Dame Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, and Elizabeth McGovern lead a stellar cast in this Second Season of Downton Abbey. Maria Doyle Kennedy, Iain Glen, and Zoe Boyle freshen up this the Second Season of this Emmy Award-winning drama. This 3-disk set includes the Downton Abbey Christmas Special, as well as several bonus features like deleted scenes. The action continues from Season One with England in the middle of World War I. It’s 1916 and the events of the Battle of the Somme up to the end of the war power the plots. If you’re a fan of British drama like Upstairs, Downstairs and Brideshead Revisited, Downton Abbey will entertain and delight you. GRADE: A
DOWNTON ABBEY, SEASON TWO [Blu-ray]
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When I reviewed Kiss Me Deadly a couple weeks ago, Todd Mason mentioned Odds Against Tomorrow, a movie I hadn’t seen in three decades. I found a DVD of Odds Against Tomorrow and watched it. I also had a copy of William P. McGivern’s novel that the movie is based on so I read that, too. In the novel version, Earl Slater (a sociopath), Johnny Ingram (a gambler who owes too much money to the loan sharks), and Burke (a former cop) plan a bank job. The structure of the movie and the book differ. In the novel, the bank job takes place about mid-way through the book. In the movie, the bank job happens almost at the end of the movie. The movie’s explosive finish isn’t in the novel. The movie starred Robert Ryan as Earl, Harry Belafonte as Johnny, and Ed Begley as Burke. Director Robert Wise chose to focus on the racial tension between Earl and Johnny. The screenplay by Abraham Polonsky and Nelson Gidding scintillates! GRADE: A-
Death of Kings is the sixth book in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon series. The series is narrated by Uhtred, the Saxon-born, Viking-raised warrior. Alfred the Great is dying and with him might die the dream of a unified England. It falls to Uhtred, an outsider, to decide whether England survives or falls into chaos. Death of Kings follows the template of the other five books: plenty of political chicanery, double-dealing, and graphic fighting scenes. I’ve enjoyed all the previous novels in this series and I enjoyed Death of Kings as well. GRADE: B+ 
Every Saturday morning in the early Seventies, I’d flip on the TV and watch Soul Train. Don Cornelius, the man with the velvet voice, hosted the shows back then. All the great soul artists, Aretha, Marvin Gay, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, James Brown, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, showed up on this program. Don Cornelius died a few days ago, but memories of Soul Train will continue to live on.
Last month I reviewed Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making where John Curran culled hundreds of fascinating facts from Christie’s notebooks to enlighten creative the process she used to create her masterpieces. In this second volume, Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making, More Stories and Secrets from Her Notebooks, John Curran focuses more on Christie’s short stories. I also found “How I Created Hercule Poirot” and “Agatha Christie’s Booklists” to be interesting. If you’re a Christie fan, this is a must-buy.
Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, a troubled writer of Young Adult novels of the Gossip Girl variety. Mavis feels an overwhelming compulsion to reconnect with her high school boyfriend, Buddy. So she drives from Minneapolis to her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota to rekindle an old flame. Along the way, Mavis meets the nerdy guy whose locker was next to her’s in high school, Matt (played brilliantly by Patton Oswalt), who she completely ignored for four years. Matt plays the Greek Chorus in this movie warning Mavis her quest will end in disaster since her old boy friend is happily married and has a new baby. Director Jason Reitman makes the most of Diablo Cody’s edgy script. Yes, there’s humor here, but it’s mostly dark and ironic. GRADE: A-
In 1982, an obscure Austrian curtain-rod manufacturer named Gaston Glock invented a new firearm. The Glock pistol featured a lightweight plastic frame and large-capacity spring-action magazine. The new pistol was adopted by the Austrian army. Timing, as they say, is everything. American law enforcement was looking for a new weapon to replace their old-fashioned Smith & Wessons. The Glock is built with only 36 parts. You could drop it in the water and it would still fire. It was reliable, accurate, lightweight, and cheaper to produce than Smith and Wesson’s revolvers. The standard semi-automatic Glock can fire as many as 17 bullets from its magazine without reloading. A Glock equipped with an extended thirty-three cartridge magazine was used to shoot Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others last year.
