This is the second of two post-series movies, intended to be theatrical
films.

Generally, I liked it as there was a tiny bit of character development.
It's still full of annoying modern sensibilities. It's better than the
earlier post-series movie about the royal visit.

It's 1928.

It opens with a tracking shot of the wedding and reception of Tom and
Lucy. Can I just say that I've completely forgotten Lucy's story and was
clueless what her relationship to the family was. But Tom and Lucy were
essentially outsiders, so I guess marrying them off made some sense.

I despised that tracking shot, done with an electronic camera on a
drone. Today's electronic cameras can create am unpleasant keystoning
effect and can do a lousy job of creating depth of focus/shallow focus
that's pleasent to view. I'm sure there's a way to create proper depth
and shallowness of focus that's not displeasing but the drone operator
was unable to do it.

I thought it was just me, but then they used the same shot in one of the
extra features and it had the same lousy keystoning. The director
claimed he got the shot he wanted. The drone camera also seemingly went
through a stained-glass window into the church during the ceremony.

I really wanted the window to break a la Mel Brooks.

Violet (Maggie Smith) knows she's dying and is trying to wrap up her
life neatly and get in the last few games.

She's having way too much fun suggesting she had a sordid past at the
beginning of her marriage and that Robert might not be his father's son.
Scandelous!

In the end, it's revealed that she not only had she not given in, she
entirely cut off all communication with the other man, fearing that
she'd be unable to resist during a later encounter.

Nevertheless, the man left her a villa in the south of France, something
that Violet was told around the time of Robert's birth. This family is
absurdly wealthy and has houses coming out of its ears.

The villa is enormous. Robert and family are invited down because the
man's son wants to meet whom he thinks is his half brother. His mother
is bitter and resentful but her husband's non-liason with Violet
happened long before they met and she's being ridiculous. The lawyer
tells her not to sue to retain the villa as she can't claim hardship
what with all those other houses.

Violet decides to leave the villa to Sybbie, daughter of Tom and the
late sister Sybil, because Violet doesn't want the girl to end up as the
poor cousin.

I fear that the Germans are going to see to it that she doesn't keep the
villa.

Back at Downton, we get a break-the-fourth-wall bit with a silent movie
being filmed there. Robert and Mr Carson truly don't want to be there.
I'm sure this is an acknowledgement to the actual family that lives
there, forcing them to live elsewhere during production. Of course, that
production keeps the place from falling down.

In story, Mary is forced to show her father massive holes in the roof
with rain pouring into the attic. They need the money.

At no point does Mary's husband put in an appearance and I've entirely
forgotten who the hell he is.

Barrow, the butler who succeeded Mr Carson, has fallen in love with the
actor played by Guy Dexter. Dominic West is doing his mild accent; I
have no idea what he would have sounded like if he never learned
accents. He was born in England but lives full time in Hollywood.

This is of course the modern sensibilities bit. Let's not forget several
story lines during the original series in which Barrow betrayed the
family and committed crimes. Nothing about his character's evolution
rang true at any point and he should have been fired if not arrested.

At Mary's suggestion, with funding for the production pulled because the
studio has lost confidence in silent movies, it becomes a talkie, and
yes, we get the plot of Singing in the Rain. The ethereal actress Myrna
Dalgleish (Laura Haddock) cannot do the proper received English posh
accent expected of the character she's playing. Mary dubs her.

Question: I thought they were unable to mix separate audio tracks at the
time. Dominic West is shown looping his own dialogue, then Mary records
her dialogue, then they mix dialogue for the scene.

Of course what we see in the scenes of looping dialogue are dailies,
which I thought were negatives and never positives.

Later, with new scenes filmed with sound, they make a big deal that
sound effects have to be created simultaneously, Dominic West speaks his
own dialogue, the actress must remain silent, and Mary speaks her lines.

Why were they able to mix sound earlier but not later?

The actress gets a better resolution than in Singing in the Rain: The
two servants Daisy (who was a big fan of her silent movies) and Anna
recognize her as a lower-class woman who has done well for herself and
get her to stop sabotoguing the movie and in turn her future. Then Cora
(Elizabeth McGovern, the token American in the cast) tells her to learn
an American accent and movie to Hollywood, 'cuz Americans won't be able
to tell. Heh

It's been Mr. Moseley (Kevin Doyle) fixing the screenplay. The director
Jack Barber (Hugh Dancy, maybe doing his own accent?) is impressed and
offers to buy four screenplays a year from him. Molesley now feels he
can afford to keep Miss Baxter (Raquel Cassidy) in some style and
finally proposes to her over an open mike!

Cora has a medical scare but it turns out not to be cancer and her
condition is treatable. Hugh Bonneville gets to do a huge emotional
scene!

Mr. Carson is greatly saddened more than the other servants over
Violet's death. After all, he worked directly for her earliest in his
career. Mary asks him to take over temporarily from the departing Barrow
and train Andy, who makes no impression on me.

Tom and Lucy return after a year, I guess, to show off their newborn
daughter.

RichA <rander3128@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, 13 October 2022 at 18:24:30 UTC-4, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>> This is the second of two post-series movies, intended to be theatrical
>> films.
>>
>> Generally, I liked it as there was a tiny bit of character development.
>> It's still full of annoying modern sensibilities. It's better than the
>> earlier post-series movie about the royal visit.
>>
>> It's 1928.
>>
>> It opens with a tracking shot of the wedding and reception of Tom and
>> Lucy. Can I just say that I've completely forgotten Lucy's story and was
>> clueless what her relationship to the family was. But Tom and Lucy were
>> essentially outsiders, so I guess marrying them off made some sense.
>>
>> I despised that tracking shot, done with an electronic camera on a
>> drone. Today's electronic cameras can create am unpleasant keystoning
>> effect and can do a lousy job of creating depth of focus/shallow focus
>> that's pleasent to view. I'm sure there's a way to create proper depth
>> and shallowness of focus that's not displeasing but the drone operator
>> was unable to do it.
>
> Anamorphic lenses will do this, or any wide angle lens with unequal
> magnification across the field of view.
> Use of lenses to create odd effects goes back a long way. There is a
> scene in "Vanishing Point" where the
> camera zooms in but widens out that is startling.

I got an ad on my iPhone yesterday for an app that claims to be able to do
that. I say there’s no way in hell an app can do that. But I get a lot of
completely fraudulent ads anymore for apps on the iPhone.

As for the movie, it was better than the first one. Mary's husband
> was a complete bore in the first one, no charisma, which says a lot for a
> supposed race-driver.
> Most striking thing in the movie was Hugh Bonneville's weight-loss.
>

--
The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it is still on my list.