'Downton Abbey: A New Era' delivers the same old mix of warmth and tears
CNN
Again facing the challenge of coming up with plots worthy of filling a movie, "Downton Abbey: A New Era" adopts a two-track approach, feeling as cozy as a brandy by the fire. Elegant, occasionally adorable and at times quite emotional, series creator Julian Fellowes still knows how to pluck the right strings -- upstairs and downstairs -- to play a symphony with his sprawling cast.
Coming three years after the first movie and six since the PBS show signed off, this "Era" finds everyone looking a little older, with even the indomitable Dowager Countess (87-year-old Maggie Smith, who really deserves an Oscar push to go with her three Emmys for the show) having lost a step, but none of her rapier wit.
After a slow-ish start, the two flourishes wind up splitting the cast spatially, while creating opportunities to bring some new faces into the mix: An unexpected windfall in the form of a French seaside villa, mysteriously bequeathed to the Dowager by a man she'd known decades earlier; and the grudging decision to let a film company shoot a movie at the grand estate, the year being 1928, as the world is making the transition from silent pictures to talkies.
The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, marking the first known US attack on a target inside that country.
The US military conducted a strike against an alleged drug-trafficking vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Monday, killing two people, according to US Southern Command.
President Donald Trump’s Monday meeting in Florida at Mar-a-Lago with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu generated plenty of warm words — but no clear progress in their peace plan for Gaza.
Rosario Olmos spent this Christmas without one of her greatest gifts. Her 19-year-old daughter, Camila Mendoza Olmos, had gone missing the day before just outside San Antonio, Texas.
On a day meant for family and rest, a father’s holiday joy turned to fear in Texas when his 15-year-old daughter didn’t come back from walking her dog, authorities said.
The United States on Monday announced a $2 billion pledge for UN humanitarian aid as President Donald Trump’s administration continues to slash US foreign assistance and warns United Nations agencies to “adapt, shrink or die” in a time of new financial realities.
President Donald Trump said the United States had taken out a “big facility” last week as part of a pressure campaign against Venezuela but did not provide further details on the reported US action.
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In the year 1998 – when Bill Clinton was president, most households still had landline phones, and CNN’s website looked like this – Gallup and USA Today called up 1,055 Americans on those landlines and asked them for their best predictions about a year in the distant future: 2025.
Repeatedly this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flown to the United States to praise President Donald Trump as Israel’s greatest champion — and to quietly press him on taking more aggressive action against Israel’s enemies.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has a remarkable record of transforming his old dissenting opinions into the new majority view and setting the direction of the law in America.
(CNN) — One person was killed and another was left critically injured after two helicopters crashed in southern New Jersey on Sunday, officials said.
Pipe bomb suspect told FBI he targeted US political parties because they were ‘in charge,’ memo says
The man accused of placing two pipe bombs in Washington, DC, on the eve of the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol told investigators after his arrest that he believed someone needed to “speak up” for people who believed the 2020 election was stolen and that he wanted to target the country’s political parties because they were “in charge,” prosecutors said Sunday.