The cinema is packed out with buzzing fans on the opening night of the sixth instalment of the ‘Harry Potter’ films, but I’ll be honest, my expectations are low. I appreciate that Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron, Mike Newell and David Yates all shared a daunting task; their mission was to create cinematic masterpieces and box office record breakers based on books which millions of people worldwide have read and hold dear.

There is no denying that the pressure of having to satisfy legions of die-hard fans must have been tough but with a huge budget to play with and some of the Britain’s best loved actors behind you I feel that there really is no excuse for making this series badly. What fans want is integrity, attention to detail, the essence of the book captured on film: all things which the first ‘Harry Potter’ films lacked. Did Columbus go through ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ with a fine tooth comb, Peter Jackson style? I doubt it. The first four films had plenty of big name actors, great CGI, detailed costumes, an amazing set but it lacked the magic of Rowling’s novels. I had decided not to risk further disappointment by boycotting ‘The Half Blood Prince’ but having seen several promising trailers my curiosity got the better of me. So here I am, waiting to be convinced.

This film follows Harry through his sixth year at Hogwarts as he begins to learn more about Lord Voldemort’s past, going right back to the days when he was a student at the school. In the novel many of Dumbledore’s memories about the young Voldemort (Tom Riddle) are described and whilst Yates cut many of these from the final script, the memories that are represented are done exceedingly well. Hero Fiennes-Tiffin’s appearance as the young Tom Riddle leaves a lasting impression in a short but effective flashback. He sends chills down your spin with his deadpan declaration, ‘I can make bad things happen to people who are mean to me.’ Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) gets the opportunity to showcase his acting ability in this instalment as he is pushed to the limits of his humanity by the dark forces at work in the wizarding world.

From ‘mild peril’ to ‘moderate threat’ the films are finally becoming darker. Whilst I can understand the difficulty of turning, what can be at times, quite chilling books into films which are suitable for children, up until now much of the dark matter of the novels has been played down or lost completely. On hearing that Guillermo del Toro had turned down the chance to direct ‘The Half Blood Prince’ I assumed that any opportunity to explore the more disturbing aspects of ‘Harry Potter’ were gone. However, in this film there were some genuinely scary moments: Katie Bell’s cursed body hanging in the air as she silently screams, the Dark Mark looming in the sky, the attack by the Death Eaters on The Burrow. Helena Bonham Carter is perfectly cast as the manic Bellatrix Lestrange; the tense scene at The Burrows, which was invented for the screenplay, allows us to revel in all her deranged glory.

Tension aside, the rest of the film succeeds in being surprisingly funny, without employing slapstick. As the teenage Harry, Ron and Hermione all experience the pangs of love comic situations arise. Radcliffe succeeds in carrying off a comic scene when he is acting under the influence of a ‘liquid luck’ potion with ease whilst Grint is blessed with many of the film’s comic one-liners. The three young actors appear to have improved dramatically since the filming of ‘The Order of the Phoenix’, although the dialogue in this film is much more realistic than the stilted lines of the early films. When I think of poor eleven year old Radcliffe being asked to delivered such contrived dialogue as ‘I.. I can’t be a wizard, I’m just Harry!’ in the first film my heart goes out to him. A workman can’t achieve anything without good tools and Steve Kloves’ script really allows us to see what Radcliffe, Grint and Watson can do. Whether the three young actors will be able to cope with the emotionally draining final instalment of Rowling’s series or not remains to be seen. But with David Yates at the reins again for the two ‘Deathly Hallows’ films, I’m now confident that it will be worth waiting for.

My verdict: whilst it wasn’t a perfect film (a lot of episodes from the novel were completely cut which I can only imagine will create difficulties in filming for ‘The Deathly Hallows’) it captured the feeling of the sixth book. Die hard fans hoping for an exact replica of the novel will doubtless be disappointed but I felt that this was compensated for in other areas: it was well shot, well cast and well considered. My final thought as I leave the cinema? What a pity it took so long for someone to make a ‘Harry Potter’ that leaves the audience spell bound.

4 stars out of 5

The scene is set for a perfect summer romance: a warm evening breeze whispers through the trees in Wadham Gardens causing the branches to sway dreamily, the audience gaze at the softly lit grassy stage in quiet anticipation. It is peaceful. Suddenly the sound of cries and laughter peal through the air as the cast of Shakespeare’s greatest love story cavort on to the stage from all sides.

Their costumes are so loud I wonder if I will be able to hear them speak their lines; some enter on foot, whilst others glide in on bicycles! And they are carrying instruments… When the cast begin their first musical number, ‘Rip It Up’, I see various male members of the audience visibly flinch. Even I start to feel slightly perplexed by the unexpected musical rendition. If I had read details of the performance on the Oxford Shakespeare Company website I would have known that the show was being advertised as a ‘rock and roll love story’ and that this version of the play was set in 1950’s Oxford. The old ‘twist on a classic’ chestnut is frequently attempted but is more often than not unsuccessful. I was interested to find out how this production would fare.

The cast consists of just eight actors, many of who double up roles throughout the performance, making lightening quick costume and character changes. To their credit, I did not realise until half way through the play that such extensive doubling up was occurring as it was so seamlessly done. The most successful character chameleon was the versatile Chris Jordan who slipped from playing the camp rascal Mercutio to the militaristic Paris with ‘blink and you’d miss it’ ease. Katie Krane was also noteworthy as Juliet’s nurse, delivering the play’s comic lines with great gusto in a production where every opportunity for humour is seized upon.

Even various tragic moments are given comic touches, such as in the scene in which Friar Lawrence tells Romeo (Alex Tomkins) of his banishment from Verona. Tomkins played this scene like a spoilt, lovesick brat and as the friar berates him for his ‘womanish tears’ we are reminded once again that Romeo is a teenage boy as well as a tragic hero.

If someone had told me beforehand that the play was going to be interspersed with 50’s style music and dance I would have expected it to be a bit naff. But it wasn’t. If it had been done badly or attempted in a half hearted way it could have been terrible. But it wasn’t. Once I had gotten over the shock that I was watching Romeo and Juliet with interludes of 50’s song and dance I really started to enjoy the play. The acting and musical performances from the entire cast were top quality. Overall the music enhanced the effect of Shakespeare’s language rather than detracting from it: the songs were mainly used to give the party scenes new life and to cement Romeo’s status as self-indulgent crooner.

The only wildly inappropriate musical number comes at the close of the performance when the lovers have put an end to their troubles and their parents are gathered around their lifeless bodies. Anything moving about this final scene is obliterated when the corpses jump up and start singing Eddie Cochran’s ‘Three Steps to Heaven.’ It was so horribly camp that it made me wonder whether the whole production had been intended to be slightly tongue in cheek. Overlooking this minor blemish, Guy Retallack’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet carries off the 50’s twist with great success and, complemented by the dreamy natural scenery of Wadham Gardens, is the ideal end to a balmy summer’s day.

4 stars out of 5

‘Romeo and Juliet’ runs until 22nd August in Wadham College’s Walled Gardens, with student tickets priced at £15.

Summer wouldn’t feel like summer without the The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. For those not in the know, now in its 241st year, the summer exhibition consists of a huge range of works in different media including painting, photography, sculpture and architecture from both established and unknown current artists. It is this which makes the exhibition so remarkable – a priceless silver Damian Hirst sculpture of St Bartholomew might be exhibited next to a watercolour by your aunt Sally who lives in Bognor Regis – it’s all judged by the same panel.

Every room is like a magnified version of an eccentric grandmother’s house with frame upon frame upon frame cluttering the walls. Each work is labelled with a number that corresponds to a printed list of works, giving it the funny feel of a guessing game at which is the most expensive or well known in the room. As always, there is a lot of chaff among the wheat with derivative Degas-esque ballet dancer sculptures, glorified wallpaper designs and soulless commercial photo-realist paintings. However these add to the authentic feel of an art fair in which every budget and taste is accommodated with works ranging from £70 to £700,000.

There are some charming works of more obscure origins such as Tom Phillips’s A Humument: Scribe the story, (no. 121 in the large Weston room), which uses a page of a mysterious-sounding book, The Human Document, as a canvas, linking various words across the page such as ‘changes made … the book…continue’ by leaving them uncovered in natural-seeming forms. The established gems are also well worth seeing, bold architectural paintings by Tony Bevan, some humorously kitsch works by Tracy Emin including a painting of piglet entitled I want it back, that feeling again (no. 579), and some strangely beautiful cartilage-esque architectural models by Zaha Hadid.

Nevertheless, the exhibition’s 1266 works are much too much to see in one afternoon so if you are to see one thing then the room dedicated to video art is definitely worth a visit. It is the first year that such a room has been included and the 19 short works featured range from Art Attack style arial image-making to digital Pictionary. The film gallery, curated by Richard Wilson, projects each clip onto Wilson’s own installation, which he describes as ‘a wall ripped from another interior space’. This other wall, with its torn edges and slanted position has the effect of removing each film from the context of the room, enhancing the sense of dislocation and surrealism that unite this otherwise disparate collection.

Two short films by Matt Calderwood, Gloss and Strips (Vertical), show the methodical dipping of a light bulb into a pot of black paint at increasing degrees until the light is snuffed out and the systematic smashing of a row of white tube lighting until the lights are all broken and we are left in darkness. The meaning isn’t clear but the effect is eerie and cathartic. With Strips (Vertical) the light fills the frame at the start so that we see a white screen and each time a light is smashed we begin to see lines – it is only near the end that we see in three dimensions and realise what has been shown. This defamiliarisation of quotidian objects creates an unexpected beauty that is simple but poignant. It somehow distils life, the passage of time, beginning and end, much as a Beckett’s Breath does.

This contrasts with the highly polished Surprise by Ben Dodd, which depicts a woman surprising a man with a birthday cake and sparklers at which point he is so shocked he falls backwards and smashes the glass shower guard. This sequence is shown in reverse. As the film goes through the event in slow motion accompanied by dramatic classical music, the initial scene of a man lying in broken glass is explained and shown to be unexpectedly trivial. This again upturns convention by depicting a farcical moment as mysterious and scenic. Guy Oliver’s Boythorn, His Thoughts Can Kill is similarly unexpected and darkly hilarious, but I won’t give away the punch line.

The Summer Exhibition 2009 is open until Sunday the 16th August from 10am -6pm daily (last admission 5.30pm) with late night openings until 10pm on Fridays. Admission is £7 full price and £5 NUS.