Fighting With My Family. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Florence Pugh, Nick Frost, Lena Headey, Jack Lowden, Vince Vaughn, Dwayne Johnson, Olivia Bernstone, Leah Harvey, Mohammed Amiri, Jack Gouldbourne, Elroy Powell, Hannah Rae, Julia Davis, Stephen Merchant, Ellie Gonsalves, Aqueela Zoll, Kim Matula, James Burrows, Thea Trinidad.

You must never be afraid to risk losing everything in the pursuit of the one goal you have always held in your heart, the price is extraordinarily high but the reward of satisfaction will always be worth it, even if it eventually takes you down a road to which you might never recover. Too high a price? Too much jeopardy involved? Nobody said it would be easy, nobody ever said it would be an easy fix, but sometimes wrestling with one’s own conscious is worth all and one that is captured with spirit and generosity of scope in the biggest sports arena of all, the ring.

Fighting With My Family. Film Review. full post

(769 words, estimated 3:05 mins reading time)

Dream Theater, Distance Over Time. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There are great swathes of people, billions across the world, who will look at a task or a project and then be put off by the time it takes to complete it. Time, they say, is too short to build a bridge across a raging river, and it will interfere with all I do, meaning that they just don’t recognise that by building the bridge, they don’t have to remain, glued to all that they ever knew, and will know.

Dream Theater, Distance Over Time. Album Review. full post

(483 words, 1 image, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Made In Minsk, Where The Truth Lies. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Somewhere between certainty and propaganda is the realm Where The Truth Lies, a kingdom within a fiefdom, where publicity and exposure battle it out to the point of surrender and the score is never truly settled, not established with a firm hand; not unless you have a stamped set of scales proudly proclaiming the legend, Made In Minsk, emblazoned upon it.

Made In Minsk, Where The Truth Lies. Single Review. full post

(343 words, estimated 1:22 mins reading time)

Brit Floyd, Gig Review. M & S Arena, Liverpool. (2019).

Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * * * *

Ian Cattell of Brit Floyd, M & S Arena, Liverpool. February 2019. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

The zeitgeist can often be over rated, its meaning shrouded in a warped sense of nostalgia as we attempt to put our fingers on a pulse that stopped beating when we were no longer paying attention. We search in vain, we grasp the remnants of what made us tick to the clock buzzing inside our minds and we see Time as a complete picture, and not the fragmented illusion that it is, one in which we attempt to place the jigsaw pieces back together, seeing an all-embracing, beautiful sunset, not realising that the picture on the front of the box is actually one that bears no resemblance to what we remember.

Brit Floyd, Gig Review. M & S Arena, Liverpool. (2019). full post

(672 words, 1 image, estimated 2:41 mins reading time)

Endeavour: Confection. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Shaun Evans, Roger Allam, Sean Rigby, James Bradshaw, Anton Lesser, Simon Harrison, Joe Bone, Oliver Farnworth, Christopher Harper, Sophie Stanton, Olivia Chenery, Ben Lamb, Katie Goldfinch, Claudia Jolly, Jack Hawkins, Richard Riddell, Abigail Thaw, Christopher Bowen, Carol Royle, Tilly Blackwood, Caroline O’ Neill.

Endeavour: Confection. Television Review. full post

(454 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Good Doctor, Juno Dawson. Book Review.

Liverpool Sound and Visio Rating * * * *

A writer’s experience will always bleed into the story or the article they are engraving into the scene they are creating; nothing happens on paper by accident, each world is chewed over, fought for, and it is with a sense of occasion, of delight, that The Good Doctor, the second of B.B.C. tie-in novels in this particular series of Doctor Who, has been impressed upon the fans by Juno Dawson.

Doctor Who: The Good Doctor, Juno Dawson. Book Review. full post

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

The Lady Vanishes, Theatre Review. Floral Pavilion, New Brighton.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Juliet Mills, Maxwell Caulfield, Lorna Fitzgerald, Matt Barber, Robert Duncan, Philip Lowrie, Ben Nealon, Elizabeth Payne, Mark Carlisle, Joe Reisig, Natalie Law, James Boswell, Cara Ballingall.

A classic thriller, the blood runs warm at the thought, the detective juices are turned on and the simmering undercurrent of intrigue is stirred sufficiently to keep an audience on their toes; a story worthy of the great crime dramas, The Lady Vanishes has all the hall marks of a tale of conspiracy and manoeuvring, of being part of a time in which an ideal of Europe was decaying and in which a new, terrifying order was being installed, a Europe on the brink.

The Lady Vanishes, Theatre Review. Floral Pavilion, New Brighton. full post

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

Sparkplug, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: David Judge.

What does family mean in a world where the idea of relationships have become almost throwaway, consumable, there only in some eyes to fill a statistic and perhaps to belong to something rather than be on their own; the idea of family has become in some ways a short hand for strangers treating you as their own, perhaps even with the notion of reckless, limited loyalty when it all gets too much to cope with.

Sparkplug, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(460 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Mike And The Mechanics, Gig Review. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool. (2019).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Mike and the Mechanics at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool. February 2019. Photograph taken by, and used with the kind permission of Alan Hewitt.

Perhaps a first for a Liverpool audience, a sight of the strange turned talking point, to be greeted by the physical image of representations of four hot air balloons above the Philharmonic Hall stage, a symbol maybe of the heights that Mike and the Mechanics have strode for, to see beyond the horizon, a depiction feasibly of Phileas Fogg and his earnest wish to prove to the world that the impossible can be achieved with the right attitude and cast iron will.

Mike And The Mechanics, Gig Review. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool. (2019). full post

(460 words, 1 image, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Only Child, Gig Review. Music Room, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The Music Room at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall has played host to the great and the good, it has become a place where a spiritual journey is undertaken, where reactions and passions run high, a meeting place perhaps where the Emotional Geography of the land finds a way to be paid out and given the detailed scrutiny once only available to those with a keen interest in ordnance survey, the peaks, the troughs and the places of interest that are always within walking distance but so few make the effort to explore.

Only Child, Gig Review. Music Room, Liverpool. full post

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