Movie Review: Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022). Theatrical release.

For the second time, the producers of the vastly popular Downton Abbey British TV series, about an aristocratic English family living in an old country mansion with their downstairs servant crew, have extended the story line of the show with a theatrical movie featuring all the same characters, actors and of course the glamorous old mansion where almost all the action takes place.  I had the good fortune to see it a couple of weeks ago on vacation, my first trip back into a public theater since the pandemic began, and in the longest continuously operating theater in the country!  It was really fun to be back in a movie theater again.

The first Downton Abbey movie, released in 2019, was set in the mid-1920s, and explored all the tensions and excitement upstairs and downstairs caused by a weekend visit by the king and queen of England (and their extensive staff, of course) to Downton Abbey.  It was well-received by the large world of Downton Abbey fans, but in fact it didn’t have a great deal of dramatic tension – nothing really important was at stake for any of the characters, as I recall.  For fans, though, it was just fun to see all the familiar, beloved characters back again, being together and doing what they do in their glorious old house.

This second outing makes an attempt to get back to more of the sort of intrigue, uncertainty and jockeying for position within the family and the household staff that drove the plot of the TV show.  The end of the 1920s is approaching, the world is changing, and suddenly it turns out that Violet (Maggie Smith), the ailing grand dame of the family, has inherited an exotic villa in Italy from a long-ago suitor, which she intends to pass on to one of her grandchildren.

While some of the family and staff head off to meet the prior owners of the villa, and try to piece together what long-ago romantic events (and possible scandal) caused this unexpected gift, the rest of the family and staff are at home, hosting a film crew that is making a silent movie in the grand old house, just as the industry is starting the transition to “talkies”.

There’s a lot going on in the family and the larger world outside, and it’s all the usual fun and surprises in the relatively safe world of the extended Crawley family.  Recommended.

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.