily hi-jacked by an NME tipped lad-band.

The leading single, ‘Living is so Easy’, is another surprise, but a definite gem of one, wrapped in a lush, twinkling instrumental arrangement, reminiscent of Krautrock heroes Neu! Instead, they stick to their social commentary, bemoaning the excess of a party lifestyle, and sharply criticizing relentless consumerism as they continue to observe the girls ‘accessorised up to the hilt’ and incidents of ‘VPL in the SUV’.

In the end, Valhalla Dancehall is no real departure from the British Sea Power of old. With so many bands losing their charm in the desperate search for a drastic ‘new direction’, it is refreshing to see a band confident enough in their established sound to continue (largely) on their natural course of progression. This is an album of epic, graceful beauty, and for anyone for whom this is not enough, the final words of eleven-minute opus ‘Once More Now’ should enlighten as to how far this concerns these quiet indie treasures: ‘fuck ’em’ has never sounded so beautiful.

We all know the routine by now. When December rolls in, so do the endless hoards of ‘albums of year’ lists, quickly followed by an explosion of enraged forum posts along the lines of: ‘crikey, [some music publication]’s list doesn’t precisely correlate with my opinions’. And 2010 was no different. But whilst this annual charade deserves to be mostly ignored, last year’s lists did share one interesting feature. It was not uncommon to see the maximalist hip hop of Kanye West next to Arcade Fire’s orchestral indie, or the polite dream-pop of Beach House alongside Cosmogramma, Flying Lotus’ everything-to-eleven post-J Dilla ‘space-opera’. The placing of so many seemingly incompatible musical styles together in a single list, as we frequently saw last year, is symptomatic of the breakdown of genre divides that is occurring in today’s music scenes.

But this is by no means a new phenomenon; Brian Eno’s article of just over a year ago entitled ‘The Death of Uncool’ was a discussion on this very same subject. In fact, the process of musical desegregation has been in action ever since the internet came into wide use. The variety of free music journalism online meant that the musical exposure experienced by a typical listener was no longer governed by their chosen monthly publication and, in effect, a small team of editors. More importantly, though, the tastes of an individual became less influenced by the opinions of their immediate groups of friends. Via blogs and forums, music fans found new ways to communicate with each other, significantly reducing the impact of ‘coolness’ and local trends on the development of musical tastes.

These factors led to a huge coming together of music fans across the globe. And with the advent of Napster at the turn of the century, listeners suddenly had access to the libraries of countless others worldwide. The supply of free music made available by P2P technology afforded listeners the chance to take risks, sampling a wide variety of styles and genres at the click of a button. Rather than setting an allegiance to a specific genre, people began to identify as ‘music fans’, exploring all kinds of sounds that they would previously have ignored.

And now, as a result of this ‘death of uncool’, the wealth of disparate musical influences that has been embraced by music scenes around the world is giving rise to a vast tapestry of highly specialised sub-genres, or ‘micro-genres’. Take the loose genre of ‘indie’, for example; influences as eclectic as 80s new wave, African traditional, 90s shoegaze and 60s pop can be heard within the labyrinth of sub-genres that has sprung forth from this common starting point. Whilst most, myself included, will be of the opinion that it is largely academic to obsess over specific categorisations of music, the rapid division and subdivision of genres (whether you choose to label them or not) has nonetheless become a permanent feature of today’s music scenes.

Obviously, this environment in which nothing is out of bounds, in which uniqueness is actively encouraged, is an extremely fertile one for musicians. But this utopian musical society has not come without its costs to the average listener. The way in which music has begun splitting off into niches has introduced new divides between listeners, and music is becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy socially.
Who, outside the few close followers of ‘hypnagogic pop’ (or ‘post-noise’ or whichever term is being used these days), will have ever heard of Oneohtrix Point Never? Yet his album of last year, Returnal, was a considerable landmark in that fledgling genre’s development.

With this ever fragmenting expanse of sub-genres, the audience for each style of music is constantly narrowing. And one could argue that Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the first record since Kid A that has really brought music communities together in the same way that Radiohead’s album did ten years ago.
So whilst the ‘death of uncool’ began as a brilliant coming together of previously disconnected music scenes, we are now seeing increasingly narrow sub-genres spinning off on different tangents. And the resulting musical landscape is, in many ways, even more difficult to navigate than before.

The young director of the O3 Gallery sits serenely opposite me, proffering jelly beans as she explains how her goals have changed since art school. ‘I was sure that I would do installations and work on commissions, and that I would absolutely be able to earn enough money doing that – and there was no other option. But of course, it’s not really like that.’ So with the help of work experience in several galleries – including an Oxford one whle doing an MA at Brookes – Statham started work in the Ashmolean’s picture room. In July last year she moved to her current domain, tucked away in behind Malmaison hotel in the Oxford Castle complex.

She is very honest about the difficulties smaller galleries like the O3 face when it comes to competing with Oxford’s art establishment – ‘you have to fight a bit harder for the poster space’. I ask if she thinks most students only visit the Ashmolean or Modern Art Oxford when they want to see art during term. ‘You have to dig a little bit deeper to find places like the O3, and people don’t always do that,’ she admits.

Yet Statham seems happy with the presence of larger venues in Oxford. ‘I think we are very much friends with them, and it’s easy for us to be that way because we’re different in what we provide. The Ashmolean is more of a museum in that the most recent stuff they’ve got is modern [early 20th century] art, and although MAO shows contemporary stuff it’s a still a museum in the way it functions.’ The difference with the O3 and galleries like it is that ‘we are showcasing early- to mid-career artists who are still making affordable work. It’s more alive, it’s art that you can make part of your life in a way that with the Ashmolean and MAO you can’t.’

‘I hope that we’re quite an approachable gallery in that sense,’ she continues. ‘I mean, we have a lot of interpretive information available for people, so if they want to come in and read up on the work and understand more of what it’s drawing upon, they can, but if people just want to come and look at something that’s really visually exquisite, then that is also there for them.’ At Metamorphosis, the last O3 show I went to, there were free handouts detailing some of the Ovidian stories to which the art referred.

So I am surprised when she describes the O3’s attitude towards its viewers as one of ‘aesthetic responsibility’. ‘While we are very much interested in ideas, it’s really important how the work impacts visually onto people. So it might have really interesting ideas behind it, but the work is also a cracking piece of art in its own right on an aesthetic level.’ It’s refreshing to hear her foreground the power of art’s visual aspect, when so many exhibition guides and reviews will insist on pointing out the perceived conceptual marvels underpinning painting X or sculpture Y. Again, the exhibitions bear out this commitment to the visual: the black and white prints of trees in Metamorphosis were beautiful in their tonal variations and the delicacy of their mark making, regardless of whether we knew that each tree was once a nymph called Daphne.

As well as managing one of Oxford’s up and coming art venues, Statham has for several years been a presenter on BBC Radio Oxford’s arts show The Hub. She got the job after meeting figures from the BBC while she worked at the Botanic Gardens during her MA. ‘I said to my boss there, ‘I’m doing an art degree, really into arts, I want to get as much experience as possible – let me know if there’s anything coming up that I can help with. And it happened that that particular year they were having a big light and sound art installation festival, which was totally up my street because my MA was in interdisciplinary arts. So that was really exciting, and they needed someone who worked in the gallery to do a short documentary… So I had to make six three-minute films all about the preparations for this festival. And actually it’s funny because in doing that, I got to know the creative directors of the project, and they said, ‘Oh gosh, so your work’s just like what’s happening here!’ and I said, ‘Yeah it is, I’m really excited about it,’ and they said ‘Oh, why don’t you put some art work into the festival?’ So I actually ended up doing an installation which ended up being the sort of centrepiece of the garden – which is just luck. It’s just total luck.’

Her career so far shows, though, that it’s very possible to make your own luck. ‘Yeah, totally, big tip: go for any opportunity that you’re given, and just try and make the most of it. Something good’ll come out.’ It’s clear that many more good things are set to come from the O3. Staham has already managed five shows as its director, as well as introducing student ambassadors and linking the gallery with a studio in Cornwall at which Oxford artists can apply for residencies. It’s easy to forget that she’s only been working there for six months – as I do, when I finish by asking what she plans to do next. ‘Oh, well I’ve still got years in me here, I think. I’d love in the future to go back to doing some big installation projects… but that’s a few years off yet and I can’t really think about that just now.’

The O3 is open Mon-Fri 12-5pm, and 11am-4pm on weekends. Admission free.