Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing American Rust; CSI Vegas; Curb Your Enthusiasm; Dexter New Blood; Fauda; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hightown; His Dark Materials; Invasion; Jack Ryan; Killing Eve; La Brea; Line of Duty; Luther; Outlander; Ozark; Peaky Blinders; Raised by Wolves; Sneaky Pete; Star Trek: Discovery, Picard; Station Eleven;The Crown; The Orville; Virgin River; Westworld; You; Your Honor +books, films, music, politics

George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

The God Committee: Life, Death, and Reality

In Baltimore two weeks ago, a 57-year-old man received a genetically modified heart from a pig. So far, so good. That's not science fiction. That really happened. And for the very first time.

Which means that The God Committee, which debuted at Tribeca in June 2021, showed up later on Netflix, and I saw this evening, is not science fiction, either. Dr. Boxer, well-played by Kelsey Grammer, is working on transplanting a pig's heart into a monkey in the movie, and could well have been doing that in our reality. And to make The God Committee even more profound, that's not even the centerpiece of the story.

That would be the way that decisions are made in hospitals in transplant cases, in an an environment, our environment, in which there are an intractable paucity of vital organs suitable for transplant to desperately needy people. If we could obtain such organs from pigs, that would be a life-and-death game changer, literally. The real events two weeks ago show we're just about there, and the movie depicts a yesterday that is not quite over as yet.

And therefore the gamut of human foibles and flaws figure in the God Committee's decisions. If someone's family wants to donate millions of dollars to the hospital, will that influence at least some decisions of some of the members of the committee? Of course it will. So will other not explicitly medical factors, such as the family support the recipient will have, and the inevitable social politics and pecking order in any committee decision.

These are all brought to bear in this memorable movie. In addition to Kelsey Grammer, Julia Stiles puts in a strong, sensitive performance as a doctor and Boxer's soon to be erstwhile lover, as does Janeane Garofalo as another doctor with a keener pragmatic sense than most, and Colman Domingo (Fear the Walking Dead!) as Fr. Dunbar

I'll say no more about the plot, because I don't want to give anything away. But I will say see this almost science fiction movie and the indelible moral drama it presents. Good work by writer and director Austin Stark, from the play by Mark St. Germain.

Monday, January 24, 2022

Podcast: Arne Berggren and Kristine Berg Interviewed by Paul Levinson about Nordic Noir

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 239, in which I interview Arne Berggren and Kristine Berg about their two television series, Outlier and Catch and Release, and Nordic Noir filmmaking.

Written blog post reviews of Outlier and Catch and Release
more about The Silk Code

Check out this episode!

Ozark 4.1-7: Hold On Tight

Just binged the first half of the final (fourth) season of Ozark, some seven episodes of pure adrenalin, propelled by powerful plots with memorable characters and all kinds of stunning surprises, including deaths.

[Tell you what -- for this review, no specific spoilers, you can read ahead with confidence.]

In fact, all the ingredients that made the previous three seasons so good, including the Ozark countryside, are here in abundance. Making these seven episodes, in sum, right up there with the best of the previous seasons.

Marty, Wendy, and Ruth in all in top form. Jonah, who has been developing into a brilliant, tough-minded teenager, has his biggest role yet. Darlene, Wyatt, and Charlotte are in true, strong, form as well. The complexities of Mexican drug cartels and criminals and police of various ranks in the U. S. are given satisfying and sometimes unpredictable workouts.

Ozark is often compared to Breaking Bad. A fair enough comparison, though Breaking Bad was more of a one to two man show, and Ozark has always been more about family. For that reason, I'd also say that The Mosquito Coast, which had one season last year on Apple TV+ ,with a second coming up, is even more like Ozark, and indeed can be clearly seen as inspired by it.

The acting of all the characters in Ozark is great, with special applause for Jason Bateman as Marty, Laura Linney as Wendy, and Julia Garner as Ruth. My favorite new character is former cop now private detective Mel Sattem, given an unshakeable, moody, noir performance by Adam Rothenberg, which reminded me of some of those hardboiled detectives in the movies from the 1930s through the 1950s. The seventh episode ends with a cliffhanger as sharp as you'll find, setting up the finale episodes as immediate, must-see viewing, whenever they reach the Netflix screen.

Saturday, January 22, 2022

audiobook published of Unburning Alexandria: The Novelette

This is an audiobook of the original novelette published in 2008 in Analog Magazine, sequel to The Plot to Save Socrates novel (2006), expanded into a novel in 2013, and followed by the third novel in the Sierra Waters series, Chronica (2014).

Audiobook available wherever audiobooks are sold. Here is the link to the audiobook on Amazon.

Friday, January 21, 2022

Podcast Review of Munich: The Edge of War

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 238, in which I review Munich: The Edge of War on Netflix.

written blog post review of Munich: The Edge of War

Check out this episode!

Munich: The Edge of War: A Brilliant Tinge of Alternate History

I guess this was a perfect night to watch Munich: The Edge of War on Netflix. Russia is on the verge of invading Ukraine. The Trumpists -- including Trump himself -- have still not been brought to justice for their insurrection and attack on our Capitol last January 6. And the movie is based on the novel Munich by Robert Harris, author of the alternate-history masterpiece Fatherland, in which Germany won the Second World War. Not as much of a masterpiece as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (made into an incandescent series on Amazon), for sure, but I'd watch a movie based on a Harris novel any time.

And Munich: The Edge of War is one memorable powerhouse of a movie. As Neville Chamberlain goes to Munich to sign a deal with Hitler which gave Germany a piece of Czechoslovakia, which as we learned in school led to Chamberlain proclaiming "peace in our time" and Hitler to start gobbling up the rest of Europe less than a year later, two young diplomats, a Brit and a German, formerly classmates at Oxford, try to stop that deal from happening.

Their failure is a fact of history. Their existence, I assume, is not. What I'm not sure about is the way Chamberlain is portrayed in this brilliant film, in which he seems to really know what he's doing, deliberately delaying a hot war with Germany to give Britain and the United States crucial time to build up their forces. That's what we get for watching a movie based on a novel by an author who is so deft at writing alternate histories.

But the movie, as I just said, is brilliant, and eminently worth seeing. Historical dramas can be powerful and suspenseful even if we know the ending. As a measure of how good this movie was, I felt bad that these two central characters -- the British and German friends -- didn't really exist. That's probably because they are fiction, and where the rise of Hitler is concerned, fiction can often be better than reality -- unless we're talking about Fatherland or The Man in the High Castle.

Thursday, January 20, 2022

The Lip-Synching Scene in David Lynch's Blue Velvet as a Touchstone Transcendent Moment

David Lynch is 76 years old today -- happy birthday! That made me think about my favorite scene in all of David Lynch's great work, and, for that matter, probably in any movie I've ever scene: Dean Stockwell lip synching Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in Blue Velvet back in 1986, with Dennis Hopper doing a fine job as that deeply sick guy, who tries to join in the lip-synching, but whose demons won't allow him the succor of dreams.

That scene also represents what I think of as a nexus in popular culture, with several different careers revived and propelled in that one scene. Dean Stockwell had been a moderately important star, playing angry and sensitive young men, in the 1950s and 1960s. Lynch had begun using him in Dune in 1984, but his performance in that Blue Velvet lip synching was incandescent and brought him to everyone's attention, including the people who cast him in a co-starring role in Quantum Leap. Blue Velvet had nothing to do with science fiction, but that Roy Orbison moment would forever and anon and make Stockwell a science fiction icon.

Meanwhile, Orbison's career, which also had been flagging, suddenly skyrocketed in the next few years. His voice in The Traveling Wilburys was one of the most prominent parts of their signature sound, and made them the best supergroup ever, surpassing Crosby, Still, and Nash, the previous holders of that position, in my humble opinion. Orbison's solo 1989 "You Got It" was also at least a minor masterpiece. And here I always mention Anne Reburn (and her clones)' cover of "You Got It" as a high water mark of music video production.

Science fiction and rock music have been my life's two cultural passions. Blue Velvet the movie was neither, but it gave rebirth to careers and soaring performances in both, and made David Lynch an enduring hero well before Twin Peaks and all the rest.

The Kid in the Video Store - science fiction about the 1988

Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night concert

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Podcast Review of Ray Donovan: The Movie

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 237, in which I review Ray Donovan: The Movie on Showtime.

written blog post review of Ray Donovan: The Movie, with links to reviews of all episodes in the previous seven seasons.

Check out this episode!

Monday, January 17, 2022

Review of Grzegorz Kwiatkowski's "Crops": Slaughter and Sunlight

I don't often review poetry on this blog. The last -- and, in fact, the only -- time I did was Andrew McLuhan's Written Matter last February. But, once again, words without music, or with music entirely in the head, call.

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski's Crops is a very short book with some very deep reflections about one of the tragedies of our modern world and longer than that. Kwiatkowski is a Polish poet and musician, and this book of poetry traces his confrontation and struggle to understand the Holocaust that took so many innocent lives of Jews and others in his country.

The poems are not easy to read, and they should not be. They're replete with bones and body parts, memories and excuses for what happened, a lot more than a moment of sheer depravity that gripped the world. And all the more relevant because of what's going on in our world today.

But I wouldn't be calling your attention to these poems if there was not also some hope in this grim accounting, leaking through and glimmering through the edges. Kwiatkowski concludes one of poems with "someone has written on the nearby wall: innocent sunsets". In the context of the poem, the "innocent sunsets" are an evasion of history and responsibility. But, for me, anything that has anything to do with sunsets is also a recognition of hope for the future. I know that I always feel good when I see a sunset. And that's why, more than fifty years ago, I wrote the lyrics to Looking for Sunsets (In the Early Morning).

And, indeed, all the poetry of Crops is a plea for understanding and hence a statement of hope and an evidence of healing. If someone in Poland today can write such poems, there's hope for our humanity.

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Hear Grzegorz Kwiatkowski read some of his poetry via Zoom here.

Friday, January 14, 2022

Ray Donovan: The Movie: Just Deserts, Real and Imaginary

Well, I really enjoyed Ray Donovan: The Movie, even though I guessed the ending about halfway into the 1 hour and 41 minute film.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

What I guessed, as soon as Bridget started driving up to Boston, was that she was going to kill Mick, and Ray was going to take the rap. That was a completely logical and even satisfying development.

Meanwhile, it was good to see exactly how Mick ended up going to jail for so long, for most of his adult life. Ray framing him, not for something that Ray did, but for something someone else did, not to get that guy off the hook, but to get Mick out of his life. That puts Mick in a completely different, more sympathetic light.

It was also satisfying to see how Mick, with all of his flaws, still very much loved his son, up until the very end. That was one complex family brought to us over the seasons and in this finale movie. Bunch ended up with the best deal -- maybe a chance to set things right with Teresa and their child. Terry wound up with a very sad deal: having a big delicious dinner he prepared with an imaginary family -- his family, but all in his head.

I guess they all had luck, those who survived, by the very fact that they did survive. I have no idea what growing up in Boston was really like -- I grew up in the Bronx -- but, yeah, it sure wasn't easy for these people. It left permanent scars of the soul, and they played out over these many seasons and this powerful finale which I'm glad Showtime allowed after cutting off the last season in the wrong place.

Playhouse Presents: Snodgrass: A Disturbing and Beautiful Beatles Alternate History

My just-published Beatles alternate history story, It's Real Life, is getting some good response. Over in the Steve Hoffman Music Forums, someone (Wildest cat from Montana) recommended that I see a short 2013 movie Snodgrass -- actually a 24-minute episode of a British series of standalone dramas, Playhouse Presents, that ran from 2010-2015.

It's disturbing -- as it should be -- with its story of John Lennon alive in 1991 in Birmingham, England, on the edge of poverty, having left The Beatles in 1962 over an argument which Lennon lost about wanting to do "Love Me Do" rather than "How Do You Do It" (written by Mitch Murray, and in our reality a hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers, after George Martin decided to release "Love Me Do" for the Beatles instead of their recording of Murray's song). It's disturbing, because it's so good to see Lennon alive, replete with his sardonic outlook, even though he missed out being with The Beatles, who became only a middling band in this story (also sad).

But it's beautiful, because it also poses the question: which is better: to live a fabulously and profoundly important life, cut brutally short by assassination, or live longer in a state of perpetual sarcasm and frustration and poverty. I'd probably say the latter, because where there's life there's hope, and a chance to succeed. Without giving away the very ending of the short movie, I'd say that's what the movie is saying, too.

See it for yourself, and see what you think. I'll also say: good job by Ian Hart as the 51-year-old Lennon, and the movie is an adaptation of a story of the same name by Ian R. MacLeod, published in 1992.

alternate history story about The Beatles

Thursday, January 13, 2022

Podcast Review of Station Eleven 1.10

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 236, in which I review the finale of Station Eleven on HBO Max.

Podcast reviews of Station Eleven episodes one to three ...episodes four and five... episodes six and seven... episodes eight and nine

Written blog post review of Station Eleven 1.10

Check out this episode!

Station Eleven Finale: Hope and Plaudits

What a glorious, hopeful finale to the masterful television series known as Station Eleven. An ending so uplifting, in a story of humanity beset by a virus that kills 99% of the population, that it can serve as beacon of hope, a map to a better world, in our own world, also beset by a deadly virus, but far less lethal than the deadly flu in Station Eleven.

There were so many wonderful parts of this finale. Kirsten and Jeevan hugging near the end. If that wasn't satisfying to the soul on the deepest level, I don't know what is. Tyler aka the Prophet telling his mother to join him. Even the passing around of the book that is Station Eleven -- the illustrated book within the illustrious watercolor television series -- well, that was inspiring, too.

The performance of Hamlet was great, too, especially Tyler as Hamlet not stabbing Clark as Claudius with the knife. That knife, of course, hadn't done Tyler any real harm when Kirsten stabbed him with it, so maybe he knew that in some sense it just was a symbolic knife not a real cutting edge at all, except that it cut to the emotional core.

The music once again, in Hamlet and throughout the episode, was just superb. I've never heard a better performance of "Midnight Train to Georgia," even from Gladys Knight and the Pips. Georgia, the state that has become a symbol and a beacon, to use those words again, in our own democracy in our off-screen world.

Big plaudits to Dan Romer for the music. Accolades to the brilliant acting of Mackenzie Davis as Kirsten and Matilda Lawler as her younger self and Himesh Patel as Jeevan at all ages. In fact, every scene was boosted to admirable heights by the performances of everyone.

Station Eleven has redefined the presentation and staging of a post-apocalyptic story . It will take its place alongside of A Canticle for Leibowitz (I read the novel but haven't seen the adaption) as a standard-bearer of portraying humanity on and after the very brink. Kudos to Emily St. John Mandel for writing the novel (which I haven't yet read) on which the series is based and Patrick Somerville for bringing the series to life.

Needle in a Timestack: Find It

For some reason, I just saw something about Needle In A Timestack earlier this evening. It's been streaming on something called Amazon Instant Video -- apparently since the end of this past October -- and it costs 99 cents to see. It will be on Amazon Prime Video, presumably for free, on January 28. Now, ordinarily I'd wait the two weeks and see it on Prime Video. Readers of my reviews will know I'm a cheapskate. But, by my reckoning, not only does time wait for no one, neither does time travel, or at least time travel narratives should not be obliged to wait. That, and the fact that the movie is based on a story by Robert Silverberg (which I haven't read), a great writer whom I not only admire but know fairly well, tipped the balance.

And I'm glad it did. Needle in a Timestack is a thoughtful, high intellect movie, very much in the Philip K. Dick tradition. Time can not only be traveled through via "jaunting" (a term made famous by Alfred Bester for teleportation in The Stars My Destination back in the 1950s), but at least one person can cause "phases" in time that can change everything in big or small ways, depending upon who gets caught up in the phasing.

Into this set-up we find Nick (superbly played by Leslie Odom, Jr.) in a less than totally happy marriage, with no kids and a cat rather than the dog he feels he'd like to have as a pet. Part of his problem is he's pretty sure his wife Janine (well played by Cynthia Erivo) is still in love with her first husband and Nick's old friend Tommy (Orlando Bloom, always good to see). I'm going to abstain from spoilers here, so the only thing more I'll say about the plot is Nick via shifting and jaunting goes through a variety of realities until ... [see the movie].

I will say, though, that I always have the greatest respect for time travel stories that stick to the logic and necessities of the presented structure of time and time travel. Needle in a Timestack does that quite well. For example, if someone is caught up in a "phase" shift, there's no reason that phasee will recall elements of the first timeline not present in the second. Further, an organization that purports to be able to save memories via photos and videos from one timeline to another is bound to be not very effective, if not an outright fraud.

Another appealing aspect of this movie is the way it portrays a slightly into the future time. These backgrounds provide a nice physical context for what is also a superior love story. Given time, I'll predict that Needle in a Timestack (directed by John Ridley) will take its place along with Time Traveler's Wife as a very memorable time travel romance -- in this "phase," or any other.

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

"It's Real Life": New Alternate History Story, FREE

Here's a new story, started a while ago, finished the other day under the inspiration of Peter Jackson's splendid The Beatles: Gat Back movie. Read it for FREE, any time: "It's Real Life" -- an alternate history tale about The Beatles.

Poets, musicians, and critics are saying ...

"Just read this alternate history on the Beatles. Cool stuff. I want to check out those tunnels and find the reality where they never broke up." -- Joel McKinnon, Seldon Crisis
"'The question was, how could he get back to the world he knew?' By the power of creativity of course. This story reminded me of the short dark and a bit surreal stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I really enjoyed this story." -- Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, Trupa Trupa
"Clever and fun. Love the slide into alternity — with a deft little nod to Poe. The sense of New York comes through front and center. Love the Conrail detail. And is that a hat tip to TZ’s “Willoughby”? Why yes, I think it is." -- John McDaid

And here's a video from two years and a half years ago, where I read the very beginning of "It's Real Life" at Readercon, a science fiction convention in Braintree, MA:

And if you'd like a very inexpensive copy of this story on Kindle:

Here are my reviews of Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back

Here is a letter I wrote and had published in The Village Voice in defense of Paul McCartney back in 1971: "A Vote for McCartney"

More Freebies: stories, articles, books, music

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Podcast Review of Dexter: New Blood 1.9-10

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 235, in which I review Dexter: New Blood 1.9-10 on Showtime.

Written reviews of Dexter: New Blood 1.9 and Dexter: New Blood 1.10

Written review of episodes in all eight seasons of Dexter (the original series):

Reviews of Dexter Season 8 Premiere: Mercury in Retrograde, Dexter Incandescent ... Dexter 8.2: The Gift ... Dexter 8.3: The Question and the Confession ... Dexter 8.4: The "Lab Rat" and Harry's Daughter ... Dexter 8.5: Just Like Family ... Dexter 8.6: The Protege ... Dexter 8.7: Two Different Codes? ... Dexter 8.8: "A Great Future" ... Dexter 8.9: The Psycho Son ... Dexter 8.10: Watch Out, Buenos Aires ... Dexter 8.11: "Not the Old Dexter" ... Dexter Series Finale: Solitude, Style, and a Modicum of Hope

Reviews of Dexter Season 7.1-3: Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 7.4: The Lesson in Speltzer's Smoke ... Dexter 7.5: Terminator Isaac ... Dexter 7.6: "Breaking and Entering" ... Dexter 7.7: Shakespearean Serial Killer Story ... Dexter 7.8: Love and Its Demands ... Dexter 7.9: Two Memorable Scenes and the Ascension of Isaac ... Dexter 7.11: The "Accident" ... Dexter Season 7 Finale: The Surviving Triangle

Reviews of Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska ... Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real? .... Dexter 6.9: And Gellar Is ... ... Dexter's Take on Videogames in 6.10 ...Dexter and Debra: Dexter 6.11 ... Dexter Season 6 Finale: Through the Eyes of a Different Love

Reviews of Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ...Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain

Reviews of Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ...Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ...4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

Reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ...Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

Season 1: First Place to Dexter

Check out this episode!

Sunday, January 9, 2022

Dexter: New Blood: Finale: Superb and I Didn't Like It At All

Well, I thought the finale of Dexter: New Blood was superb and powerful, and I didn't like it at all. I'll tell you why after the spoiler warning. If you've already seen the finale, you'll know why.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Dexter was right in his thinking, made clear in the past few episodes, that Harrison needed Dexter's guidance and fathering to channel Harrison's dark passenger (which was very real and dangerous) in a way that kept Harrison from prison and worse, getting killed. Nothing that had happened in tonight's finale warranted Dexter changing his mind.

Now, it's true that if Dexter had left Iron Lake, and taken on a new identity again, that would also have left Harrison without a father. But not permanently. Dexter could have figured out a way to get back to Harrison, wherever Harrison was, sooner or later.

And with Harrison killing his father, there is no way. And what impact will killing his father have on Harrison? How will Harrison get over that? Now he not only has that dark passenger, but the guilt of killing his own father to bear, for the rest of his life.

So here's what I think Dexter should have done: run away to a new life. Not instructing Harrison to unlock the trigger of the rifle. This, in addition to being a better ending, would have made for a much better second season, if ever there is one. As it is, we'll have to be content with Dexter being the same scolding or comforting vision of Harrison's, as Deb was to Dexter this season.

But, hey, this isn't my series. I'm just a viewer and a reviewer. And this was a great series, deserving of all kinds of credit. Up to but not including the very end.