Film – Lady Bird
Ladybird (2018) is being released on Netflix next week and I cannot recommend it enough. In understated terms Gerwig captures teenage angst in a way that seems neither adolescent or anxious. Her careful depiction of familial, romantic, and self love will have you equally enamoured and frustrated with each character’s treatment of the others. If you have ever been a mother or had a mother you need to watch this film.
Lily Sheehy (Film Editor)
TV– Sex Education S2
This fresh season of Netflix’s heartfelt and hilarious school drama introduces a brand new set of loveable characters, as well as reuniting us with all the old favourites.
Tom Martland (Theatre editor)
Literature – Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino
If you’re looking for a book of essays on modern life, I highly recommend Tolentino’s collection published just last year. Covering topics from the relationship between religion and ecstasy, the biggest scams of the past decade and ‘the cult of the difficult woman’, the read is erudite, heartfelt and perfectly executed.
Emmeline Armitage (Senior Culture Editor)
Music – Gold Baby
I’m listening to indie band Gold Baby, who played at The Library pub in Cowley last week. Their grunge-pop tracks offer musings on memory, heartbreak, and the difficulties faced by female musicians in the industry.
Martha Davies (Literature Editor)
Wild Card – Pre-Raphaelite Sisters
This week’s cultural experience for me was a trip to the National Portrait Gallery to see their exhibition on the ‘Pre-Raphaelite Sisters’. I have always loved the intense colours and detailed natural and medieval-inspired imagery of this sprawling movement, but the core of this exhibition lay in its focus on the women who were its models, muses and pioneers in their own right. This was a set of beautiful paintings presented with a fresh story.
Anna Mullock (Music Editor)