Samurai Warriors 4-II (PS Vita). Game Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9 out of 10

Samurai Warriors 4-II is a third-person musou hack and slack action role playing game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita with compatibility for PlayStation TV, while also releasing on PS4 and PS3 which began as a spin-off of the Dynasty Warriors series in 2004 when the first game released on PS2. A PSP port titled Samurai Warriors: State of War was released in late 2005 in Japan and early 2006 in America which was followed by a sequel released on the PS2 in 2006 and received a remake on PS3 and Vita in 2013. Samurai Warriors 3 was released on PS3 in February 2011 and PSP a year later and Samurai Warriors 4 released on Vita, PS4 and PS3 in 2014 with Samurai Warriors 4-II released 11 years after the game which started the series.

Samurai Warriors 4-II (PS Vita). Game Review. full post

(3281 words, estimated 13:07 mins reading time)

Let It Be, Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

Let It Be at The Royal Court, Liverpool. October 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Liverpool’s rich, almost exuberant, heritage for popular music has a long and proud history but it one that is missing a vital component to the story, one that history, fate and circumstance has seen fit to take away from the city that arguably gave popular culture to the U.K. after the Post-War austerity. The Beatles, the foursome who kick started a revolution, never returned to the city in their absolute pomp and ceremony in which to give the fans who propelled them to the top of the charts a sense of completion, of revelling in the majesty that the progressive nature of the band would have gone down a storm in at any of the venues in the city at the time.

Let It Be, Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(575 words, 1 image, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

Jess Green, Performance Poetry Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound & Vision Rating: * * * * *

Cast: Jess Green

Performance poet Jess Green focuses her poetry on her own experiences of when she worked in schools as a reading champion. She has created a very fast paced performance, lasting just over an hour and delivers no less than ten unique poems accompanied by acoustic guitar and a Cajon drum. Green introduces us to Janine, a tired sixty-something who is fighting for her pension on the picket line, and Sandra the librarian who secretly removes ‘unsuitable’ books and takes them to the tip. There are many more characters in Green’s repertoire and all just as quirky and funny as the last.

Jess Green, Performance Poetry Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(309 words, estimated 1:14 mins reading time)

Tom Jones, Long Lost Suitcase. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It might prove a stroke of good fortune in the end, to be let go from what amounts to arguably the highlight of cerebral boredom for many, listening to televised Karaoke aimed at those to whom many will be forgotten and dismissed in the search for vanity in the three or four minutes it takes to sing a song. For true mastery, for longevity and absolute superstardom, Tom Jones was and more than likely will always be, a true voice in which music just turns to velvet within. If being released from a television show can have a golden glint attached to it, then the Welsh maestro’s latest album Long Lost Suitcase is a room full of liberated bullion.

Tom Jones, Long Lost Suitcase. Album Review. full post

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

I’ve Never Been On The Bus To Gannow Green.

I’ve never been on the bus to Gannow,

but then I’ve also never been to Canterbury

or Durham or even slipped into Rio,

admittedly the last one a bit harder to do from

the bus stops outside of

New Street Station, at least in a day and without

stopping to look at the marvel of Christ,

stoney faced, eager and

ready to bungee jump.

I’ve never made my way to Gannow,

neither have I seen where the 50 goes beyond King’s Heath,

I have never made my way to California,

I’ve Never Been On The Bus To Gannow Green. full post

(249 words, estimated 1:0 mins reading time)

Queensrÿche, Condition Hüman. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Everything in nature eventually divides, certainly at the base level where cells learn that division means growth, that a single celled organism just doesn’t have the same power as one that has two, four or millions of cells wrapped within its casing and hard shell like appearance. A single celled person would just be unfeasible, the state in which it would exist would be a nightmare, and like a band that finds the way is blocked by different directions and the taste of animosity that hangs in the air like acrid static electricity, the way forward is to split; after all it is only the condition of any human after all.

Queensrÿche, Condition Hüman. Album Review. full post

(389 words, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

Rhymes, Rock & Revolution: The Story Of Performance Poetry. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea. To some, perhaps misguided, possibly even consciously ignorant of the form and its turbulent history, the seismic revolt against strained form and stiff suited underwhelming development that shook the world post World War Two, is nothing more than pretension, a dip into the ocean without a bathing suit or a pair of trunks to hide the soul and yet arguably poetry has never been as popular now in the 21^st Century at any time since the days when Allen Ginsberg tore apart convention at the Royal Albert Hall and delivered the 20^th Century standard bearer, Howl.

Rhymes, Rock & Revolution: The Story Of Performance Poetry. Television Review. full post

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

The Crows At The Funeral.

The black tarred hearse arrives at the crematorium,

going no faster that three miles per hour,

it glides to a stop, measured, composed,

running out of steam, the engine making a last growling sound

of torture

as it silently falls asleep.

I watch from the shaded part of the graveyard

having taken time out to enjoy

the tranquillity that other people’s passing secures

and in the bright brilliant sunshine, I think of the grandfather

I never had the will to bury as the coffin containing James Collins

The Crows At The Funeral. full post

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

Silence.

There is a silence between us

that reflects the way I think of you,

the way that you easily slipped into the guise

of the creature in black, the despot with red

insignia cross who bellowed orders,

wishing to not be only obeyed

but to make me suffer with open wound

everywhere I went

and everywhere you wouldn’t take me.

I held out for so long, my resistance total, and yet

from the fist initial meeting, you tried to control me,

the detour you took me upon,

Silence. full post

(228 words, estimated 55 secs reading time)

Sicario, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Daniel Kaluuya, Julio Cedillo, Jon Bernthal, Bernardo P. Saracino, Kim Larrichio, Eb Lottimer.

Who is the pawn in the biggest game when it comes to trafficking on the borders of the United States of America and Mexico? Arguably the richest country on Earth per capita and one of the poorest sitting side by side, the inequality between the two countries perhaps never really equalled out going back to the war between the two countries in which had land not been lost and ceded to the United States, all that money that flowed from the discovery of oil would have seen the economies of the two countries wildly different as the 21^st Century progressed.

Sicario, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

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