What We Do In The Shadows: Series Two. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillen, Mark Poksch, Veronika Slowikowska, Jake McDorman, Anthony Atamanuik, Michael Mann, Craig Robinson, Nick Kroll, Mark Hamill, Greta Lee, Haley Joel Osment, Lucy Punch, Christine Ebadi.

It is the darkness that we arguably feel our senses become heightened, take on a form that borders somewhere between overwhelming animalistic hedonism and the morose anxiety that sees us confess our perceived sins to total strangers at four in the morning, the lockdown blues of the missed bus home, or the last temptation of the meat feast pizza in which to soak up the residue of Bloody Mary’s devoured; in darkness we are more our true selves than we care to believe, care to imagine, in the daylight, when the sun bleaches out our wickedness.

What We Do In The Shadows: Series Two. Television Review. full post

(520 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Harris Dickinson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sam Riley, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ed Skrein, Robert Lindsay, David Gyasi, Jenn Murray, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, Judith Shekoni, Miyavi, Kae Alexander, Warwick Davis.

There will always be an audience for the mystery of the fairy-tale, the warning that the younger crowd will be unaware of that is being played out for them, the notice of the cautionary advice and fear that comes from being the parent to the child caught spellbound in myriad of colour, magic and spectacle, especially when it is delivered with the effect of outlandish beauty attached to it and the dream-like quality to which foretells of unrepentant merchandising galloping along beside it like a knight vanquishing the dragon or troll in pursuit of their own pile of gold.

Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil. Film Review. full post

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

Barry Briercliffe, One Step Forward. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

One Step Forward, and a day, an album, a resonating thought at a time; the pleasure that comes from listening to a set of songs that you always knew was coming, and one that was placed in your trust from the moment the artist stepped out onto the stage and introduced themselves to a world that was unaware, unconscious of what was about to be unleashed.

Barry Briercliffe, One Step Forward. Album Review. full post

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

The Furious Seasons, La Fonda. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Too often we write the songs, paint the pictures and recite the down at heel poems which reflect our own imagined lives, the sense of gentle conceit that surrounds us as we imagine that our lives are somehow worthy of other’s gaze and perception, of their interest; occasionally we might also draw the life of another into our artistic subconscious and present a part, a detail of their story, to allow their memory to live on after their death.

The Furious Seasons, La Fonda. Album Review. full post

(444 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

The Dead Don’t Die. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Chloe Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Eszter Balint, Danny Glover, Maya Delmont, Taliyah Whitaker, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Kevin McCormick, Sid O’Connell, Caleb Landry Jones, RZA, Larry Fessenden, Rosie Perez, Jodie Markell, Carol Kane, Rosal Colon, Tilda Swinton, Sara Driver, Iggy Pop, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler, Luka Sabbat, Sturgill Simpson.

The Zombie overkill has reached, and past, its climax in recent times, and yet, occasionally, through the backdoor sneaks in another reason to enjoy the genre, and in The Dead Don’t Die it is also one to reflect upon the cinematic therapy that throws its vast independent might in the subtexts and clinical observations of its writer and director, Jim Jarmusch.

The Dead Don’t Die. Film Review. full post

(471 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

George Sansome. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The emotional ties we keep hidden away in the attic, the items stored in boxes out of reach to all bar those with the humility and passion to climb a precarious ladder, are concealed out of sight for a reason, because whilst they remain deep inside the home’s least-ventured room, they remain safe and unscrutinised, they are the ideas that have yet to see fruition, yet to be placed on display, or relegated to the trash.

George Sansome. Album Review. full post

(381 words, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)

Alan Parry: Neon Ghosts. Poetry Collection Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Bright lights attract the eye, the Neon Ghosts that blazes on the side of buildings, that pound at the door of the part of the brain that insists on stimuli, the advertising that entices you to investigate, the invitation highlighted by the texture, the colour and the magnetism that has been orchestrated into shape to make you see the radiance that is held within.

Alan Parry: Neon Ghosts. Poetry Collection Review. full post

(428 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

Killing Eve: Series Three. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Jodie Comer, Sandra Oh, Fiona Shaw, Kim Bodnia, Owen McDonnell, Harriet Walter, Danny Sapani, Turlough Convery, Gemma Whelan, Steve Pemberton, Raj Bajaj, Alexandra Roach, Sean Delaney.

As inevitable as it was for a third offering of Killing Eve to be commissioned, especially with the cliff-hanger that preceding series left the viewers confronting their emotional response to Villanelle’s destruction of Sandra Oh’s titular character, there seems to be a moment in which you can foresee the story-lines embracing the world of the absurd, of creating havoc for havoc’s sake and treating the agent of chaos as nothing more than that of embracing titillation.

Killing Eve: Series Three. Television Review. full post

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

Code 404. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Stephen Graham, Daniel Mays, Rosie Cavaliero, Amanda Payton, Anna Maxwell Martin, Michelle Greenidge, Emily Lloyd-Saini, Steve Oram, Richard Gadd, Simon Strutt, Anna Leong Brophy, David Shelley, Tracy Ann Oberman, Faith Edwards, Richard Pepple. Ruth Horrocks.

The future of policing is in information and the ability to embrace even greater advances in technology, or so the message goes, so it is delivered on an ever-increasing basis.

Code 404. Television Review. full post

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