Author Archives: admin

The Musketeers, The Prize. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Gage, Tamla Jari, Matthew McNulty, Hugo Speer, Robby Fisher, Andre Flynn, Robert Glenister, Crispin Letts, Thalissa Teixeira, Matt Stokoe, Victoria Alcock, Melanie Kilburn.

All good stories end far too soon and as one of the biggest hits on the B.B.C., The Musketeers, will attest as it draws to its finale, such stories are only possible to love because they have been given absolute care and love by those involved and the audience at home; that rare mix to which so many lengthy serials strive for but so few actually grasp the true meaning of The Prize at hand.

The Musketeers, The Prize. Television Review. full post

(463 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Finding Dory, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Ellen DeGeneres, Ed O’Neil, Kaitlin Olson, Hayden Rolence, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Sloane Murray, Idris West, Rob Peterson, Dominic West, Kate McKinnon, Bill Hader, Sigourney Weaver, Alexander Gould, Torbin Xan Bullock, Katherine Ringgold, Lucia Geddes, William Dafoe, Allison Janney.

Some sequels can justifiably be seen as a marketing tool, a chance to take the public down the same road with just enough plot twists to make it feel new and exciting, and too which the money becomes sly as the franchise becomes all consuming. It is perhaps cynical to think of it that way but it is nonetheless an important factor to remember.

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

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

Your Walk Along The Cliffs At Mullion.

Beautiful photographs captured

with digital stillness in full colour

and without enhancement

of a county

I haven’t been able to see

with my own eyes since before

we worried about the Y2K bug

and the image of the end of days,

they all float before me,

my eyes growing damp,

of a county tattooed

on my brown like skin

and the cross of St. Piran

held high upon every rugged coast line,

another country, a different place

and one that I wish I could see

Your Walk Along The Cliffs At Mullion. full post

(232 words, estimated 56 secs reading time)

Ball Of Fire, Theatre Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Michael Hawkins, Ronny Goodlass, Michael Cullen, John Purcell, Sally Tryer, Adam Byrne, Katie King, James Ledsham, Danny Noble, Lisa Symonds.

At best Alan Ball was a world beater, a man to whom Pele described at the finest player in an England shirt, arguably the best player on the pitch on the day the country won the World Cup in July 1966, tenacious, a spirited player to whom Alf Ramsey made a hero of and to whom Don Revie discarded cruelly and without pomp and ceremony, at worst…well there was no worst, just dogged by ill fortune and personal disasters that would go hand in hand with the Lancashire’s lad’s demeanour and psyche for his entire life.

Ball Of Fire, Theatre Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(439 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

John O’ Connell, Gig Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There is always the novel approach, the unexpected gig to hit the Liverpool streets or the venue in which the audience turn up for a different kind of theatrical experience, the play may well be the thing but it is music after all in which captures the conscious of the audience and there are very few people like one of the Merseyside area’s favourite sons, John O’ Connell, in which to liberate the expanse of music on stage and to give a genuine feeling of love to the classical side of guitar performance.

John O’ Connell, Gig Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(369 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

The Tattooed Crow And I.

The tattooed Crow

and I go way back,

longer than almost anybody I remember,

save for immediate family

and a girl I loved named Jo.

Tattooed Crow, tattooed crow,

once a skinny Birmingham boy

to whom the words of cars,

machines, 50s beat,

and Elvis were the product

of a life I could not imagine,

not giving a damn about how

an engine worked or the days

of music long since past,

or of Rugby, a game that wasn’t

mine to enjoy,

The Tattooed Crow And I. full post

(246 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)

Christopher Shayne, Turning Stones. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The sound once came out of the cold swamps, the back beat slow and mystical…or that’s as close an analogy as you would find being perpetrated as a sizeable truth from out of the mind of Jim Morrison. If anything Southern Rock came from the fiery pits of Hell, where the Devil sang with charm and the band were always on fire, the taste in the air was like fine bourbon tickling the throat and that mystical sound, it was there but it pulsed with so much life that it sired grandchildren before each day was over.

Christopher Shayne, Turning Stones. Album Review. full post

(382 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Anne McCue, Blue Sky Thinking. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The artist is not to be trusted if they don’t listen to the stories that other people tell them, that if they are too wrapped up in their own words and thoughts, then they should be not ignored but at least scolded for their actions. The artist, the harbour of secrets and the keeper of the clandestine, eventually will sing of the tales and make them breathe and one of the finest of these, Anne McCue, is always on the verge of shepherding the story in the right direction and aiming for that distinction of Blue Sky Thinking.

Anne McCue, Blue Sky Thinking. Album Review. full post

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

Batman: No Man’s Land 1, Graphic Novel Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

If the city you lived in was left to rot by the powers that be, if something so catastrophic hit it that the decision to let it bleed to death, let it become a crumbling edifice of humanity’s folly, would you stay behind to try to save it, cower in the darkness and the filth and wait for a hero to turn up, one that could at least bring hope, or would you run, leave the city to die in slow agony and watch from afar, counting down the heartbeats, counting down time to the inevitable last gasp from the shadows.

Batman: No Man’s Land 1, Graphic Novel Review. full post

(465 words, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)

In The Dark Hours, The Memory Of The Bear Calls Out.

I want to talk to you,

just like

we did in old times

over a beer, over the background music

in which we catch ourselves smiling

at each other, shyly as children,

hormones unwilling to commit

as adults.

I want that beer to turn to three or four,

a session in a pub garden in the middle

of an Oxfordshire abyss or quiet literary desert;

let that beer sink, dregs drained

another one ready at the bar…

…I miss the gap in the silence

of comfortable reproach, when you

In The Dark Hours, The Memory Of The Bear Calls Out. full post

(216 words, estimated 52 secs reading time)