Downton Abbey: Style Ranking

By Cláudio Alves

Since its first season, Downton Abbey has been the delight of every costume drama fan. Starting in 1912 and ending in 1926, the show featured an astounding portrayal of changing styles. We all watched the characters go from Edwardian finery to the glamour of the 20s.

Every actor in the Downton Abbey movie is perfectly dressed by costume designer Anna Robbins. Sometimes the perfection is even a bit too emphatic  --no one ever looks even slightly rumpled! At the end of the day, though, this isn't a realistic view of the past but a romantic dream of a bygone era. For such nostalgic reveries, a bit of fairytale immaculateness isn't out of place. To celebrate such beauty, let's rank the Downton Abbey ladies, from worst to best dressed. For the sake of brevity and fairness, we're only looking at the upstairs crowd. It would be cruel to compare Mrs. Patmore's humble clothes to the literal crown jewels...

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Oscar History: Dame Maggie Smith

by Cláudio Alves

Younger audiences may know Dame Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall and the sharp-tongued Countess of Grantham, but, before Downton Abbey and Harry Potter, she was already a British national treasure, having won two Oscars by 1979, with four additional nominations. This awards season, with the Dowager Countess promoted to the big screen, she might return to the Academy’s good graces.

Her Downton Abbey role has already proven an awards magnet with three Emmys and a Golden Globe. Maybe its popularity will translate to movie awards? 

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Podcast: Hustlers, Ad Astra, and More...

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R

 

Index (42 minutes)
00:01 Hustlers - lots and lots of Jennifer Lopez love for you, plus thoughts on Loren Scafaria, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Constance Wu. Yes, we also talk Oscar buzz for JLo, which scenes Murtada wants to rewind again and again, and why Nathaniel was triggered.

25:00 Murtada gawks at Brad Pitty's beauty in Ad Astra while Nathaniel travels to Downton Abbey and marvels at Dame Maggie Smith's Oscar clip.

31:00 Best Supporting Actress chatter including Annette Bening in The Report

35:00 Recommendations from the New York Film Festival and which films are coming to regular theaters shortly after the festival: Pain & Glory and Parasite

40:00 Announcement: Murtada's new podcast "Sundays with Cate!" 

 You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

JLo, Brad, Dame Maggie

Downton Abbey is a hit!

[NOW UPDATED WITH ACTUALS] Box office pundits thought it would be a tight battle for the crown this weekend but it wasn't. Downton Abbey trampled all over its competition with its army of butlers, ladies & ladymaids, footmen, and visiting royals. The chart is after the jump...

Weekend Box Office Sept 20th-22nd (ACTUALS) 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = recommended
WIDE RELEASE (800+ screens)	PLATFORM TITLES
1 🔺 DOWNTON ABBEY $31 *new* ★	1  🔺 LINDA RONSTADT: SOUND... [DOC] $427k on 218 screens (cum. $1.6) REVIEW

2 🔺  AD ASTRA $19 *new* REVIEW ★	2 🔺 OFFICIAL SECRETS $249k on 482 screens (cum. $1.3) REVIEW

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Posterized: Promotions to Film for TV Casts

With Downton Abbey (2019) in theaters today and already threatening a sequel let's talk movie spin-offs of TV shows. TV shows have been adapted into feature films for as long as we can recall, but up until the 21st century it was more common for feature films to be adapted into TV shows.

Examples of TV series getting their own theatrical film outing with the original cast intact dates back to, we think, Dragnet (1954) and Batman The Movie (1966), both of which had one theatrical release during their TV runs. But it was fairly rare until recently and it has usually only happened after a television series has wrapped. A large part of this becoming more common obviously has to do with the narrowing gap between how audiences experience TV and film. On a less obvious and more theoretical level we suspect its due to the even newer cultural trend of immediate / perpetual nostalgia. It used to be that there had to be a bit of distance before the populace got collectively teary-eyed with longing but... no longer! 

Batman got a movie in the summer of 1966, even though it has just premiered on television in January of that same year.

You can now be wistful for things you experienced just the year or even a few months before and demand that they come back to you in the closest approximation possible. 

Let's look at some examples of this increasingly popular trend leading up to Downton Abbey (2019). How many of these spinoffs have you seen? The posters are after the jump...

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