Venom: The Last Dance. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10

Cast: Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Clark Backo, Alanna Ubach, Cristo Fernández, Jared Abrahamson, Hala Finley, Dash McCloud, Andy Serkis, Reid Scott.

Like many Sony attempts to fulfil the needs of the Marvel fans’ expectations of how the surrounding Spider-Man players would fare in their own film, the downgrading of Venom over time has seriously demolished what was perhaps the finest character outside of the MCU, and whilst the initial story of the alien symbiote who melded with Eddie Brock was startlingly good fun, offering Tom Hardy the chance to play a part for fun, in its third outing, Venom: The Last Dance, the enjoyment has become at best a middling affair, given a small dosage of high craft in its appearance, but very little else to give the creature, or Tom Hardy, the gravitates they both deserve.

Venom: The Last Dance. Film Review. full post

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

The Bombing Of Pan Am 103. Television Drama Series Review.

Cast: Connor Swindells, Patrick J. Adams, Eddie Marsan, Peter Mullan, Lauren Lyle, Phyllis Logan, Tony Curran, Merritt Wever, James Harkness, Amanda Drew, Molly Geddes, Nicholas Gleaves, Douglas Hodge, Alastair Mackenzie, Kevin McKidd, Dominik Tiefenthaler, Estrid Barton, Adrian Lukis, Joe Layton, Robert Jack, Andrew Rothney, Adam Rothenburg, Archie McCormick, Parker Sawyers, Etta Jackson, Majd Eid.

To live through history is to take stock of the emotions you feel as the moment reveals itself; to be able to reflect as television, the modern mediator of truth and fiction, uncovers those emotions once more as they harness the energy of the subject for either entertainment or for unearthing some even darker secret, is to understand the curse of our age, that everything presented on a disaster of unimaginable scale is up for debate.

The Bombing Of Pan Am 103. Television Drama Series Review. full post

(559 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Celebrating 50 Years – Live At The Ryman. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Lynyrd Skynyrd are one of the great eminences of music, no one can deny their place at the heart of American Rock, especially the Southern variety which they exemplified with panache and style in their distinguished career, no one can understate the enormous loss felt, and which still resonates today, as the story of the infamous airplane crash which devastated the group just at their absolute zenith; and yet as the group celebrate the release of Live At The Ryman, that sense of legendary performance is almost metaphysical, it is rejoiced.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Celebrating 50 Years – Live At The Ryman. Album Review. full post

(496 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Star Circus: From The Wreckage. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

People say that bands have forgotten how to punch a song out with fierce gusto; like a prize fighter living on former glories and memories of taking down the one hit wonders who challenge with futility the king of the ring in his heyday, but who could now deliver From The Wreckage a stunning victory and knockout blow.

Star Circus: From The Wreckage. Album Review. full post

(432 words, 1 image, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Tawny Ellis: Edge Of The World. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The beauty of art that is emotionally charged is in its power to take you to the Edge Of The World before pulling back from the precipice and showing you that life is more than existence and suffering, nor is it a futile act of resistance, it is a glory to be lived boldly and with every fibre of your being.

Tawny Ellis: Edge Of The World. Album Review. full post

(440 words, 1 image, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Memories Of A Lost Soul: Songs From The Restless Oblivion. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We face extinction it seems with a sense of dramatic unawareness, collectively we may look into the void and pretend to scream at the darkness, the hopeless of our cause opening up before us like a gigantic yawn from bored celestial being, but secretly it feels as though we are enjoying this realm of pre-annihilation, that the Songs From The Restless Oblivion are but a grand opus sang from the true depths of our embattled spirit.

Memories Of A Lost Soul: Songs From The Restless Oblivion. Album Review. full post

(386 words, 1 image, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

Ben Bostick: Become Other. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Always be curious, and never find yourself become narrowminded, find a way to ask questions rather than be so pained that you only listen to one side of argument and decide that is enough to carry the weight of your own opinion…Become Other than human judgement framed by all that you ever knew and not what you could have learned.

Ben Bostick: Become Other. Album Review. full post

(495 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Peggy James: Till I Turn Blue. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Confidence in the right hands is never an illusion, it is never based on a false premise that is employed by the nature of the complacent, the smug or overly satisfied, it is based in a truth that a confident person offers a 100 percent of themselves, building from nothing, taking time to reach their potential and showing the world that they planned it all meticulously, took the chances but also measured it so much that the self-satisfied will argue until they become cold and unfeeling to the beauty shown.

Peggy James: Till I Turn Blue. Album Review. full post

(345 words, 1 image, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

Joanne Shaw Taylor: Black & Gold. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

When the annals of 21st Century Blues are written there will be names that are assured to note only feature heavily within the factually written pages but will be seen as true luminaries and icons of the genre; those that arguably saved the music from dying a death that had been telegraphed since the mid-1980s.

Chiefly amongst them will be the undoubted Queen of British Blues, one who has herself been influenced and aided by the likes of Joe Bonamassa, but has forged her own indomitable style and taken all in her path from the Midland’s heartlands of her birth to the wilds of America and back, the creator of all that is Black & Gold, Joanne Shaw Taylor.

Joanne Shaw Taylor: Black & Gold. Album Review. full post

(397 words, 1 image, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

The Last Of Us. Series Two. Television Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Isabela Merced, Young Mazino, Kaitlyn Dever, Rutina Wesley, Danny Ramirez, Catherine O’Hara, Robert John Burke, Spencer Lord, Tati Gabrelle, Ariela Barer, Noah Lamanna, Jeffrey Wright, Alanna Ubach, Ben Ahlers, Hettienne Park, Tony Dalton, Joe Pantoliano.

The second season of The Last Of Us certainly can claim to move the action on, to expand the narrative of the downfall of humanity, but by doing so it finds itself lacking composure and the ferocity of the moment so elegantly pursued in its opening episodes.

The Last Of Us. Series Two. Television Drama Review. full post

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