Friday, May 23, 2025
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OxView: Best finales

Calum Bradshaw
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OxView: Best finales

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Set against the violent chaos of the American Civil War, the last of Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy is a western of still unmatched scale and style. Clint Eastwood is at his best as the cigar-chewing ‘man with no name’, opposite Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach who both positively simmer in their roles as rival outlaws chasing a stash of buried gold. Tense, long shots, and a soaring Ennio Morricone soundtrack bring the trilogy to a gripping conclusion.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Currently tied with Titanic and Ben-Hur for the most Oscars for a single film, the final instalment in Peter Jackson’s epic fantasy trilogy is a movie on a massive scale and ultimately hard to find fault in. The level of cast performance and production value remains masterfully high as the fellowship’s desperate attempt to save Middle-Earth reaches its climax.

Three Colours: Red

Both the last film in the Three Colours Trilogy, and Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski final work, Red is a stunning exploration of human loneliness and friendship. Starring Irène Jacob as student Valentine, this French-language film is a sumptuously directed and deeply emotionally involving drama, played out against Zbigniew Preisner’s critically acclaimed score.

Double defeat for Oxford in Varsity T20

Matthew Roller
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Double defeat for Oxford in Varsity T20

Oxford’s Men and Women both suffered Varsity defeats on Friday, as Cambridge completed a T20 Cricket double.

After comfortable victories in both the 50-over and T20 contests last year, the Women’s Blues meekly surrendered their Varsity crown after limping to an abject 74/9 in their twenty overs. Cambridge had no trouble in knocking off the runs, winning by nine wickets with some 50 balls remaining.

The Men’s match which followed was a somewhat tighter affair, but despite Matty Hughes’ valiant fifty, the Dark Blues fell just short, losing by ten runs after something of a recovery following a poor start with the bat.

Despite winning the toss on a sunny day which seemed perfect for batting, Oxford Women got off to the worst possible start at Fenner’s.

Wicket-keeper Charlotte Graham was run out in calamitous fashion off just the third ball of the innings, and strike bowler Lucy Binsted picked up the wickets off Vanessa Picker and captain Sophie Taylor within the first four overs to leave the visitors reeling at 11/3.

Imogen Brown and Sam Moore threatened some resurgence as they found some fluency at the crease, but the innings never really got going as wickets continued to fall.

Oxford managed to rack up 204 in this fixture last year, but their pitiful batting effort was epitomised this time out by Lucy Taylor’s tortured 32-ball stay at the crease, which yielded only three runs.

Leg-spinner Chloe Allison finished with a remarkable set of figures—four overs, two maidens, the wicket of Brown and just three runs conceded—as the Light Blues’ attack dominated.

A target of 75 was never going to be enough to challenge Cambridge’s batsmen, and openers Barber and Fisher accumulated steadily through the powerplay overs to reach 30 without loss.

Sarah Attrill picked up the wicket of Fisher, but as the Light Blues pierced the field with ease, they charged towards their target, eventually winning with a flick to fine-leg for four from Barber (33*).

This was Cambridge Women’s first ever win in a Varsity T20 fixture, and it was a fine way to do it.

The Men’s game saw two in-form sides face off: Patrick Tice’s Cambridge had won seven of their previous eight games, while Oxford’s Varsity treble last year was followed up by a series of strong results this season.

Despite losing the toss, Oxford got off to a strong start, with Toby Pettman’s medium pace proving hard to get away. He snared two wickets and took a catch within the first eight overs, and a sharp run-out from Matty Hughes saw the hosts slump to 34/4.

Tim Moses led something of a fightback, but dismissals in the middle overs meant Cambridge were 68/6 from 14 overs: a recovery was needed.

Fortunately for the hosts, Pettman (4-0-17-3) had bowled his full allocation, and returning Blue Johny Marsden’s increased pace played into their hands.

Moses slammed him for fourteen runs off the first three balls of the 18th over, and despite his eventual dismissal for 43, Rory Sale carried on where his teammate had left off, sending the final over of the innings for a further eighteen to leave the hosts 129/7.

Sale’s 14-ball cameo yielded 24 runs, which proved to be absolutely vital.

Vice-captain Dan Escott had been in fine form with the bat for Oxford, so it instantly felt like a bad sign when he was dismissed in the second over for just one: Moses proved impossible to keep out of the game, and forced an edge behind out of the Lincoln student with a nasty bouncer.

Jamie Gnodde and Alex Rackow came and went without proving the scorers with much trouble, while Hughes started to accumulate at the other end.

And just as Mathew Naylor became to settle at the crease, his lengthy partnership with Hughes was ended by a run-out at the worst possible time.

Hughes took the game into his own hands with the required rate climbing, and slammed two lusty blows for six in the fifteenth and sixteenth over to keep the run chase alive.

But some excellent death bowling from Moses and James Poulson, coupled with a lack of support from the other end, meant the Mancunian could not manage to pull off the chase: he fell in the final over, and Cambridge saw out the game to complete a ten-run victory.

The result meant it had been a disappointing two days for the Dark Blues, who were defeated by Manchester University yesterday in the BUCS National League 50-over semi-final.

However, their fighting performance will at least give them hope against of next week’s 50-over clash at Lord’s and the four-day game in Cambridge next month.

Oxford’s reputation catches up with Cambridge for first time

Cherwell News
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Oxford’s reputation catches up with Cambridge for first time

Oxford University’s public reputation has equalled that of Cambridge University for the first time, according to the latest edition of the Times Higher Education (THE) World Reputation Rankings.

Since the creation of the rankings seven years ago, Cambridge has always surpassed Oxford, but this year’s rankings places the two institutions in joint fourth place.

The improvement in reputation comes after the appointment of Louise Richardson as the University’s first female Vice Chancellor, with the editorial director at THE, Phil Baty, describing the move as “symbolic”.

“This was a historical moment—these big symbolic things can make a difference for being front of people’s minds and being noticed,” he said. “Having a woman at the helm means there is a sense of change, momentum and difference”.

Louise Richardson took up her post as Vice Chancellor in January 2016, replacing Andrew Hamilton, but Baty described the effect of her appointment on the University’s reputation as a “slow burner.”

Other factors may have contributed to the improvement in Oxford’s reputation, with suggestions that Oxford’s first place in the THE world university rankings and receipt of a series of prestigious research grants may have improved its reputation.

The top three places were occupied by Harvard, MIT, and Stanford University for the second year running. Besides Oxford and Cambridge, only UCL, Imperial College, and the LSE appeared in the top 20 of the rankings.

The rankings were compiled following a three month survey of over 10,000 academics from 137 countries.

Dispatches: Friends, Ulysses, and the value of a story’s ending

Ellie Duncan
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Dispatches: Friends, Ulysses, and the value of a story’s ending

Let me set the scene: Times Square, New York, and 3000 people have gathered to watch the final episode of Friends on the giant screen—only one of multiple viewing parties organised in the city, and only a fraction of the 51 million estimated viewers across the country.

As an unashamed devotee of a series that, despite its glaringly idealistic and dated presentation of roles and relationships, I will still turn to for a dose of comfort on a hungover day, I can only imagine the excitement of this collective viewing. Child-like, there is something tantalising about sharing the very same space of any fictional world you are invested in. More than that, the immense hype that surrounded ‘The Last One’ is a testament to the way in which we invest in stories and specifically, their endings: the crucial point we grasp at, where the story might be mapped onto our individual trajectories, or at which the story becomes an area for staking an opinion.

Extrapolating the deep significance of stories in society from the final episode of Friends may seem a little tenuous (and/or pretentious) when the characters repeatedly show very little surprise at the simplicity with which so many of their issues can be resolved, and when this is the very point of the show. Living life through the eyes of a Rachel or a Chandler is relatable up to a point—we unfortunately can’t wield packaged-up identities that people will receive uniformly, and excuse us on the basis of. But Friends still provides a happily coherent world that is recognisable if not attainable, where the possibilities for the story’s ending have been safely constrained by ten seasons of static personality.

The personal value of Friends—make of it what you will—is somehow validated by its commercial value. Providing a kind of shared cultural identity, this love of Friends finds an obvious companion in the worldwide mania for Harry Potter. I still remember dragging my mum to W.H. Smith to buy the final novel and the pride of clutching a copy in the queue. I probably was a bit too young to properly understand the psychological complexity of the characters and the weight of the ending. But I loved the plot. I imagine many readers felt the same back in the day of serialisation, a sensation of suspense nevertheless qualified by the promise of a carefully crafted conclusion—if you kept up your subscription!

In the case of a novel series then, it might seem that the ending is the most important factor in providing a sense of coherence—the final puzzle-piece reference point (that can make re-reading a novel such a variable experience!) In other cases, simply getting to the end of a formidable book—take Ulysses for example— provides more of a sense of an ending than any satisfactory explanations actually arising in the writing.

Managing to gain a ‘whole’ perspective on Ulysses by reaching the end only amplifies the confusion, yet also expands the possibilities for drawing meaning. Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night A Traveller sets out directly to deny the significance of a conventional ending. But it has the same effect. Where we know there must be an ending, of any kind, we’re instantly reminded of a fictional re-ordering of reality, and the comparative perspectives that stories make us crave

‘Community’ teaches us all how to say goodbye

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‘Community’ teaches us all how to say goodbye

Community never did have an easy ride. Its head writer, Dan Harmon, was fired by NBC after season three, while Chevy Chase—one of the lead actors—repeatedly disrupted filming for season four. Despite regaining Harmon at the beginning of season five, the show was now facing an uphill battle, shedding cast members before moving to Yahoo for its sixth and final season.

Two years on from its finale, and it’s now clear that its final episode stands amongst best TV conclusions of all time, despite the adversity faced by its production team. In the bar, the Greendale gang spitball ideas for what they ought to do for a hypothetical “seventh season.” We too often speak about how characters have “revealing moments,” but, by this point, there’s very little left to reveal.

Instead, the show is so comfortable with its characters that it just lets them be themselves, their pitches a perfect representation of who they are and of who we’ve always known them to be. Of course Britta would pitch a far-fetched, hack-handed show about political dissent; of course Chang’s seventh season would be utterly nonsensical and feature a talking ice cube person; of course Abed understands his friends so well that he can reduce their utterances to stock types.

Community is uncompromisingly, unapologetically itself in its final episode, drawing upon its self-reflexivity in a way that allows its cast to shine.

And yet, it also acknowledges its own diminishment and the impossibility of sustaining itself in the wake of losing so much of its core cast. Jeff —having already expressed his fear of change in the season five episode ‘GI Jeff ’—pitches a vision in which everyone gets to stay together, in which the show can continue in perpetuity. Jeff , like much of the audience, wants something impossible, something that has already begun to fall apart.

This conclusion makes the show’s difficult production history work for it, the metanarrative of a dissipating cast becoming the narrative, the story of the production of the show becoming the show itself in a way that feels perfectly at home in this self-aware, self-referential, self-deprecatory series. Its ending is both heart-breaking and entirely right.

It doesn’t try to tie everything up, to resolve every hanging plot thread, to put some neat bow on everything in a grasp for some arbitrary sense of conclusiveness. For all its willingness to smash through the fourth wall with a great big wrecking ball, the show here is at its most emotionally true, showing life in all its messy, tragic, joyous incompleteness.

This finale is a celebration of the show’s best qualities and an acceptance of its ephemerality, a last hurrah for its terrific cast and a bittersweet climax to the show’s long running thematic interests. It is, in short, a perfect farewell.

‘Quanne’s’ romp to Hockey Cuppers win

Harry Style
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‘Quanne’s’ romp to Hockey Cuppers win

In this year’s hockey mixed Cuppers final, favourites Christ Church faced off against a combined team from St Anne’s and Queen’s.

Whilst they boasted some experienced players, the recently-formed ‘Quanne’s’ side had only played four matches as a team before this match, all without a goalkeeper.

The match started well for Quanne’s, who swiftly won a penalty flick in the opening minutes. However, they could not convert this opportunity, after they were denied an early lead by the nimble Christ Church keeper. The frustration continued as Christ Church charged down a string of successive short corners until their defence was eventually cracked by a smart reverse from Johann Perera.

Another goal followed soon afterwards courtesy of Ed Audland and things began to look more positive for the Quanne’s side.

However, the team took a literal blow when star player Helen Megone was struck in the face with the ball from close range. Sadly she was taken to the John Radcliffe and after a lengthy delay the game was resumed.

The injury was a sign of things to come as the game turned scrappy. As tempers flared, Christ Church received the first of several green cards, which allowed Quanne’s to take advantage as James Hawrych snatched a third goal.

After the half-time whistle blew, both teams received rousing team-talks from their captains. As the second half progressed, the extreme heat of the evening began to take an effect on the players. Christ Church’s were able to bring on fresh legs in the form of formerly unused substitutes, while Quanne’s suffered on account of their non-existent keeper.

It should have been one-way traffic as Christ Church pushed forward.

Despite this, the last ten minutes saw Quanne’s superstars Danielle van Gilst and Ayaz Mohamedali find the backboard to spark wild celebrations among the combined XI’s players. The game ended 5-1.

Quanne’s departed as Cuppers champions, having come a long way for so recently formed a team. After winning Water Polo and Floorball Cuppers and the Summer Eights M1 headship last weekend, it was a swift crash back down to earth for Christ Church.

Life Divided: Carnations

Jamie Onslow and Nicola Dwornik
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Life Divided: Carnations

Jamie Onslow: Against

As Trinity Term drew to a close last year and my prelims approached, I found myself feeling sad and alone, longing for some human company. One day my college father approached me in Main Quad and presented me with a bouquet of flowers. Touched by this romantic gesture, I immediately tried to lure him to a broom closet, but was instead hurriedly informed of the Oxford tradition that is the wearing foliage in one’s exams. For those who are, like I was, unaware of this hallowed custom: Oxford students have traditionally considered it good luck to incorporate flora and fauna into their subfusc, in order to appease the Pagan fertility gods that live in the trees and boulders.

There is, of course, a political dimension to the wearing of red carnations, which have always been associated with the labour movement. As a committed communist, I have no problem with the wearing of these flowers, but we must spare a thought for Oxford’s many fragile Conservative students, for whom the mere thought of wearing a symbol of international labour is enough to induce projectile vomiting. Furthermore, carnations are traditionally a symbol of a mother’s love, and there is surely a cruel irony in forcing Oxford students to wear such a symbol, as most of us here have clearly never felt such love—how else could we have turned out like this?

I am not completely insensitive to the charm of wearing a small bit of nature as part of one’s exam outfit, but at some point a line must be drawn. In my final prelim, I was unable to complete the exam as my next door neighbour had put a horse chestnut tree through his buttonhole—as a result I was showered with conkers from start to finish. History finalists had one of their exams cancelled this year after one candidate’s lucky severed cow head began to rot in the midsummer heat of the exam hall.

Nicola Dwornik: For

I love carnations. So it’s good then that Oxford provides one for your every mood in Trinity, representing the gradient from semi-functioning, through ‘utterly dubious about your existence’, and finally to contemplating pressing flower petals with the exam paper rather than answering it. After all, it’s common knowledge that a key feature of, say, Martin Luther’s doctrine was sweat-plastered and squished-by-paper foliage. It is now, anyway.

Besides being symbolic of exam season, carnations act as a reminder that there really is a world outside. I know–amazing! Five exams in, you’ll be wilting or at least in the process of slowly turning into a flailing greyscale footnote, revising from unanswered tute sheets that seemed less inviting than a Hassan’s cheesy chips on the night it was due. Come to think of it, you’ll probably have turned into a walking, occasionally talking, often crying, tute sheet. You’ll be one big unanswered question, specifically the question of ‘Why did I pick such an unemployable degree and proceed to fuck it up?’

So, even if you do relish in the harsh glow of artificial neon lighting and feel the exam-provoked creases on your face really add to your profile, one should celebrate the love that carnations emphatically sprinkle into our lives. Just when you thought your college daddy issues were starting to affect your romantic choices and the fantasy of settling down as a family of four with a faithful Dalmatian was beginning to fade, carnations prove otherwise. The sight of a pidged carnation prove that your college parents really do remember being assigned to you, despite having ignored your pleas for old essays for the past three weeks. In the depths of despair, your mum trudges to the Covered Market to purchase your fl orals and do your commercial dealings in a period when everything besides moaning, staring blankly at walls, and wearing black is beyond you. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

A sense of closure amongst dreaming spires

Sarah Brown
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A sense of closure amongst dreaming spires

In almost two weeks’ time, I will have officially finished my last term at Oxford. After three years of feeling excited, anxious, angry and even bored with the dreaming spires, and, like a caffeine-inspired magician, not quite knowing how I managed to pull essays out of the bag, I’m naturally feeling a bit mixed about it all being over. Perhaps it’s because, no matter how mixed I’ve been feeling, Oxford has always been the sort of place that keeps going. Excitement passes into boredom, and boredom passes back into excitement. The peace of an essay crisis resolved passes back into the terror of an impending one for next week. And now that it’s all coming to a halt, I don’t quite know how to feel.

Luckily, however, as an English finalist who finished their exams in fourth week, I have plenty of spare time to dwell on the fantastic train wreck of my Oxford experience, and the unconfirmed destination it’s finally arrived at. Some of the words finalists like me might be hearing are the well-meaning praise of family and friends not at Oxford, words that go something to the joyful, honeyed tune of “what a great experience”, ‘“you’re so privileged to have gone there,” “you must be feeling so happy.”

For me, the ‘you’ in those words feels faintly remote and, well, sort of but not exactly ‘me’. I know in my heart of hearts that Oxford was a great experience. I also know deep down that I was privileged to experience it. And I know that there is a part of me, a very big part of me, that’s happy. But there is another part of me that feels it could have been greater, that I could feel more privileged, that I could be happier. It’s the possibility that it all could have been something more that jars with the concrete, impregnable words of people who I care about dearly and who have supported me more than I could ever have asked for, but who don’t know, and might never know, what Oxford meant to me.

Before I came to Oxford, I thought I was great at English. No, actually, I thought I was the bees-knees at it. It didn’t take me long to find out that I had a lot to learn. And I don’t say that lightly. Very soon into my time here, I began to feel that I was at the bottom of my class in college. I didn’t show it and I carried on with the work pretending with the idea that I might still be the greatest. But I was aware that my tutors weren’t fantastically enthusiastic about my essays, and I certainly knew that there were no 25/25 essays here, no very goods, or comments telling me that they wouldn’t change a thing. I got the feeling I could change a lot. It took me a while to make any significant change to my academic work, and I would mark the event of that change in my final year, and, even then, things were far from perfect. The worst part about it was that I couldn’t say that I was an Oxford Blue, or an extracurricular superstar. I was never in a play during my time in Oxford, and my musical talents were powerful only insofar as they might severely rupture someone’s ear drums. My mental health was good. I did quite a bit of running. My academic work was okay, and possibly quite good. I wasn’t a failure, I wasn’t a success. Everything was fine. Oxford was fine.

But a privilege? A great experience? Somehow, Oxford didn’t have the box-office happy ending I had anticipated when I first arrived. But I don’t mean to make Oxford sound more enigmatic than it merits. In any case, closure, and, therefore, the idea of having to ‘crack’ Oxford, isn’t a priority. And feeling I could have done better is not a bad feeling. To me, it’s the one valuable lesson Oxford taught me. The work load might be tougher than other universities and certain people might make you feel that they’ve got a fast-track pass to their career successes before they’ve even turned twenty. It’s tough, and it can be tough in different ways for different people. Nevertheless, the reality of Oxford is far from a puzzle crafted for the born-genius and the naturally-gifted. Personally, I don’t believe that those people exist. People who get good results work hard. By the same token, some people work hard and don’t get good results. Some people here might work hard in unique and subtle ways, but they work hard nonetheless.

The fact is, Oxford has been achievable and achieved by everyone who comes here. It doesn’t have any less of an ending because you feel you could have tightened the structure of this chapter, or filled that chapter with more interesting content. Those thoughts only reinforce the sense of an ending. The ending that can look forwards, that refuses to be closed is a defiant, strong-willed ending that puts its author in a position from which they can go anywhere and do anything. I think that ending is the only truly meaningful one, and it’s a pretty damn good one, exactly because it refuses to end.

As a saucer-eyed, bushy-tailed prospective student, I read in that year’s prospectus that Oxford attracts the ‘brightest and the best’. I disagree. If Oxford works, it is because it can teach people to be brighter and better. Because no one is the brightest, and no one is the best. There will always be things everyone could have done better. That’s not Oxford. That’s life. And if Oxford can tell us this at its ending and make us feel okay about that, that’s the greatest ending of all. Tell yourself you can do better, sure, but know that you’ve already done fantastically by telling yourself that.

“Intense and enjoyable to watch”

Nina Crisp
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“Intense and enjoyable to watch”

Richard II has been deposed and Henry Bolingbroke is on the throne, but not free from troubles. He cannot wage the crusade he wants to. His son, Prince Hal, is living with drunks and thieves in a manner unfitting for a crown prince, and his former allies are plotting against him. Four Seven Two’s production of Henry IV examined the conflicts of family, loyalty, and politics.

Max Cadman, as Prince Hal, capturing the light-hearted playfulness of a man enjoying his youth, but adopting a more serious tone as the play went on, and he began to take on some of the responsibilities of being crown prince. Jonny Wiles was a very good Falstaff, winning many laughs for his delivery, physicality and responses to the actors around him. Chris Page was a forceful if slightly wooden Hotspur, but his death scene performance made his character far more sympathetic . Marcus Knight-Adams’ King Henry was steely and appropriately threatening. From the ensemble, I particularly liked Ben Thorne’s speech as Worcester denouncing Henry for his betrayal, Jack Doyle’s camp and fun-loving Poins, and Meg Harrington’s beautiful singing in Welsh as Lady Mortimer.

The direction by Miranda Mackay was impressive, as the changes between comic and serious were well effected, and the energy given to all the scenes suited what was happening. However, considering that the production chose to set up the stage in thrust, there could have been more attention paid to the sides of the stage — the tavern scene in particular seemed to use only the very front of the stage. The fight scenes were well choreographed. Those that established the battle seemed a bit hurried, as actors ran on, fought a few seconds, and ran off again, but the more important ones between two characters looked especially brutal and effective.

The set, designed by Olive McAndrew and Laura de Lisle, was minimal, composed mostly of tables and barrels, but the arches of Westminster were permanently in the background, reminding the audience of what was at stake. The costuming was well done, each faction looking a little different, but also consistently true to the period.  Falstaff’s makeup was very well done — his grey beard and hair were particularly believable.

The technical side of the play was designed well, and I especially liked the lighting in the battles, and the effect that made the voices in Westminster really resound. It could have been improved by more of the lighting transitions being cued on time, and the music at scene changes being loud enough to distinguish from a low murmur.

Henry IV is a play that was not familiar to me, but Four Seven Two’s interpretation made it immediately engaging and easy to follow. The three-hour run time may be hefty, but the performance is one that is intense, keeps on moving, and is very enjoyable to watch.

OxFilm: An exciting summer lined up

Calum Bradshaw
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OxFilm: An exciting summer lined up

It’s been a great term for student film in Oxford. From both newcomers and veteran filmmakers, the quality and range of content on show has been truly impressive. A mixture of styles, skills, and genres have been showcased—for the best of the term, give This, Where’s Johnny, and Yellow Grass a watch.

As the term winds down, Oxford student film winds up for the summer. A host of projects are getting underway during the vacation, including a 24-hour filmmaking challenge and a new OUFF contest. This competition is for short films under five minutes in length, centering on ideas of home for the students of Oxford who divide their time between uni and elsewhere.

Documentary is an often neglected genre in the student scene, so the possibility for a non- fiction film to be entered is an exciting one. The winner will be screened in Michaelmas—I, and all at Cherwell, will be watching closely.

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