Author Archives: admin

Lewis & Leigh, Gig Review. Echo Arena, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It always with an interested eye on the crowd that you take in a new band appearing anywhere in the city of Liverpool, the occasional glance around at the faces, the small ticks and upturned smiles or the corresponding withering looks or confused, abandoned stares that places your trust in the gut feeling you have formed a belief in. It is with an acute ear though that makes up your mind and allows you to know that in many cases the music you hear is sincere, played with panache, a certain style and whilst it could be lost in the big wide space, it most certainly would go down a bomb and be applauded with great honour in avenue size down.

Lewis & Leigh, Gig Review. Echo Arena, Liverpool. full post

(401 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Jack Taylor: Nemesis. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Iain Glenn, Siobhan O’ Kelly, Christopher Fulford, Jack Monaghan, Ian Beattie, Rory Fleck Byrne, Patrick O’ Brien, Cathal Pendred, Deborah Wiseman.

The evil in anyone’s heart can grow, can manifest to the point where they become unrecognisable to themselves as well as to others. The fate of many becoming a secondary thought to the battle that rages between the one who has lost their mind and the person they want to seek retribution against, the Nemesis will claim many lives.

Jack Taylor: Nemesis. Television Review. full post

(404 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Football On The Radio.

Football on the radio

was always a bonus of Saturday

afternoon childhood,

it filled the void between Tiswas

or the forced trip

to the supermarket,

bored and regretting having to carry the bags.

Now football on the radio,

listening to the Blues,

is a staple of middle age,

now I cannot go shopping

for proper items

worth my soul

inside the club shop.

Ian D. Hall 2016

Permanent link to this post (69 words, estimated 17 secs reading time)

A United Kingdom, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.CT., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport, Tom Felton, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Laura Carmichael, Jessica Oyelowo, Terri Pheto, Vusi Kunene, Arnold Oceng, Anastasia Hille, Charlotte Hope, Theo Landey, Jack Lowden, Zackary Momoh.

History is made by breaking rules, by defying Government and putting your love for someone above the expected doctrines of faceless mandarins and cowards who will not stand up to racism and prejudice, to intolerance, lies and hate. Love and honour is the catalyst that topples Government and empire and perhaps none more so in recent times than the love between Seretse Khama, the King in waiting of his homeland in Africa and Ruth Williams, the daughter of a former World War Two soldier and somebody who has been tainted by thought of what is supposedly right and proper when it comes to marriages of mixed heritage.

A United Kingdom, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.CT., Liverpool. full post

(417 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Paterson, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Chaston Harmon, William Jackson Harper, Barry Shabaka Henley, Johnnie Mae, Masatoshi Nagase.

There is only one thing worse than a poet without a voice, that their means of communication is destroyed by unseen hand and that is when they deny their craft in conversation to another poet, that their resolve or confidence is so low that they pretend or forget that they have spent time in the wordless void as they honed their verse.

Paterson, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

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

Tuts.

It seemed much colder

for the time of year,

November in Bootle on the doorstep

whilst I fiddled for my keys, unlocking

the door with its customary deep groan,

“Hurry it’s cold”. You pronounced it cald

as if to draw out the meaning

and I told you so as I flicked the

inside light switch.

“What’s in a vowel?” You smiled,

beaming brighter than the bulb

over your head, incandescent.

“A lot”, I replied, “You would moan,

if in the cald,

I asked you to show me your tuts”.

Tuts. full post

(96 words, estimated 23 secs reading time)

The Innocents, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Lou de Laâge, Agata Buzek, Agata Kulesza, Vincent Macaigne, Joanna Kulig, Eliza Rycembel, Katarzyna Dabrowska, Anna Próchniak, Helena Sujecka, Mira Maluszinska, Dorota Kuduk, Klara Bielawka, Pascal Elso, Thomas Coumans, Leon Latan-Paszek

Not every story from the despair of World War Two has been told, not every action and reaction has been explored; however The Innocents seeks to address part of that by showing a world far removed from Julie Andrews singing the joys of spring as she wanders the hillsides in Germany-annexed Austria. Not every story has been told but there are some that you cannot help but wonder how they stay hidden for so long and the barbarity of some actions live long in the shadow, the stain of humanity.

The Innocents, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(406 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Black Friday.

Come inside the Mall,

the lights are bright and everything

is super, cheap and worth the risk,

of the stampede, of the pushing

and shoving, the charge of wallet and purse brigade,

the scattering of Stilettoes, the handbags

seized and used as battering rams,

the abuse towards the sales people, that’s O.K.,

the abuse towards your fellow man, that’s O.K.,

worth a black eye, that’s O.K. man,

as long as you get your 50 inch television

for fifty Dollars, quid, Euros, nicker less,

the money saved still more

Black Friday. full post

(145 words, estimated 35 secs reading time)

John Chatterton, Gig Review. The Casa, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It is a question of illusion, do you listen to music or do you watch it, do you shut your eyes in the crowd and let each note transport you to another place, another realm, or do somehow diminish the sound you are hearing and take in visually as much as possible, letting your eyes be astonished by the speed, the delicate and the insanely beautiful. It is a question of illusion for in John Chatterton, you have to peel back the ears, let the eyes widen in anticipation and just sit there without an animated bone in the body and let life have its way with you, let it entertain and entrance for John Chatterton does things on a guitar that leave you breathless in their simplicity and amazed in their complex belief.

John Chatterton, Gig Review. The Casa, Liverpool. full post

(399 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Eleanor Nelly, Gig Review. The Casa, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

A hall fit for heroes of their craft, or perhaps just a simple way to enjoy the sound of a woman who is surely destined for great things, be it here in the suburbs of her home town in Liverpool or the drama of undiluted cool across the United States where her music pretty much already has no rivals; in Eleanor Nelly there is flourishing youthful hope and she is class personified.

Eleanor Nelly, Gig Review. The Casa, Liverpool. full post

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