It’s not easy, being Keane. Taking the brunt of NME’s Bland Bashing, it seems even drug addiction can’t legitimise this band’s professionally yet ineptly cultivated image of edginess.

Press reaction to their latest offering, Perfect Symmetry, has been perfectly predictable – the middle aged Katie Melua Disciples feel smugly in touch listening to its eighties inspired electronic basslines, the slightly more self conscious Guardian reader tentatively acknowledges the trio’s ear for a well crafted tune, while NME unleashes a tirade that borders on the frenzied against former addict Tim Chaplin ‘or whatever the fuck he’s called’.

Keane seem to be a yardstick of coolness – the only way you can get away with listening to them is by donning some thickly black rimmed glasses, a vintage Mickey Mouse T-shirt, and adopting a lazily ironic expression. Perfect Symmetry is not going to earn any ‘parental guidance’ stickers, it’s true, and the French voice-over on Black Burning Heart is cringing, to say the least.

However, there is no lack of well crafted and catchy pop tunes on this album, Spiralling is a (hopefully consciously) cheesy nod to the decidedly non-ironic artists of the eighties, and Perfect Symmetry is as infectious as the tunes that keep NME employees up at night, gnawing on the bedpost with frustration.

So enjoy it as you would any other eighties-inspired guilty pleasure, along with The Breakfast Club, shoulder pads, and body glitter. Or if you’re too ashamed, crack out those glasses.

2 stars out of five.

A quick trip to The Peryls’ myspace will inform you that this band ‘trade in a brand of creaky, sinister pop…dark, lyrical and enchanting’. Rather an accurate definition, even if they do say so themselves. On this EP of only four songs, there is much to like, but it may be something on an acquired taste for those who don’t like kooky quacked-up left-of-the-beat jiggy-pop.

The music achieves the band’s aim, being very simple, relaxing and unexciting – not necessarily a criticism. However, that does mean there is not much to listen to. The off-beat accordion-style rhythm of ‘Bad Medicine’ props up the song well, with well balanced percussive nuances and the odd swell of a cello line, but the whole thing washes over the listener, without leaving a mark. The monologue style of the lyrics do much the same.

They apply their sparse style best to the last song: ‘Iron Man’. This stands out as a well poised serenade to solitude. All the instruments blend together well, supporting the vocal melody and playing off against it to create a more complex piece, creating a more powerful sentiment with a concise accusation at the effects of loneliness.

All in all, this is a perfectly average record. It doesn’t really do anything for or to you. Good pop should attract your attention, which this does not. They are far off from writing good pop if they concentrate on the texture of the songs and not the whimsical bent in their lyrics. Best listened to in a waistcoat.

3 stars out of five

Available to buy or rent this week is Wanted, one of the summer’s silliest but undoubtedly most fun action blockbuster.

Based loosely (very loosely actually; hardcore fans may be scoffing into their popcorn) on the graphic novel by Mark Millar, the film follows boring office-boy James McAvoy as he is told that he is linked by blood to an allegiance of deadly assassins, entrusted to maintain the status quo of good versus evil by killing all those named by a code in the threads of a woven tapestry.

So far, so bizarre, but suspend your disbelief to allow for evening runs along the tops of moving trains, men with the ability to shoot the wings off flies, and the idea that Angelina Jolie (pictured) would ever fall for James McAvoy, and you might just survive.

The particular highlight is a superb action sequence which begins at the pharmacy of a supermarket and ends with Jolie driving a car with her feet whilst gunning down a rival assassin. Overall, there are better action films than this Matrix wannabe, but it’s certainly enjoyable enough to see you through a Friday night.

Three stars

Maybe a misanthropic dentist was an unusual choice for the protagonist in an American romantic comedy. In fact, maybe a fat, middle-aged British comic is not be the ideal casting choice. But Ricky Gervais somehow makes it work.

I’m aware that Gervais is a bit like Marmite, so I’ll admit from the outset that I’m a fan. However, it is important to point out that he didn’t write the film, so the humour is less cringeworthy than that in The Office or Extras: when watching it I did not feel the desire to crawl from the screening room, just to stop the pain.

From the moment it becomes clear that Bertram Pincus (the unlikely name of the dentist) is going to attempt to woo ghost Greg Kinnear’s former wife (Tea Leoni) it is easy to see how the film is going to tackle the romantic part of its brief. But what of the comedy?

Most of it derives from the situation- the idea that Leoni’s character would go for Gervais’ is fairly laughable in itself. In the typical American fashion, she is far too pretty to be in his league, but not so much so that it is impossible to suspend disbelief. Although it is definitely the dead-pan delivery of Gervais that drives the film, the rest of the cast are also able.

Kinnear is endearing in a worn-out way and Leoni is charming as the love interest. A very pleasant surprise for me was the fact that Gervais can actually act. Although the characterisation is not what it could be, I found myself really rooting (or perhaps, root-canaling(!)) for Pincus.

If there was one thing that would make me give this romcom one less star, it would be the patchy dialogue. Most of it is sharp and witty, but it occasionally lapses into the kind of mushy sentimentalism that underlies my normal refusal to touch a romantic comedy with a bargepole.

However, the film just about manages to avoid sinking into the quagmire of chick-flick (and, thank God, there are no sex scenes) and performs (though only just) the difficult task of making cheesiness its own. My heart was warmed, against my will.

All in all, this film is certainly worth watching. Grin and bear the occasional gaffes in the script and you will come out of the cinema feeling happier than when you went in. If you’re a stressed Oxford student, what more can you ask of a comedy than that?

Four stars

Austen Saunders sings the praises of High School Musical’s high drama

I must admit, High School Musical is not a very good film. High School Musical 2 is a little worse and I have absolutely no doubt that the final part of the trilogy will be even poorer. The acting is weak, the plot risible, and the songs far from masterpieces, to say the least.

And yet, Troy and Gabriella, and most especially Sharpay and Ryan, I do love thee.

William Blake was very much of the opinion that Milton, whether he knew it or not, was on the side of the Devil when he wrote ‘Paradise Lost.’ I think much the same must have been true of the Disney Corporation when they channelled their many talents towards creating High School Musical.

The satanic force in East High is Sharpay, and she is every bit as charismatic and compelling as Milton’s anti-hero. After the naïve Gabriella knocks her off the school pecking order’s heavenly summit, she is desperate to seduce Troy away from his new sweetheart. She is a mischievous temptress driven by jealousy. She is fantastic.

If you love Sharpay, you will love High School Musical. She is the all-singing, all-dancing, malevolent heart of darkness which gives High School Musical its soul. If you ask me, she also gives it a sex-appeal the other teenage stars could only dream of, (It’s okay, she’s actually 23, I can say these things).

The Devil always has all the best tunes, and Sharpay knows how to make the most of them. The audition scenes in which she performs with her brother Ryan are breathtaking. Troy and Gabriella’s routines are exceedingly insipid.

Ryan is almost certainly gay, but he and his sister are very chummy. Forming as they do the counterpart couple to Troy and Gabriella, there is the slightest suggestion that family affection has been carried a bit too far.

Such suspicions can only add to Sharpay’s Byronic grandeur. Sharpay is a sequined force of destiny and if High School Musical had given the world nothing else, its place in the memory of man would be assured.

That, by the way, is no overstatement.

Sean Faye thinks HSM is out of tune with teens and families alike.

I should love High School Musical. The initial premise, involving an Alpha-male basketball captain who struggles to publicly admit his love for musical theatre, is certainly not wasted on me. When my 11-year-old sister encouraged me to watch the first film she sold it to me as a modern version of Grease.

Oh how deceptive this description was. On watching High School Musical, I discovered that the students of East High were in fact deranged antecedents of their 70s counterparts. Troy (Zac Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) are an emotionally and sexually-stunted pair in comparison with John and Olivia; they don’t even kiss until the end of the second film!

With virtually no allusion to the trials and tribulations of adolescence, their singing and dancing is vacuous and inexpressive. Ridiculously, Troy hides his desire to sing and dance with his sweetheart by singing and dancing with his ‘macho’ friends.

My criticisms are drowned out by the chorus of pre-teens who have aided High School Musical in its rise from made-for-TV film to big screen phenomenon. If nothing else, High School Musical is a ruthless marketing machine, selling its teen stars and their manic smiles as heroes for children everywhere. In reality, they are closely managed, sterilised stereotypes: the ‘zany’ African-American friend, the ridiculous Paris Hiltonesque bitch with a stupid name (Sharpay? God help us) and her brother Ryan.

Ryan is perhaps the oddest figure in this group: a camp, pink beret-wearing dancer who, rather creepily, sings love songs with his own sister. It’s not like the all-American Disney channel were going to include an actual homosexual. Yet, they inexplicably decided to feature a desexualised, comical effeminate who, in High School Musical 2 suddenly took an interest in girls, largely due to the comments of reviewers in the series’ first outing.

Behind the scenes, there have been brief glimpses of the dishonesty of the High School Musical brand. Vanessa Hudgens’ chaste incarnation on camera was counterbalanced by real-life nudity… on camera. This is all in the context of her supposed relationship with foundation-wearing Zac Efron who, let’s just say, is probably more of a Ryan than a Troy in HSM terms.

The way that this relationship slowly falls apart with every passing moment of the High School Musical extravaganza just underlines the failure of High School Musical. HSM tries to inhabit an odd space between ‘family-friendly’ and ‘teen comedy’, and ultimately fails at both.

What is it like to be a bat? The is the question Jan Crombie poses at her new exhibition at OVADA. The first drawing evokes the strict lines and arches of neoclassicism, yet these lines have become mere mathematical facts, holding no importance.

The first few sketches (‘What is it like to be a bat? 1-5′) are barely there themselves – great circular heads are filled in with black so that they are literally cancelled out, vast cruciform shadows seem more present than the figures to which they attach themselves.

Jan Crombie is dealing with issues of identity. ‘Incorporating the Future’ shows a body painted from the leftovers of a landscape, unable to transcends its status as mere furniture. ‘Woman Who Knows Who She Is’ seems to be sinking through the canvas out of sight.

Yet this is not an exhibition wholly given over to heavy-handed statements – ‘What the Fuck is Bebo?’ is a collection of twenty-seven oil-on-board portraits, providing humorous touches alongside more sobering images. Equally, ‘A Suitable Tree’ shows a pair of cartoonish eyes attached to a man with wings, hanging upside down from a tree.

There is a certain amount of bathos in this response to the exhibition’s opening question – gone are the headless bodies and dominating shadows. What remains is an image of childlike enjoyment, with a sunflower yellow back wall further adding to the optimism of the piece. This is what it’s like to be a bat.

It is hard to say if this exhibition succeeds. Gone is the political clarity and novelty of Crombie’s earlier works, and it’s hard to define what she has replaced these with. It’s hard to know if there’s any palpable honesty to these pieces.

That’s not to say that this exhibition isn’t worth a visit (though the sight, outside, of the Oxford Tube beckoning me towards the delights of London was certainly tempting), just that the questions Crombie asks have been asked many times before.

Three stars