Night School. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * *

Cast: Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, Rob Riggle, Taran Killam, Romany Malco, Keith David, Loretta Devine, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Yvonne Orji, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Ben Schwartz, Anne Winters, Bresha Webb, Al Madrigal, Jeff Rose, Tilda Del Toro, Fat Joe.

You do have to wonder sometimes about cinema and the film industry when it finds ways to bring out the worst in the genre. It seems to be a problem that continues for the most part with what is loosely termed- American comedy, a sink hole into which its small screen cousin always hits absolute highs, and yet it cannot transfer to the pulling power available to the longer format.

Night School. Film Review. full post

(489 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Killing Eve. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * *

Cast: Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw, Kim Bodnia, Sean Delaney, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Owen McDonnell, David Haig, Darren Boyd, Ken Nwosu,  Sonia Elliman, David Agranov.

The world of spies and espionage is nothing without its major villain, it is the binding reassurance that the tussle between two equally determined people plays out in front of an audience who always seem to have the appetite for the resource of the cloak and dagger, the thinly veiled appreciation of a war that has enthralled readers and viewers alike for decades.

Killing Eve. Television Review. full post

(619 words, estimated 2:29 mins reading time)

Revolution…Never.

The revolution you want…

…will never happen, stuck

as we are

in an endless game,

let’s play Risk tonight

you ask, but I counter

with Blind

man’s bluff, or even

solitaire,

to play on in pairs, the group

game has now become impossible,

Risk…too risky to show the side

of the coin you flip,

as it spins and tumbles

in to the crack between

soul and mind, you call tails,

knowing that now the revolution

we deserve, is a game

nobody is prepared to win,

Revolution…Never. full post

(101 words, estimated 24 secs reading time)

The Lovely Bones, Theatre Review. Everyman Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Pete Ashmore, Charlotte Beaumont, Emily Bevan, Bhawna Bhawsar, Susan Bovell, Natasha Cottriall, Keith Dunphy, Karan Gill, Jack Sandle, Ayoola Smart.

The interpretation of what is a universally enjoyed modern classic to the lights and close-up inspection of the theatre can hinge greatly in the eyes of the audience on just how close it gets to the emotions they would expect to be portrayed, of the damage and the reconciliation they feel is appropriate in the modern world.

The Lovely Bones, Theatre Review. Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(499 words, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

Liverpool Sound And Vision: An Interview With Robert Cray.

The Blues, for the longest time, seemed to shrink back in itself, a natural reaction perhaps to being seen as a bloated, out of touch, left behind behemoth that many could not face being played in their company. The fear arguably that it had somehow become a pastiche of itself, too drawn out and like Jazz, an entity of music that wasn’t in keeping with the modern way of the world, the bright future that many believed involved leaving such genres of music behind.

Liverpool Sound And Vision: An Interview With Robert Cray. full post

(1575 words, estimated 6:18 mins reading time)

The Kooks, Let’s Go Sunshine. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is the memory of soft urgency, the call out to the children at your feet, the young at heart who wait for you to make the final decision concerning the right time and place in which to give you the nod for the adventure ahead. Let’s Go Sunshine, let us heed the words of the informed, the dreamers, the awake and The Kooks, after all, adventure, in any form, is always worth exploring, it is forever worth the intrigue that once was saluted in the very heart of British popular music.

The Kooks, Let’s Go Sunshine. Album Review. full post

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

The Blinders, Columbia. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The alternative side of the argument is one that is rarely acceptable to those who only see, and hear, their own prejudiced view. In a world that is overloaded with information, where for one simple question typed into the world wide web, a myriad of conflicting responses litter your inbox as if dumped there by a whirlwind, a tornado of useless information that you have to sift through just to find that nugget of information which means you can pull The Blinders off and find the alternative wealth of truth in a world that claims it is the real deal, the only reality.

The Blinders, Columbia. Album Review. full post

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

Slash: Featuring Myles Kennedy And The Conspirators, Living The Dream. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Few of us truly attain the place in which we can say we are Living The Dream, through bad decisions, the lack of aptitude, or even just plain bad fortune, the dream becomes a series of lucid, waking realisations that some steps were missed in the pursuit of the vision we once had, that the fantasy of our existence has become the revelation of a simpler, perhaps more tranquil, appearance, for after all, Living The Dream is quite often accompanied by stalking nightmare of excess and over-indulgence.

Slash: Featuring Myles Kennedy And The Conspirators, Living The Dream. Album Review. full post

(455 words, 1 image, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Bodyguard. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Richard Madden, Keeley Hawes, Gina McKee, Sophie Rundle, Paul Ready, Vincent Franklin, Stuart Bowman, Nina Toussaint-White, Stephanie Hyam, Tom Brooke, Matt Stokoe, Pippa Haywood, Nicholas Gleaves, Shubham Saraf, Claire-Louise Cordwell, Michael Schaeffer, Richard Riddell, David Westhead, Anji Mohindra.

Bodyguard. Television Review. full post

(590 words, estimated 2:22 mins reading time)

Rachael Ball, Wolf. Graphic Novel Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Our childhood memories are made of the real and the imagined and quite often the lines of both worlds are blurred, become merged with each other, what we believe we may have experienced, what we may have seen, is something we may be told later by well-meaning relatives, that didn’t happen, or imagination out-ran our senses. That the snarling Wolf we followed one day through a thick and unnerving forest, was in actual fact a small puppy caught in the brambles and small thicket that was on the other side of the fence, just a few feet from the bottom of the garden.

Rachael Ball, Wolf. Graphic Novel Review. full post

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