Reviews Amongst Other Things

I will start by saying that this album (in it's 25th year at the time of writing!) is often overlooked and unfairly so in my opinion but it isn't helped by the lack of exposure or that it was overshadowed by Jeff Wayne's previous record, the immensely successful 'Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.' Such the huge hit that it was back in '78, one would be forgiven for thinking it was the only album Jeff Wayne ever released but not so, as fourteen years later he provided us with his musical adaptation of the classic tale of the mighty gladiator 'Spartacus!' It was rather by accident that I came by this underrated concept album around two and a half years ago. By this point, I'd become quite the fan of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds that I had thought to myself, "I wonder what else the man has done" so it was off to search on Wikipedia and I came to find that though he had worked on various pieces for television shows over the

It has been a while what with Easter and more people about, I have struggled to concentrate so some practice is in order. With that said, what better film to review than another one of the Horror Channel's finest.... Hold that thought, here goes! Now bearing in mind I watched this off the back of a film that I found rather poor (completely different genre), this appeared in a brighter light in comparison but it isn't all that good especially when put up against films of a similar variety in my opinion. The difficulty here is to try and avoid giving away anything and if I was to say what films it was similar to, it would. On a number of occasions where I have viewed a film without knowing anything about it first, it has worked in my favour even if the film in question has been given a bit of a bashing from others, I have enjoyed it. A couple of examples would be 'The Spirit (2009)' and 'Legion (2010)' with the latter especially. All I would say is the f

I wasn't going to review this originally but after seeing this on the Horror Channel the other evening, I just had to talk about it. I have to say first of all that I found this film rather silly, I knew it wasn't going to be an incredible watch by any means but I felt it had potential. Perhaps I have seen too many of these stranded at sea type films but I found myself getting rather frustrated with the situations that arose throughout and I should be able to just take it for what it is. One saving grace was they didn't go down that very familiar route we tend to get with these films (I will let you take a guess at what I mean there) which was rather refreshing but mostly everything else got to me. From the moment the lead character stepped on the boat (sorry I do beg your pardon, IT'S A YACHT!) carrying her baby, my face met the palm of my hand and so it went on from there. I won't say much more about the film from here as saying anymore I may as

Another interesting story to this one. Back in the summer of 2006 (a particularly hot summer if I recall) and the days of MySpace, (anyone remember that) I found out about this upcoming artist Laura Critchley. I can't remember exactly how but it may have been through Lucie Silvas' page however one feature I remember very well was the amount of customisation one could apply to their page and one such feature was the ability to put up music tracks for others to listen to. This proved very useful for new artists to try and get their music out there (before the days of Bandcamp) and I had discovered a few through MySpace this way! I believe Lily Allen came to success thanks to MySpace aswell. Looking back I think the limit was four songs for them to upload and you could also download them which is what I had done with the very talented Laura Critchley who I'm talking about here. I enjoyed the tracks so much that I had messaged her on MySpace to congratulate her on a f

I will be honest, I'm not sure what to say about this film! I mean I can refer you to the picture above and that would sum the film up right there. This was one of those films that aired on the Horror channel in the early hours of the morning and you end up staring at the screen while not thinking about it at all. I think I am right in saying that the cast was almost entirely made up of Playboy models and in the case of the girl pictured above (she spends the entire film looking as she appears there by the way), YouTube celebrities. Having read other reviews for this one they are all right in what they say and it has rated very low indeed. It has been stated with films before that "it's so bad it's good" but with this they have said "not here it isn't." There was the potential here for a horror in that classic 'teenage slasher' mould but it just doesn't quite hit the mark. It's hard to tell when watching if that is what they e

A rather interesting story behind this one. This time two years ago, I was working a temporary job in a warehouse where I met a chap who was just as much a fan of music as I am and we would spend most of the day talking about our passion. Unfortunately, we only worked together for a week or so as we probably spent more time deep in conversation than actually working (that is another story) but in that short time, we sure did discuss much about music. He lent me some 'Classic Rock' magazines that he was a subscriber to and a few albums he owned; a couple from one of his favourite bands (Thunder) and this one from Empire State I am to review here, a band of which he is a member! His name is Andy Morris and he is the bassist and the lead vocalist of the band. He had told me at the time that they were working on their third album which has since been released around this time last year while this one pictured above was their second. I had decided to listen to the two Th