Tuesday 14th October 2025

Culture

Spike Lee’s lackluster remake: Highest 2 Lowest

There is no reason why a remake should remain inferior to its source material; even less so when it’s a ‘reinterpretation’ by an auteur as opposed to a cynical...

One book, 500 years of art: The History of Art in One Sentence

★★★★☆ Former Wadhamite Verity Babbs has created a practical guide to the history of art...

The Librarians (2025) at the Bodleian: reviewed

Kim A. Snyder’s The Librarians (2025) draws the audience into a pernicious web of...

Be brave, Oxford: Let’s put creativity back in the creative arts

Welcome back, Oxford. While you were away preparing for the next academic year, or...

Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying: Tracing the Atmospheres of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

'When the pandemic hit Ontario, William Faulkner was a cadet in the Canadian Royal Air Force. Writing home to his parents, he would bemoan the lengthiness of his base’s lockdown, and the protracted sense of time it engendered.'

Interview: ‘A Night of Queer Music’ at Holywell

Deborah Acheampong (Producer) in conversation with Adrienne Knight (Musical Director), Katie Kirkpatrick, and Eliza Hogermeer (both singers) on Vanguard Productions' upcoming show 'A Night of Queer Music', a dramatic music concert, at the Holywell Music Room, on the 30th and 31st of May.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

'If you’ve been sitting at home with your cork board and red string, becoming the next Hercule Poirot trying to work out how on earth the MCU fits together nowadays, give this intergalactic film a try.'

Embracing the Echoes: The Significance and Allure of Literary Retellings

'The concept of reimagining an existing story is relatively new in the context of storytelling, emerging more prominently in recent years.'

Inside the Oxford fashion scene: the Fashion Gala designers

'I spoke to some of the Fashion Gala designers, who told me about their background in the world of fashion and design, their pieces for this year’s gala, and where they find their inspiration.'

The shift towards online thrift: a guide

'It is okay to deliberately buy fast-fashion second-hand since it is already in circulation and will not constitute to financially supporting unethical practices. Honestly, the longer it avoids landfill the better.'

Interview: ‘The Mandrake of Machiavelli’ at Exeter College

An interview with Kian Moghaddas (Director), Matilda Piovella (Assistant Director), and the cast of 'The Mandrake', the Exeter College Garden Play.

Between Love and Hate: The Strokes’ Guide to Staying Together

'US-based pop-rock band The Strokes have encountered just about all of rock’s common killers. And yet, 22 years on from their first album, they are still here – and reportedly working on a seventh.'

The White Stuff and its Discontents

'Increasingly, then, the heritage bequeathed to us in these museums is not just trapped in glass, but also in a host of moralising, ‘problematising’ and, ultimately, infantilising, narratives that are in their nature more political than educational.'

‘Ornamented choral what?’ – your favourite early sacred music like you’ve never heard it before

'What is ‘polyphony’? I hear you cry. Why is it ‘choral’ and what makes it ‘ornamented’?'

The Identity Crisis of Everything Everywhere All At Once

'In an alternate universe, you are not an Oxford student reading Cherwell. In another alternate universe, you are a pinata hanging from a tree. In yet another alternate universe, you have hot dogs for fingers.'

Female Rage: Too normal to be so rare

'A quick glance at the TikTok search results for ‘female rage’ tells a very interesting story - women, shouting and expressing their anger without shame, presented as though this is something shocking.'

‘Women, Scorned’: Exploring Feminine Rage in Art

'Feminine rage is all the rage. It’s everywhere.'

Review: A Poet and A Scholar.

'The audience of Kian Moghaddas’ A Poet and a Scholar was in hysterics pretty much the entire way through.'

The Super Mario Bros. Movie – A review

'This movie will make you feel like you’re sitting back at whichever Nintendo console you first met that little, moustached man.'

Normalising transgression: A review of Joyland.

'In Joyland, queerness becomes banal, and patriarchy is revealed to be futile.'

Is That an Angel? No, it’s Maisie Peters – Tour Review

'The Good Witch, embarking upon her first headlining tour, has brewed up a concoction of heartbreak and hope, insecurity and exuberance'

Review of PAMFIR: ‘A raw and unpretentious thriller’

The sounds of heavy breathing and rustling form the first few seconds of Pamfir, the debut feature film of Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk. These...

Interview: ‘Macbeth’ at the Pilch, an ensemble of tragedies

"Shakespeare gives us so much space to sort of deal with psychological problems, which aren't always necessarily textual, but really come through in rehearsals and give the performance a higher level of connection with the audience."

Top 10 Films for a Trouble-Free Trinity

'For every bit of stress, there’s a summer day, an approaching sense of closure and a long sprawling summer to keep us going.'

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