SATURATED FITZ

Coming of age finds FitzChivalry Farseer increasingly drenched in two glamorous and dangerous forms of magic.

As the trajectory of his story continues in Royal Assassin, Robin Hobb's second installment of the Farseer Trilogy (after Assassin's Apprentice), Fitz, bastard son of the old king, must learn to manage the gifts he's inherited (legitimately, or not) from his royal Farseer bloodline.

Through The Wit, publicly condemned as "Beast magic," he is so attuned to animals, he can share their thoughts, feelings, pain, and adventures.

Far more sophisticated, and potentially more treacherous is The Skill, a sort of Vulcan mind meld (but no physical contact required) by which a Skillmaster can enter the minds of friends and foes alike, flinging powerful support to allies in danger, or confusing the minds and distorting the actions of enemies.

Having failed Skill training as a youth, Fitz's powers are random and unpredictable — but increasingly potent.

The character of the mysterious Fool grows more intriguing here, as his friendship with Fitz deepens — and his cryptic prophecies become more pointed.

But the key relationship in this book is Fitz's bond with Nighteyes, a wild wolf pup he rescues from the cage of an unsavory animal vendor.

The perils of The Wit — that the human soul might be tempted to untether itself and be literally carried away by its wild bond animal — is explored from every possible angle and leads to a gripping, literally death-defying finale that will have you racing for the finish line — even as your inner reader screams that she doesn't want the book to end yet!

Like any junkie, the minute I finished this book, I groped immediately for the next injection — oops, installment — to find out what happens next. It does not disappoint.

Btw, just because I'm coming so late to this series doesn't mean that zillions of others have not already fully embraced Hobb's fabulous books. Here is one of the more interesting alternative covers I found online.

I don't know where it comes from; there was no attribution, and my knowledge of the Slavic-seeming title (Polish? Czech?) is, well, nonexistent. Anybody recognize it? But one thing seems certain: Hobb's  popularity is global!

COMEDY OF MANORS

Upbeat approach in lavish, gorgeous Downton Abbey movie

No one knows Downton Abbey better than Julian Fellowes, creator and longtime scriptwriter for the insanely popular PBS television series — unless you count the untold gazillions of rabid fans who embraced the show during its five years on the air.

As a token of thanks, Fellowes treats his fans like royalty in the movie adaptation of Downton Abbey. We're invited to join the King and Queen of England on a visit to Downton, an event of such epic pomp and ceremony, it takes a big screen to contain it all.

The faithful will adore every juicy frame of the Crawley family's cinematic adventure — the subtle rustling of every beaded gown (the year is 1927); every fashionably bobbed and waved hairdo; every pointed remark between beloved characters, both upstairs and downstairs. And beneath the narrative focus on the royals' impending visit, the busy subplots are devoted to catching up with as many familiar characters as possible.

Admit it: you watch for the clothes!

But there's also just enough storyline skipping along the movie's glittery surface to entertain the uninitiated, propelling things to a satisfying conclusion (or two), stylishly done.

Scripted by Fellowes for director Michael Engler, another Downton veteran, the movie takes a more lighthearted approach to storytelling, without so much of the angst that can be developed in the episodic TV format over time.

Maggie Smith, of course, is Fellowes' secret weapon. As Dowager Countess Violet Crawley, acerbic clan matriarch, she makes an elegant feast out of every syllable he feeds her, and while the writing is impeccable, as always, it needs Smith's imperious, pitch-perfect delivery to steal every scene she's in.

The darker complexities of all the characters' relationships can only be hinted at here, but at least Fellowes and company provide two hours of easy entertainment, with plenty to look at along the way. (Seriously, Anna Robbins' costumes alone will keep you enthralled!)
(Read more)

SPY vs SPY

As irony would have it, this week marks the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. This was the pretext the George W. Bush administration claimed for launching the U.S. war on Iraq — a pretext that soon proved to be completely erroneous.

The dogged US insistence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that put lives at risk, globally, was the only tenuous thread by which the invasion of Iraq might be legitimized on the world stage. Of course, no WMDs were ever discovered, but by then, one of the most devastating and entirely illegal wars in which U.S. troops (among many others) have ever bled and died was well underway.

All of which provides background for Official Secrets. There's nothing slick or flashy about Gavin Hood's tightly constructed and efficient suspense drama. Less a conventional thriller than what you might call an investigative procedural, it zeroes in on a few intrepid individuals facing tough moral choices when they begin to uncover the campaign of misinformation and manipulation the U.S. is using to sell the war.

Smith as reporter Martin Bright: back when the truth mattered

The movie tells the true story of Katharine Gun, an unassuming translator with Britain's information-gathering GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), whose decision to leak a sensitive memo to the press got her hauled up on charges of violating the Official Secrets Act in September, 2003.

Katharine is played with stoic determination by Keira Knightley. Although fearful of the consequences, she's so outraged at how the public is being misled in the rush to war, she stands by her actions and her principles all the way to the Queen's Bench.


Ralph Fiennes is terrific, as usual, as Katharine's lawyer, Ben Emmerson, an expert in human rights and international law. Other familiar faces doing a stand-up job are Matt Smith as Martin Bright, the reporter for The Observer who broke the story, Conleth Hill (Lord Varys from Game Of Thrones), unrecognizable as Bright’s  feisty, foul-mouthed newspaper editor, and Jack Farthing (the odious villain in Poldark) as Katharine's chipper cubicle-mate at GCHQ.

In a way, the movie almost makes one nostalgic for the Bush era, when the revelation of such bald-faced lying and corruption still had the power to incite outrage and moral courage.

Those were the days.
(Read more in this week's Good Times)

UP UP AND AWAY

You don’t see an A-List steampunk movie too often. (And sometimes you shouldn’t: The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, anyone?)

But check this out: The Aeronauts, with Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as mid-Victorian hot air balloonists!

He’s a meteorologist, she’s a balloon expert, and they boldly go where few have gone before (mainly up) with a cargo of gadgets to study the weather.

Maybe not room for a lot of action or plot twists in such confined quarters, but hey, that’s what I thought going into Gravity! This one looks like great, clockwork fun to me!

Here’s the caveat: When the promo says “Inspired by a True Adventure,” (don’t they all?), in this case it means everything IS true — this expedition actually occurred — except for the woman aeronaut played by Jones. She’s as imaginary a character as Harvey.

Redmayne’s meteorologist is a historical figure, but his real-life partner in this enterprise was pioneering male aeronaut Henry Coxwell, who saved the day, the craft, and their lives when things took a dire turn.

Revisionist or not, all could be forgiven if the movie proves to be as ripping a yarn as this trailer suggests. Director Tom Harper’s last movie, Wild Rose, had its moments.

We’ll find out in December! Stay tuned . . .