Culture & Literature – Page 22 of 37

31Jan

By Emma HalahanNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Theatre & Performance

UnScene Festival: A Review

The 10 short pieces that made up Drama Socs UnScene Festival certainly packed a punch. Emma Halahan reviews a night of laughter, tears and tender moments. Ranging from spoken word to a brief improvisation by The Holloway Players, the 2016 UnScene Festival had something for everyone. Original writing at RHUL doesn’t have much of a platform: if you are a drama or creative writing student there are opportunities with the Student Workshop and Musical Theatre Society’s Variations offers the opportunity to write an original musical, although it’s first years only. UnScene plugs this gap in the market by allowing a plethora of original writing styles to gain stage time and I can attest, the results were simply magical. Guided by two wonderful co-hosts, Ellie Cozens and Azan Ahmed, the night pr...

30Jan

By ruby_rogersNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Film & TV

Doctor Who?

Ruby Rogers discusses the decline of BBC’s ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Sherlock’ “Doctor who?” – the famous question, that has been asked by almost every character on the BBC’s favourite family sci-fi drama, has suddenly gained new meaning for me. I, like many other people my age, remember vividly when the Doctor returned to our screens in 2005, in the form of the leather-jacket-wearing, more-intense-less-eccentric Christopher Eccleston. My brother and I watched it every week without fail for years, and, when it wasn’t on, we’d spend countless hours re-watching previous episodes, playing with my brother’s TARDIS set or running around the garden pretending to be aliens. Then, the question “Doctor who?” was nothing more than a plot device, a question to which the answer was simply ‘the (italics) ...

25Jan

By Joanne ArcherNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Music

McFly: It’s All About Egham

Four-piece boyband McFly have been spotted in Waitrose Egham during their writing trip. Joanne Archer charts the recent developments of the band. In September 2016 I saw McFly play their anthology tour in London. Watching the boys play every song in their discography over the course of three nights was a delight. I was even lucky enough to catch Tom Fletcher’s guitar pick. The band had been joint at the hip with Busted for three years, forming super-group McBusted. Many fans, myself included, enjoyed the novelty of McBusted, a blend of their childhood favourites, but found that this soon wore off when McFly faded out of existence. There was no new McFly music and no McFly tours. That all changed in 2016 with the announcement that Busted would be touring alone with the likes of Emma Blac...

19Jan

By Joanne ArcherNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Film & TV

A Mainstream Love Affair

Joanne Archer discusses the inevitability of cheating in mainstream film. I’m pretty lucky really. Unlike a lot of lonely souls out there, I have been in a very happy relationship for the last four years. You would think this can only mean Happily Ever After. My life is a Disney film and my days are filled with birdsong and baking apple pies. Reality check. We live in the 21st century and as much the above is fairly accurate, I am very aware that the course of true love never did run smooth. What exactly, I hear you ask, is it that fills me with a perpetual dread for the future? The normalisation and romanticising of cheating in mainstream film. You only have to look as far as Alan Rickman in Love Actually to see what I mean. Evidently we are supposed to feel bad for Em...

The Top 5 Most Instagrammable Locations Near You

10Jan

By Joanne ArcherNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Visual Arts

The Top 5 Most Instagrammable Locations Near You

You’ve returned to Royal Holloway after Christmas and to get back into the swing of uni life you need to find a way to show your friends and family just how much Royal Holloway slays. One setback: despite Holloway being the ‘University of London’, perhaps the most exciting thing outside of campus walls is Runnymede Chicken and Ribs. Never fear. Orbital has rounded up the very best spots, both on campus and the surrounding area, to fill your Instagram feed. Founder's Very cliché and predictable but, no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to avoid uploading a photo of the Victorian architecture from one of the numerous angles. There is no doubt that Founder's Building played a huge part in your decision to attend Royal Holloway. My personal favourite angle is from the bus sto...

3Jan

By Joanne ArcherNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Theatre & Performance

Culture Without the Cost

Orbital's Joanne Archer talks you through getting theatre tickets without maxing that overdraft. 1. Download the TodayTix app From this app you can order cheap theatre tickets for the current week, often with promotions offering great value for money. Certain shows also offer a ticket lottery where you can win amazingly discounted seats, often right on the front row. You might never win but it is well worth a try! All you have to do is make an account and choose which shows you want to see. You can enter the lottery each day but be sure to have your alerts switched on! If you do win, the tickets are normally for the same night so you need to be swift in claiming your winnings. TodayTix promises that it “secures the best discounted and full price tickets avail...

22Dec

By Harry BrownNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Film & TV

Hail, Caesar! Review

The Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! is one of their most hilarious, absurd and grand films yet. What the film lacks in emotional depth is more than made up for in laughs and often stunning spectacle. Taking place in 1950’s Hollywood, the film stars Josh Brolin as Eddie Mannix, the man who makes sure everything at fictional studio Capitol Pictures runs smoothly. His day to day work ranges from trying to rescue rumour-ridden star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) from a kidnapping, to managing the pregnancy of starlet DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson). While the subject matter could treated as a biopic in other hands, the Coen Brothers inject these stories with a silliness often bordering on parody. It is actually this aspect of the historical period’s depiction which is one of the film’s str...

20Dec

By Beth CarrNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Literature

Diary of an Ordinary Woman Reviewed

Background reading for your course can equal enjoyment, writes Beth Carr. In the midst of a reading-heavy degree it can be a struggle to find time and energy to delve into books for leisure, but making an effort to do so can be captivating and refreshing. This is exactly how I felt reading Diary of an Ordinary Woman, a book retrieved from my bookshelf after years of sitting there, since my mum passed it on to me as something I might enjoy. She was certainly not wrong and this is a book I would thoroughly recommend to anyone. Charting one woman's life through the twentieth century, Margaret Forster's novel reproduces extracts from the diaries of Millicent King, dating from 1913 to 1990. At first it was an ideal choice to relate to my course on twentieth century women but my interest s...

19Dec

By sumibalNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Music

Coffeehouse Sessions: Lee Rasdall-Dove

Sumi Bal drops by Coffee House Sessions to check out Lee Rasdall-Dove This week Tommy’s Kitchen welcomed singer songwriter Lee Rasdall-Dove for the weekly Coffee House Session. At only twenty, he has performed over 150 gigs in one year alone. If this wasn’t impressive enough, some of these venues include festivals such as Bestival and V Dub Island Festival. Lee’s earthy voice coupled with the smell of burgers wafting through the air makes for a delicious combination, fit for a scene taken straight out of Central Perk. How refreshing it is to see an artist accompanied by only his guitar, leaving the soul focus on his strong vocals and guitar rhythms. Lee’s recently released EP, ‘Head in the Clouds’ is definitely worth checking out. Paired with a nightmarish yet emotive music v...

14Dec

By Georgia BeithNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Film & TV

Netflix & Diversity

Orbital's Georgia Beith gets to grips with an issue bigger than Netflix and Chill: the topic of Netflix and Diversity. Netflix is widely recognised as the future of the entertainment industry - it’s not news to anyone. It’s a way of watching film and TV that has rapidly increased in popularity. But it isn’t just its quickly garnered success that sets Netflix apart; it also far outstrips traditional forms of media in terms of representation. TV and film’s lack of diversity is not a new issue by any means but, more recently people have finally been taking notice of this problem. The #OscarsSoWhite controversy, a response to the lack of diverse acting nominees at last year’s Oscars, highlights the limited opportunities and recognition given to actors of ethnic minorities. The lack o...