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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Michael Hall, Guy Boyd, Brett Rice, Francis J. Murphy III, Jane Mowder, David Bennett, Lee Perkins, Daniel Hilt.

 

Making a film out of sport can be as hit or miss as putting a blindfolded 15 year old goalkeeper up against Lional Messi in the World Cup Final in a best of five penalties on the basis that he once saved a penalty in a school yard against the doddery old headmaster. Sometimes promise never, ever matches reality.

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

(556 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

Driveclub (PS4), Game Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating  9 out of 10

Driveclub is a socially connected racing game available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4.

Evolution Studios have a real pedigree for developing racing games as they developed all five of the PS2 exclusive WRC games from 2001 through 2005, while creating the rather unique world of MotorStorm for a trilogy of PS3 exclusives from 2006 to 2011 with a spin-off in the form of the cross-buy MotorStorm RC for PS3 and PS Vita in 2012.

Driveclub (PS4), Game Review. full post

(3800 words, estimated 15:12 mins reading time)

Mis Les, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. (2015)

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Gillian Hardie, Keddy Sutton.

The Scottie Road Two are at large in Liverpool, they are on the run armed with musical comic satire, a set of hilarious harmonies to die for and with a fondness for providing the funny-bone with an evening out that few can match.

Mis Les, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. (2015) full post

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

Resolution Number 9.

Have you broken yours yet?

Have you misplaced the list of items neatly written out,

first in soft lined pencil, then set in stone in unforgiving ink

and underscored in black lipstick with a faint damned kiss

or with the blood of a passing forethought that strayed too close to the

edge?

 

This list, did it contain anything that you truly wanted to do or be

or better still, to achieve something in which others

would benefit from without ever knowing it was you

that set them on the road to redemption?

Resolution Number 9. full post

(213 words, estimated 51 secs reading time)

Joe Topping And The Vagrant Kings, The Vagrant Kings. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

A faith can come and go; it can be lost, misplaced or even denounced, but even the biggest denouncers still retain an element in all that they do. It doesn’t have to be a faith in whichever deity is current flavour of the month, or even in a person or humanity as a whole or in something, a faith gets shaken but if treated gently and with caution, that faith can be restored.

Joe Topping And The Vagrant Kings, The Vagrant Kings. Album Review. full post

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

Should I Compare You…

Should I compare you to harridan hag of a winter’s day?

For you are the television screens celebrity whore,

Who people urge others on to detest what you say

Because your mealy brown nosed mouth knows no common decent law.

 

The papers are full of your tripe, belly pork and pock marked offal

And the stuffing, well best left to the imagination

Of the viewer who glances with excited glee at your high pitch waffle

At your endless diatribes set to cause expected squeal and harmfully stun.

 

Should I Compare You… full post

(153 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

Nell

The foliage free trees bowed in your honour as the court dipped their heads,

and the angels wept at your passing and the mourners cried with Humanity’s tears.

The Great Satchmo’s voice strengthening the memory of what

was loved about you and the time you gave others,

yet deep down inside we knew that the Jazz man lied

for we don’t have all the Time in the world,

for far too soon it is all over and an angel greets their new recruit and

she will forever smile upon you.

 

Nell full post

(173 words, estimated 42 secs reading time)

Broadchurch, Series Two, Episode One. Television Review.

 

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: David Tennant, Olivia Coleman, Jodie Whittaker, Andrew Buchan, Charlotte Beaumont, Tanya Franks, Carolyn Pickles, Jonathan Bailey, Joe Sims, Arthur Darvill, Simone McAullay, Charlotte Rampling, Eve Myles.

You can always rely on Chris Chibnall to throw a rather large spanner into the works. Not content with bringing one of the best detectives and certainly one of the most unique series to British television in 2013, he now invites all to revisit Broadchurch for a second time, and by doing so, throws everything that the viewer thought they knew completely and utterly into a frenzied doubt.

Broadchurch, Series Two, Episode One. Television Review. full post

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

Memory Loss

It’s curious that the one thing that age destroys is memory.

We can reminisce and regale our grandchildren to the point of delight

of delicious and noble deeds done but the temptation

to over embellish, or add a line in for cosmic effect then

perhaps awkwardly becomes the main focus of the story.

As we get older, instead of being sure of the whole story,

We begin to miss things out, they disappear from view, hidden,

shrouded by  Time and alienated by a sense of the perverse.

We no longer recognise what we have been,

Memory Loss full post

(242 words, estimated 58 secs reading time)

Charlotte Pollard, The Shadow At The End Of The World. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: India Fisher, Jacqueline King, Abigail McKern, Nicola Weeks, Lucy May Barker, Nicholas Briggs, Michael Maloney, James Joyce.

Charlotte Pollard, adventuress, traveller in space and time and once close friend and confident of The Doctor, a woman born on the day that the S.S. Titanic sank and who, as history will have it, died on the Airship 101, a woman who it seems was born to be a magnet for trouble and exploits, especially when cornered at The Shadow at the End of the World.

Charlotte Pollard, The Shadow At The End Of The World. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

(554 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)