The public perception of the Boat Race is that this most traditional of sports events in this country has increasingly changed from being a contest between British undergraduates to a gladiatorial clash starring mature foreign internationals, indulging in some rowing tourism between Olympic Games. It is true that there are 12 foreigners in the 156th Race next Saturday (April 3) compared with just one exactly 50 years ago. Yet there is still scope for young Britons to get selected. Step forward two 20-year-old students: Oxford’s Ben Myers and Cambridge’s George Nash.

It is a testament to their fortitude and talent that the pair have been chosen for this most unforgiving of competitions, where there are no consolation medals for second place and no rematches. The selection has delighted David Searle, the Race’s executive director. “It is terrific for the Race to have young undergraduates taking part, just as it is vital that the event maintains its status in the sport. One reason that the Boat Race attracts such international interest is because the rowing is of such a high standard. In most circumstances, a good 26-year-old will beat a 20-year-old oarsman because he is stronger and more mature. Oarsmen generally reach their peak in their late twenties and many go on with huge success in their 30s such as Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent.

“However, Myers has improved out of all recognition over the last year while Nash is probably going to be a future superstar, if not at the London Olympics then in 2016. He could well follow the path of Tom James, who also read engineering at Cambridge and won a gold medal in Beijing.”

Nash is described by coach Chris Nilsson, in his second year at Cambridge, as “always up for anything. He gives you 150 percent, going hard all the time. His heroes are Redgrave and Pinsent. They pulled every stroke hard and that is George’s way.” Last summer, having only done a ride of no longer than ten miles in preparation, he and a friend cycled from John O’Groats to Land’s End in nine days, an experience that he termed as a “massive mental test but one which helped makes Boat Race training a little easier.” In a winter of rain and and then of snow and intense cold, the preparations have been particularly arduous psychologically.

Last year, he rowed in Goldie, the Cambridge reserve eight, which was expected to defeat Isis, the second Oxford crew. It didn’t. Nash says:”We were very powerful but struggled to apply it on the day. Mentally, I did not anticipate the scale of the event. When you are young, you don’t understand what it is like. The atmosphere makes you all fired up. You get too excited, when you need to be precise in rowing.”

He describes himself as being just “OK” at games such as cricket and football when at school at Winchester. He tried fencing, basketball and golf before finding rowing. ”I stuck with the routine. The sport sucks you in. It is addictive.” He made the British junior team at the age of 16 and won a gold medal in the coxless fours at the 2007 world junior championships.

His sustained success as a teenager is very different from that of Myers, who is only two days younger. The Oxford bowman was notably lacklustre at rowing at Kingston Grammar School, where he was even dropped from the squad only for his persistence to be rewarded. Eventually he was readmitted. “Still it took me 18 months to work back into the racing crews.” Still, when he arrived at Exeter College in 2008 to read physics, he did not even enter the trials for Isis. “ I didn’t think I was good enough and when I did them last autumn for the 2010 Race, I was only aiming for Isis. “ However, under the tutelage of Sean Bowden, who has coached Oxford to six victories in the last eight Races, he has developed.

Bowden says: ”Ben has progressed extremely well. He is a smooth, skilful rower, is athletic and has a good engine. Last October he was in the bottom boat and may not have even made Isis . But he was given a run in the Blue Boat because of sickness and took his opportunity.” Ben says he learns much from the far more experienced oarsmen around him, such as the American Winklevoss twins, who rowed as a pair in the 2008 Olympic final and while at Harvard set up the social networking site, ConnectU, the fore-runner of Facebook.

It is this blend of international experience and enthusiastic youth, combined with Bowden’s ability to get the best from his crews, that make Oxford marginal favourites for an event that over the last decade has had many of the most enthralling Races in its long history.

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Original article source

A long list of eleven museums and galleries are in the running to win the £100,000 Art Fund Prize, the UK’s largest single arts prize. The long list has been selected by a panel of Judges chaired this year by broadcaster Kirsty Young. Traditionally the long list comprises ten, but for the 2010 Prize eleven institutions are nominated, attesting to the high quality and volume of applications received.

The £100,000 prize is awarded to the museum or gallery for a project completed in the last year, that the Judges deem demonstrates the most originality, imagination and excellence. The Prize, which has been sponsored by the UK’s leading independent art charity, The Art Fund, for three years, aims to increase public appreciation and enjoyment of the UK’s museums and galleries.

The eleven long-listed museums and galleries are:

* The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
An ambitious redevelopment of one of the great university museums of the world that extends and enhances public access to its remarkable collections of art and archaeology.

* Blists Hill Victorian Town, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust
The transformation of a fifty-four acre site, part of the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, which interprets life in a typical town of the East Shropshire Coalfield around 1900.

* Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle
Three outstanding collections of natural history, Roman and Anglo-Saxon archaeology and Greek and Etruscan Art and Archaeology have been combined for the first time to create a major new museum for the North of England.

* Hampton Court Palace, Surrey, for Henry VIII: heads and hearts
In 2009 Historic Royal Palaces celebrated the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession with the most ambitious programme of exhibitions, events, displays and preparatory conservation work that it had ever staged at the King’s former royal residence.

* The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry
A long-established regional museum has been transformed through a major redevelopment which is reaching new audiences and has become a fresh focus for local pride.

* The Leach Pottery, St Ives
The rescue and restoration of the most influential studio pottery in the world, founded in 1920 by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in the Cornish fishing village of St Ives.

* The National Army Museum, London, for Conflicts of Interest
A new exhibition exploring the impact of 40 years of conflict on Britain’s soldiers and civilians worldwide is designed to capture history as it happens and to allow visitors to contribute to its evolution.

* The Natural History Museum, London, for the Darwin Centre
An awe inspiring new public space and state-of-the-art science and collections facility that allows visitors to explore world-class science in action. The most significant expansion at the Natural History Museum since it moved to South Kensington in 1881.

* The Royal Institution of Great Britain, for Science in the Making
The important scientific collections of the 200-year old Royal Institution have been brought to life in a new exhibition as part of a major refurbishment and enlargement of the Grade I listed building, supporting the Institution’s mission of making science accessible to all.

* Towner, Eastbourne
The rebirth of a long-established local authority gallery as a stunning new public art space for Eastbourne and the leading centre for visual arts in the South East.

* The Ulster Museum, Belfast
Part of the National Museums Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum has reopened following a three-year redevelopment that has fundamentally reshaped the character of this major museum.

Kirsty Young, Chair of the Judges comments: “My fellow Judges and I deliberated passionately and at length, and even then it was impossible to select fewer than eleven for the long list. The quality of applications was simply outstanding. We are delighted with our selection and feel that this year’s long list demonstrates a snapshot of the UK’s incredible cultural offerings.”

Stephen Deuchar, Director of The Art Fund, comments: “This year’s long-listed museums and galleries have shown such depth of imagination and drive; they are a testament to the wealth of culture on offer right across the UK. I for one can’t wait to see how the judges’ journeys unfold from now until the end of June when the winner is announced.”

The Judges will travel the UK to visit each of the eleven long-listed museums and galleries before selecting a short list of four, to be announced at the end of May 2010. The winner of the £100,000 prize will be announced on Wednesday 30 June 2010 at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.

The 2010 judging panel comprises:

* Kirsty Young (Chairman), broadcaster
* Kathy Gee, museums and heritage adviser
* Professor A C Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, London
* Professor J Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics, University College London
* Sally Osman, communications consultant and former Director of Communications, BBC
* Lars Tharp, Director, The Foundling Museum and BBC Antiques Roadshow expert
* Jonathan Yeo, artist

The public can vote for their favourite long-listed institution and leave comments for the Judges on the Art Fund Prize website telling the Judges why they should win. The poll results and online comments will be given to the Judges for their consideration when selecting the Short List and Winner. Visitors to the website can enter an exclusive competition to win a limited edition Jonathan Yeo print.

To vote, comment or for more information about the Prize go to: www.artfundprize.org.uk

Sky Arts returns as the TV Media partner for this years’ Art Fund Prize and will go behind the scenes in a 30 minute documentary that will broadcast on Sky Arts 2 HD throughout May and June. The documentary will take a look at each of the long-listed museums and galleries and follows the developing story as the panel of judges visit the eleven venues all vying for the prestigious £100,000 prize.

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The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race

The idea for a rowing race between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge came from two friends - Charles Merivale, a student at Cambridge, and his Harrow school friend Charles Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth), who was at Oxford.

On 12 March 1829, Cambridge sent a challenge to Oxford and thus the tradition was born which has continued to the present day, where the loser of the previous year’s race challenges the opposition to a re-match.

The Modern Boat Race still runs along the same lines but has now become a major international sporting occasion drawing millions of viewers from around the world.

On Race Day up to 250,000 spectators crowd the banks of the Thames from Putney to Mortlake to witness the action.

Cambridge currently lead the series since 1829 by 79-75. Oxford won the 2009 Race.

The 156th Boat Race takes place on Saturday, 3 April 2010 at 16:30.

Oxford Crew

The Oxford crew, known as the "Dark Blues" because of the dark navy blue of the club’s colours, is organised, trained and selected by Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC).

OUBC’s training facility is part of the world-famous Iffley Road sports centre - where Sir Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile. Here the crews work out on ergometers (indoor rowing machines). The coaches also have the opportunity to provide support on rowing technique by use of the indoor rowing tank.

OUBC also puts a lot of emphasis on sports science support and much of the testing is also done at Iffley Road. Most afternoons the crews will train on the water at Wallingford.

Oxford’s reserve crew on Race day is known as Isis.

2010 SQUAD
Oxford's squad for the 2010 Race features 20 rowers and 5 coxes.

There are nine countries represented including 8 Britons, 6 Americans, 3 Germans, 2 Dutchmen, 2 Swiss, 1 South African, 1 Canadian, 1 Irishman and a female cox from France.

The one returning Blue is this year’s OUBC President Sjoerd Hamburger, the 26-year-old Dutchman who is studying Educational Research Methodology at Oriel. He is the first student to hold the position whose first language in not English.

Returning from the winning Isis boat of 2009 are cox Adam Barhamand (USA), stroke Martin Walsh (Ireland) and Britons Douglas Bruce and Alec Dent.

The squad also includes the Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron, who rowed for the USA in the pairs in the Beijing Olympics. As Harvard students they also set up the ConnectU social networking site, the forerunner of Facebook.

The last twins to compete in the Race were Mark and Mike Evans who rowed in the winning Oxford crews of 1983 and 1984. Prior to that, Hugh and Robert Clay won with Oxford in 1982, having won with the Isis crew the year before.

ROWERS
Doug Bruce
Charlie Burkitt
Andrew Craig
Antoine de Weck
Alec Dent
Ben Ellison
Matt Evans
Simon Gawlik
Basil Grüter
Moritz Hafner
Sjoerd Hamburger
Boris Le Faber
Ben Myers
Ed Newman
Billy Rueter
Bodo Schulenburg
Ben Snodin
Martin Walsh
Cameron Winklevoss
Tyler Winklevoss

COXES
Adam Barhamand
Jack Carlson
Alexandra Girard
Hannah Leadbetter
Chris Young

View a promo video for the Boat Race here

Watching the Race

London's Free Sporting Spectacle

Enjoy the festival atmosphere of the Boat Race by watching for free from one of the many vantage points along the course. You should be able to find a place to watch on either side of the river along the full length of the course, but particular areas to note are: Putney Bridge, Putney Embankment and Bishops Park (at the start); Hammersmith and Barnes (mid-course); Dukes Meadows and Chiswick Bridge (at the finish).

This section of the site provides an overview of how to get to The Race and where to watch. Please don’t drive, public transport can take you close to many of the best places to watch along the length of the course.

There are large screens at Bishops Park, Fulham and Furnival Gardens, Hammersmith which mean you will be able to watch the whole Race before and after the crews have passed. The parks will also feature food outlets, beer stands and merchandising stalls. See Boat Race In The Park for more information

For a really special Boat Race experience sign up to a Fulham FC Varsity Day package. See Boat Race Events for more information.

A few moorings are available close to the start from Chas Newens Marine.

BBC1 will be showing the Boat Race live in the UK, including build up from around 2pm, visit www.bbc.co.uk for more information

Spectator Information

We have divided the course into four sections containing maps and notes about the viewpoints along the footpaths that line the course:
Places to Eat & Drink: information about pubs & restaurants lining the course.

For more information about watching the race, click here

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Visit the official website for the Boat Race

It's been over 30 years since Jackie Chan supplanted Bruce Lee as film's reigning martial-arts superstar. Now in his 50s, Chan tries to broaden his audience with the kids-oriented The Spy Next Door, appealing directly to the Kung Fu Panda crowd with mixed results. Entertaining in spots but too obviously low-budget, the film faces so-so returns.

The opening features clips from some of Chan's recent films before speeding briskly through a nicely staged fight pitting the star, playing CIA agent Bob Ho, against villain Poldark (Magnus Scheving). Ho's athleticism and James Bond-like gadgets play perfectly to Chan's strengths, and fans should enjoy seeing how the star has adapted old routines for new purposes.

But the plot soon shifts to Ho's retirement to a suburb in the Southwest, where he dons Clark Kent spectacles is his guise as a "pen importer." Ho pines for next-door single mom Gillian (Amber Valletta), but she worries that her kids won't accept him. Older siblings Farren (Madeline Carroll) and Ian (Will Shadley) sneer at Ho, while the younger Nora (Alina Foley) is the first to suspect that he may be more than he seems.

Ho offers to babysit when Gillian is called away, only to learn that Poldark has escaped from custody and is once again a threat to the nation's security. What's worse, Ian inadvertently downloads a deadly computer program, putting the kids and Ho in peril. Struggling to protect the children and capture Poldark, Ho is forced to reveal his background as a secret agent, and to call upon the kids to help defeat his enemies.

Most of The Spy Next Door is pretty tired stuff, from Pacifier-style slapstick to comic relief from, of all people, erstwhile country star Billy Ray Cyrus. Scheving and his cohort Katherine Boecher display the proper spirit, but everyone else, Chan included, seems stiff and listless. The star has worked with kids before, in the Hong Kong production Rob-B-Hood, for example, and will soon be seen in a remake of The Karate Kid. For much of this film, he is clad in unattractive clothes and forced into dumbed-down situations. It's hard to understand his English at times, a crucial drawback in a PG comedy.

Chan can be an extremely appealing performer, and when his old magic breaks through he can still thrill viewers. He does a sensational bit with some chairs while helping demolish a Chinese restaurant during one battle, something that will delight kids as much as their parents.

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By Daniel Eagan

Since they are old dogs, there are no new tricks in Walt Disney's "Old Dogs," a shamelessly predictable, overly broad comedy aimed at the family audience starting Thanksgiving weekend. One could debate whether John Travolta or Robin Williams have reached an age to be mistaken for grandfathers, but they certain don't shy away from jokes their grandfathers would have groaned about.

Apparently, the working principle is if it's old, let's use it. There is one mild -- really, really mild -- gag that hints we are in an age that doesn't freak out that gay people exist. That's about as bold as "Old Dogs" gets. The film should play well this weekend for grandparents and youngsters, after which any staying power it demonstrates will be a tribute to the stars' names and the Disney brand.

The film resurrects the ghosts of "Kramer vs. Kramer," "3 Men and a Baby" and any other drama or comedy that congratulates men at being able to cope with young children. Travolta and Williams are the old dogs, one a happy skirt-chasing bachelor and the other a miserably twice-divorced klutz. They are sports marketing partners about to close a major deal with a Japanese firm. Then comes the bombshell -- two to be exact.

It seems Williams' character fathered fraternal twins seven years ago but only now does the mother (Kelly Preston) bother to tell him. Oh, and by the way, she is about to go to jail for two weeks for political-activist trespassing. She needs someone to baby-sit the kids since, well, Williams just sent her best girlfriend (Rita Wilson), who normally would mind the children, to the hospital due to his habitual clumsiness.

Yes, it's that contrived.

So we have Sudden Dad and Uncle Playboy mind the kids for, yes, two weeks! You'd think they'd been asked to cure cancer the way the movie stands back to admire their challenges and resolve.

Make those predictable challenges and results. If the kids mix up prescription medicine, expect a golf game to descend into balls fired into the genitals or paralyzing facial grins at bereavement services. If the men break into a zoo -- why would a zoo be locked in the middle of the day? -- expect human interactions with an amorous gorilla or enraged penguins.

When in doubt -- or in desperate need for anything cute or funny -- director Walt Becker can always cut to Travolta's dog. Yes, of course, he's old.

If reports are true that new Disney Studios chief Rich Ross has criticized "Old Dogs" as a "missed opportunity" to appeal to women by creating credible female characters, then the new dog is onto something. You don't hire an all-male team of stars, producers, exec producers, writers, a director and every below-the-line crew member and not get a dumb male movie like this.

"Old Dogs" gives men a bad name.

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By Kirk Honeycutt

Korean director Kim So Yong has made a sombre yet touching film about the vulnerability and loneliness of children in a world of not-very-benign neglect. Two little sisters of six and four are one day told by their mother that she must leave them for a while – something about needing to track down their ­father. They are to be sent to their aunt, and given a piggy-bank, and promised that every time they do something good they will get a coin to go in it, and when the piggy-bank is full, the mother will return. Finally the kids get sent to their kindly grandmother, who has holes in her shoes that make the children feel sorry for her – and that piggy-bank, long since full, is to be the centre of a quietly moving moment at which we realise how the girls have accepted their fate. Not an easy watch, but worth sticking with.

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Peter Bradshaw

There's an awful lot of likability and charm in this debut feature from British film-maker Giles Borg: a downbeat, neo-Britpoppy tale from north London about a nerdy guitarist called Stevie (Ian Bonar) yearning for a record deal, but also deeply and hopelessly in love with the bassist Emily (Lyndsey Marshal), who doesn't really want to be in the band at all. It's a bit uncertain here and there, but the scene where Stevie and Emily have a fleeting, uncomfortable kiss is heartbreakingly tremendous. The feature, shot by Mike Eley, looks great too.

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by Peter Bradshaw

A warning about spoilers is necessary before rehearsing the question at the heart of this deeply intelligent film: why do people commit suicide? Is our catch-all diagnosis of "depression" a glib, quasi-clinical alibi which masks our incomprehension? Is suicide a spasm of despair, or rather something calmly envisioned years or even decades before the act itself, like emigration or retirement, and in fact the neurotically comforting option which has been the sole foundation for carrying on with the business of life? Mia Hanson-Løve has made an outstanding, undemonstrative family drama based on troubled film producer Humbert Balsan, who took his own life in 2005.

In the busy heart of cosmopolitan Paris – established with a superbly invigorating, uncliched montage over the opening credits – Grégoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) is a film producer: a handsome man in early middle age forever on the move, talking incessantly on his mobile, juggling projects, delegating, problem-solving. Yet he never appears grumpy or stressed or even in much of a hurry. On the contrary, his relaxed charm is remarkable. He has a lovely family to whom he is devoted: Italian wife Sylvia (Chiara Caselli) and three sweet daughters. Yet Grégoire is in deep trouble. His company is desperately in debt. Canvel is admired for promoting important but uncommercial film-makers, but each succès d'éstime has pushed him further into the red, and his problems are reaching critical mass. When the terrible crisis comes, it is unexpected and shocking. Sylvia has already comforted him that financial success is neither here nor there: his contribution to the art of cinema is permanent and his family is what's important. Surely a sensible and admirable guy like Grégoire can see that? Apparently not: and we can never underestimate how profoundly men put their careers at the centre of their identity.

His terrible fate is the cause of a profound disagreement between his wife and daughter: Sylvia wishes to carry on the company in his honour; his daughter angrily wishes to wind it up and reject the grotesque showbiz compulsion which destroyed their family. Hanson-Løve presents us with the possibility that Canvel with all his charm was, after all, selfish and contemptible – and yet her film does not offer easy answers. What precisely was in Grégoire's heart and mind are unknowable. All that is left is the dignity and courage of his family which has quietly decided to continue loving their lost father in the same way that they will continue to love each other.

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by Peter Bradshaw

Old fashioned sweet shops are something of a passion with me. I’ll make a trip to Burford just to visit the ‘bottled sweet shop’, as our kids call Hamiltons. My mouth drools in the scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the original and best adaptation of the Roald Dahl book), where Charlie visits his local sweet shop, a wonderland of old shelves, slabs of chocolate and bottles of every kind of hard or soft candy.

So when @TomDJG, a teenage pal on Twitter, tweeted “OMG I found the best sweet shop EVER today. Shelves and shelves of tall jars filled with all the sweets and chocolates you could think of…It was like freakin' Honeydukes, or that sweet shop from Willy Wonka” – I honed in on the shop asap!

Tom wasn’t exaggerating. We are talking major-league bottles of sweets. Over a hundred, I’d say. The there are dedicated sections for candy canes, lollipops, a mini-wall dedicated to fudge, another to chocolate slabs (not just skinny mean ones but great chunks of the stuff, studded with marshmallows or nuts or dried fruit – or more chocolate).

Old-school pick-and-mix for 99p per 100g, and not just the dreary selection you see at the cinemas and supermarkets.

In the bottled sweets, the shop’s true genius emerges. Pretty much every old favourite you remember (Kola Kubes? Of course. How about Pineapple Fizz, Soor Plooms, Rosy Apples, Coconut Mushrooms, Bullseyes – and dozens even I don’t remember. Liquorice satins, anyone?)

Seven types of bonbon (chewy, not jaw-breakers like in packets from supermarkets)

At least seven types of sherbet crystals. Including my favourite – American Cream Soda.

The décor is proper old-style, dark wood, wall-to-wall with shelves, like an old-fashioned drugstore.

It’s an apothecary of sugar!

Right now it’s also stocked with German imports of chocolate Easter bunnies and other seasonal novelties in chocolate, hard candy and marshmallow.

Prices? Not too bad, for a tourist trap.

Here’s my £10 stash: a box of chocolate-covered marshmallows, bag of butter fudge, 30g of cream soda sherbet, 60g of lemon and Vimto bon-bons, a strawberry candy cane, a packet of cola-flavoured popping candy, roll of giant Parma Violets and a bubble-gum printing toy (stamp your name onto a strip of gum).

As we were leaving we spotted a slim mother tutting with disapproval as she dragged her child past Mr Simms’s shop. She should have looked further – there’s a huge selection of sugar-free sweets too!

Nevertheless, the shop was packed. Mr Simms’ wouldn’t look out of place in Disneyland. But it’s better. Sweets are more fun when sold by weight. At Mr Simms, it’ll take a long time to try them all.

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MG Harris is a sweetie addict and author of The Joshua Files, a bestselling series of teen thrillers.

The first daily scheduled flight took-off from London Oxford Airport at Kidlington last Monday.

The company's website said the suspension was due to "operational issues" with the airline and the operator of the aircraft it uses.

Varsity Express said all passengers effected were being informed.

Five years ago, Martin Halstead, the owner of Varsity Express, was nicknamed "Baby Branson" after setting up the Oxford to Cambridge service when he was 18-years-old, but the route was not successful and closed several weeks later.

Mr Halstead was unavailable for comment but a statement for Varsity Express said: "The board of Varsity Air Services Ltd are in current negotiation with potential aircraft operators and AOC holders who could provide the operational capability required to allow the resumption of services, on what has already proved to be a very popular, viable and sustainable route.

"The board are hopeful that Varsity Air Services Ltd will be able to resume full operational services in the very near future."

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Original article source

Tania Higgins (pictured left) is part actor, part director, part firework display. With an impressive performance CV to back up her role of Director for the brand new Oxford based theatre company, The Deck, Tania has worked extensively in devised theatre, both as teacher and in many starring roles herself over the years. However, being made redundant from the “day job” in 2009 finally kicked her into realising a childhood dream.

“I was going through some old school folders and files and having a bit of a sort out when I came across a scrap of paper I’d written all my goals out on when I was 18 – starting up my own theatre company was one of them, so I thought: ok, what’s wrong with now...?” She says. The name, The Deck Theatre Company had many connotations for Tania: “all hands on deck, down to earth, free space, down to basics; once I had hit on the name, I kept coming back to it.”

With the almost impossible question of voluntary euthanasia highly topical at the moment, The Deck Theatre Company’s first production will be “A Prayer for Wings” by Sean Mathias. This intense, award-winning two-handed play stars Oxford actresses Hester Lott and Lucy Hoult and will run over one hour with no interval. The action follows the descent of a mother suffering from Multiple Sclerosis and her daughter who cares for her. Focussing on the nightmare of guilt, hope, and tragedy associated with long-term degenerative illness and those who care for sufferers, the play explores the extremes to which those involved may feel drawn, although never gives a definitive answer to the question: “to be or not to be”....

The project is very close to Higgins’ heart; her own mother suffers from muscular dystrophy, and when not rehearsing or devising theatre workshops for the Oxford Actors’ Network, she virtually lives on the A40 to and from her mother’s house in Herefordshire.

With 10% of the proceeds going to The Princess Royal’s Trust for Young Carers, “A Prayer for Wings” will be one of Oxfringe 2010’s absolute essentials.

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7th – 10th April 2010
The Moser Theatre
Wadham College
Parks Road
Oxford

Tickets £8 / £6 concessions
Also from: http://www.wegottickets.com and on the door

Theatre preview by Emma Blake

Tear-jerkers about lovable dogs are almost always boxoffice winners as "Marley & Me" proved last year. Lasse Hallstrom's "Hachiko: A Dog's Story" might not match that film's performance, but it seems certain to win an appreciative family audience. At the Seattle International Film Festival, where the film recently received its North American premiere, sounds of sniffling permeated the large auditorium. The movie is no masterpiece, but it delivers.

Stephen P. Lindsey's screenplay is adapted from a Japanese film made 20 years ago, which itself was based on the well-known story from the 1930s about an Akita that came to the train station in Tokyo to wait for his master every day for 10 years after the man died. Lindsey changed the setting to Rhode Island and updated the story but retained the basic idea of a loyal Akita who achieves an almost-transcendental bond with his owner, a music professor played by Richard Gere.

Gere was one of the producers of the film, and it's possible that his interest in Eastern philosophy gave him a strong connection to the story, which begins when he discovers an Akita puppy that has been abandoned at the train station where he commutes to work. He brings the dog home on a temporary basis, but it isn't long before Hachi becomes a permanent member of his household. His wife, elegantly played by Joan Allen, objects at first to the dog's presence but is quickly won over. Characterizations are fairly perfunctory, so it helps that Gere and Allen bring conviction and dignity to their portrayals. Hallstrom does a good job creating a sense of community. The townspeople all chip in to look after Hachi while he performs his daily ritual.

Those who know the legend will realize where the story is heading, but it plays out effectively because Hallstrom handles the tear-jerking moments discreetly. The score by Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, an Oscar winner for "Finding Neverland," enhances the poignancy. The locale is skillfully rendered, and Hachi, played by three dogs as an adult and about 20 as a puppy, has definite star presence. The final moments of the film are absolutely devastating. Kids will love the movie, and their parents might be equally enchanted.

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By Stephen Farber

"I Love You Phillip Morris" doesn't have anything to do with smoking, but that's about the only thing it's not connected to. It's of the ethereal-absurdist-gay-romantic-biographical farce genre, which begs the question: "How are you going to market this?" Basically, just say Jim Carrey struts his stuff in this engaging oddity.

Carrey is at his nimble best as Steve, a Texas family man and lawman who bolts out of the closet into a life of, well, everything. He makes up for his lost years of a straight-arrow, heterosexual life by plunging headfirst into multiple lives of con man and lover. Based on a real-life character, Steve was abandoned at birth, and in the film's glib psychology, he's undertaking to find his real identity.

A charmer and a rascal, Steve enthusiastically embraces the high-gay lifestyle: vacationing, accessorizing, spending, dining, prowling. And he gets a first boyfriend, who is expensive. Like certain smitten males whose mate's tastes outdistance their pocketbooks, Steve jumps headlong into the foolhardy -- he embraces embezzlement, fraud and all sorts of chicanery to maintain his Rolodex ways.

This fast life leads to the pokey, where he falls for a delicate fellow con, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor). They truly spark, and complement each other. In jail and out, the twosome attempt a conventional romantic relationship. Steve is the breadwinner, while Phillip holds down the hearth. True to his wild nature, Steve can't contain himself. He reverts to his con man ways.

It's in these naughty parts where this inventive escapade shines: Carrey's chameleonlike gyrations and falsifications are deliciously funny. His comedic versatility and impersonations are amazing, but it's in his character's darkest recesses that he's truly powerful. As the steadfast Phillip, McGregor is sympathetic and vulnerable. His heart is always ready to be broken.

Like Carrey's character, the story and style are also all over the place, rendering it somewhat inaccessible. Admittedly, the whole film is in a bit of an aesthetic dither, which will confound many viewers. Still, filmmakers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa have concocted a frothy and misty amusement.

"Phillip Morris' " spry storytelling is wonderfully accessorized by production designer Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski's stylish furnishings and costume designer David C. Robinson's vivid fashions.

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By Duane Byrge

Martin Scorsese reportedly received the script for his new film Shutter Island while recording narration for a documentary on Val Lewton, the great producer of low-budget 1940s RKO horror films that generated suspense through the power of suggestion. Laeta Kalogridis’ adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel surely appealed to Scorsese’s love of Lewton, with its similarly eerie setting on an isolated, forbidding prison island harboring dark mysteries. The resulting movie is gorgeously crafted, as one would expect from the masterly Scorsese, but any one of Lewton’s films delivered double the chills at half the running time and a fraction of the budget.

Shutter Island was a departure for author Lehane, known for the Boston-based crime novels Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, each made into a successful film. It’s a Gothic-style psychological thriller set in 1954 and centered on a U.S. marshal, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), investigating the disappearance of a murderess from the high-security, island fortress of the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, accessible only by ferry from Boston. Despite the solicitous manner of Ashecliffe overseer Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), Teddy and his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) are still treated largely like intruders, leading them to suspect dark doings at the institution.

Teddy has his own demons—horrible memories of the piles of corpses he encountered at the Dachau concentration camp as a World War II soldier, then the death of his beloved wife (Michelle Williams) in a fire set by an arsonist. In fact, one of the reasons Teddy is at Ashecliffe is to track down that same arsonist, whom he believes is housed in the dreaded “Ward C.” As a hurricane buffets the island and strands him, Teddy becomes convinced that the hospital has links to the Nazis and Cold War experiments and his investigation turns increasingly perilous.

There are many more plot twists ahead, but already you can get a sense of how overcooked the narrative is. This stew of ’50s paranoia, medical mayhem and historical hysteria ultimately comes to a full boil and delivers some much-craved answers, but for a long stretch you sit there wondering if all the breakneck melodrama is going to make any sense (kind of like the current season of “Lost”). Oh, for the efficiency of a 70-minute Lewton movie like The 7th Victim.

With his residual baby face, DiCaprio looks like he’s play-acting in his ’50s trench-coat and fedora, which may even be the intention. But he remains an admirably committed (forgive the pun) actor, fully up to the intense demands of the material. Kingsley is smoothly insinuating as the possibly deceptive doctor in charge, Ruffalo makes an appealing sidekick, and Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, Robin Bartlett and the great Max von Sydow offer stellar cameos.

As you’d expect with Scorsese, technical contributions across the board are top-notch, from Robert Richardson’s dynamic cinematography to Dante Ferretti’s highly atmospheric production design to Thelma Schoonmaker’s dependably sharp editing. Unusual for Scorsese, the effective music score, supervised by Robbie Robertson, consists of often discordant passages from modern composers like Krzysztof Penderecki, Morton Feldman and John Adams. And Shutter Island itself, the spectacular Peddocks Island near Boston, deserves star billing too.

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By Kevin Lally

Revolving around an investigative reporter and his unlikely crime-solving partner, Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson's posthumous Millennium trilogy of novels were not so much best-sellers as international publishing phenomena. The film adaptation of the first book, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," is, like its source material, at once formula thriller, scathing social commentary and dark history lesson. But it's also a more eloquent work; smartly condensing the novel's sprawl, the feature forgoes prosaic detail for cinematic vigor. The result is a character-driven mystery of considerable emotional power, often harrowing and always compelling.

The film broke boxoffice records in Scandinavia, where it opened a year ago and where the two subsequent movies in the series already have been released. Stateside, the Music Box-distributed "Tattoo," which opens March 19, will attract not only fans of the book but art house patrons drawn by strong reviews.

For all his insight on finance and politics, muckraker Larsson's most indelible creation is the title character, a 24-year-old goth fury named Lisbeth Salander, who has a genius for computer hacking and no interest in -- or capacity for -- quotidian niceties. In a stunning performance, Noomi Rapace fully inhabits the role, making Lisbeth's sullen and righteous anger evident in her every glance (she's a woman of few words). The nose-ringed beauty is fascinating because she's far more than the sum of her troubled past, which is divulged gradually. She's one of the story's two truth-seekers, intent on exposing abuses of power; the other is financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist). Other than digitally, their paths don't cross until more than an hour into the film.

As the story opens, Mikael has been convicted of libeling a corporate chieftain, and Lisbeth has been surveiling him for a client in her capacity as a researcher. He discovers that she's tapping into his laptop and enlists her help in solving a 40-year-old murder. Their investigation takes place in the atmospheric northern chill of Hedeby Island, where Mikael has accepted a lucrative job to fill the months before he begins his jail sentence. Octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), patriarch of a family he despises, wants a last shot at uncovering who among his relatives killed his beloved niece Harriet, a teen who disappeared from the island at a family gathering four decades earlier.

A who's who of the Vanger clan, replete with alcoholics, indifferent parents and card-carrying Nazis, is at first a staggering pileup of information, but screenwriters Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel and director Niels Arden Oplev ("Portland") turn the exposition into a life force -- from the Internet to hidden cameras, technology is a character in its own right.

Digging into the archives of the local newspaper, Mikael finds grainy images of 16-year-old Harriet on the day of her disappearance. Computer software enables him to animate the snapshots, and the result is a haunting update of Antonioni's photographic mystery in "Blow-Up" (a film released the same year as the fictional Harriet's disappearance). Manipulation of photos gives way to evidence: Across a 1966 summer crowd, Harriet seems to be facing her murderer.

Monsters walk among us, and their crimes are extreme in this bleak yet not-quite-hopeless story, whose Swedish title's literal translation is "Men Who Hate Women." Lisbeth, clearly no stranger to abuse, never is merely a victim. When she turns the tables on the latest monster (Peter Andersson) in her life, there's no real sense of triumph. The film refuses to pawn off false notions of redemption.

It isn't, however, above the hoariest of whodunit conventions (the killer takes ample time to explain his crimes to his next target). Although it sometimes stretches credulity, the lengthy film doesn't feel overlong. Fine performances, especially Rapace's, ignite this cold case, and the clean widescreen cinematography never betrays the project's small-screen origins.

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By Sheri Linden

The 125-year old timepiece was made by team mates of William King, who was forced to pull out of the race against Cambridge because of illness.

The clock movement and parts were put in the cut up boat and given to Mr King as a sporting gesture.

The 5ft 10in timepiece failed to reach its estimate of between £700 and £1,000 at the auction in London.

James Stratton, from Bonhams, said: "The story goes that the day before the race William King fell ill.

"In the real spirit of sportsmanship and camaraderie, his team mates took the clock and they put the clock movement in the cut up boat."

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Original article source

Opening in Cinemas in Oxford this week:

Alice In Wonderland (PG)

Starring Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway

Contains moderate fantasy violence

From Walt Disney Pictures, Tim Burton directs an epic 3D fantasy adventure ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Featuring an all-star cast including Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter; Burton adds a magical, imaginative twist to this classic story. When Alice returns to the world she encountered as a young girl, she embarks on a journey to discover her true destiny, and encounters some of the most fantastical, charismatic characters ever created. Prepare to see the White Rabbit, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter as you’ve never seen them before.

Crazy Heart (15)

Starring Jeff Bridges, James Keane, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Anna Felix

Contains strong language

A beat-up, broken-down, hard living country music singer, Brad has spent way too many years on the road, gone through a series of marriages, and had far too many drinks. However, Brad’s life begins to change when he meets a journalist, Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who sees the real man behind the musician. With a chance for salvation, Brad begins the long journey to redemption, and along the way discovers just how hard life can be with a crazy heart.

Green Zone (15)

Starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs

Contains strong language and violence

From director Paul Greengrass, ‘Green Zone’ stars Matt Damon as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, who is sent to Baghdad in 2003 to find weapons of mass destruction thought to be stockpiled in the Iraqi desert. Soon, Miller and his men stumble upon an elaborate cover-up. Now they must hunt through faulty intelligence to find answers that will either clear a rogue regime or escalate a war. As they search, they discover that the most elusive weapon of all is the truth.

Case 39 (15)

Starring Renee Zellweger, Bradley Cooper

Emily Jenkins is a family services social worker, assigned to a new case involving a ten-year-old girl named Lilith. As she investigates, Emily soon realises that the troubled Lilith is in real danger from her parents, so she takes her in herself and offers to look after her until a suitable foster home can be found. However, she discovers to her horror that the situation is far worse than she could ever have imagined.

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For showtimes and reviews for these films, please visit our cinema page

Horror movie subjects, like celebrity deaths and buses, come in threes. Thus, trailing behind the latest, recycled rash of 'bad seed' pictures The Unborn and Orphan, like some sulky teenager on a family holiday, comes the Renee Zellweger-starring Case 39 - another apparent anti-adoption screed, from the director of Pandorum. Clearly, Philip Larkin got it back to front, and Cyril Connolly was onto something: they screw you up, kids, especially other people's kids, while that pram in the hall almost certainly contains 57 varieties of pain. And little girls, of course, are absolutely terrifying. That's why Stanley Kubrick used not one but two of them in The Shining.

The latest threat to homeland security is sad-eyed moppet Lillith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland). Despite whimpering that her hollow-eyed, crucifix-clasping parents "talk about sending me to Hell", Lillith's lank black hair is scraped back and tucked behind her ears, which everyone knows is movie shorthand for 'sneaky 'n' weird'. She also tilts her head sideways when she speaks, which even brain-damaged pitbulls dimly appreciate is the internationally-recognised symbol for 'run, run like the wind'. Now you mention it, she also shares a name with Frasier Crane's ex-wife, in turn named after a Hebrew storm demon associated with death, darkness and vengeance. All of which is lost on lentils-for-brains social worker Emily Jenkins (Renee Zellweger), who hauls her out of the kitchen oven after her folks attempt to bake her alive.

In a move even the filmmakers realise stretches credibility to twanging point, Emily temporarily adopts Lillith while she waits to be re-housed with foster parents who won't mistake her for a birthday cake. Unfortunately for Emily, what Lillith wants, Lillith gets. And what she really wants right now is an ice cream. Not just today, every day. See, this witchy cuckoo also possesses the ability to make people see and experience their own worst fears. So you'd better hurry up with that 99 Flake.

Before the first hour's up, Em's other cases and colleagues are slaughtering their slumbering parents with a tyre iron or being pestered to death by a plague of CGI hornets, vomited out of their every orifice. Meanwhile Em's barricading herself in her bedroom every night and attempting to burn her own house down, with the satanic little charge inside. "A damaged, deceitful, manipulative child is not a demon," insists grizzled, perma-tanned detective Mike Barron (Ian McShane). But can Emily convince her Barron knight that Lillith has got the very devil in her?

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By Ali Catterall

Nonfiction cinema or provocation? Art or prank? Questions of authorship, authenticity and credibility cleave through "Exit Through the Gift Shop," a nearly unclassifiable hybrid documentary film by international "street artist" phenom Banksy. Originally identified as "Spotlight Surprise" in the film listings, Sundance programmers only revealed the title a few days before its Jan. 24 world premiere.

Touching on contemporary cultural trends, the popular/high art divide and celebrity obsession while showcasing world-renowned artists, "Exit" offers broad audience appeal, particularly for urban and international viewers captivated by underground art, as well as film fans fascinated by unconventional narrative techniques.

An outgrowth of the graffiti art that originated with '70s B-Boy culture, street art features the same outdoor locations and outlaw attitudes as its precursor, incorporating additional media into artworks, including stencils, posters, stickers and sculptural materials.

French expat Thierry "Terry" Guetta, a Los Angeles retailer and compulsive home videographer, gets caught up in the movement while accompanying his street artist cousin, aka Invader, on nighttime excursions posting his Space Invader mosaic images. After experiencing the adrenaline rush of documenting Invader illegally posting his guerilla artwork, Guetta is hooked and begins seeking out other artists to film, including Shepard Fairey (who originated the "Obey" and Barack Obama poster-like images), Buff Monster and Neck Face.

Guetta rapidly gets drawn into the shadowy world of street art and begins traveling around the country and Europe assisting artists with their frequently illegal installations over an eight-year period on the pretext of making a documentary, despite his lack of any filmmaking experience.

The only one he can't manage to connect with is the pseudonymously named British graffiti stencil artist Banksy, who obsessively conceals his identity from all but his closest associates. But in 2006, when Banksy arrives in Los Angeles, Guetta jumps at a chance opportunity to assist him, gradually working his way into the artist's confidence, so that when Banksy asks Guetta to finally deliver his promised documentary, the Frenchman is practically obliged to comply.

Culling random images and footage from hundreds of videotapes, many undated or undocumented, Guetta produces "Life Remote Control" a 90-minute documentary so unwatchable that Banksy questions whether Guetta may just be "someone with mental problems and a camera." So he sends his protege on a new mission that entirely flips the arc of the film, inserting Banksy in the role of filmmaker and casting Guetta as the street artist Mr. Brainwash, providing the Frenchman with a shot at fame like he'd previously only dreamed of.

The outcome is a nested film structure, with Guetta's rough, run-and-gun footage of artists at work serving as the departure point for Banksy's more polished perspective on the intricacies of the artistic process, the commodification of art and the nature of celebrity. Banksy appears both at work in Guetta's footage with his features obscured and in an on-camera interview wearing a hooded sweatshirt, his face hidden and voice disguised.

Slyly narrated by actor Rhys Ifans and featuring extensive interviews with Banksy as well as Guetta, an enigmatic and self-aggrandizing subject whose frequently amusing and improbable statements stretch credibility, "Exit Through the Gift Shop" also includes exclusive footage of well-known street artists creating their work.

The title appears to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the commercial aspect of art exhibition and sales.

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By Justin Lowe

Fox Searchlight's sudden decision to toss "Crazy Heart" into the heat of December and therefore the Oscar competition casts a brighter spotlight -- and greater scrutiny -- on what is a modest, rather conventional depiction of an aging and alcoholic country musician on a lengthy downward spiral. Had this film appeared later at Sundance, you would have the pleasure of discovering a fine performance by Jeff Bridges in an otherwise unremarkable movie. But with his best actor candidacy already announced, you start to notice his uncanny resemblance to Kris Kristofferson and speculate about how much this performance derives from Rip Torn's still-memorable turn as a ruthlessly self-absorbed country singer in the 1973 film "Payday."

Make no mistake: Bridges more than delivers the goods for Oscar eligibility. He is the mesmerizing, dangerous, unpredictable heart of "Crazy Heart." He is a damn good reason to see the film, and Maggie Gyllenhaal and the ever-mysterious, shockingly beautiful New Mexico desert are a couple of others.

But even with a more upbeat ending given to this adaptation of Thomas Cobb's downbeat novel, some 22 years out of print, "Crazy Heart" might struggle for an audience. Whether a drunk recovers or not, you still have to pass time with a guy you know will screw up just about every opportunity coming his way.

Bridges' Bad Blake earns his name. He can't always get through a set without having to go backstage to vomit. Even so, you figure cigarettes might kill him before the booze does. Either way, it'll be a tight race.

Once a genuine star, he now plays with teenage pickup bands and performs at bowling alleys. Women slip him phone numbers, though, so he has something other than a bottle to get him through the night.

He meets a cute, very young journalist (Gyllenhaal), to whom he grants an interview. So the interview gives you his backstory -- four marriages and a son he hasn't spoken to in years -- while these two fall into a high-risk relationship. It's especially high risk for the reporter, who has a 4-year-old son.

The question in movies about abusers is where exactly will rock bottom be and when will he hit it? One pretty much knows it will have something to do with that young boy, especially when Gyllenhaal says she couldn't live without him.

Bridges gives Bad Blake a rough charm that sees him through hard situations and attracts the occasional friend like Robert Duvall's compassionate tavern owner. As he rumbles to one-night stands throughout the Southwest in a battered car, he has his mood swings, but one senses what really keeps him going is the music. It matters to him. He connects his life to his music and lives his songs onstage and off. Bridges is not a bad singer, either, thoroughly convincing one that he once could have been a headliner.

There is a smart subplot involving a younger country star, well played by Colin Farrell. Once his protege, Bad Blake now feels the sting of his success. But when they meet, the singer clearly does not emulate any of Bad Blake's self-destructive ways. The star tries very hard to help his old friend and begs him to write songs for which he will pay grandly.

Actor Scott Cooper makes his debut as a writer-director, but he's working with tired material. As it is, Bridges and the cast perform wonders to make "Crazy Heart" seem as fresh as it does. But an ex-star out of control and the self-destructive drunk is a cross between types with too many antecedents in other movies.

"Crazy Heart" is the second salvage job by Fox Searchlight in as many years. The film was made for about $7 million by Country Music Television, a unit of Viacom. When Paramount was about to throw it into the scrap heap of a video release, the film was purchased by Fox Searchlight. Unlike that unit's rescue of last year's "Slumdog Millionaire" from Warner Bros., "Crazy Heart" lacks that spark of originality. So what Fox Searchlight has salvaged essentially is a highly watchable performance by Bridges, one of many he has furnished throughout a long career.

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By Kirk Honeycutt

Christopher Isherwood was one of the great prose writers of the 20th century, a man of complexity, honesty and wit, and the fashion designer Tom Ford, making his carefully stylised directorial debut, has done an altogether admirable job of bringing to the screen what many regard as his best novel.

Born in 1904, Isherwood grew up with the cinema, was fascinated by the relationship between literature and the new medium, and his most famous line occurs his most celebrated book, ­Goodbye to Berlin: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." Over the years he worked frequently on movies (his masterly novella, Prater Violet, was based on his experience of co-writing the 1934 Berthold Viertel film Little Friend), and when he and WH Auden left Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Auden settled into the literary world of New York while Isherwood travelled west to be close to Hollywood and to California-based students of ­eastern religions.

Isherwood touched on Hollywood in The World in the Evening, his first novel set in America, and satirised it in the adaptation of Waugh's The Loved One that he made with Terry Southern, which he spoke of as his most enjoyable experience in the cinema. He can be spotted as a party guest in his friend George Cukor's final film, Rich and Famous (1981). A ­Single Man, however, published in 1964, while as semi-autobiographical as the rest of his fiction, has no reference to Hollywood. Its background is a very specific time in America: the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 when the nation seemed on the brink of annihilation, but before the escalation in Vietnam and the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s. And its setting is that rootless, lotus-eating southern California, where conformity and eccentricity painfully coexist and where anything seems possible. Several generations of British homosexuals, from the film director James Whale in the 1930s through Isherwood in the 40s, to the screenwriter Gavin Lambert and the painter David Hockney (both close friends of Isherwood) in the 50s and 60s, found a liberating freedom there.

The central character is the openly gay George Falconer, a 58-year-old British exile and professor of literature at a middling Los Angeles university, living a few minutes from the beach since 1938. He's played by Colin Firth with an unforgettable intensity. Observing the world through horn-rimmed spectacles in an apparently detached, ironic, quizzical manner, he's a camera with its shutter open and appears as coldly fastidious and un-Californian as his immaculate suit, white shirt and tie. But George, like Isherwood at that time, is concealing an inner turmoil. Isherwood was worried about losing his young partner, the American painter Don Bachardy and thinking of a move back to England or to the more relaxed San Francisco. George is in a state of anguish over the recent death in a car crash of Jim (Matthew Goode), his lover of 13 years, whose family ignored George's existence. He also finds increasingly infuriating both the homophobia of the political right and the bland understanding of middle-class liberals, and regards his time as a teacher wasted on a new generation of shallow students.

The action takes place in a single day, Isherwood arriving at this day-in-the-life form after re-reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, which was in turn inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses. Of the films based on these novels, Ford's is, I think, the best, though Isherwood's often savage social criticism – of university life, the straight world and cultural homogenisation – has been considerably softened up. A central theme is ageing and mortality, the inevitability of one's own death and that of those you love.

When the book appeared in 1964 the novelist and critic Stanley Kauffmann noted in his perceptive review striking resemblances between A Single Man and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, and he even suggested it might well have been called "Death in Venice, Cal". This dramatic thrust has been further emphasised by Ford and his screenwriter David Scearce, borrowing, consciously or unconsciously, from a French movie dating from around the same time as Isherwood's novel, Le Feu Follet, where the protagonist, at odds with a distrusted world, carries with him everywhere a Luger, with which he proposes to commit suicide. Likewise, George has a gleaming black revolver that he similarly fetishises, buys bullets for and thinks of using.

While engaging in reveries and flashbacks, George goes about his business as a teacher, conducting a class on Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan and challenging his students to think about conformity and prejudice. He has two particularly remarkable encounters, one with an old friend, the other with a young student. The old friend is Charley (the excellent Julianne Moore), an English divorcee considering returning to London, with whom he has an extended, boozy dinner. The student is a sensitive outsider, the insecure bisexual Kenny (Nicholas Hoult). Both penetrate George's carapace, bringing out a frankness and vulnerability he's tried to ­conceal.

Exposed to searching close-ups throughout, Colin Firth gives the performance of his career as George, and subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, gradations of colour and visual texture reflect and complement his changing moods as the day goes on. This is a self-conscious, superbly crafted, deeply felt movie. It's not a gay film but the story of a gay man, a single man in several senses, but also everyman in the way we respond to him, as we do to Clarissa Dalloway or Leopold Bloom.

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By Philip French

Not that there was any doubt that, when it came to restaging the 1865 Lewis Carroll classic for a 21st century sensibility, Tim Burton would be the man for the job.

But even the filmmaker's trademark winsomely outlandish style doesn't prepare you for the thoroughly enjoyable spectacle that is his "Alice in Wonderland."

A fantastical romp that proves every bit as transporting as that movie about the blue people of Pandora, his "Alice" is more than just a gorgeous 3D sight to behold.

Armed with a smartly reshaped but still reverential script by Linda Woolverton ("Beauty and the Beast," "The Lion King"), Burton has delivered a subversively witty, brilliantly cast, whimsically appointed dazzler that also manages to hit all the emotionally satisfying marks.

Disney won't have to consume any little cakes in glass boxes in order for the resulting worldwide boxoffice to reach colossal heights.

That's a given for this PG-rated (blame it on that smoking caterpillar) release, which also should emerge as an early, cross-category Oscar contender.

No longer a wide-eyed child, Alice Kingsleigh (a pitch-perfect Mia Wasikowska) is now an easily distracted 19-year-old who seems hopelessly out of sync with her muted Victorian surroundings.

Dodging a garden-party marriage proposal from the dorky son of a lord and lady, Alice instead opts to take off after a pocket watch-clutching rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen), giving those 3D glasses their first major workout as she plunges deeper and deeper into Underland.

Although she doesn't realize it, Alice has been down this particular rabbit hole before, when she was a much younger, more spirited girl.

But before she's able to get back in touch with her "muchness," she'll bond with a mercury-poisoned Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp, in another blissfully out-there tragicomic performance) and butt heads with the tyrannical Iracebeth (a never-better Helena Bonham Carter, who is an absolute scream of a Red Queen).

Whether they were required to spend quality time in front of a greenscreen or were totally CGI creations, all the usual suspects, from the rotund Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas times two) to the disembodied Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) to the fearsome Jabberwocky (the great Christopher Lee), are present and brilliantly accounted for in collaboration with special effects master Ken Ralston.

Although Carroll purists might pooh-pooh some of the script's more radical alterations, like bringing Alice up to legal age, the shift helps hit home the film's welcome message of female empowerment.

Ultimately, it's the visual landscape that makes Alice's newest adventure so wondrous, as technology has finally been able to catch up with Burton's endlessly fertile imagination.

Also taking their cues from John Tenniel's original illustrations, Robert Stromberg's fanciful production design and costume designer Colleen Atwood's ever-inspired wardrobe selection help make it quite the trippy trip.

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By Michael Rechtshaffen

Everybody has heard of Oxford and seen its historic colleges in films and favourite television shows, but hands up how many of us have ever visited as a tourist? We certainly hadn’t, and as we stood in the 20-strong group for a walking tour, it seemed possible that far more foreign visitors value its famous nooks and crannies than us Brits.

We set off from outside the Tourist Information Centre in Broad Street, which is just around the corner from the world-renowned Bodleian Library and the University’s 17th-century Sheldonian Theatre, designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

Within a few minutes we were in the gardens of Exeter College, where writers JRR Tolkien and Alan Bennett were undergraduates; where the shining lights of the British Arts and Crafts movement William Morris and Edward Burne- Jones once studied: and where television’s Inspector Morse suffered his fatal heart attack.

The Fellows’ Garden has a wonderful view of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, where Henry VIII’s Protestant Archbishop Cranmer was tried for heresy by Henry’s Roman Catholic daughter Queen Mary - and burnt at the stake in Broad Street.

The sense of history here is tangible as you walk from one amazing building to another. But Oxford is not stuck in a timewarp, as you can see the minute you walk through the doors of the Ashmolean Museum. It may be full of ancient artefacts and housed behind a splendid neoclassical 19th century facade, but inside is all glass, light and space thanks to a £61 million rebuilding programme completed last year.

It was here that we encountered other British tourists, presumably attracted by its free entrance - although the rooftop restaurant is another big draw. The Ashmolean has been described as the world’s finest university museum, but we think the most engaging could well be the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

A collection of zoology, entomology and geology specimens might not sound like fun, but we loved the procession of dinosaur and other animal skeletons and were pleased to see a cast of the mummified head and feet of the famous Oxford Dodo.

Then, just as you think you’ve seen it all, you find yourself in the chaotic but brilliant Pitt Rivers Museum, to which the Oxford University Museum of Natural History is linked. Anybody who loves old-fashioned glass cabinets rather than interactive computer displays will thoroughly enjoy poking around this eccentric collection of anthropological bits and pieces - the clothes, tools and toys of just about every ethnic group once visited by rich and fearless explorers.

You may be able to find the shrunken head that appears in the Harry Potter film The Prisoner of Azkaban or the famous English witch in a bottle.

The museum was reopened last summer after a £10 million upgrade, although the displays were left virtually undisturbed; this spring the Upper Gallery will be reopened to show the armour and weapons collections.

But a day of cultural tours and museums can leave you feeling pretty exhausted, so it’s worth knowing where you can stop off for a rest. We had lunch in the Vaults and Garden café in the Old Congregation House which adjoins the University Church of St Mary the Virgin and serves salads, soups and hot food using organic and locally sourced produce.

In the evening we stayed at Witney Four Pillars Hotel, about 10 miles outside Oxford on the edge of the Cotswolds, which makes a good base if you want to explore the countryside as well as the city. It has an indoor pool, sauna, steam room and gym and our evening meal was a perfect combination of good food and relaxing atmosphere.

If you want to stay close to the city centre, Four Pillars has the Oxford Spires Hotel, while there is another close to the Thames and a further branch at Abingdon, another good centre for exploring the countryside.

The only disadvantage of our weekend in Oxford was that there just wasn’t time to do everything, such as walking along the river and seeing more of the city’s traditional pubs such as the Turf Tavern, tucked away beside what is left of the city wall.

Then there is the Museum of the History of Science in Broad Street, which is the world’s oldest surviving purpose-built museum building.

Let’s hope the reopening of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s Upper Gallery this spring spurs us on to return to look for that witch in the bottle.

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Deborah Stone

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