TV Review: Party Tricks (2014). Amazon Prime.

Party Tricks is a 2014 Australian dramedy mini-series about a liberal female Prime Minister of Victoria (played by Asher Keddie), who suddenly has an upstart challenger, a handsome, charismatic journalist with a wealthy backer and no government experience (Rodger Corser), who has decided to run against her in an upcoming election.

The bigger problem for both of them -- the two of them had shared a secret extra-marital affair in the past, which they both hope desperately to keep quiet.

This series was very well done.  In a similar vein to the popular CBS series The Good Wife (but set in Australia), it explores the hazards and difficulties of having complicated personal lives and conflicted emotions under the intense pressures of competing political interests and relentless media scrutiny.  Recommended.

Book Review: Doomsday Book (1992). Connie Willis.

I re-read this excellent science fiction novel recently after many years (it was a Nebula Winner, originally published in 1992). What perfect pandemic-era reading!

This is the story of Kivrin Engle, a petite young Oxford undergrad history student in the year 2054, who is sent alone on the first time-travel study to the Middle Ages (time-travel having been discovered a few years earlier, and now being put to use as a historical research tool).  Her destination is the Oxford area, Christmas time in 1320, safely 28 years before the Black Plague will arrive, for a two-week observation and research trip.

Unfortunately, something goes terribly wrong in the time-travel drop, and she ends up desperately ill, and stranded back in the Medieval period, in a little village near Oxford, but not quite when she had intended.  Meanwhile, her academic mentor Mr. Dunworthy's frantic attempts to discover where she is, and rescue her, encounter endless obstacles as a mysterious new virus outbreak sweeps through the 2054 Oxford community.

A gripping and very moving story of the timeless nature of human emotions, behaviors and relationships, and the eternal presence of good and evil, and generosity and selfishness, in societies throughout history, regardless of their technological level.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Fifth Risk (2018). Michael Lewis.

Lewis, who is a prolific non-fiction writer with interests and expertise in the interplay of money, statistics, business and politics (as displayed in books such as Moneyball and The Big Short), shines a light on what the administrative agencies of the U.S. government (i.e. the "Deep State") do for us as citizens and members of U.S. society.

He spotlights a number of key figures in various agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service, the Department of Commerce and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), describes what they do and why these services are so important to our success and survival as a society.  He then focuses on how the Trump Administration set out to destroy these agencies through a lack of presidential transition planning, appointment of inept, corrupt administrators, and deliberate attempts to monetize their valuable governmental functions and assets for private gain.

A disturbing and less-well-known aspect of the Trump presidency and its disasters, nicely-told and explained, and a very absorbing read.  It is also a strong counter-narrative to the cynical view that good government doesn't matter, and doesn't do anything important for us as individuals and as members of a national community.  Highly recommended.

TV Review: The English Game (2020). Netflix.

Set in the late 1870s and early 1880s, this very novel period piece and docudrama mini-series shows how two young men -- one a banker and Etonian son of an English lord, the other a poor Scottish factory worker -- together created the modern game of professional soccer, through their fierce competition on the pitch as star players for rival teams, and their cooperation off the pitch in pushing through important changes to how the sport was organized and played in England.

Among the innovations that grew out of their collaboration, and ultimately spread around the globe, were changes to who could field teams, which opened the sport up to players and teams from all classes, rather than just the wealthy; eligibility and participation rules changes which allowed players to be paid for their playing; and also important changes to the on-field tactics and rules of the game, particularly the evolution toward a more team- and pass-oriented tactical game, rather than having teams just rely on a few individual stars’ skills and prowess.

In the course of this intriguing story, each man also has to deal with other challenges in their respective personal and social lives.  This film is based on real events and historical figures.  It was produced by Julian Fellowes (of Downton Abbey fame).  Recommended.

Book Review: Great Circle (2021). Maggie Shipstead.

As someone who has been a pilot and involved with the aviation community for part of my adult life, and fascinated with the history and ongoing story of human flight ever since I was a young boy, a novel like this one, where the most important character is an early woman pilot, might be more appealing to me than to people who don’t know or care about flying.  But in fact, this excellent historical novel has been winning widespread acclaim and awards, so it’s safe to say that it has a wider appeal than just to flying enthusiasts.

There are really two main characters – one the famous woman pilot, whose unusual childhood and young adult experiences span the 1930s and 1940s, and the other a troubled young actress from our own era, who has won the part of the older woman in a movie about her famous around-the-world flight attempt, which ended in her disappearance.  But there are also a number of other important characters in the story, whose lives are intertwined with those of these two young women from different eras, and who are also struggling with their own personal demons and desires.

In the course of the story of these two parallel female lives, and the contemporaneous stories of their various friends, lovers and family members, we see how each person’s knowledge of the world, the skills they develop, and the sexual and relationship experiences they have, all shape the kind of people they become, and the things they achieve.

We also are reminded how mysterious every life is to the rest of the world, and how impossible it is to ever truly know everything about who a person was, what they thought and felt, and what they experienced over the course of their lives, from the scraps of written and photographic records they left behind, and the fading memories of those who knew them.

There is also a mystery that grows throughout the book, which is this: what happened to the woman pilot, when she disappeared in the last phase of her “great circle” flight around the world?  In this respect, the story reminds us of the unsolved mystery of Amelia Earhart and her earlier (real life) around-the-world flight, and it becomes a consuming question for the young actress, as she struggles to fully understand and know the story of the character she is playing on the screen.  But of course, I can’t tell you how it turns out . . .

This was a thoroughly enjoyable novel about a cast of interesting and relatable characters, living in two different modern time periods yet somehow connected.  Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Castles in the Sky (2014). Amazon Prime.

This BBC made-for-TV movie is about the British scientist Robert Watson Watt, a meteorologist who, after failing to produce a workable prototype of a death ray prior to World War II, went on to invent and lead the R & D development of radar technology, and the equipment and monitoring stations that were so valuable to the RAF during the Battle of Britain. Quite informative and entertaining.  Recommended.

Book Review: Geniuses at War: Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age (2021). David A. Price.

A historical side-note to the history of Bletchley Park and World War II code breaking by the British, this book focuses on the small group of scientists, engineers and mathematicians who invented the first modern electronic computers, in order to speed up the secret code-breaking operations.

This is another of the recent releases revealing archival details that had been suppressed for many decades under the Official Secrets Act, where the principals who were there at the time weren't allowed to talk about or take credit for their achievements until long after the age of computers had begun.  Recommended.

Movie Review: Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Theatrical release.

By now, most people know that the long-awaited sequel to the mega-hit Top Gun from 1986, Top Gun: Maverick, was just released to theaters this past weekend.  The new movie, which was ready for release in 2020, was shelved for two years until it could be seen by audiences in theaters on big screens.

Tom Cruise, the movie’s star and one of the executive producers, was insistent that this film would not be released to streaming platforms until it could be seen in theaters first, and so it wasn’t throughout the first two years of the pandemic.  But it’s finally here, and it was well worth the wait, especially for fans of the original movie (who are legion).

It’s worth noting at the outset that the plot contains a large number of elements that are absurd, and just not believable from a rational standpoint.  But of course, we can always decide to suspend disbelieve, just as we would for a blockbuster science fiction film, in which case, strap in for an incredible and entertaining ride!

The absurd parts: a legendary fighter pilot now in advanced middle age is still in the Navy, stuck by his own individualistic misbehavior at the rank of captain in the role of a test pilot, but yet somehow not forced out of the service for failure to advance.  An unnamed hostile country possesses fighter planes that are way better than the F-18s (or for that matter, F-22s or F-35s) the U.S. military actually flies.  A 3-week “emergency” is created, where an elite team of pilots needs to train for and perform an impossible and unprovoked attack on the unnamed country’s new uranium processing plant.  And so on.

Of course, the original Top Gun film had a lot of the same sort of contrived and unrealistic plot devices to set up its story, and none of us who have watched and enjoyed it over the years have ever really cared about that, because the believable characters, the portrayal of the human relationships under stress within an elite world of competitive warriors, the humor, and the incredible aerial combat scenes more than made up for any trivial lack of story plausibility.

The new movie is absolutely faithful to those aspects of the original, while continuing the story of several of those personalities and relationships as they have aged and matured through time, and at the same time showcasing even more spectacularly realistic aerial footage than the original, as a new Top Gun team of "best of the best" fighter pilots trains for and then launches the seemingly impossible attack.

Much has been made of the extent to which this is a Tom Cruise showpiece, and it certainly is.  As a producer, he brought a long career’s worth of knowledge and experience about how to create outstanding action-packed cinematic entertainment, along with his expertise as a highly trained pilot (in real life), and his strong connections to the Navy from the original film, due to its decades-long value as a major recruiting tool for naval aviation.

But as an actor, he also brings authenticity to his portrayal of an older, sadder but wiser Maverick.  He’s still the dominant fighter pilot among the “best of the best”, and he still won’t follow orders if it doesn’t suit him, but he also knows how to act his age and life experience – struggling over whether he can teach his students what they need to survive, self-aware about the impact of pilots’ deaths on their families, and loving and compassionate toward his ailing friend and former Top Gun competitor Iceman (Val Kilmer), now the admiral who’s been providing “top cover” for Maverick’s checkered naval career over the years.

As is typical of Cruise, he also insisted on doing his own stunts to the extent possible, to make them look more realistic, although apparently (and not surprisingly) he did not actually pilot the Navy’s F-18s used in the movie.  He does briefly fly his own personally-owned World War II era P-51 Mustang fighter, which in the movie is one of Maverick’s fast-moving boy's toys, along with his iconic Kawasaki motorcycle.

If you’re ready to venture back into a movie theater, and you’re able to enjoy a film that is loud, visually overwhelming, blatantly militaristic and fantastical, but also epic entertainment with an uplifting story and likeable characters, Top Gun: Maverick should be at the top of your list for the summer.  It seems to be playing almost everywhere, so finding a theater near you that’s showing it shouldn’t be a problem, and in the near future, we can expect it to show up on one of the streaming services (although it won't be as grand or overpowering on the small screen).  Highly recommended.