Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Mitch Benn, Andrew Knott, David Dobson, Ryan Sampson, Alison Thea- Skot, Jonty Stephens, Barnaby Edwards.
1963 will be remembered for many things, many moments in time which defined how the following 50 years has been looked upon, sometimes with great fondness, sometimes with the pit in the stomach which leaves those living today feeling sick and morally outraged that it was allowed to happen.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Mario Bello, Terrance Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano, Dylan Minnette, Zoe Borde, Erin Gerasimovich, Kyla Drew Simmons, Wayne Duvall, Len Cariou, David Dastmalchian, Jeff Pope.
There is nothing more emotionally complex or disturbing than the chance that your child may be taken from you by a person or person’s unknown. Just the thought of it is enough to give people nightmares and keep their children under close supervision. Denis Villeneuve takes this fear and gives it added depth, unblemished and raw treatment to make the thriller genre stand up and take notice of how these sensitive subjects should be approached in the film Prisoners.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins, Andrew Dice Clay, Bobby Cannavale, Max Casella, Michael Stuhlbarg, Joy Carlin, Peter Sarsgaard, Richard Conti, Annie McNamara, Daniel Jenks, Glen Caspillo, Tammy Blanchard, Kathy Tong.
Every male director needs his absolute leading lady, every screenwriter needs the one person who can carry a film from start to finish and have the audience utterly absorbed by that person’s story. Woody Allen, long since one of the masters of this art, has perhaps the distinction of being able to bring the very best out of the actors who grace his films. The excellent Diane Keaton stands out in his early works as being a gem of comedy and now as Woody Allen comes to the other side of his long career, the outstanding Cate Blanchett gives one of the finest performances of her life in the superb Blue Jasmine.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Stuart Richman.
A well written story needs a powerful performance in which to hang its tale upon and they don’t come much more emotionally and spiritually brilliant than Isaac Bashevis Singer’s A Day of Pleasure and the man who enraptures and leads an audience through the near derelict streets and run down housing of pre and post First World war Warsaw, the outstanding Stuart Richman.
As April Ashley sits down on the specially provided chair next to Radio Merseyside legendary presenter Roger Philips at the Museum of Liverpool, the audience that had made their way to the city specifically to see Ms. Ashley rose almost as one and gave a standing ovation that would normally be reserved for an actor or musician giving a rare solo performance to an adoring crowd.
To many in the audience and to thousands, if not millions round the world, April Ashley is a heroine, a heroine of the highest order, someone that without whom the dark ages, the misguided and in some cases repugnant behaviour of others towards transgendered issues, would have carried on perhaps well into the 21st Century.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Tracey Childs, Christian Edwards, Terry Malloy, Jonathan Forbes, Nicholas Briggs, Tim Delap, Jessica Brooks, Paul Chandi.
There is only one way to perhaps to finish off what has been an absorbing trilogy involving one of the best female additions to the Doctor Who audio range, a machine so powerful that even in the Doctor’s hands can cause the listener anxiety issues and a fine quirky new companion straight from U.N.I.T. and that’s by having the revulsion of the Doctor’s most hated enemy make an appearance alongside their creator. If all that can happen in one great story then what hope is there for others following after.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
No matter where you look on television or in the book stalls and shops of Britain, there is always the chance you will come across a programme, factual case or long line of fiction dedicated to the murder. The British seem obsessed with it, so much so that no Sunday night would be the same without one of Agatha Christie’s plots giving the viewer a challenge to find the killer before the spinster or the Belgian and no trip to a book shop would feel the same without picking up the latest crime thriller. Dr. Lucy Worsley’s latest historical series delves into the mind set of our island race’s preoccupation with the despicable act and looks at some cases of the deed in A Very British Murder.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Rupert Penry Jones, Phil Davies, Steve Pemberton, Sam Stockman, Ben Bishop, Hannah Walters, Mandeep Dhillon, Munir Khairdin, Hugh Mitchell, Natasha Joseph, Angela Pleasance, Gavin Marshall, John Hodgkinson, Tom Beard.
American television programmes that would be considered on par with the I.T.V. detective thriller Whitechapel would no doubt scream for the sense of history that surrounds the East-End of London, the chilling residue of time, death, murder and mayhem that seem to come out of every pore and alleyway of the area. America’s loss is Britain’s gain especially when it comes to Whitechapel and its abundance of historical murders that can be re-enacted with a new novel twist by today’s modern writers.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When Peter Gabriel released Scratch My Back in 2010, cover versions performed by an artist, which normally has the feel of creativity poverty and a terrible aching of lack of substance, was turned on its head and given fresh, bold and enjoyable lease of life.
The original idea for artists to return the favour and put as much spin as they could on the gabrielesque lyrics may have taken longer than the project intended but time is something that never seems to worry the man who has thrilled generations of fans over and over again. What matters is the final product, the accumulation of ideas and threads into one neat and absorbing packaging. Now Scratch My Back has its companion, the excellent and rightly titled And I’ll Scratch Yours.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The ordinary and those that are extraordinary, the everyday and uncommon, the heroes that take on the unjust, the one –sided discriminatory and those that revel in the prejudicial and underhanded are all there somewhere within the heart and wonderfully lyrical ballads of Liverpool’s Alun Parry and perhaps never more so in his first album in far too long, When The Sunlight Shines.