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Ride (PS3), Game Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5 out of 10

Ride is a motorbike arcade racing game available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS3 and PS4. Milestone has a history of exceptional sports games, although they have been especially prolific with multiple iterations throughout various forms of motorbike racing from SBK to MotoGP to Motocross, but how does Milestone’s latest effort stack up in comparison to what has went before?

The Hellfire Club, Songs For The Fallen Stars. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It was a place steeped in debauchery and sin, a location of vice and intrigue and in which many deeds were committed in the name of notoriety; a society in which the powerful and mighty could “Do what thou wilt”. Yet for The Hellfire Club in which the sounds of majesty appear in their latest album Songs For The Fallen Stars, the motto of “Do what we can for you” would be more appropriate.

The Inappropriate Husband.

I may not have been the most ideal husband

that you could have had, baggage

galore and the wandering lust of the insecure,

not content in boredom and one who finds

it near impossible to dance. Married once before,

turned down twice more and the ignominy

of walking away from an Hispanic woman

who offered me the world, pompous at times

and stubborn as Hell when it comes to backing down

and the worry I have caused as I continue

to break down piece by piece by infuriating

The Producers, Theatre Review. Empire Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Corey English, Jason Manford, Ross Noble, David Bedalla, Tiffany Graves, Stephane Anelli, Abigail Brodie, Jaye Elster, Rebecca Fennelly, Olivia Fines, Andrew Gordon-Watkins, Aimee Hoonett, Paul Hutton, Nia Jermin, Marjorie McAvoy, Joel Montague, Genevieve Nicole, Tosh Wanogho-Maud, Jay Webb, Russell Wilcox, Aron Wild.

Satire isn’t dead, despite the stamp of modern life and politics trying its upmost to make it the saintly reserve of those who don’t get the joke, it lives hard and fast, it just takes the right mix of intelligent crowd and knowing performer in which to bring it out fully so that it can breathe and stir more than laughter out of the brain.

Helloween, My God Given Right. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Thirty years on from the opening salvo and the declaration of war on British and American dominance on Heavy Metal, thirty years since the Walls of Jericho came tumbling down under the pressure of guitar riffs being played as if Joshua’s trumpet had been misinformed of its exact duty in life, the pumpkins of Helloween are reborn once more in arguably the band’s finest and certainly critically advanced album since The Keeper of The Seven Keys Part II.

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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Jean Dujardin, Gilles Lellouche, Céline Sallette, Mélanie Doutey, Guillaume Gouix, Benoît Magimel, Bruno Todeschini, Moussa Maaskri, Féodor Atkine, Pierre Lopez, Éric Collado, Cyril Lecomte, Jean-Pierre Sanchez, Georges Neri.

The dark side of humanity’s consumption and need for stimulus has arguably always been close to cinema’s heart. From the days of early film to the golden age of the art form in which the Noir became king and through to the 1970s when humanity was under the pressure of unease and the drug culture became more apparent as Heroin became the narcotic choice, cinema has always reflected this darkness and given stark warning to the after effects of such crimes and punishments.

Danny Collins, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Al Pacino, Annette Bening, Bobby Cannavale, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Garner, Josh Peck, Melissa Benoist, Nick Offerman, Aarti Mann, Katrina Cas, Anne McDaniels, Brian Smith, Eric Lange, Giselle Eisenberg, Michael Patrick McGill, Scott Lawrence, Eric Michael Roy.

Every actor has one film in them which the plaudits and the cinema goer attaches great stock and faith in, some have more than one. For Al Pacino, they seem to have come with never ending force and for even those who might not see the appeal of his film career over say Robert de Niro or Jack Nicholson, they have to concede that the man is adored the world over.

Dust Marks

…Yes, of course it wears you down.

It grinds away at you till at some point you forget

to breathe, you forget that there is more than one

emotion possible and you have to force yourself to grin

like one of humanity’s D.N.A. sharers and

spark life into your soul by doing something stupid,

in other people’s eyes, because you’re in danger

of letting go, and there is no one around to catch you

because they have no idea you’re going to fall.

 

Perhaps it’s not that life is to be lived

The Rainbreakers, Blood Not Brass. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The world revolves around both, one nourishes the heart, the other allegedly makes the Earth spin at a peculiar angle and warps the judgement of anybody who gets to close it. Whether it is Blood or Brass that floats your boat, to The Rainbreakers it is most defiantly Blood Not Brass that makes music flow with astounding pressure and the white heat of the raw and unadulterated flood through the unguarded eardrums.

Weakness.

The arms around me are so close

and I can smell the delicate squirt of perfume

that lingers around you as you invite me

to remain the fifteen year old boy

who was in love with you

and who thirty years later still crumbles

and goes weak at the knees when I think of love

as pure deliverance and a teenage angst poem

dedicated to you, unseen

hidden in the pages of a diary in which your name

appears scrawled over and over again.

 

With our youth all around us,