1st week

WRITE TO BE PUBLISHED: A workshop with Nicola Morgan

Blackwell’s Bookshop

Thursday 19th January. £20 registration

 

2nd Week

GROUP 2012: New writers group est. by Blackwell’s, Hersilia Press & The Oxford Editors

Blackwell’s Bookshop 

Tuesday 24th Jan, 7pm

 

3rd Week

 KEEPING TIME: TAMARIN NORWOOD

A Study in Choreography, Instruction and Transcription

Modern Art Oxford

 

4th Week

 VISIONS OF MUGHAL INDIA: THE COLLECTION OF HOWARD HODGKIN

Right now, silent film is the talk of the town. Scorsese took as his inspiration for Hugo the psychedelic fantasy and visual trickery of Georges Melies’ experimental films at the turn of the century. The long stretches of original footage Scorsese included stole the show. The Artist, a quite incredible 100 minutes of silent, black and white melodrama celebrating the late silent era, received six Golden Globe nominations and is expected to perform very well in the UK box office this month. French director Michel Hazanavicius cited as some of his inspiration a number of sensational silent dramas, including Murnau’s Sunrise (1929), John Ford’s Four Sons (1928), and Chaplin’s City Lights (1931). 

The reason behind such a revival of interest is hard to descry. Perhaps the attraction to silent film is dependent on some level of estrangement, the age-old selling point of nostalgia and the ‘vintage’. As we occupy the 100-year mark since these films were made, the enthusiasm with which we greet any big anniversary is clearly present. The current appreciation of early special effects — stop motion, time lapse, multiple exposures — could either represent a longing for earlier simplicity and charm in this current age of breathtakingly expensive CGI, or a recognition of a similar time of technical discovery and excitement to our own.

However both Hugo and The Artist zone in on the melancholic passing away of the silent era, a sad but inevitable side-effect of transient popular tastes, and indeed we are unable to watch silent footage on a modern screen without the awareness that there is no talking. The films originally from this era are nonetheless magnetic because of what they can do, not what they can’t. The great three physical comedians of the 10s and 20s — Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin — embody this joyful exhilaration as they explore the possibilities of their medium though their scrambling, dangerous and occasionally horrifying stunts (combined with some startlingly intimate and subtle acting). The most sophisticated example of this genre is probably Lloyd’s Safety Last! (1923), but Buster Keaton’s short films are always dense, funny and astonishing. The films remain immersive, perhaps more so than talkies due to the level of audience participation required — you are forced to strain your imaginative ears to fill in the gaps, and, as some modern adverts have twigged, a sudden silence can be more arresting than the rest of the clamour put together. 

 

Oxford has a long tradition of men and women who twinned the ability to think intellectually with the ability to create literature, laying side by side the long divided capacities to be artist and thinker. Among the best-known examples are Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), mathematician and the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; JRR Tolkien, a philologist and Anglo-Saxon don who wrote the fantasy epic Lord of the Rings,; and Iris Murdoch, tutor in philosophy at St. Anne’s and the author of award-winning novels like The Sea, The Sea. 

Perhaps these drives — the critical and the creative – are not incompatible. Over this Hilary Term, Cherwell will be interviewing Oxford’s academics who write novels, plays, and poetry. We’ll be asking about their beginnings and their current projects, whether or not they see their disciplines interacting, and how they divide their time between academic, professional and creative pursuits. We hope you find yourself inspired.   

 

Leonardo Da Vinci was undeniably a man of ideas and his capacity for innovation carries over beautifully into his painting. In the National Gallery’s current exhibition, Leonardo’s technical skill, not only in painting but in sketching and anatomical recording, is showcased in a way that highlights his fresh and unique (for his time) concentration on the humanity of his subjects: their characters, personalities and the nuances of their expressions. 

In the very first room of the exhibition (if you have been lucky enough to procure an audio guide), your attention will be breathily directed to Leonardo’s Portrait of a Young Man, painted in 1486 and described by the voice-over as ‘revolutionary’ in his time. The three-quarter profile of the subject was a radical departure from the traditional convention of portraiture, the profile view. Leonardo’s young man poses naturally and accessibly. His features and expression are more pronounced and characterful; he is absolutely ‘human’. 

This humanization of his subjects carries over into his unconventional paintings of women.  As with The Young Man, Leonardo softens his subjects, turning them to face out of the frame. By imbuing their faces and postures with character and personality, he makes their stance inviting rather than imposing; as the excitable voice-over eulogises, ‘you can fall in love with’ the women of Leonardo’s portraits. To achieve such vividly human depictions in his paintings, Leonardo made copious sketches and studies of the varieties of human expression and pose largely from life, occasionally from sculpture and, infamously, from dissected bodies. In this exhibition, the curator, Luke Syson, has made a careful and inspired decision to surround the famous (although admittedly few) paintings of Leonardo with the preparatory sketches that built up to them. Wandering around a room in the exhibition, you see a stranger built into a Madonna in several stages. It is in the last room, dedicated to The Last Supper, Leonardo’s greatest and yet most disappointing masterpiece, that this relationship is best showcased. 

A series of sketches line the walls and for each one there is a depiction of where this sketch has been worked into the final painting. Thus, we can see an old man’s head transformed into a disciple; and a dramatic sketch of a group of grotesquely depicted gypsies worked into Leonardo’s depiction of Judas. The Last Supper is the ultimate exemplar of the painter’s skill: each figure in the painting is dynamically realised. Bursting with character and emotion, they are essentially recognisable. We ourselves have felt the emotions we see played out on that artistic stage. Therein lays Leonardo’s genius: enabling identification. The viewer of his paintings can very naturally identify with the subjects he depicts because we can identify with their humanity, even when the subject is divine. In Leonardo’s paintings the divine is rendered as human, and thus the human becomes divine. It is the ultimate humanist agenda for art and it is proof of Leonardo’s genius that he was so radically ahead of his time. 

 

‘Jolly good yarn’. ‘Witty banter’. ‘Romp’. All could be applied, quite appropriately, to Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows – the sequel to Guy Ritchie’s 2009 reimagining of Britain’s favourite genius-detective (reprised gleefully by Robert Downey Jr). There’s a slick continuity of style here, and the slow motion trick is used with particular relish. ‘Slower than a plodding tortoise’ it appears, is the new ‘faster than a speeding bullet’. In certain places this works well, and it was easy to be sucked into the mania, music and merriment of the fight scenes, for the simple fact that Downey Jr. is so engaging to watch. I was having fun, so much so in fact that I forgot to pay attention. And that is a dangerous thing to do in A Game of Shadows. Not because the overriding plot is difficult to follow, but because the individual sequences of Holmes’ brilliance are just a little too tenuous. 

 

The film is nonetheless peppered by moments of joy which manage to redeem the slightly clumsy story development. There is not a bad word to be said for the Holmes/Shetland pony pairing; the progress of which, over beautifully filmed French and German countryside, I could happily watch for the full feature time.  The development of Holmes and Watson’s relationship (excellently played again by Jude Law) is also heart-warming to watch; boyish, tender, they act best when they act together and bring out the subtler elements of Ritchie’s shoot-‘em-up world. Stephen Fry is spot-on as the genius aristocrat Mycroft Holmes, lovingly exposing Holmes and Watson for what they really are; highly educated ruffians caught up in tomfoolery and bromance. The dynamic works well, even if Fry and Downey Jr. do make the most unconvincing of siblings. 

There is even a spot of nudity, though unlikely to create as much of a feminine flutter as that of Benedict Cumberbatch’s towel drop in Stephen Moffat’s sensual Sherlock last Sunday (no offence, Mr Fry.) The Holmes boys, it seems, like to get their kit off. But that could be the only similarity between these small and silver screen portrayals, and it’s unfortunate that these second part-ers emerge at similar times. 

The legendary intellect of Ritchie’s Holmes is entirely physical, limited to pre-empting fights and concocting hilarious disguises.  Compare this with Cumberbatch’s more cerebral sleuth, and Downey Jr.’s take isn’t the workings of a beautiful mind so much as the machinations of a powerful body, which means that the battle of wits so long promised between Holmes and Moriarty culminates in just another fight. And Jared Harris is brilliant, but underused, as the part-Lenin-part-Milo Minderbinder Professor Moriarty. Jolly good fun it may be, but there is no encouragement to really think in A Game of Shadows. There is only so much hitting that can be done before an adaption of a cerebral character starts to miss. 

 

Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo boasts little of the bravado and boisterously loud filmmaking that coats The Social Network. But has he nevertheless made a fine film? Well, of course he has. By refusing to shrink from the explicitness and darkness of its Swedish original Fincher may not have satisfied as wide an audience, but he has certainly created a film that is ten times the better for it. Scenes such as the brief nightclub interlude, the torture scene, and a darkly compelling scene of anal rape – incredible in its animalism and in the starkness of Lisbeth’s shrieks – show Fincher’s mastery of representations of evil. 

Add in Reznor and Ross (who also gave us the soundtrack to The Social Network) to provide the pulse to these vulgar visuals —  a deep beat throbbing through the violence — and sounds and images are fused. These scenes shout ‘LISTEN! If I want to make my movie jump then I will, and you’ll shiver at the sight of it’.

This is precisely what they do. The visuals are as crisp as the characters and climate are cold, and as always with this story and the loopy Stieg Larsson world, we’re left looking at and thinking about Lisbeth. She’s an invincible bitchy Batman with superwoman capabilities, packed into a tiny but explosive mind and body of vengeance. Rooney Mara masters her. Despite modest claims that she had to do little but turn up and follow Fincher’s lead, she evidently put everything into this. The smooth girl-next-door beauty of Erica Albright (her character in The Social Network) has gone, and in its place appears an  albinoesque punk with sandpaper skin wrapped in coal black hair and eyeliner. 

Craig is, in contrast, as sturdy but bland as Blomkvist should be. He goes about his detective work in that Fincherian fashion we know from Se7en,  with the trademark sequences of pure proceduralism. This is combined with the investigation for investigation’s sake that also pervades Zodiac. But in comparison to those two masterpieces, this side of Dragon Tattoo is largely muted. Fincher has stayed loyal to the original adaptation, but the one notable difference is a drastic dilution of the plot details, in exchange for what feels like a greater emphasis on Lisbeth and her male demons. In some places the film seems too long, and a sense of the covering of old ground is inevitable in a remake of this kind. Fincher’s take on the first leg of the trilogy still manages to be a boiling pot of vengeance, erotica, cybergeekery and sadism. The opening titles alone are hipper than most films manage to be in their totality. Go. See. Enjoy. 

4 stars

 

There’s a lot to Sandi Toksvig, despite there being only 4 foot 11 inches of her. Telegraph columnist, Liberal Democrat supporter, one half of a lesbian civil partnership, Radio 4 presenter, mother of three children conceived with the assistance of a sperm donor, Dane, contributor to Good Housekeeping,  human rights campaigner, children’s fiction author – it’s certainly an eclectic picture.

 Her career began at Cambridge which, no matter how strong your Oxford loyalties, you have to admit was the place for aspiring comics to be in the late 70s and early 80s. It was then and there that Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery and Emma Thompson – to mention but a few – were launched on their path to stardom. Sandi was with them in the renowned Cambridge Footlights Group, undoubtedly the hub of this burgeoning comedy. Sandi was to make her own mark on the Footlights by writing, directing and performing in their first all-female show, alongside Emma Thompson. 

When asked about their motivation for doing this, she explains that female Footlighters were mostly expected to help their male counterparts get laughs, rather than to show off their own comedic talent. ‘There was Emma Thompson and myself and Jan Ravens, and every time we went up for parts all we got was ‘the Doctor will see you now’.’ Soon tired of playing ‘the nurse’ or ‘the secretary’, they determined to take matters into their own hands. ‘We decided that we wanted to do our own show, and it was the biggest success of anything I did at Cambridge. It was a huge hit, it was great.’  The show was so well received that it led to Sandi’s first break: a director offered her her first job in television, and saved her from working out what to do with her Law and Archaeology and Anthropology degree. 

She continued to work in comedy alongside her presenting job and performed at the opening night of the legendary Comedy Store in London. Here she was also keen to showcase women’s comedy: ‘I’ve done a lot of work at The Comedy Store, and on the 10th anniversary we held an all-female night, all female comics. It was packed out, it was a huge success.’ So did it make a difference? Has anything changed for women in comedy? ‘No,’ she is dishearteningly quick to reply: ‘Nothing has changed. I think if anything things have slid slightly backwards.’ And the all-female night?  ‘It’s never been done again.’

She also wryly recalls that the producers of Whose Line is it Anyway?, an improvisational comedy programme in which she often stole the show, refused to book more than one woman per episode. ‘Yes, I don’t know what they were afraid of;’ she muses, ‘that our menstrual cycles would synchronise?’ She adds that even when she took over the Radio 4 show The News Quiz she was the first woman to host such a programme in over thirty years. Apparently the relieved producer telephoned the day after her first broadcast with news that they had survived having a female host without too many complaints. This was only in 2006. You can see her point.

It’s not all doom and gloom though: she does think that there are some very talented female comics about. Sandi offers us Scottish comic Susan Calman as an excellent example and one to watch. She is only sorry that some women seem to feel limited to certain subjects: ‘It worries me when I see female comics who feel that the only comedy they can do is about knocking how they look, knocking themselves, or talking about themselves in relation to a man.’ As host she always wants a varied panel of guests on The News Quiz, but says that they can struggle to find women who engage with political material. ‘We also try to have more right wing people on’, she comments, adding in amused exasperation, ‘but they’re just not very funny!’

 Political satire is certainly something Sandi herself has never shied away from. She has appeared on Have I Got News for You and Mock the Week as well as her own show, and she’s rather good at it. My favourite moment from the most recent series of The News Quiz was her description of Mr Cameron’s rhetorical technique: ‘he has the style of Henry the Fifth but the content of a Henry vacuum cleaner.’ The show has become something of an institution, and now has an impressive 75 series under its belt, whilst the television spin-off, captained by Paul Merton and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, has tallied up a very respectable 42.

 It seems the viewing public can’t get enough and today’s satirist can forge a lucrative career.But can satire really make a difference? Sandi, for one, would like to think so: ‘I hope so. And it has made a difference in the past. There used to be a programme called Spitting Image and the way in which people were portrayed by the programme’s satirists stayed with the public and it actually affected the way in which they were viewed. And perhaps the way in which they failed to get elected.’ So can political comedy have an impact upon political careers? ‘A good example at the moment is Nick Clegg, who is the subject of many, many jokes, and there is no question, I think, that it has damaged his political standing.’ 

Yet, political comedy can also play another role — to Sandi an extremely important one–by encouraging people to take an interest in current affairs. ‘I think a lot of people are not engaged with politics at all, and I find that very worrying. There are a lot of people who think, you know what? It doesn’t really matter, politicians will do whatever they like. But they do listen to comedy programmes, and maybe, sometimes, we can get the message over that important things are happening and people need to pay attention. I hope so.’ The genuine concern is evident, ‘But I’m not trying to tell you it’s a worthy career,’ she adds, ‘its just fun.’ 

Seems both ‘worthy’ and ‘fun’ to me, not to mention extremely varied. So is there anything left that Sandi Toksvig would like to try her hand at? ‘I’m not ambitious, I’m really not’ she insists. Indeed, listening to Sandi talk about her career you’d think that it had been nothing but a series of lucky breaks.   There is, however, definitely one job that she set her sights on in the past and for us it’s rather close to home. In 2003 Sandi Toksvig ran against Christopher Patten in the election for Oxford’s next Chancellor. Although unsuccessful, her belief in ending student fees earned her a lot of undergraduate support. She assures me that she ran entirely in earnest and is only more passionate about the issue of free education in the present situation. And if she was offered the position tomorrow? She would still love to have it.

Despite her successful Cambridge background — she graduated with a first from Girton College–it appears Mrs Toksvig harbours a lot of affection for her alma mater’s dark blue counterpart. Well, a matriculation ceremony hosted by Sandi would certainly be a lively affair. I suggest another job with which her name has been connected: ‘I heard that the words Doctor Who have been mentioned?’ ‘Yes I’d love that,’ she laughs. ‘This was kind of a joke, but do you not think its time for a female Doctor? Why is it that in all the times the Doctor has transformed himself, it’s never been a woman? Why is that? I think a little, short, fat, Danish woman would be rather fun.’ I have to say I entirely agree.