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Doctor Who: The Darkness of Glass. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Mark Lewis Jones, Julian Wadham, Sinead Keenan, Rory Keenan, Nicholas Briggs.

The glass is never half full for the Doctor. There should be a point in the Doctor’s life where someone sits him down and examines in depth, just what would happen if boredom ever got the better of him! For even in the smallest detail of finding himself cut off from his Tardis on a stretch of lonely beach, there is always a house on an island in which the allusion to an Agatha Christie novel will appear.

Doctor Who: The Darkness of Glass. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(421 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Mad King March Sees The Folly Of His Ways.

The last throws of his titanic, obliterating, rage upon him,

Mad King March sinks into solitude and reckless despair.

He had known all his life that his anger was wasted

on the faithful subjects who had grown to love him,

as they had every March before him, for Mad King March

understood that the time was at hand in which,

baring disaster, baring cosmic storms and ice so ravenous that would

carve death into the heart of the Universe, it was time to start

thinking of the future, the January babe, medieval child in arms,

Mad King March Sees The Folly Of His Ways. full post

(209 words, estimated 50 secs reading time)

A Forest Of Stars, Beware The Sword You Cannot See. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The attack from the front, the wielding of the weapon flashing before your eyes from the confronted foe is far easier to understand than the one that comes from behind your own lines and takes you down in an act of cowardice and betrayal. The foe who attacks you full on, eye to eye, is far more worthy than the that you do not see coming, it is always better in such cases to Beware The Sword You Cannot See.

A Forest Of Stars, Beware The Sword You Cannot See. Album Review. full post

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

If Not For Miss Dicks.

If not for Miss Dicks,

school would have been nothing but a waste of time for me.

Not to say I didn’t enjoy the time locked in a classroom,

some teachers positively nice, doing their job, as Mrs Gray

did, with enthusiasm in the face of permanent adversity

but there were others

for whom teaching was surely just a way to spend a few hours

away from home and the drudgery of living

in 1970s Britain.

 

If not for Miss Dicks,

I would have gone on to senior school

If Not For Miss Dicks. full post

(688 words, estimated 2:45 mins reading time)

The Musketeers: Trial And Punishment. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Gage, Tamla Kari, Hugo Speer, Maimie McCoy, Marc Warren, Phil Rowson, Peter Sullivan, Alex Giannini, Charlotte Salt.

When the world turns on a single fateful decision to topple a King, the fall out is never going to be pretty, the lives that become embroiled in the plot, whether they know about it or not, are going to change, perhaps even ruined and the ultimate measure in Trial and Punishment is set, the pawns and the people placed in it all will feel the wrath of the King.

The Musketeers: Trial And Punishment. Television Review. full post

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

Earth Hour.

Where does the time go?

When the clock goes forward by its incongruous hour

it sits in a bank somewhere off shore in an account

owned by a Time magnet, a man who twiddles his embalmed moustache

and thinks of the interest earned

on the sixty minutes deposited, we lose an hour, he gains seventy

million and will live forever.

When he gives that hour back in late October,

the month in which Time gets charged its annual V.A.T.

(Vanity Adulterated Time), we see not a single second

Earth Hour. full post

(155 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

North Of The Mind, If Not For You. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is one of the age old questions that has bogged humanity, it is a question that has resonated and perhaps never bettered as when Hamlet procrastinated with the musing, “To be or not to be.” For the modern day equivalent, the 21st subtle arrangement of this paused thought is captured very well by North of the Mind’s new single If Not For You and its ever hanging question contained within its beautifully imagined lyrics, What’s a man to do?

North Of The Mind, If Not For You. Single Review. full post

(346 words, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

Wild Tales, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Ricardo Darín, Oscar Martínez, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Érica Rivas, Rita Cortese, Julieta Zylberberg, Darío Grandinetti, María Onetto, María Marull, Mónica Villa, César Bordón, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Walter Donado, Nancy Dupláa, Oscar Martínez, Germán de Silva, Diego Gentile.   

There are films that come along that just take your breath away. Whether it is for the scenery, the sheer animal magnetism between protagonists and leading artists, the story line or the images that seem ahead of their time; film has the power to shock, to captivate and to believe that anything is still possible. In the world of cinema and for the first time in what seems an interminable age, Spanish language film Wild Tales does everything you want it to and perhaps with great sincerity, some things you don’t want it to.

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

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

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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Lily James, Helena Bonham Carter, Richard Madden, Stellan Skarsgård, Nonso Anozie, Sophie McShera, Holiday Grainger, Derek Jacobi, Ben Chaplin, Hayley Atwell, Rob Brydon, Jana Perez, Alexander MacQueen, Tom Edden, Gareth Mason, Paul Hunter, Eloise Webb, Joshua McGuire, Matthew Steer, Mimi Ndiweni, Laura Elsworthy, Ella Smith, Ann Davies, Gerard Horan, Katie West, Daniel Tuite, Anjana Vasan, Stuart Neal, Adetomiwa Edun, Richard McCabe, Joseph Kloska, Andy Apollo, Craig Mather, Jonny Owen-Last, Nari Blair-Mangat, Michael Jenn, Josh O’ Connor.

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

(649 words, estimated 2:36 mins reading time)

Modern Damocles.

The single hair that holds the danger aloft

is but a trigger in the minds of those with envy in their heart.

The crown unsettled, as if troubled by feet of clay so soft,

is not to be worn by one whose for lust of power is but a start.

 

I will not envisage a crown upon my head

nor will Damocles push me into the arena bold

for when all is not done and never mentioned, never said,

will my heart be cravenly sold.

 

Modern Damocles. full post

(167 words, estimated 40 secs reading time)