A gray area

Advantages: quite an interesting plot
Disadvantages: plots a bit slow in places

...I was looking forward to watching Charlotte Gray. It was a film I’d wanted to see at the cinema, but hadn’t got round to. I ended up disappointed by it. It wasn’t truly awful I was able to watch it without thinking ‘god when is this going to end’. It was just not as good as I thought it would be. It’s hard to think what went wrong with it. It’s got all the ingredients for a good film: wartime drama, love interest, secret missions. However, it was strangely flat in a lot of places. Charlotte Gray (Cate Blanchet) is a young scottish woman working at a surgery in wartime London. Whilst returning to London from a holiday in Scotland a ‘civil servant/spy master’ spots her reading a French book, it turns out that she studied in France. He invites her to a book launch where she meets and falls in love with Peter, an RAF airman. She is...

ricci 26.11.2002 · Read review
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Review of Charlotte Gray (DVD)

A Gray Movie

Advantages: Basically a good script, cinematography
Disadvantages: Mostly everything else

...You are sitting at home with bad weather outside and a film comes on that you don’t normally watch. What do you do hotshot? What do you do? In my case, I unfortunately took the gamble and watched the movie. It is based on the novel by Sebastian Faulks and is a “thriller” that follows the adventures of our eponymous heroine Charlotte Gray ( Cate Blanchett ) in Nazi-occupied France at the height of World War II. It should tell of heroism ( or in this case mostly heroinism ), the dangers of war, love, self sacrifice etc etc but ends up being a blank, dull, grey canvas that’s not fully filled. The plot should have been able to support the film, as at its core, there is a good story there. On travelling to London, Gray meets someone on a train and an innocent conversation strikes up during which she reveals she is fluent in French...

ultras67 30.06.2004 · Read review
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Review of Charlotte Gray (DVD)

* Charlotte's Web *

Advantages: Funny , Good Family Film
Disadvantages: Drags On In Some Places , Sad

...Charlotte's Web is an American family film released in the United Kingom on February 9th 2007. It is based on the book Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. The film was directed by Gary Winwick and stars Dakota Fanning. Running time of the movie is ninety seven minutes. The story is based on the life of a young pig named Wilbut. When little girl , Fern's dad plans on killing the piglet because he is the smallest piglet in the litter , Fern steps in , in order to try and save the life of the little pig ; promising to care for him herself. Fern then keeps little Wilbut as a pet ; allowing him in the house. When the piglet is too pig to keep as a pet , Fern's parents insist that he has to go ; they then come up with the idea of Wilbut going to live in Fern's uncles barn on the farm next door. Here he meets the rest of the farm animals...

xdonzx 26.10.2008 · Read review
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Review of Charlotte's Web (DVD)

Charlotte Bingham

Advantages: Interesting Person
Disadvantages: none

...Charlotte Bingham. Charlotte was born in Haywards Heath , her actual memories was not particularly there in West Sussex but at her grandparents home in Ireland where she was taken to by her Nanny when she was about three it was Bangor Castle in North Ireland. So this was where she had remembered mostly and also the influence of several of her novels where there settings were in large country houses. Her schooling was first of all in London then to a small school where she was born from the age of 6-16 years of age which was in the Sussex Downs which became an important part of her life particularly as she found she loved the sea and several of her books included the sea as well as the countryside. When she was sixteen she went to Paris and stayed on the Left Bank with a French family who were French aristocrats to learn...

ruth1957 29.01.2009 · Read review
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Review of Charlotte Bingham

Not a gray read!

Advantages: Interestng historical parts
Disadvantages: Bit too romantic and slow early on

...I read this book without reading Birdsong, so I can?t compare the two. I thoroughly enjoyed it though, and will try to read the earlier book. It was a gripping story, although hard to get into. I found it a bit too romantic at the beginning, and quite hard to see where or how exactly Charlotte does fall in love with Peter Gregory. The parts in France are by far the highlights of the book, with some really emotional scenes. The segments involving the Holocaust are informative but don?t go in to too much gory detail, which doesn?t make it a very depressing story. Overall, the book is enjoyable to read and contains some great characters but also some weak ones....

schizochico 04.09.2000 · Read review
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Review of Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks

Hope springs eternal

Advantages: Interesting take on the ordinary lives of people during WW2
Disadvantages: Changes in accents make it difficult to follow at times

...When Charlotte Gray meets and falls in love with a young airman, Peter, she should have her entire life to look forward to. However, it is World War 2 and her fiance very soon goes to France on a mission and goes missing. Determined not to give up hope, Charlotte applies for the Secret Service and is sent to France herself; ostensibly to help the war effort, but also to try and find out what has happened to Peter. Will her personal feelings get in the way of her job, putting her colleagues lives at risk? And will she find Peter? Knowing that this film is based on the book of the same name by Sebastian Faulks should have encouraged me to watch this film sooner, but somehow, I have never been able to bring myself to watch it until now. I think it is partly because war stories depress me and I need to be in the right frame of mind...

sunmeilan 04.05.2008 · Read review
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Review of Charlotte Gray (DVD)

Nothing's black and white with Dorian Gray

Advantages: Great acting, costumes, sets
Disadvantages: Music a bit too much sometimes

...Please note that this is a film only review. Having seen the trailer for this film several times, both me and my boyfriend decided this was a film we wanted to see. It came out on the 9th September 2009 - perhaps because of the 09.09.09 significance. What's the story of Dorian Gray? I had no idea what to expect, as the trailers don't actually give that much away of what the story is about. A man who never ages? A curse? Something about this trailer intrigued me - and it being set in Victorian times also appealed, making it seem all the more mysterious and dramatic. It turns out that it's based on the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - something I didn't know beforehand. It also turns out that it was controversial for its day, dealing with rather taboo themes. The story follows the (mis...

lora44 18.09.2009 · Read review
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Review of Dorian Gray

SEEN IT ALL BEFORE

Advantages: Good cast, nice scenery
Disadvantages: The storyline has all been done before, unoriginal and largely fogettable

...Routine, Run-of-the-mill and Unoriginal ? there you are, in a nutshell, my review of Cate Blanchett?s latest offering - the Wartime romance ?Charlotte Gray. We?ve certainly seen a lot of the talented antipodean recently. Here in the UK we saw BANDITS released in November, where she co-starred with Bruce Willis. That was closely followed by LORD OF THE RINGS, in which she played ? albeit briefly - Galadriel. Soon to be on our screens is the much vaunted SHIPPING NEWS, where we see Cate playing opposite Kevin Spacey. This current outing, however, sees her take on the role of Charlotte Gray, the eponymous heroine of Sebastian Faulk?s romantic novel. But, however fine an actress Ms Blanchett undoubtedly is actress (the nearest thing in the current day to Meryl Streep), she is unable to lift this predictable yarn of wartime romance...

flashpointz 15.03.2002 · Read review
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Review of Charlotte Gray (DVD)

It would take a great deal to crush me, said Charlotte

Advantages: Thought-provoking and original in its portrayal of the subject
Disadvantages: A little over-analytical in the later stages

...It is hardly surprising that the lives of the Brontë sisters (and brother) have attracted so many biographers, and the story of their short existences and premature deaths has been told many a time. Where this new account by Lyndall Gordon differs from what has already been published is in exploring Charlotte's life from a more feminist viewpoint than that of the apparently downtrodden novelist, who in the words of her contemporary and first biographer Mrs Gaskell was ?a valiant woman made perfect by sufferings.? Naturally the life takes up a good proportion of the book. Gordon paints the familiar, unhappy picture well ? the family growing up in unhealthy Haworth on the Yorkshire moors, where there was polluted water and no sewers, and where the average life expectancy was around 25. She leads the reader through the early deaths of Mrs...

JOHNV 05.11.2009 · Read review
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Review of Charlotte Bronte - Lyndall Gordon

Love and war.

Advantages: very well written
Disadvantages: not what you might expect.

...I was expecting this to be an intelligently written second world war thriller. I was surprised by the degree to which this is not in fact a thriller novel. It is however, brilliantly devised and written and very much about the second world war. The setting is largely France, dealing with French responses to the occupation - unlike the image created by 'allo allo', most people were not in the resistence, many collaborated, including the then Vichy government. In war time, people often do terrible things, and this book does not shy away from exploring the inhumanity that war encourages. The book follows the lives of a range of characters - centered on Charlotte Gray. Charlotte - a young Scottish woman trying to do her bit for the war effort. Posessed of excellent French language skills, she ends up working for some covert...

Bryn_Pearson 12.09.2002 · Read review
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Review of Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks