Parade's End Trailer (HBO MiniSeries - 2013)

If you didn't get enough of Downton Abbey, HBO has a miniseries out now, Parade's End.  The same era as Downton, it has some of my favorite English actors.  Anne Marie Duff, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rufus Sewel - they just don't get any better.  I have followed Anne Marie Duff since she acted as Queen Elizabeth I with Tom Hardy in The Consort - The Virgin Queen. It is one of my favorite movies.  Rufus Sewell was in The Pillars of The Earth and Benedict Cumberbatch is in just about everything of late.

Beautifully filmed with sumptuous locales and interiors; it has it all.

Downton Abbey Blues

This Sunday is the last installment of season 3 of Downton Abbey.  Not only have I been watching this season, but I have also been catching up on seasons 1 and 2, though not in order. It has been all Downton since January. I am going to go through withdrawals.  Let's hope they don't take too long to put out season 4.  I am such a fan.

Birds Of A Feather

Blame it on Marie Antoinette.  When the vain queen wore feathers in her hat, one woman's whim became a trend that lasted more than a century and practically decimated avian populations.  According to a 1913 study by the director of the New York Zoological Park; in 1911, the feathers of 129,186 egrets, 13,598 herons, 20,698 birds of paradise, 41,090 hummingbirds, 9,464 eagles, condors and other birds of prey, and 9,472 other birds were sold at auction in London for the millinery trade.  And that's 11 years after the first American animal protection law -  the Lacey Act of 1900 - was passed.  And, those numbers were for one year.  Unimaginable.

For those of you that watch the wonderful Downton Abbey, you'll notice the feathered hats worn by the manor born.