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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons, Blake Anderson, Rakim Mayers, Kimberly Elise, Chanel Iman, Roger Guenveur Smith, Forest Whitaker, Rick Fox, Bruce Beatty.

Pre-conceptions of someone’s abilities or life is perhaps arguably one of the worst ways in which to underestimate them or even under value them as human beings. It is prejudice by any other name and a bias that can have startling consequences when they turn and bite you where the sun refuses to shine.

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

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

Ripper Street: The Incontrovertible Truth. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, David Wilmot, Clive Russell, Josh O’ Connor, Laura Haddock, Lydia Wilson, Charles Edwards, Daniel Kendrick, Richard Goulding, Alex Cusack

In some respects not much has changed in Whitechapel in 120 years, certainly not where the idea of ghoulish tourism is concerned. Where today the area benefits from the daily Jack the Ripper tours and the sightseers wanting to take on the mantle of roving armchair detective in London’s, even the U.K.’s, more interesting area and immersing themselves into the history of arguably the most notorious murderers to stalk the Earth, it still feels as though it is erring towards the macabre spectacle.

Ripper Street: The Incontrovertible Truth. Television Review. full post

(441 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Fear And Loathing In Bootle (The Girl In The Phone Box).

She shifted her weight back and forth,

the black opaque tights

her mother made her wear that morning

because they looked nice underneath the pencil

skirt, shimmering

against the September sunlight

and as she looked despairingly at her dead phone,

the battery having been forgotten to be charged

overnight,

she began to become anxious, desperate and fidgeted

to the point where putting money into the thin slot

became somehow a sign of alien ignorance

but she never once lost her ability to keep the legs beneath her worry

Fear And Loathing In Bootle (The Girl In The Phone Box). full post

(269 words, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

Seamus Begley, The Bold Kerryman. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There are very few things in life that can raise the spirits that have been cut adrift upon a sea that rages with absolute frequency than hearing the voice of a natural poet sing with clarity and the soft stirrings of passionate beauty in their hearts. For County Kerry’s Seamus Begley, the music and the poetry go hand in hand, each one just as vital as the other and the result is one that makes Mr. Begley’s debut solo album a charming and prosperous proposition to behold.

Seamus Begley, The Bold Kerryman. Album Review. full post

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

Just A Small Vision Of Hell.

Welcome to a vision of Hell,

an image in the public gaze

of the country with its reputation

for fair play and stance against fascism

and all things abhorrent, a country

that stood firm against the most evil man

and the tidal wave of black and to whom

decency for the most part was as inherent

as a love for a cup of tea at four in the afternoon,

and now is caught in the mire of selfish gain

offered by a weasel to a cornered mouse.

 

Just A Small Vision Of Hell. full post

(231 words, estimated 55 secs reading time)

40 Years

I remember my first day

and the grey jumper of differing sizes

and snot stained cuffs

to which I was then tied throughout

my seven years at Moor Green

was one in which I met you

and forty years later I still

think you’re pretty cool.

 

We stood side by side in class

and in the playground, though I had further to travel

as we didn’t move to Selly Park

till the days when the Four Seasons

sang of a decade before and my first game against

40 Years full post

(416 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

New Tricks: Prodigal Sons. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Larry Lamb, Denis Lawson, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Tamzin Outhwaite, Anthony Calf, Mark Frost, Tracy Ann Oberman, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Amerjit Deu, Matthew Steer, Ella Kenion, Geoff Leesley, Peter Vollebreght, Harry Lister Smith.

The most despicable act of murder meets the most despicable act on the sporting field in the latest of episode of New Tricks, Prodigal Sons, and the fall out in the investigation is not pretty.

New Tricks: Prodigal Sons. Television Review. full post

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

Best Of Enemies, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

In an age of political pygmies and silent observers often too scared to say the wrong thing in case it hurts in the popularity stakes, to look back upon the series of debates which overshadowed the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1968 is to step into another world.

Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s Best of Enemies is one of those documentaries that comes out of nowhere but delights the political beast inside from the first reels and stays to conquer with its juicy commentary and ravishing pay off; it is a documentary that many might shy away from but it is to their detriment that they do so.

Best Of Enemies, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(540 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

The Wolfpack, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Everybody has a right to have their story told, if not how do we learn to accept other points of view and then debate them with clarity and insightfulness. It is the rise of the documentary in the modern age that lifts a lid onto how others were raised so that we might glean how the adult turns out and how they have been influenced by their surroundings.

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

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

Cold Turkey.

She removed the breadcrumbs from the base

of her fingers with what to some

would have been just the casual flick

of a an irritating itch easily quelled

by the simplest of caresses

but having watched her sullen expression

take root and a mean glaze searching

for the right level of disgust

as she destroyed the turkey sandwich on rye

as though it was the last edible substance on Earth,

I saw her flick her fingers dry of the small

leftover fragments as if she was brushing

Cold Turkey. full post

(234 words, estimated 56 secs reading time)