Advantages: Ideal for group reading,
Disadvantages: background knowledge is almost essential

...A Woman Of No Importance was written in a time when women had little or no place in the world, politically. Lord Illingworth, a womanising politician demonstrates this through his tendancies to leave women 'fallen'. The tale of Rachel Arbuthnot, a single mother in the 1890s, trying to teach her son, Gerald, of the evils of the world has her life torn apart when Lord Illingworth throws the ultimate spanner into the ultimate works. Thus leaving the middle class family closer than he had ever intended. On first reading, this book seems to be soley an outstanding play, but on more intense reading, the many levels and the many themes Wilde involves leave the reader astounded. With refrences to the political state of Middle Class England at the time Wilde wrote this play as well as many other aspects of England and the position of women... Read review

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Advantages: Brilliantly horrific and satirical, written with a sense of the beauty words can construct that astounds, this is simply wonderful...
Disadvantages: Age has not stolen it's power to disturb - this is no charming classic...

...Oscar Fingal O' Flahertie Wills Wilde was an author and playwright whose range covered just about every genre in the book, and in life he was both amused and pained that many thought this range suggested superficiality. That is one crime of which Wilde can never be justifiably accused. The content of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', a work which is almost semi-autobiographical, works on a multitude of levels. In short, this is the story of a man exposed, through literature given to him by one Lord Henry, to the darker side of life, the sins and pleasures of the flesh and the spirit. Throwing himself into these pleasures with vigour and enthusiasm, the once pure-hearted Dorian Gray becomes a black beast. He remains youthful, beautiful and saintly looking, while all the time the titular picture of him grows more and more repellent... Read review

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Advantages: Beautifully written and still so important...
Disadvantages: Bleak and sad and horrific...

...++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ “It is the spectator, and not life that art really mirrors”. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In “The Picture of Dorian Gray” the wonderful fop Oscar Wilde paints a bleak picture of the repellent side of human nature as the beautiful hero Dorian Gray ages not one jot between lewd acts and malefaction but the sinister portrait of him hanging in the attic takes on all the pestilence, age and filth that befits the face of one so lost in hedonism. That portrait is an iconoclastic image of the age: it matters little if you have ever read the book but I would be surprised if many English-speaking adults did not know at least the central theme of this most famous of short stories. The once pure “child” that is the early Dorian reveals all the stains on his blackened soul through the hidden... Read review

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Advantages: Stephen Fry's performance
Disadvantages: Not completely accurate

...I occasionally wonder if Oscar Wilde's life wasn't just a necessary preliminary so that Stephen Fry could get to play him. Fry clearly has a lot of sympathy with Wilde, and has little trouble placing himself in his shoes - something that I suspect he has done all his life. The story is familiar by now - Oscar becomes one of the most popular playwrights and wits of his age, only to shoot himself down at the height of his fame due to his relationship with the horrible Alfred Lord Douglas, for which he finds himself sentenced to two years' hard labour. The film goes to some pains to be historically accurate (it even gets right the almost illegible message that Lord Queensberry pinned to the theatre door which sparked off his ill-fated libel trial) but makes one blunder in providing a happy reunion of the two lovers upon Wilde's final... Read review

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Advantages: Entertaining, Plenty of action and laughs
Disadvantages: None

...Wild Hogs film only review. The film wild hogs is a fairly new release into the cinema's that I recently watched and here is my review on it. The film contains some well known actors, Such as Tim Allen, John Travolta and Martin Lawrence they are 3 of the four main characters with the fourth being played by William H Macy who is less well known. The Film revolves around these four middle aged men who are weekend bikers and they meet up every week at a bar to have a few drinks and a ride on there bikes, they call themselves the Wild Hogs. All of them have some issue in there life that they are not happy with and its plaguing there lives. The character played by Tim Allen is a middle aged Dentist who has a medical condition forcing him to eat healthy foods only and also his son has no respect for him and thinks he is boring. John...