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More for ‘Downton Abbey’ Fans

Posted on January 22, 2012 at 8:00 am

Can’t get enough of sumptuous British estates with their proper servants and silver tea services?  Check out Secrets of the Manor House on PBS, premiering tonight at 8/7 central and it will stream in its entirety beginning January 23.

One hundred years ago the British manor house was in its heyday, sheltering families of enormous wealth and privilege within its stately walls. But what was really going on behind closed doors, where these wealthy families and their poor servants coexisted? Shot on location at some of Britain’s finest estates and country houses and featuring interviews with contemporary masters and the servants, the series reveals that life in the manor house was a world unchanged for almost a thousand years. By the time the 20th century entered its second decade, mounting financial, political and social pressures would alter the world of the Edwardian aristocrat forever.

The program includes some of the great homes with commentary from some of the premiere historians of the Edwardian era, including Lawrence James (The Illustrated Rise and Fall of the British Empire). As he and others explain, by Edwardian times, the agricultural revenues of the great country estates were dwindling. With the Industrial Revolution, wealth began moving away from agriculture and into manufacturing and banking.  While the easiest solution would have been to sell some of their land, the practice of entailment demanded that estates be passed on intact. Many aristocrats, finding themselves in need of cash, married rich American heiresses in a trend that was quietly called “cash for titles.” As historian Dr. Elisabeth Kehoe (Fortune’s Daughters) recounts, among the many American heiresses who married into the aristocracy was Jennie Jerome, who wed the second son of the Duke of Marlborough and was mother to Winston Churchill.

Rumblings of change were also coming from below stairs. Those who served the lords and ladies led backbreaking lives of non-stop work for little pay and less freedom. Thousands of working-class Edwardians left these country estates to make their way across the sea to America, hoping for a better life and more freedom in the land of opportunity. When hundreds of these would-be immigrants, traveling in second and third class, perished in the sinking of the Titanic, the inequity of the British class system was shown to the world in all its ugliness.

It lasted for hundreds of years, based in a rigid class system, an agriculture-based economy, and strict laws of inheritance.  All of that would come to an end with the two World Wars.  Even the most passionate Anglophiles would not want to return to those times….but it is delicious to visit them in “Downton Abbey” and in shows like this one.

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Watch Davy and Goliath on SpiritClips!

Posted on January 20, 2012 at 3:57 pm

Remember the class television series “Davy and Goliath?”  The stop-motion animation children’s show about the little boy and the dog who spoke to him was owned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and produced by Art and Ruth Clokey of “Gumby.”   The gentle parables about sharing, tolerance, and obedience included episodes that featured Davy’s friends Nathaniel and Jonathan, among the first black characters on television to be friends of a lead white character.  Episodes of the classic “Davy and Goliath” series are now available online via SpritClips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbu7jQ3HhMg

 

 

 

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Haywire

Posted on January 19, 2012 at 6:08 pm

A little bit “Rambo,” a little bit “Kill Bill” and more than a little bit “La Femme Nikita” and its imitation, “Alias,” this film can best be summarized as follows: a private contractor operative employed by the United States kicks butt in many locations, taking time off in the middle to have her hair put in cornrows, with a slight storyline attached to keep us on her side.

Mixed martial arts champion Gina “Conviction” Carano has a strong screen presence as Mallory, a former Marine turned free-lancer working for a one-time boyfriend named Kenneth (Ewan McGregor).  After the government client insists that she be assigned to a new mission in Dublin, Kenneth pushes her to go, assuring her that it will be simple and that her role will be secondary.  She meets up with her handsome British counterpart (Michael Fassbender) and they pose as a married couple at a glamorous party.  But Mallory’s approach is always the Reaganesque “trust but verify.”  She is always on the alert, and so when it turns out that she is in danger, she is prepared.  The rest of the movie is her single-mindedly knocking the lights out of anyone foolish enough to have done her wrong, less out of anger than sheer ruthless efficiency.  She has a firm sense of justice but does not waste any energy on distractions like emotion.  She works the odds and she works the problem.

The fight scenes are the reason for the film and they are well-staged in a variety of settings that allow Carano to show what she can dish out and what she can take.  Director Steven Soderbergh wisely unravels the story a piece at a time to hold our interest in the sifting locales and allegiances.  He lightly touches on some issues with contemporary resonance without taking us more than a few minutes away from the next beat-down.  Mallory tells her story to the poor kid whose car she had to take on an escape and we see flashbacks of missions and encounters and it becomes clear why she is telling all of this to a random civilian.  Soderbergh wisely surrounds his first-time leading lady with supremely capable actors including McGregor, Fassbender, Michael Douglas as a government official with an enormous American flag at his elbow, Michael Angarano as the guy who provides her getaway car and some on-the-move first-aid, and Bill Paxton as Mallory’s father.   If Mallory’s confident, husky voice is in part due to electronic tweaking, it sounds natural and in character.  Even in the midst fighting off a battalion of protective-gear-clad law enforcement officers, Carano has a businesslike confidence.  And even when she is choking a man with her thighs or being chased through the woods, it is in aid of making the world a little less haywire.

(more…)

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