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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi, Amr Waked, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Pilou Asbæk, Analeigh Tipton, Nicholas Phongpheth, Jan Oliver Schroeder, Luca Angeletti, Loïc Brabant, Pierre Grammont, Bertrand Quoniam, Pascal Loison.

Scarlett Johansson seems to be everywhere you look during the last couple of years. Not only is that a testament to the actor’s work, productivity and sheer enjoyment for cinema goers but it stands in good stead for the fact that in her latest cinematic release, Lucy, she really is everywhere. In a film which for the most part plays fast and loose with the cinema fan’s intelligence, Ms. Johansson, along with the ever reliable Morgan Freeman, the wonderful find of Amr Waked and Min-sik Choi, gives a performance that at least makes her stand out amongst the backdrop of instability and sometimes utterly ridiculous story line.

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

(544 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Pub Tales: First Rounds. (For Andy Bell)

If I could have had anybody as my first drinking partner,

the first one for whom the tempting taste of

bitter

in a dimpled handled glass, offered over

with great ceremony from a woman with biceps

protruding, bursting out from underneath a starch filled blouse

more obscenely than an unsightly black tar mole covered in three curly grey hairs,

who suspected I was underage

but knew I could control the art of a pint without making a scene

in the Bicester darkness and in the company of pre-cancer darts players cussing

Pub Tales: First Rounds. (For Andy Bell) full post

(462 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Hotline Miami, (PS4). Game Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Hotline Miami is a top-down 2D action shooter game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita. The game was originally created by the two man team of Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin at Dennaton Games and released for Windows on October 23rd 2012 by the publisher Devolver Digital who then recruited Abstraction Games to port Hotline Miami to the Vita and PS3 for a release on June 26th 2013 and now a further enhanced version for PS4. Since the original PC release of Hotline Miami it has became such a sleeper hit that it has garnered many award nominations and awards with a sequel titled Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number set for release in late 2014 with the PS4 version of the game acting as a way to provide a new opportunity to entice gamers into the world of Hotline Miami and to even provide gamers with a reason to return to the first game before the release of the sequel.

Hotline Miami, (PS4). Game Review. full post

(2936 words, estimated 11:45 mins reading time)

Nicola Benedetti, Homecoming, A Scottish Fantasy. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Many issues or ideas live in the realm assuredly marked fantasy, they are kept alive with unhindered love but perhaps with a certain amount of sadness or melancholic abandonment, they wither, they die and are forgotten, only half remembered through the mist and freezing fog that clears momentarily upon waking. The sound of a forlorn piper heralding the start of another day without whimsy and the never achieved fantasy is where most dreams end up and yet in the hands of Nicola Benedetti, the classical violinist, fantasies are more than kept alive, and they are nurtured and respected.

Nicola Benedetti, Homecoming, A Scottish Fantasy. Album Review. full post

(476 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

New Tricks: Tender Loving Care. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Dennis Waterman, Tamzin Outhwaite, Denis Lawson, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Oliver Cotton, Jon Foster, Laura Rogers, Alex Austin, Max Cavenham, Richard Dillane, Tanmay Dhanania, Lorna Rose Harris, Emmanuel Ighodaro, Sian Thomas, Storme Toolis.

Standing in line to get into a club once you get to a certain age would not be high on everybody’s list of things to do before they get to retirement but for the U.C.O.S. team it’s just another line of enquiry for the team to get into.

New Tricks: Tender Loving Care. Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(517 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

Philip Sayce, Influence. Album Review.

Philip Sayce, Influence.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

You only have to hear the start of the gentle rhythmic hum of the guitar to know that what you are about hear is so close to off the scale that there hasn’t been a machine invented yet to take the enormity of it.

Philip Sayce, Influence. Album Review. full post

(405 words, 1 image, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Justin Currie, Gig Review. The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The Edinburgh Fringe is perhaps arguably the most exciting and diverse event to place in the U.K. during the optimistically lazy days of August. The thought of the dark days and nights to come as the year gallops towards its end not quite lingering in the air like a last minute firework set off well after the others have fallen and crashed spent to the floor but still floating in its embryonic state, it is with that in mind that August should be about letting go, of doing things differently and playing it fast and loose with convention as the Edinburgh Fringe suggests.

Justin Currie, Gig Review. The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh. full post

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

Juvenalia. The Assembly Mound. Edinburgh. Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Simon Callow.

Satire it seems may be a dying art, no wonder when various governments and politicians have done their damndest to try and, for want of a better word, outlaw it, make it unacceptable, to make it seem offensive where there is no offence to be gleaned. They have succeeded by stealth, by somehow deflecting the real reason for satire, to poke the finger of jolly discontent at the objectionable behaviour of those who are paid handsomely to serve the state and insisting by doing so it is an attack on other sections of society.

Juvenalia. The Assembly Mound. Edinburgh. Edinburgh Fringe Festival. full post

(439 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

Tiff Stevenson, Optimist. The Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh. Edinburgh Festival.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There are many ways of looking at comedy; what floats one boat is likely to cause offence in another. The only way to look at comedy is just to go with it and enjoy what you see, if it is near the knuckle, if it disturbs you, makes you think too much of what another soul is going through then don’t go again, however should pathos and humour, the intelligent and the forthright honesty with a huge dose of the ultimate psychological feel good emotion of flirting thrown in, then you could no better than spending an evening with London comedian Tiff Stevenson and her take on the world of optimism.

Tiff Stevenson, Optimist. The Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh. Edinburgh Festival. full post

(549 words, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)

Rory McGrath And Philip Pope: Bridge Over Troubled Lager. Edinburgh Fringe, The Assembly Rooms.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The Edinburgh Festival is a potential match made in Heaven for the enjoyable combination of dexterous word play and musical accompaniment that is in the hands of Philip Pope and Rory McGrath in this year’s cool and witty Bridge Over Troubled Lager.

The two comedians work together goes back so far that their comfortable approach to each other feels as though it pre-dates the time when Cornwall was annexed into the English culture. Such is the command of language at their disposal that the audience inside the Assembly Rooms were treated to a show in which the expected may have been seen coming just before the punch line but were nevertheless enthralled at the spectacle in front of them.

Rory McGrath And Philip Pope: Bridge Over Troubled Lager. Edinburgh Fringe, The Assembly Rooms. full post

(336 words, estimated 1:21 mins reading time)