He Gave Me More Than He Knew.

 

Bright blue sky day far from home

Met an experimental performance poet

Who likes to say words that rhyme with ‘an’

And make tiny sculptures from the wire cages

That hold corks onto champagne bottles

Swapped our books by a sunlit forest waterfall

Something mutual and unsaid in that

More than the gift of words on paper

 

Wandered around a secret Elizabethan garden

Clipped formal hedges and geometric forms

Collected a handful of fallen rose petals

Crushed in my hand they smelled like heaven

Cody McCarver, The Lord’s Will. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

No matter what you think of the subject matter to found within Cody McCarver’s latest soul bearing offering, The Lord’s Will, there can be no denying that musically it is a great listen. Regardless of what your views on religion are, your views on certain aspects of faith and conviction are; what devotion you may bring to the table in offer, there are at times moments in life when to hear somebody pour their heart into producing something so delicate can be a little humbling. Whether you believe in a power beyond your recognition is not up for debate but you sometimes do have to listen to somebody else view or way of life to understand that your own particular road is not seen the same from even those you may call friends or lovers.

Muppets Most Wanted. Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T. Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey, Tony Bennett, Hugh Bonneville, Sean Combs, Jermaine Clement, Rob Couddry, Mackenzie Crook, Celine Dion, Dexter Fletcher, Lady Gaga, Zach Galifianakis, Josh Groban, Salma Hayek, Tom Hiddleston, Tom Hollander, Toby Jones, Frank Langella, Ray Liotta, Ross Lynch, James McAvoy, Chloë Grace Moretz, Usher Raymond, Miranda Richardson, Saoirse Ronan, Til Schweiger, Russell Tovey, Danny Trejo, Stanley Tucci, Christoph Waltz

Voice artists: Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz, Bill Barretta, David Rudman, Matt Vogel, Peter Linz, Louise Gold.

Captain America: Winter Soldier, Ultimate Collection. Graphic Novel Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

The graphic novel/ film/television tie-in has had many great reasons in which to celebrate multi-media crossover in the last couple of decades. From Sin City to The Watchmen, from V For Vendetta to Buffy The Vampire Slayer, each has carried the other with the weight of heavy expectation foaming from its pages or celluloid extravagance. When it comes to the world of Marvel, arguably the heaviest hitter in the world of the comic book communities, the films have been great, the comics have been superb but the tie-ins have not been so enamouring.

Special Measures, Theatre Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Eithne Browne, Paul Broughton, Stephen Fletcher, Jessica Guise, Colin Hoult, Adam Search, Angela Simms, Michael Starke.

St Jude’s Primary School has been placed into Special Measures, the universal, one size fits all term, to denote that somewhere something is not right with the system.

When Tory M.P. Thomas Winters feels the wrath of the P.M.s anger at being hit by a croquet mallet in a particularly painful constituency, he is dispatched to tick the right sort of boxes in a North of England school and make amends. The fall out, the so called oppressed kicking downwards is not new but for the Head Master and staff of St. Jude’s the fall of basic humility and understanding looking them in the eyes is one that is too much to bear.

The New Line, Can’t Hold The Wheel. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Not everything in life needs to be shouted, screamed at the pace of a jet fighter roaring over an oil field with soldiers protecting the peace underneath or the rush and exhilaration of a football championship decider. Not everything needs the roar, sometimes the quietest word can grip hold of life more eloquently than the damnation of a thousand rhetoric speeches of hate can ever achieve.

Robert Cray, In My Soul. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The healthy resonance of a guitar is sometimes the only sound you need to hear to understand in how every instant the world can be both beautiful and devastatingly sad at the same time. For Robert Cray that singular echo coming through the airwaves is one that haunts, chills and pleases from opening track till the time when The C.D. has been placed regretfully back onto the rack. His latest album In My Soul is no different.

Desert, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Giles Roberts, Lucy Farrett.

One of the advantages theatre has over other forms of media is its ability to be intimate, to bring the innermost thoughts and feelings of an individual in front of your face and force you to confront them. The Molino Group does exactly that with Desert, the story of Private Chelsea Manning, formerly Bradley Manning, a soldier in the U.S. Army who leaked footage on Wikileaks of what is often referred to as “Collateral Murder”, and consequently, today is serving 35 years in prison.

Sin City: That Yellow Bastard, Graphic Novel Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

In the Robert Rodriguez 2005 film Sin City, one of the more interesting set of stories weaved together was that of Nancy Callaghan, Detective Hartigan and one of the beasts that haunts Basin City like a Japanese knotweed being cultivated by perverted and foul paedophile, the obscene Roark Junior. Sin City: That Yellow Bastard follows that story neatly from start to finish and it is arguably the best story in the entire series because of it.

The Events, Theatre Review. Everyman Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Clifford Samuel, Amanda Drew, Magnus Gillijam, Up For Arts Choir.

All events lead to somewhere. The unseen random strands dissecting, passing along easily in infinite possibilities and unhindered, until they converge, they smash together in such an explosion of such reverberation and repercussions that could be felt for years after. The Events are how we deal with the unfolding drama and how we choose to live with the aftermath.