Mystery - Director: Tim Fywell - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Jeremy Northam, Douglas Hodge, Paul Rhys, Michael Sheen, Helena Bonham-Carter, Celia Imrie, Sophie Ward, Saira Todd more
Three features. Adaptations from the crime writer Ruth Rendell writing under the name of Barbara Vine. In 'A Fatal Inversion', two friends are reunited after ten years when the... more
liberation from the guilt her parents have imposed on her for the pylon-climbing that led to it; it is also the tale of new mistakes, and their disastrous consequences. In the London of the late 80s, Clodagh finds her own level--and it is way above the streets, with a roof-jaunting group of disaffected young people, each with a trauma of their own. For Swedish Liv, it is the nightmare of au-pairing; for Silver, it was abduction as a small boy; for the sinister young thug Jimmy, it was sexual abuse on a massive scale. When they graduate from merely clambering around to trying to do good, and help a couple on the run from the social services with a foster child, that is when the trouble starts... The audiobook adaptation is taut and passionate; Frances Barber's range of voices and characterisations adds immediacy to the strong characterisation and never becomes a mere series of comic impersonations, she retains a sense of this story's urgency even in the chunks of back-story that punctuate the main action. Duration: 5 hours--Roz Kaveney
Vinenom-de-plume(and there are many who do) will need little persuasion to pick upThe Birthday Present. But the fact that this is something of a departure for the author -- under either of her names -- may give them pause.Margaret Thatcher's days as prime minister are over, and the John Major era of the Conservative party is about to begin. The media is full of tales of sleaze and corruption, and it is not a good time to be a Tory Member of Parliament. However, Ivor Tesham is sanguine: money is no object to him; he is charismatic and attractive, and he is in the middle of a passionate affair. The fly in the ointment is the fact that this is an adulterous relationship: not a happy state of affairs when PM John Major has made 'Back to Basics' morality and 'Victorian Values' the new yardsticks for his variously philandering and kickback-taking MPs. Ivor and his lover -- the beautiful Hebe Furnal -- share a particular erotic predilection; a taste for bondage and the more risky extremes of sexuality. Ivor arranges for a mock kidnapping in line with the couple's games, but, needless to say (this is a Barbara Vine novel, after all), things quickly go pear-shaped, and Igor find that everything he holds dear is about to be stripped away from him.As this synopsis suggests, Rendell is moving into even more incendiary territory than she has traversed before, and the political element makes the experiment even more piquant. Those who know Rendell's association with the Labour Party (she is a working peer) might assume that a novel which rekindles all the sleaze of the last Tory government (particularly when the latest incarnation of the party is riding high in the polls) is a political act, but Rendell/Vine is far too sophisticated a writer to fall into that trap. In fact, this is one of the most ingenious and disturbing books. As often before with her, the stake for the central character could not be higher and it is impossible not to be drawn into the plight of the beleaguered Ivor (not for the first time, we are reminded of the authors distinguished American predecessor Patricia Highsmith).The Birthday Present,disturbing as it is, will sit happily on your shelves alongside all the other Barbara Vine titles -- and if you don't possess them, why not? --Barry Forshaw
Rendell stretches the boundaries of what we mean when we describe a book as a psychological thriller. Nanther is a biographer who is in crisis in most areas of his life--he has run out of inspiration, his other "job" as a hereditary peer is in the course of being voted out of existence and his relationship with his second wife is threatened by the difficulties she is experiencing in bringing a child to term. He throws himself into a study of his great-grandfather Henry--a doctor ennobled by Queen Victoria for his work on the haemophilia which dogged her descendants--and finds something not quite right. Henry was not just a repressed Victorian--there was something about his ruthless jilting of mistresses and fiancées which implies something a lot more peculiar and Nanther sets out to work out what it was. This novel is acute on the intellectual pleasures of historical research including the guilty prurience of working out dead people's secrets;it is also genuinely insightful in its portrait of Nanther, a man who thinks he is a worse and more useless man than he is, and finds out from Henry what real human evil might be. --Roz Kaveney
Thriller - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Timothy West, Neil Morrissey, Tara Fitzgerald, Annette Crosbie, Pauline Quirke, Rob Brydon, Denise Van Outen, John Thomson, Kevin Whately, David Suchet
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Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: K.C. Bascombe - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Jesse James, Rachel Skarsten, Charles Powell, Linda Purl, Kevin Zegars
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Plot: Three features. Adaptations from the crime writer Ruth Rendell writing under the name of Barbara Vine. In 'A Fatal Inversion', two friends are reunited after ten years when the bodies of a woman and a child are discovered in the pet cemetery near on one of the friend's country house estate. Can they stay one step ahead of the police or will the police discover the truth? Also includes: 'A Dark Adapted Eye', and 'Gallowglass'.
DVD Description
Three features. Adaptations from the crime writer Ruth Rendell writing under the name of Barbara Vine. In 'A Fatal Inversion', two friends are reunited after ten years when the bodies of a woman and a child are discovered in the pet cemetery near on one of the friend's country house estate. Can they stay one step ahead of the police or will the police discover the truth? Also includes: 'A Dark Adapted Eye', and 'Gallowglass'.
Advantages: An excellent book by a versatile writer Disadvantages: Some may find it a little slow-moving
...Introduction
I have been quite critical of Ruth Rendell in some past reviews - her books range from the brilliant to the really bad - but I have to admit she is the most versatile of writers. I knew before I started this book that BarbaraVine was a pen-name for Ruth Rendell; had I not known, there is no way in a million years I would have guessed that this book was by the same author as the Wexford novels. I have not read any of BarbaraVine's books before, but expected something along the lines of a psychological thriller, such as those by Nicci French. What I got was a really well-written novel describing one man's efforts to write a biography of his great-grandfather, who happened to be a top physician to Queen Victoria, and who turns out to have some complicated happenings in his life. The writing is altogether of a different level...
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Advantages: Engrossing psychological drama Disadvantages: Pace may be too slow for some readers
..."The Minotaur" is the twelfth and most recent novel by BarbaraVine, who is, of course, the alter ego of the highly successful crime novelist Ruth Rendell. The Vine novels are, I think, intended to be the darker, more psychological, less crime-genre side of Rendell's writing, giving her the opportunity to branch out in new directions? although to be honest, I'm not convinced they are really all that much different from the (non-Wexford) novels she writes under her own name.
The story is narrated by Kerstin Kvist, who as a young woman in the late 1960s comes from Sweden to the Essex countryside in order to work for the Cosway family; ostensibly, as a carer for John, the mentally-ill thirty-nine year old son of the family. Kerstin's main motivation is to be closer to her London-based boyfriend; however, she is also intrigued by...
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Advantages: Well acted, Great Book Adaptation Storylines, Fun for All Ages Disadvantages: Each Movie is About Three Hours Long
...be ignored by the overall storyline.
I was slightly disapointed by this third story since it really didn't go by the books my L.M Montgomery at all. The first two movies are at least based on her books , but this movie was almost entirely made up. I was hoping the third movie would follow the other books about Anne as she is grown up with Children.
Still, the movie was well made and entertaining. It was good to see the actors again, and the costumes anad attention to detail from the World War I era are fantastic. It's not as good as the first two movies, but well worth a watch.
******Conclusion*****
All these movies in the BoxSet; Anne of Green Gables, The Sequel , and The Continuing Story, are so much fun. Children around the age of 7 and up will enjoy the first one. While children more around the age of 10 and up would...
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helpful 25.09.2009
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