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Get Involved: Table football

By
Rob Pilgrim
-

Along with nailing that triple twenty on the darts board and emptying the quiz machine, rifling in a twenty yard screamer on the Foosball table can make anyone a college bar hero, at least for one night.

We’ve all been there on a quiet evening, enjoying the thrills and spills of a quick game between essays, wasting loose change and lording it over your mates, but last year I took the chance to dabble in the inter-college table football league. Run by the OUTFC, this is one of the top leagues in the country, featuring a large number of sterling national players.

I must add that at the time of joining I was in no way gifted at the sport; horrific own goals rather than the aforementioned screamers had become my speciality and my scoring droughts left me looking less Alan Shearer and more Ade Akinbiyi.

Still, I wouldn’t trade the laughs and jokes for anything. The league setup gives students an excuse to visit a new college every other week for an evening, meet new people and chill out in a different bar or common room. The atmosphere is always relaxed and never taken too seriously, especially outside of the top tier, in a sport where alcohol merely acts as a lubricant for epic games.

Commitment levels are relatively low – the odd game here or there easily counts as ‘training’ and overall I personally found it a very rewarding experience.

Of course if Table Football is already your niche then I cannot recommend the University league highly enough. A number of students we came up against on our travels were nationally or even internationally ranked and the mesmerising skills they could pull off were a joy to behold, although less so when we were on the receiving end.

Whether an experienced player or simply a legend in your own lunchtime, Table Football is definitely something to get involved in as a fresher, even if just for the chance to meet new people or check out other colleges. In fact if you’re anything from a fresher to a seasoned grad a quick game of competetive foosball comes highly recommended (get in touch with the OUTFC for more information on setting up a college team).

So one evening, don’t let Noel steal all of your student pennies on the IT Box, why not put some change in the Foosball table and let the banter flow.

Nights in Rodanthe

By
Rowan Parkes
-

The film tells the story of Paul and Adrienne who, having both reached crossroads in their respective lives, find themselves thrown together in the idyllic beauty of Rodanthe as each attempts to face their own demons. Closed off from the rest of the world by a hurricane, in scenes that epitomise man’s struggle against the elements and himself, they finally stop fighting and come together; but the morning comes all too soon with consequences to face as life goes on with or without them.

The film has a certain classic feel about it; one almost feels it could have been shot in black and white. With its “tell it how it is” dialogue, epic turning points, unashamedly mature, life worn characters, and an integral soundtrack ranging from classic jazz to blockbuster surges, it could have been made anytime in the last fifty years. Add to these the quite exquisite use of colour, light and the natural scenery, and you have yourself a great romance in the making.

There are clichés, as there always are in film adaptations of Nicholas Sparks’ novels (for example The Notebook), yet I’ve always felt that he carries off cliché rather well, and the several members of the audience who were blubbing like babies obviously agree with me. The flashbacks can be irritating, and there is a horrible moment a little too reminiscent of Message in a Bottle which very nearly ruins the film. However, this is a story primarily about hope, and the possibility of life after death (of a loved one), and life after love, which are often one and the same. It just about manages to hang on to that message by the skin of its teeth, and remains a poignant, not to mention visually stunning, life affirming film.

3 Stars

The House Bunny Review

By
James Byfleet
-

If there’s one thing that The House Bunny isn’t, it’s clever. But then again, it’s very good at being stupid. This film has Adam Sandler’s seal of idiocy stamped all over it (he’s credited as producer) and it’s not difficult to imagine where it could have gone if not for one single factor: its lead.

Anna Faris, Scary Movie stalwart and expert of comic timing, oozes charm and warmth throughout a film that, without her, verges on the vacuous and predictable.

Shelley Darlingson (Faris) is one of the oldest bunnies in the playboy mansion. So old, in fact, that at twenty seven
she is deemed too old for centrefold, and is kicked to the kerb by Hugh Heffner himself.

Penniless then, alone, and lacking any transferable skills, she is forced to take solace as the live-in mother to a sorority house of social misfits. You can see the makeover montage a mile off, but the group of girls are a pleasant, if clichéd, bunch. They include the likeable pair of Emma Stone and Rumer Willis; Willis is blessed with the face of her mother Demi Moore but cursed with her father Bruce’s chin.

These testaments to She’s All That proceed to return the favour by teaching their mentor how to be smart, and therefore manage to find love with a man who cares more for IQ points than bra-size.

It’s a dodgy premise at best, and certainly not one that’s likely to win any Oscars, but it’s harmless enough. Shelley’s back-story, though comical (she was left in a basket as a baby with a note asking that only the basket need be returned) brings nothing to the narrative, and there is of course the difficult issue of the film’s message. After all, Shelley is ultimately applauded for her success in making women more attractive with peroxide and short skirts. Hardly the best moral, but Faris’ portrayal ensures that it’s all treated innocently enough, and with an attempt at her own intellectual transformation there is at least some recognition of just how shallow the film is. It just misses the ‘female empowerment’ vibe of soemthing like Legally Blonde, but not by much. The end is perhaps a little too farcical, an error made worse by the tongue-in-cheek majority of the film, and as always, the best bits are in the trailer, but if you’re after a good laugh this week, The House Bunny is definitely your best bet.

3 Stars

Chasing pack eye Worcester’s crown

By
Sean Lennon
-

The sight of a shattered group of second-years huffing and puffing away their summer of lethargy in endless shuttles can mean only one thing; the football season is back with a bang.

This year the question remains exactly the same as last year – can anyone topple Worcester from their throne? Last year they seemed unstoppable as a side packed with Blues talent played some excellent football on their march to a JCR Premier Division and Cuppers double.

However they were certainly given some scares along the way and this can only give encouragement to last year’s chasing pack of St Anne’s, Wadham and Teddy Hall, each of which gave Worcester’s star studded line-up a scare along the way. So much so indeed that Worcester’s title win was only on goal difference ahead of St Anne’s.

As ever which side emerges as the closest challenger depends largely on the quality of the fresher intake, and sides such as Wadham shorn of a degree of their attacking flair will be hoping for some pace and trickery to add to their evident steel. Equally, New will require a shot of fresh blood to arrest their slide from predicted title challengers last season, to the plodding mid table side they turned out to be.

Much is expected of the three promoted sides, St Catz, Christ Church, and Magdalen, all of whom finished neck and neck at the top of an extremely competitive First Division last season. The top two especially ought to have sufficient attacking flair to be aiming for mid-table and beyond.

Yet which side can really challenge the champions is likely to come down to consistency; last season’s Wadham side matched two hard fought victories over rivals St Anne’s with defeats to rock bottom Lincoln and relegated Brasenose. If they and the rest of the chasing pack can find the elusive ingredient of consistency they will be confident of taking Worcester all the way to the wire.

Much can be read into the results of the opening gambits, with the first day clash between St Anne’s and Teddy Hall providing the most mouth-watering prospects along with the battle for supremacy between promoted Magdalen and Christchurch.

In the second tier much will depend on whether relegated Lincoln can let their attacking talent override the crippling lack of confidence that saw them finish with just seven points last season, especially against the verve and goal threat of LMH, unlucky in not being promoted last season by just two points.

Similarly the rest of the division ought to offer serious threat to both Lincoln and their fellow relegated sides Jesus and Brasenose. Last year even Exeter, who finished just one place above relegation, were safe by all of fifteen points and will be determined to see their good results rewarded with a rather higher finish than last time out.

The promoted trio of Pembroke, Merton/Mansfield and Corpus/Linacre will all be hoping that they can add their names to a long list of sides to become rejuvenated by a quality season in the lowest tier to challenge immediately for promotion to the Premier Division.

Much like last season, the First Division should prove the most competitive of all the college football leagues with the array of closely matched talent, especially given the tightness of last year’s contest, giving a whole host of sides equal chance of pushing for promotion.
A stunning season awaits with both the top two divisions promising to be more competitive than ever before.

Whether this will be enough for one of the pack to depose the sport-rich Worcester however, is another story entirely.

Brideshead Revisited Review

By
Guy Pewsey
-

First things first, I am perhaps the worst person in the world to be reviewing Julian Jarrold’s adaptation of classic novel ‘Brideshead Revisited’. Not only have I, to my shame, never quite got round to reading Waugh’s most famous book, but I have also never seen the BBC’s apparently magnificent series. Nonetheless, it was clear from the beginning that Jarrold et al had a hard act to follow. For the most part, however, the result of their efforts is a sumptuous tour de force of high-calibre performances and superb visuals.

The film begins with a revisit to Brideshead, an English stately home of epic proportions. The visitor in question is a rather weathered Charles Ryder, recently stationed there at a time of war. It is here that he ponders the events which brought him to the house previously when, as an undergraduate at Oxford, he met and became entangled in the tempestuous Sebastian Flyte.

Cue class divides, a brother/sister love triangle, and a stern family matriarch played by Emma Thompson, and there you have it; a film which pulls you in closer and closer before finally casting you adrift in an unwanted though inevitable misery.

While Castle Howard, standing in for Brideshead, is perhaps the true star of the film, and the many Oxford locations make it worth a look for any student here, it is the two Flyte siblings who shine. Matthew Goode is likeable, if wooden, as Charles, but Ben Whishaw’s Sebastian and Hayley Atwell’s Julia are a compelling double-act who flawlessly express how duty, guilt and parental domination can lead to two very different outcomes linked so inextricably by the idea of rejection. Thompson’s Lady Marchmain is the perfect fusion of repressive and vulnerable, and comic relief is provided by the always excellent Ed Stoppard and Felicity Jones as Sebastian’s other siblings.

Such performances, though, are occasionally let down by a clunky script seemingly ordered straight from the Andrew Davies catalogue (and, surprise surprise, he has had a hand in this film). There are moments of understated humour, of tender exchanges, but they are often marred by the melodramatic presentation of the Catholic Church as the world’s great evil. Subtle it ain’t. And while I haven’t read the book, the whispered murmurs of those around me made it clear that some rather huge changes had been made to a beloved story.

Above all else, this film tells the story of a love triangle, and if this focus is not up your street then you are best sticking to the novel. That said, the costumes and cinematography cannot be faulted; every still is composed meticulously, lavishly bathed in crisp flannel suits or sleek satin gowns. Like last year’s ‘Atonement’, there are moments when ‘Brideshead’ has the look and feel of an advertisement for Chanel. It may just fall short of greatness, but it is a thing of beauty and a homage to an era of stifling duty and all-consuming love.

4 Stars

Can Keble exact cuppers revenge?

By
Matt Evans-Young
-

As boots still covered in last season’s mud are pulled out of the closet, we take a look at the prospects for the teams involved in Michaelmas term’s rugby.

In the first division Teddy Hall and Keble are expected to resume their titanic struggle for the top spot in college rugby. Teddy Hall’s somewhat surprise win in the Cuppers final at the end of last season ended a two year period of Keble dominance over college rugby silverware.

However, Keble will be determined to respond, despite many of the players that lifted them from third division mediocrity having left over the summer. Other than hoping for a good intake of freshers, both teams will be praying for favourable weather after the second season last year was all but washed out, with some teams only playing one game.

Outside of the top two in the division, who are unlikely to be challenged, the main focus will be on how a resurgent Pembroke team will perform in the top flight. Having had a double promotion season last year, followed by victory in the summer sevens tournament, there is a lot of pressure on them and it will be interesting to see if they can live with teams who will undoubtedly provide a higher level of opposition than any they have played in the last few years.

In the league below, Magdalen are presumably surprised to find themselves no longer rubbing shoulders with the other big names in college rugby. Despite being one of the strongest teams in the university, the washout that was last season meant that they were only able to play one match, which happened to be against Teddy Hall, thus condemning them to finishing in the relegation places.

The other teams in the division won’t be looking forward to playing what is probably the third best team around, and Magdalen should have no problem reaffirming their position in the top division.

The other promotion place is likely to be contested between Queens and Christ Church, although a lot will depend on both teams recruiting heavily at the beginning of the year. In terms of relegation, newly promoted Univ look the most likely to go straight back down. Having narrowly squeaked past Balliol on the last day of the season to confirm promotion, outside of Cuppers they still remain a lacklustre force.

The other new face in the division is St. Anne’s/St. John’s who, despite losing over half their back line from last season, will hope that their dominant pack will take them to mid table safety. They would have been pleased to beat Worcester, the other team who looks to be in contention for relegation, in Cuppers at the end of last season.

Doubtless a thrilling season of blood, guts and drama is in the offing for both divisions.

It’s a royal knockout

By
Michael Docherty
-

In an attempt to prove myself capable of being a competent Books and Exhibitions editor, this summer I saw quite a lot of art. As such, I could now knowledgeably expound upon the excellent Tracey Emin or the stirring Walter Hammershoi. I could regale you with tales of all manner of enjoyable bits and pieces at Gateshead’s Baltic. I could produce an acerbic expose of the frankly appalling standard of the pavement chalk drawings currently being produced by some elements of Gloucester’s homeless community.

Frankly, though, I don’t want to write about any of those things. With a glorious inevitability, they were all eclipsed by the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. I’m hugely fond, and have been for some time, of this particular cultural institution. It does, after all, bear an endearing likeness of the ancient, decrepit, Tory grandee who puts on an admirable show of pride, dignity and deportment even as he dribbles down his own, and adjacent, lapels in the House of Lords.

This is because I’m increasingly convinced that the old duffer is in fact the most cunning piece of contemporary art in existence. It’s a huge and hilarious post-modern joke that revels in how seriously its ramshackle self-importance, nonsensically Victorian attitude and general downright silliness are taken by the attending public. I imagine that somewhere deep beneath London, a crack team of surrealist-anarchist art pranksters, probably led by Marcel Duchamp, Peter Cooke and Salvador Dali – not Banksy, please, never Banksy – are watching CCTV footage of the exhibition rooms on a bank of black and white televisions.

They see you and me drift from ecellent pieces by artists at the tops of their respective games, to things that look like, and probably are, the products of old ladies’ watercolour clubs. Throughout, as we pass from the sublime to the ridiculous to the downright dreadful, we maintain the same expression of dull, unthinking, dim appreciation. Duchamp and his cronies, down in the control room, fall about laughing.

The Summer Exhibition is an occasion tailor-made for a kind of culture-induced rictus grin. We wear it at the RSC, at the Festival Hall and at the Royal Academy; it’s completely pointless, incontrovertibly middle-class, horrifically British, and absolutely, hilariously, wonderful.

I fully intend to keep going to the Royal Academy every year, chuckling knowingly, until the moment when I, standing next to a man with medals on his jacket and a small mammal asleep on his upper lip, gazing dazedly at a small, gaudily-framed picture of a yacht in a tranquil bay, forget that it’s all a joke and start taking it seriously. You should do likewise.

Righteous Indignation

By
Richard Blaine
-

INDIGNATION
PHILIP ROTH
Jonathan Cape, £16.99

A departure from Roth’s recent meditations on the indignities of old age, his new novel revisits the age-old menaces of sex, death and communism. The campus-based tale, set against the backdrop of the Korean War, follows the son of a kosher butcher in 1950s Newark.

Nineteen-year-old freshman, Marcus Messner, attempts to escape his suffocating and overbearing father by leaving college in New Jersey and transfers, somewhat disastrously, to Winesberg College, Ohio. Messner is an A-grade student, while his new classmates are churchgoing, beer-swilling conservatives. Disregarding the Jewish fraternity and determined to escape the claustrophobia of his father’s oppressive love, the butcher’s shop, and the stink of blood and meat, Messner involves himself with a disturbed Gentile named Olivia Hutton.

Alienated by the Christian ethos and confused by his sexual experiences, Messner fears he is only a sexual-transgression away from ending up a doomed rifleman in Korea. His father is proved correct in his abnormal anxiety for his son’s welfare, because Messner is killed in action in Korea.
He is drafted after expulsion from Winesburg, following a series of amusing clashes with college authorities, charting Roth’s return to comic form. Roth condemns Messner to an afterlife of endless metaphysical incomprehension, doomed to revisit the events of his life. While death is a unifying preoccupation of Roth’s later work, the clumsy shift in narration from first person to third in the final chapter, spelling out Messner’s fate for anyone who hasn’t quite worked it out, is an ill-considered strategy which disrupts the otherwise propulsive and visceral narrative. But without Roth’s characteristically taught style, the novel would simply be a series of comic set-pieces which didn’t make the cut in his earlier works.

Messner’s sexual hi-jinks are not unlike that of previous Roth protagonist Mickey Sabbath, masturbating on his beloved’s grave; he is not simply another of Roth’s fictional alter-egos, but a far darker creation of sexual insecurity. The amount of sex (as in any Roth novel) is not quite enough to be gratuitous.
It is never an end in itself but a principal source of terror and neuroticism. While this may sound like well-trodden ground to anyone who has read at least one of Roth’s 29 novels on sex, conformity and religious and moral rectitude, it is anything but formulaic.

Much more satisfying than his last novel, the sorely disappointing Exit Ghost, Indignation is a combination of the poignant disenchantment of Roth’s recent works, and the righteous anger of his earlier novels.

3 Stars

Portraits of the Artists

By
Lucy Hodgetts
-

WYNDHAM LEWIS PORTRAITS
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
Until 19th October

Man of peace. That’s how Wyndham Lewis described Hitler in 1931. Fascistic, homophobic, racist; almost everything about Wyndham Lewis was repellent, yet his portraits of contemporaries such as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot are unequalled. His artistic genius was often stymied by his Nazi sympathies, perhaps hindering analysis of his work as tough and unprepossessing. Often overlooked in favour of Cubism and Futurism, this exhibition proves that Lewis’s Vorticism was every bit as integral in the artistic exposition of turbulent times as either of those more highly regarded movements.

The National Gallery’s recent show presents a figure capable of pictorial brilliance with the power to amaze and entertain, regardless of personal viciousness or political shortcomings, much as knowledge of Umberto Boccioni’s affiliation with the extreme views of Mussolini and Marinetti cannot dim the brilliance of his Futurist masterpieces.

If you really want to know what there is to dislike about Lewis, you only need glance at his famous self-portrait ‘Mr Wyndham Lewis as a Tyro’. A grotesque, grinning head, compactly constructed from flat planes and sharp angles set against a sour-yellow background, it fixes the viewer with an arrogant, snarling glare.

Lewis disregards all aspects fundamental to portraiture: the drama of the human form, the voyeurism and sympathy of the viewer. Instead, Lewis’s painting is an affront to the universal ‘human interest’ of modern art. It is anti-portraiture.

There is little hint of the fleshy sensuality which imbues a human figure. Geometry is the altar at which Wyndham Lewis worships; it dictates the shape and detail of the human frame and governs the artist’s exacting respect for the likeness of the sitter; the shape still recalls the appearance and identity.
Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Edith Sitwell receive similar Vorticist treatment, but Wyndham Lewis’s geometric approach does not compromise his ability to capture their characters, demonstrating that Lewis’s best portraits are of the most uniquely individuated sitters. It is as if Wyndham Lewis, a famously strong personality himself, raised his game when faced with subject whom he considered his equals in character and intellect. A beautiful pencil portrait of Rebecca West reveals an intimate moment of intense anxiety, merely by showing her face from two slightly different perspectives.

Crucially we see Lewis’s portrait of TS Eliot, which was rejected by the Royal Academy in 1938. Every aspect of the figure is defined: from the colossal architecture of his suit, to the neat parting in his hair. A compromise between icon and caricature, the portrait explores the physicality of selfhood and the manipulation of visual identity. It is not that Wyndham Lewis is completely unconcerned with the emotional content of his work, simply that the monumentalisation of simple human form is his primary focus.
It is true that the other works are not of such consistent brilliance. At times it seems as if he reserves the modernist style for the literary avant-garde, reverting to a more mundane, naturalistic style in portraits of his wife. Perhaps this in itself reflects the cultural elitism that he and his contemporaries were guilty of.

Moreover, his later works, particularly an awkwardly executed portrait of Naomi Mitchison, are suffused with a certain sadness; as Wyndham Lewis’s eyesight began to deteriorate, his art suffered.

What is clear from this small but concise show is that Lewis was not interested in exploring the psyche of a sitter. Instead he concerned himself with creating the definition of a distinct individual, creating an image rather than a personality.

4 Stars

Oxford Through The Years

By
Rob Pilgrim
-

Oxford University has always sent successful athletes to the Olympics and of course this past summer was no exception. Here we take a look at some of the past greats who have sported the dark navy vest and gone on to the games.

Arnold Jackson was the first Olympic Champion to come out of the OUAC ranks. He won the 1500m at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, scraping home by the narrowest of margins in 3:56.8, an Olympic record.

By the 1930s Jack Lovelock had arrived at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar from New Zealand. In 1934 Jackko was elected to President of OUAC and despite suffering reoccurring knee injuries, led the team to a sound victory over Cambridge at the Sports.

Jackko’s greatest run came in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics. Faced with the greatest 1500m field of all time, Lovelock achieved an incredible victory, overcoming his opponents with an unprecedented extended sprint from home with 300 metres to go. His time of 3:47.8 was a world record.

The BBC commentary to the race was provided by Jack’s good friend, Harold Abrahams, winner of the 100 yards in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Abrahams completely lost the plot during the race and the transcription of his garbled words is now legendary.

Chris Chataway’s story is one not of success but of a heartbreaking near miss. In 1952, Chataway went to the Olympics in Helsinki where he faced an exceptional field in the 5000m, including the great legend, Emil Zatopek. I

In the final, Chataway led a group of four round the last lap, but tripped across the curb on entering the back straight. He scrambled to his feet but the three other runners had got away.

Chataway crossed the line in fifth, ten seconds inside his previous best, winded and only semi-conscious. In the same games, the great Roger Bannister (pictured left), OUAC’s most famous alumnus suffered one of few relative career failures finishing fourth in the 1500m.

Finally, having arrived at Oxford in 1994 Steph Cook showed great running potential in her second year, coming second in the Varsity X-Country and winning the 3000m at the Varsity Match. In her final year, Steph made more progress, winning the Varsity X-Country and placing an impressive 7th in the Nationals.

By this time, Steph had developed another love, the modern pentathlon and she was very good at that too. At Sydney, she became OUAC’s first female Olympic champion with her stunning win in the Olympic’s first Modern Pentathlon competition achieved with a storming run in the last event, lifting her from 8th to 1st in the overall standings.

The following year, Steph retired from the sport and returned to medicine after winning 3 golds at the Modern Pentathlon World Champs, in the team, relay and individual events-a great haul for any athlete.

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