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The World’s End, Film Review. FACT Cinema, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, Pierce Brosnan, Bill Nighy, David Bradley, Mark Heap, Steve Oram, Jasper Levine, Reece Shearsmith.

 

Is there nothing that Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright cannot put together that isn’t just pure British comedy gold? For the first fifteen minutes of the latest film to come from the warped and surreal imagination of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, The World’s End, it felt as if though the run had finally come to a crashing and disturbing end. Not so much comedy, not so much a film bought together by some of the most talented people around but the sinking feeling that this was more about a pool of writers and actors finally admitting defeat and waving a white flag but making a tedious journey round of jokes concerning the drinking culture of the U.K.

The World’s End, Film Review. FACT Cinema, Liverpool. full post

(504 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Pete Thomas & The Horns A Plenty, Big. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision * * * * *

When Pete Thomas says Big, he doesn’t just mean huge, enormous or giant like, he means Big, emblazed in bright neon lights, all signs pointing his way and saying that there is no other show in town for the foreseeable future and all tickets are sold out. A sound that encompasses the vastness and drive in which Pete Thomas & The Horns A Plenty take up residence in your soul and make your heart skip in time to the music in such a way that it is hard to imagine there being space for anything else in your head. Such is the power of Big, such is the power of the big band feel.

Pete Thomas & The Horns A Plenty, Big. Album Review. full post

(456 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

The Piper’s Lament, Audio Drama. Read By Frazer Hines.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Frazer Hines

Perhaps the only thing worse then never being able to remember your name, is the life you have had. Something that can cause great concern and consternation as you battle each day to remember what your life was like during a set period of time. For an old Scottish man who talks to a stranger in a pub, only his life before the battle of Culloden and the hardship he faced after his return are the only memories that he has, everything else is a like a dream and in David Howe’s audio drama The Piper’s Lament, the mournful and the laying of memories down go hand in hand.

The Piper’s Lament, Audio Drama. Read By Frazer Hines. full post

(493 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)

Rob Clarke And The Wooltones, Are We Here? E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Sometimes to appreciate what music from a city offered you, you have to delve fully into its past. You have to find out what worked and turned the population’s heads and captured the spirit of the time, the elusive zeitgeist that pops its being round at the seemingly most opportune times and captures the soul of the city.

Rob Clarke And The Wooltones, Are We Here? E.P. Review. full post

(448 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

The Music Of Buddy Holly Returns To The Liverpool Empire In 2014.

Celebrating an amazing 25thyear anniversary with a 2013-14 U.K. and The Republic Of Ireland’s national tour, Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story proves that whilst there have been many imitators over the years, this show – that inspired a generation multi-million selling juke-box musicals including Mamma Mia and We Will Rock You – remains the true original and a musical phenomenon.

Today, the first of 2014’s dates are announced as Buddy is set to open in the New Year and will be at the Liverpool Empire from 13th – 15th March 2014. The tour rocks on around the U.K. from next spring with dates including Bromley, York, Stoke, Darlington, Derby, Brighton, Aylesbury and Richmond.

The Music Of Buddy Holly Returns To The Liverpool Empire In 2014. full post

(427 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Eddie and Jackie, Jackie and Eddie, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Eddie John Fortune, Becky Brooks.

Does art imitate life or does life take a big huge dollop of inspiration from the art that goes on around it? In the case of two fellow struggling actors who live in Dingle, the hastily drawn chalk mark between these lines have become blurred and in the end the fractious nature of their relationship, the acerbic co-dependency that has been formed can only lead to one conclusion that both Eddie and Jackie need each other, despite the fact that they drive each other up the wall.

Eddie and Jackie, Jackie and Eddie, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(482 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Federal Charm. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

British Blues Rock has never seemed healthier. Perhaps it’s the times the nation is living through and experiencing or it may just be because a generation of performers, sick and tired of the same old thing have gone in search of a musical utopia and bought back a message from the past which says this stuff is very cool, why did we ever abandon it?

Federal Charm. Album Review. full post

(387 words, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Persuasion. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish 175.

Liverpool sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Tracey Childs, Christian Edwards, David Silbey, Jonathan Forbes, Paul Chahidi, Miranda Raison, Gemma Whelen.

Persuasion is perhaps the most potent weapon on the planet, if you can influence your way of thinking on to others what could that make you? A skilled negotiator perhaps, a person of reason, a tyrannical despot or perhaps the biggest persuader and manipulator of them all, The Doctor!

Doctor Who: Persuasion. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish 175. full post

(594 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

The Hummingbirds, E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The sheer magnetism that runs through The Hummingbirds, whether in their live sets which sets the pulses racing as if being hooked up to the national grid or in the studio recordings which just seem to get better and better, certainly marks them out as being part of the new breed, the surging confidence in music from Merseyside.

Their latest self-titled E.P. release epitomizes this and once more the band has come up with a set of music which has been strung together in timeless fashion and made to resemble a piece of work that gets pawed at, eyes glowing with anticipation as the prospect of each song coming through the speakers is nothing short of tantalising.

The Hummingbirds, E.P. Review. full post

(377 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Final Phase, Big Finish Audio Play 2.07.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson, David Warner, Toby Hadoke, Dominic Mafham, Jane Slavin, Nicholas Briggs, John Dorney.

If for nothing else, and to be fair there is a lot of emotion running through this last episode of Tom Baker’s second series for Big Finish. For fans of the classic series of Doctor Who, the final moments and words of May Tamm as the compelling Lady Romana as she admits to want to carry on travelling with The Doctor in the Tardis and keep an eye on him are filled with a deep and lasting regret as this would be the last the devotees and story addicts will ever get to hear new and well-polished expressions by one of the finest actors to step on board the Tardis.

Doctor Who: The Final Phase, Big Finish Audio Play 2.07. full post

(532 words, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)