First Great Eastern or Worst Great Eastern

Advantages: Good announcements
Disadvantages: Generally packed trains

...All of my life I have lived a train ride away from London. Working from the age of 16, I have spent the best part of 9 years travelling to and from the City to get to work. Fortunately for me I learnt to drive when I was 17, and for some time was able to avoid the Connex-controlled route from my old town of Welling to London Bridge. However, moving to Chelmsford saw me take a job in the centre of town ? literally a 10 minute drive from home. Talk about bliss! No more hour-long traffic jams, or waiting in all weather for the train to pull in late again. What could possibly go wrong? I shouldn?t have asked, because within six months a company takeover saw me transferred to a London based office, and with some trepidation I started to catch the train to work again. After several years of being subjected to Connex South Eastern...

SeasonTicketless 19.05.2003 · Read review
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Review of First Great Eastern

Good Intro to the Traditional Sounds of South-Eastern Europe

Advantages: great selection, good variety
Disadvantages: somehow mistitled, mostly traditional stuff

...Rough Guide, best known for their budget travel guides, has been steadily expanding in other areas, and has been responsible for quite a few musical "guides" over the years. This 1998 album, marketed as "Rough Guide to the Music of Eastern Europe", does pretty much exactly what is says on the package: provides quite a wide ranging overview of folk and (occasionally) folk-inspired music of Eastern Europe. This is an album that pretty much started my liking for "world music" coming from my part of the world, and despite its age it remains a good compilation which really does showcase the variety of what's on offer quite well. One thing that this "Rough Guide" album needs is perhaps a better definition of what is considered Eastern Europe: this is a surprisingly woolly category (I always remember somebody commenting than Poland...

magdadh 13.07.2009 · Read review
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Review of Rough Guide To The Music Of Eastern Europe, The - Various Artists

Eastern Promises-A brilliant crime thriller

Advantages: Brilliantly written.Good performances
Disadvantages: Genre has its limitated appeal

...Eastern Promises is a crime thriller directed by Daviid Cronenberg and stars Naomi Watts,Viggo Mortensen,Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl in principal roles. The film starts with a pregnant young girl asking for help in a pharmacy who soon dies after giving birth to a daughter.Anna(played by Naomi Watts),a midwife at the hospital keeps the diary she found with the patient where she finds a card of a restaurant and decides to go visit that place to know more about the young girl who died. As it turns out, the restaurant is run by a family of underworld don(which she is completely unaware of),who actually molested/raped the young girl who died earlier.Since Anna can't read the language of the diary,Semyon(the don himself who only appears to be a very respectable family man) offers his help to translate the diary for her. By...

aadnan613 12.11.2009 · Read review
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Review of Eastern Promises (Blu-ray)

Mediocre Eastern

Advantages: frequent services
Disadvantages: dirty and no seats at peak times

...I always thought that when you buy a train ticket that you were purchasing a seat on a train. First Great Eastern obviously think differently. First Great Eastern run train services between London, Southend, Ipswich, Harwich and Clacton plus a couple of smaller branch lines. First Great Eastern itself was formed with privatisation in the late 1990’s as part is the First Bus group of companies. This review mainly concentrates on services between Chelmsford and Liverpool Street as this is the route that I have daily experience of. However having used other services on an infrequent basis and discussed their services with friends who use First Great Eastern services from other destinations I think this review does give a fairly accurate pictures of their services as a whole. In general terms the facilities at Chelmsford...

PaulBed 16.05.2003 · Read review
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Review of First Great Eastern

New angles on Dickens by Eastern Angles

Advantages: Real Live Basic Theatre
Disadvantages: You need to think,use the imagination.

...David Copperfield. This is a theatre show on tour, performed by "Eastern Angles" theatre group. It is an adaptation of the novel by Alistair Cording. The show is touring nationally and may be somewhere near you soon. To find out more about the company and it's future plans there is a website at www.easternangles.co.uk There is a free mailing list you can join by writing to Eastern Angles Mailing List, Sir John Mills Theatre, Gatacre Road, Ipswich IP1 2LQ. Eastern Angles have returned to touring outside their own region after ten years because of new touring monies available from the Arts Council and equipment from the Lottery.This David Copperfield is a revival of their acclaimed 1995 production. The East Anglia and Great Yarmouth connection in the Dicken's novel "David Copperfield "attracted them as did the rich assemblage...

parker-munn 21.05.2003 · Read review
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Review of David Copperfield - Eastern Angles Theatre

Eastern National bus Bus Company

Advantages: Busses used to be green; frequent services to north Chelmsford suburbs
Disadvantages: Drivers smile only irregularly; journeying at peak school commuting time is dangerous

...The Eastern National bus company cannot help but slowly insinuate itself into the lives of just about every central Essex resident. I had to endure almost 5 years of daily travel on a large sweaty green double-decker bus in order to make my way from rural Billericay to the great swarming metropolis that was Chelmsford. In the earlier years it seemed fun; members of the general public who braved that notorious 3.55pm bay 9 ?Billericay? bus took their life in their own hands. The entire journey had a sort of apocalyptic air ? as if we might just meet the seven horsemen as we trundled along Galleywood common; or perhaps the driver would decide, amongst the meadows north of Stock, that it was time to drive at extreme speed, in such a way as to ensure that the bus leaned dangerously to one side. Tickets were cheap; indeed, most of us were...

saundej 28.07.2000 · Read review
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Review of Eastern National Bus Company

Never a dull moment

Advantages: Real life adventure
Disadvantages: Rapidly receding into history

...?When General Zahidi, a dapper figure in a tight-fitting grey uniform and highly polished boots, entered the room, he found himself looking down the barrel of my Colt automatic. There was no advantage in prolonging a scene which might easily become embarrassing. Without further ado I invited the General to put his hands up?.took away his pistol and hustled him through the window into the car which was waiting outside with the engine running.? This is not, as one might guess, an excerpt from a far-fetched spy thriller of a slightly dated vintage, but from the memoirs of a Member of Parliament. Fitzroy Maclean, the autobiographer in question, was admittedly a very unusual MP, having only decided to stand for Parliament under the most unconventional circumstances, but then he was an unusual man generally. Eastern Approaches...

torr 26.08.2009 · Read review
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Review of Eastern Approaches - Fitzroy Maclean

The code of thieves

Advantages: Acting, thorough culture research
Disadvantages: Drags a bit in the first half

...Eastern Promises takes the relatively successful combination of director David Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortenson, and transfers it from the backroads of the American countryside to the backstreets of London and its Russian gangs. British writer Steven Knight's script is well penned, and is essentially a crime drama more than any other genre. The addition of Cronenberg introduces a stark and no nonsense violence that the director seems to be able to transport to the screen with ease. He is aided by a sterling cast, none moreso than the excellent Viggo Mortenson. He plays Nikolai, driver and general 'hand' to London's Russian gang boss Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who crosses paths with midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) when a baby loses its mother in childbirth. Anna follows a business card to the restaurant fronting Semyon's gang...

pmcds 22.09.2009 · Read review
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Review of Eastern Promises (DVD)

Not so Great North Eastern Railway

Advantages: Quicker than the coach/car
Disadvantages: Where do I start?... See op

......

Zedex 04.11.2003 · Read review
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Review of Great North Eastern Railway

Eastern Block

Advantages: Outlandish Forays Dripping In Irony.
Disadvantages: The Irony May Have Been Lost On The Main Players.

...helps if you are partaking of the same journey as you read but not essential. Tony Hawks comes from the same school as the above authors. He pursues his laughs like a rabid ferret, eeking out any shard of humour that could raise a tittle. Nine times out of ten he manages to avoid cliche and brings forth another nugget of satire. Perhaps his days of being a stand up comedian have provided the ammunition. He also has quite a few TV appearances behind him but is probably best known for his appearances on 'Have I Got News For You'. So how do you end up in a strange Eastern European country with a mission to beat its top footballers at tennis. Well, the same way you find yourself travelling the length and breath of Ireland with a fridge, you take on a bet dreamed up in the pub by your friend Arthur Smith. While the absurdity of such a bet...

indiecater 10.10.2002 · Read review
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Review of Playing the Moldovans at Tennis - Tony Hawks