Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There is something quite comforting about watching Squeeze perform their huge back catalogue of hits, particularly when their set is now liberally laced with tracks from their first brand new album in 17 years – that being Cradle to the Grave, the “soundtrack” for Danny Baker’s life story telling sitcom currently running on B.B.C.2 starring Peter Kay.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are performance poets, there are whirlwinds of poetic infusion but rarely do the two ever meet, Allen Ginsberg aside, none really have the pulling power that the modern world and medium fully deserves with the exception of the very positive and wonderfully punk, the gracious Dr. John Cooper Clarke.
To open up a night of music offered by Squeeze with the whirlwind persona that resides in John Cooper Clarke, a selection of poems beaten out of thin air and which magically entranced and threatened to spill out and dominate, not just the night ahead, but the thoughts of the audience for a good few weeks, was one in which should be applauded with great nods of enthusiasm to see a poetry master at work.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Elizabeth Debicki, Marion Cotillard, Sean Harris, David Thewlis, Jack Reynor, Paddy Considine, David Hayman, Lynn Kennedy, Maurice Roëves, Seylan Baxter, James Harkness, Roy Sampson.
There are moments when going to the cinema should be a true joy to behold. The merging of both the cinematic experience and theatre portrayed as a guiding light of how to bring out the very best from arguably England’s greatest playwright.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kirsten Wigg, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover, Chen Shu.
If you want epic adventure you really only have call upon Ridley Scott and he will deliver you a story of such rich ambition and heroism, such is the outer core of the autumn blockbuster The Martian.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
It seems hard to believe that Liverpool had never had the pleasure of hosting Joanne Shaw Taylor before, that in all the years the absolute blistering sound that comes from arguably the Queen of British Blues had never dominated the Liverpool skyline, had never been heard in a huddled teeming mass before and had only been cherished in various houses, in the front rooms and bedrooms of the enlightened and the reverential.
Federal Charm at The Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. October 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
British Rock and Blues is in arguably the healthiest state that it has had the pleasure to be in for many years. The renaissance of the genres has perhaps come at the expense of the U.K.’s prime export of Heavy Metal and in many cases the once dominant pop scene and culture but for The Blues none of that matters; rude health it seems does come at a cost somewhere else upon the many lines.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Lee Armstrong, Simon Dutton, Roger Evans, Polly Frame, David Hartley, Ranjit Krishnamma, Chris Reilly, Sule Rimi, Danusia Samal, Colin Tierney, Susie Trayling.
A man is sent on a mission by a powerful leader, a man to whom his days of adventure are said to be behind him and to whom nothing would displease him more than being sent away far from home, sent to a land where the customs and practices are now as alien to him as those who share his national flag abroad. It is a story as old as recorded time itself and yet one that plays itself out over and over again as each generation repeats The Odyssey, duplicates the trials of Odysseus, just in nicer suits and with a flair for diplomatic disaster enshrined into the mission.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There seems to be a never ending way to experience The Wall and yet each time the fan or the casual amateur psychologist reaches in, placing their trust and their heart to the album’s creator, Roger Waters, it never seems to do anything but drain with beautiful emotion, to dig deep down into the very core of human experience, just exactly what the album, the songs and the essence of what life is.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
A night at the theatre can mean many different things to different people. To educate, to entertain, to allow a sarcastic monkey the reason to be adored are perhaps just three out of a multitude of reasons that the crowd who piled in with beaming faces and who left the Playhouse Theatre in a state of comedy fulfilment would have come to see and take part in.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Louise Mai Newberry, Steven Elder.
Man’s humanity to man has been seen for all it is worth over the last few months after image after image has reached all corners of the globe as the biggest mass exodus and movement of people since the Second World War has been beamed without hype into the homes of billions. Images of death, of desperation, of recriminations, of pain, of fear, of selfishness and of hope have all played their part of the story of 2015.