Maddie Stenberg, Gig Review. Thornton Hough, Wirral.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Confidence is an amazing thing, it can tear down mountains, raise the seas, and give you something that doesn’t come naturally, it gives you the ability to understand just how far you can push yourself. To hear it being sung with such exuberance and in its demurest form is to know that the musician on stage doesn’t just want to succeed themselves, they want you to feel that you also can take on the world and at least play it at its own game and with a level playing field.

Maddie Stenberg, Gig Review. Thornton Hough, Wirral. full post

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

Bob Hope’s War In Vaudville.

 

We stopped waving our pictures of Bob Hope,

now that the joke has worn thin,

different ways to fly the flag, smile

for the cameras, flash bulbs popping,

headlines made, U.S.O. satisfied

and the men grin

on the face of it,

not wanting to worry the folks back home.

We stopped sending letters, redacted, blacked out

lines, forcing half truths,

or no truths to take hold in lie,

lie, lie, lie

and yet they still sent Bob Hope,

with a smile, with a gag,

Bob Hope’s War In Vaudville. full post

(132 words, estimated 32 secs reading time)

Ibiza To the Norfolk Broads, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Alex Walton. Rob Newman, Margaret Campbell.

We all have something we use to get us through the day, that one powerful pull in which insists that we can be better than the sum of our parts or the total of fears, in which guides us towards the light with a smile or which holds on to our soul when we become too fascinated with the dark and its surroundings; the day we lose that final piece of the puzzle which has made us whole, is the day we have to admit we have lost.

Ibiza To the Norfolk Broads, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

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

They Might Be Giants, I Like Fun. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Just because a song happens to be about death or the overwhelming subject of dread, does not mean it has to be in vain, it doesn’t have to have the music accompaniment that is sombre, almost too serious or downright sober and gloomy. What it can supply, and what They Might Be Giants have succeeded once again in capturing, is that life, no matter how draining an experience it can be, is there to enjoy and part of life is the understanding that to have the good, you must also praise and see the smiles in the bad times.

They Might Be Giants, I Like Fun. Album Review. full post

(400 words, 1 image, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

The Sad Song Co., Worth. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

A person’s confession, is in itself, an act of self sacrifice, a demand for reason to become clear, to allow the possible misjudgements imposed by others, to become evident and to lay down the individual’s own thoughts and deeds, not to be hampered by society, convention or false dawn of other’s statements.

The Sad Song Co., Worth. Album Review. full post

(411 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

Fit To Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

History is what defines us; it is what has shaped our nation and those around us, without the ability to learn from it, to take comfort in its meaning or to be able to look at the parallels in which we can draw conclusions of in today’s world. We may as well arguably find ourselves bereft of the ability to reason, to wonder and imagine; we may as well start again and scrap anything and everyone that has lived in the last thousand years.

Fit To Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History. Television Review. full post

(546 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * * *

Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Caleb Landry Jones, Kerry Condon, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage, Abbie Cornish, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Riya May Atwood, Selah Atwood, Lucas Hedges, Zeljko Ivanek, Amanda Warren, Malaya Rivera Drew, Sandy Martin, Christopher Berry, Jerry Winsett, Kathryn Newton, John Hawkes, Samara Weaving, Clarke Peters.

The way we act now in times of personal doubt and individual pain has changed, dramatically and with much noise, perhaps even ceremony, no longer are we dictated to that we must grieve in a certain way, that we must take it on the chin all that happens to us; to sit in silence and slowly drift into the greyness that claims our own lives without our consent.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Film Review. full post

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

Darkest Hour. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn, Lily James, Ronald Pickup, Stephen Dillane, Nicholas Jones, Samuel West, David Schofield, Richard Lumsden, Malcolm Storry, Hilton McRae, Benjamin Whitrow, Joe Armstrong, Adrian Rawlins, David Bamber, Paul Leonard, David Strathairn, Eric MacLennan, Philip Martin Brown, Jordan Waller, Alex Clatworthy, Anna Burnett, Jeremy Child, Brian Pettifer, Michael Gould, Pip Torrens.

Few men in history can go through life without causing waves, without being the conversation of being somehow divisive, hated perhaps in equal measure as they are loved; it is the symbol perhaps of just how much drive a person can have in life, a thirst for adventure that makes them the figures they are.

Darkest Hour. Film Review. full post

(577 words, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

The Storm Tossed Nest.

 

For those just walking on by,

pulling their coats closer to their skin,

It was surely nothing more than

a piece of litter thrown carelessly

out of a window of a passing car,

the jetsam of the age, too busy

for a bin, for the black plastic bag

collection on Friday morning at seven A.M.

Yet, no rubbish, just all dead

inside the remains of this wind battered nest,

no sign of mother, sticks clumped by rain

and sod and tossed from the tree with force.

The Storm Tossed Nest. full post

(130 words, estimated 31 secs reading time)

Little Red And The Big Bad Wolf, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. (2018).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Liz Jadav, Simone Lewis, Harvey Robinson, Luca Rutherford.

BSL Interpreter: Kate Labno.

We all warn our children about straying from the path provided, to not deviate, keep close at all times, and even though we understand they have to make their own way in the world. We also have the responsibility to make sure that they don’t get hurt, become embroiled and hang with the wrong crowd, that they, unlike Little Red, find fascination with the wolf who wears its fur with pride, who has the smooth pick up line and casual interesting manner.

Little Red And The Big Bad Wolf, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. (2018). full post

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