Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The attack from the front, the wielding of the weapon flashing before your eyes from the confronted foe is far easier to understand than the one that comes from behind your own lines and takes you down in an act of cowardice and betrayal. The foe who attacks you full on, eye to eye, is far more worthy than the that you do not see coming, it is always better in such cases to Beware The Sword You Cannot See.
If not for Miss Dicks,
school would have been nothing but a waste of time for me.
Not to say I didn’t enjoy the time locked in a classroom,
some teachers positively nice, doing their job, as Mrs Gray
did, with enthusiasm in the face of permanent adversity
but there were others
for whom teaching was surely just a way to spend a few hours
away from home and the drudgery of living
in 1970s Britain.
If not for Miss Dicks,
I would have gone on to senior school
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Gage, Tamla Kari, Hugo Speer, Maimie McCoy, Marc Warren, Phil Rowson, Peter Sullivan, Alex Giannini, Charlotte Salt.
When the world turns on a single fateful decision to topple a King, the fall out is never going to be pretty, the lives that become embroiled in the plot, whether they know about it or not, are going to change, perhaps even ruined and the ultimate measure in Trial and Punishment is set, the pawns and the people placed in it all will feel the wrath of the King.
Where does the time go?
When the clock goes forward by its incongruous hour
it sits in a bank somewhere off shore in an account
owned by a Time magnet, a man who twiddles his embalmed moustache
and thinks of the interest earned
on the sixty minutes deposited, we lose an hour, he gains seventy
million and will live forever.
When he gives that hour back in late October,
the month in which Time gets charged its annual V.A.T.
(Vanity Adulterated Time), we see not a single second
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is one of the age old questions that has bogged humanity, it is a question that has resonated and perhaps never bettered as when Hamlet procrastinated with the musing, “To be or not to be.” For the modern day equivalent, the 21st subtle arrangement of this paused thought is captured very well by North of the Mind’s new single If Not For You and its ever hanging question contained within its beautifully imagined lyrics, What’s a man to do?
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Ricardo Darín, Oscar Martínez, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Érica Rivas, Rita Cortese, Julieta Zylberberg, Darío Grandinetti, María Onetto, María Marull, Mónica Villa, César Bordón, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Walter Donado, Nancy Dupláa, Oscar Martínez, Germán de Silva, Diego Gentile.
There are films that come along that just take your breath away. Whether it is for the scenery, the sheer animal magnetism between protagonists and leading artists, the story line or the images that seem ahead of their time; film has the power to shock, to captivate and to believe that anything is still possible. In the world of cinema and for the first time in what seems an interminable age, Spanish language film Wild Tales does everything you want it to and perhaps with great sincerity, some things you don’t want it to.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Lily James, Helena Bonham Carter, Richard Madden, Stellan Skarsgård, Nonso Anozie, Sophie McShera, Holiday Grainger, Derek Jacobi, Ben Chaplin, Hayley Atwell, Rob Brydon, Jana Perez, Alexander MacQueen, Tom Edden, Gareth Mason, Paul Hunter, Eloise Webb, Joshua McGuire, Matthew Steer, Mimi Ndiweni, Laura Elsworthy, Ella Smith, Ann Davies, Gerard Horan, Katie West, Daniel Tuite, Anjana Vasan, Stuart Neal, Adetomiwa Edun, Richard McCabe, Joseph Kloska, Andy Apollo, Craig Mather, Jonny Owen-Last, Nari Blair-Mangat, Michael Jenn, Josh O’ Connor.
The single hair that holds the danger aloft
is but a trigger in the minds of those with envy in their heart.
The crown unsettled, as if troubled by feet of clay so soft,
is not to be worn by one whose for lust of power is but a start.
I will not envisage a crown upon my head
nor will Damocles push me into the arena bold
for when all is not done and never mentioned, never said,
will my heart be cravenly sold.
I will not hang
by an open doorway, or even one
where the door is slightly ajar, glass bottomed, for fear of the label,
lest I hear your secrets tumble out of your mouth
and into the ears
of those less worthy of your undisclosed closet life.
I once heard my granddad through the floorboards,
a big man, a wise man, act as the secret man in red
with Reindeer slippers on his feet and stag like antlers
scratching down the back of any bus driver
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Reece Dinsdale, James Harkness, Cyril Nri, Maggie McCarthy, Amiera Darwish, Charlotte Lucas, Gyuri Sarossy, Theo Cowan, Barry McCarthy, Helen Ryan, Don Gallagher, Ekow Quartey.
History could have been so different but it is the joy of speculation that only makes the subject interesting, for the time the events take place, the winner and the loser are only remembered for being in the same race. It is up to the historians, the journalists and the playwrights to put flesh on the bones and the gloss of pallor of imagination on the cheeks of the long since departed. History though is not quite viewed in the same way when there is The Absence of War dictating the proceedings.