Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When those who drove you from your home, took your families hostage, killed, murdered, those you love and destroyed everything you have peaceably raised and seen flourish begin to come into the land you have settled in, made new homes and lives but with always a rememberance to the past in your heart, then do you make a stand and draw the biggest line possible; do you say no more or do you run once more?
Rhodri Mellir as Spike in Bright Phoenix. Photograph by Jonathan Keenan.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Carl Au, Paul Duckworth, Rhian Green, Penny Layden, Rhodri Mellir, Mark Rice-Oxley, Cathy Tyson, Keiran Urquhart, Laura J. Martin, Vidar Norheim.
Somewhere over the rooftops of Liverpool, a haunting soliloquy is sang softly by one of the people the new renaissance taking place in the city couldn’t touch. In Lime Street an old ghost comes home to face the past and a group of children’s memories are re-awoken. The Futurist Cinema may be gone but its soul still resonates in those that made it their home and for the future, a Bright Phoenix stirs from the ashes of a crumbling society.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Writing on the wall is normally a phrase that signifies an abrupt ending, a sense of closure if a wrong, and sometimes inevitable, turn is made. The thought of all chances gone and it is just a matter of time before the clock heralds an unsatisfying conclusion to what could have been something magnificent.
For the threesome that makes up Folkstone’s Orfila, it’s not that the writing is on the wall, eulogies being prepared and a service of rememberance being arranged, the opposite is true, the writing is done with a flourish and heralds loudly that there is a band around who can offer a night in listening to music which is both gentle and sincere; the script is still being added to and it looks great so far.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
There is something almost devilish about insects and arachnids that awaken a primeval fear in millions of people around the world. The reader only has to think of the beast Shelob in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy of books to perhaps feel a shiver of disgust, of undiluted terror run smoothly down their spine to know how they feel about spiders, the revulsion at the cockroach, the abhorrence of a plague of wasps and despite marvelling at the ingenuity and might of the humble ant, to see thousands of them milling around you, climbing over you in search of food is enough to send Horror makers grin at the thought of celluloid gold.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
Cast: David Morrissey, Ian Hart, Colm Meaney, Claudie Blakley, Darren Morfitt, Sacha Parkinson, Lee Ross, Harish Patel, Lewis Rainer, Andrew Tiernan, Chris Coghill, Shaun Dingwall, Andrew Knott, Nathan McMullen, Ciara Baxendale, Leanne Best, Dominic Coleman, Rick Bacon, Emma Bispham, Karl Collins, Alan Rothwell.
The British gangster drama, whether on television or in the cinema has never really captured the days of Brighton Rock with Richard Attenborough and William Hartnell or the fantastic The Long Good Friday with the much missed Bob Hoskins and the excellent Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Since those days of cinematic greats the genre seems to have become too safe, it has waved a white flag in surrender to its American counterpart.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Destiny is a hybrid of an open world first-person shooter and role playing game in an online connected world available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. The new release naturally had a lot of high expectations with it being a partnership between the publisher Activision who own the behemoth first-person shooter franchise Call of Duty and developed by Bungie who was responsible for the success of Halo. However, can Destiny live up to such a high level of anticipation from all of the publicity it has generated over the last year and a half since the big reveal on February 17th 2013 via the video documentary titled Pathways Out of Darkness: A Destiny ViDoc and at the reveal of the PlayStation 4 at PlayStation Meeting on February 20th 2013 which has resulted in it becoming the most pre-ordered new franchise to date in the history of videogames?
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
A meeting of minds can happen so unexpectedly, so suddenly that the resulting maelstrom of emotions and musical frenzy that follows is something you just have to try and grab the tail of and tag along for the ride.
For Robbie Hill & The Blue 62, a chance meeting with Jesse King in Finland has led to a young Scotsman adding weight to the Blues and invigorating a genre with their, and Finnish drummer Tatu Parssinen, seriousness, style and collective wit and charm. The Devil at times might hold all the best cards in the deck but there is always a Price To Pay when allowing someone dedicated to join the game.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Tamzin Outhwaite, Dennis Waterman, Denis Lawson, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Anthony Calf, Julie Graham, Ian Hogg, Nicholas Woodeson, Mariah Gale, Finlay Robertson, Leanne Best, Anthony Barclay, Fox Jackson-Keen, Gertrude Thoma.
Chess, it’s nearly as bad as croquet for being a particularly vicious sport when the tempers flare and the too serious take their mind to murder. However all is not as black and white as it seems as several chequered paths start to treat the UCOS team like pawns in their own game in the latest episode of New Tricks, English Defence.
Others might see you as the omen before the oncoming storm.
The loud-mouthed, certain and confident callous bellow
That comes full of wind and withered joy before the year weeps and grows old
And turns young at heart Old Father Time into a dour, disabled dying fellow!
They might see you and rage as you do, all piss and wind,
Shaking their fists in frightened fury at what you may have wrought
And the golden amber hue fading as they recount who against they have sinned
Their conceit in conflict now chastised in thought.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There is an adage that to have done well you passed with flying colours, the overall result was about as close to perfection that you could ever hope for without a team of University lecturers raising an eyebrow in your direction and asking for a re-count on the basis that nothing could be that good. To pass with flying colours sounds good, it reads well and it puts a song in your heart so loud that it drowns the sorrow of high expectation in your own life with magnificence normally reserved for trying to please loved ones and close friends.