Killing Eve Season 3 Finale: Cold Turkey

In a show like Killing Eve, cold turkey could mean a lot of things.  But especially in this third season, it's meant two things: leaving the killing/spying business; Eve and Villanelle leaving the fatal attraction they have for each other.

Obviously, for the show to go on, at least in the way it's been going, neither can happen.  So, what keeps the show attractive and provocative, is the way in which neither kind of cold turkey happens.

Villanelle has been saying all season she wants to stop doing the hands-on killing.  As good as she still is, this is like Mickey Mantle or Whitey Ford hanging it up in the middle of their incandescent careers (right, I'm a New York Yankees fan).  But no one, no one wants to accommodate her.  Not Dasha, never Konstantin. and, tonight, apparently not even Carolyn, either, who refuses to hire Villanelle as a spy for MI6, after she offered her that job, unless Villanelle were willing to kill for Carolyn.

As for Eve, it's not entirely clear what exactly she wants.  She already effectively left MI6, and came back only to find Kenny's killer.   Given the beyond complex feelings that Carolyn has about her son's death, finding his killer and working for Carolyn was bound to be an impossible combination.   And, indeed, Carolyn's feelings are so complex that even I can't completely understand them.  Yeah, the 12 were responsible for Kenny's death, but Carolyn's attitude about them is even more inscrutable than her feelings for Kenny.

But clearly, Eve and Villanelle do very much want each other.  The very existence of each has come to give the other's existence meaning.   So when, at Villannelle's suggestion, they turned their backs on each and started walking away, we all of course knew they wouldn't get very far at all on that bridge, which they didn't.

Hey, I have a suggestion for the ending of the series: Eve and Villanelle both die at the same time.  That would be a happy ending for their affair, since neither would have to go cold turkey and leave the other.

See you back here, I guess next year, when the next season is on.

See also Killing Eve 3.1: Whew! ... Killing Eve 3.2: Bringing It Into Focus ... Killing Eve 3.3: The Third Time's the Charm ... Killing Eve 3.4: Tip Toe Through the Tulips ... Killing Eve 3.5: The Darkness ... Killing Eve 3.6: Wounded ... Killing Eve 3.7: The Omelet

And see also Killing Eve 2.1: Libido and Thanatos ... Killing Eve 2.2: Villanelle as Victim ... Killing Eve 2.3 Lipstick ... Killing Eve 2.6: Billie ... Killing Eve 2.7: Death and Sex ... Killing Eve Season 2 Finale: Possibilities After the End

And see also Killing Eve: Highly Recommended (Season 1)

Hightown 1.3: Dirty Laundy

Another standout episode of Hightown - 1.3 - in which dirty laundry figures prominently.  Not the Don Henley song (which is also excellent), but Krista's suitcase, filled with it, which Jackie and a reluctant Junior retrieve.

This first leads to Jackie telling Junior not to call them "panties" - she prefers "underwear" (my wife agrees with Jackie, I'm with Junior) - and then to a silver lining discovered by Jackie in the suitcase, a list that leads her to some connection Krista has, or business she was doing, in Wareham, just off-Cape.

We pass by Wareham - that is, my wife and I - every time we drive up to the Cape, and never knew it could play a role in Jackie getting to the bottom of Sherry Henry's murder.   And, actually, so far, at this point, she's making better progress than Ray, who is progressing only with sleeping with Frankie's wife Renee, and only because Frankie asked her aka ordered her to do.  The only hope for Ray, if this keeps going this way, is that Renee falls in love with him and tells him what's really going on.  That's possible, but not very likely, because Renee has to be very afraid of Frankie, not to mention Renee needing above all else to protect her little boy.

It's a suitably tense, frightening situation that never lets up, and is always on the verge of getting much worse when Osito is on the scene.   There's something about him that's genuinely unsettling, which means that Atkins Estimond who plays the role, and I've never seen him before, deserves a lot of credit for a fine performance.  If he keeps this up, he could enter the pantheon of memorable villains.

As I said after seeing the debut episode, Hightown is way at the top of new cop shows, and thus aptly named, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Hightown 1.1: Top-Notch Saltwater and Characters ... Hightown 1.2: Sludge and Sun

Spaceship Earth: The Misunderstood Success

I don't often watch documentaries, and review them even less often, but Spaceship Earth is an exception, because it tells at least two highly significant stories: (1) the attempt to construct a totally self-contained environment or biosphere (Biosphere 2) on Earth, with human inhabitants, as a template for what could be sent out to our solar system and beyond in the future; and (2) the media misreporting of what Biosphere 2 accomplished.

The truth is that Biosphere 2 was unable to maintain total self-sufficiency.  At seventeen months into its two year 1991-1993 mission, oxygen was imported from the outside into the biosphere to combat the sharp reduction in oxygen from 20.9 to 14.2 percent of the biosphere atmosphere.  Obviously, this is not something that could have been done in the middle of a mission to Mars or anyplace off the Earth.  But the media were wrong to report this as evidence that the Biosphere 2 mission failed, or was some kind of publicity stunt rather than a scientific experience.  Apparently no one in the media read British philosopher Karl R. Popper (for example, The Logic of Scientific Discovery), and his widely accepted view that mistakes are the way that science learns and progresses.

The Hulu documentary, named after Buckminster Fuller's apt characterization of our planet as "spaceship Earth," does a fairly good job of reporting and assessing the above, relying on extensive current and historical in-situ interviews with most of the central players in the Biosphere project, including the Biosphereans themselves.   I know at least two people who provided support for Biosphere 2, Carl N. Hodges, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona, who was not in the documentary, and Kathy Dyhr, Director of Public Affairs for Biosphere 2, who had a major role in the documentary.   I had long and riveting conversations with each of them in the mid-1980s, when Biosphere 2 was under planning and construction, and both were students at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute pioneering online education program, where I was a faculty member and was first introduced to online education, which gave me the idea for Connected Education and which has become so important during our current Coronaviris pandemic.  These conversations, as well as my knowledge of how science works, and plain common sense, are what led me to conclude that the media assessment of Biosphere 2 was so wrong.

But why, then, did the media jump on the bandwagon of Biosphere 2 failure?  The documentary provides one of the two answers.  Steve Bannon - yes, that Steve Bannon - was brought in by financer Ed Bass to run the Biosphere managing company (Space Biosphere Ventures).  Apparently Bannon sought to make a name for himself by publicly and repeated denouncing the project (including destroying some of the crucially valuable data it had collected, according to the documentary).

The second reason is more endemic and intrinsic to the media and to us, its public.  As Phil Ochs pointed out so well in his song "The Crucifixion" (1966), we love to tear down, or see torn down, that which we have built up for adulation.  The idea that we could build here on Earth a habitat which with proper propulsion could take us to the stars was heady, intoxicating stuff.  When it failed to achieve that goal in at least one critically important way, the disappointment that resulted was enough for the media and many viewers to discard the entire project as an ambitious entertainment gambit that flopped.

But facts are stubborn things, and I expect the documentary to continue to bring the truth of Biosphere 2 out to the world and the future, which is that it was an important and major first step that taught us a lot about how we can get beyond this planet to the cosmo beyond.

Angel Has Fallen: Great Performances and Resemblances

So we saw Angel Has Fallen (2019) on Netflix last night.  It's the third in the "Fallen" series - Olympus Has Fallen (2013), London Has Fallen (2016) - a nonstop adrenalin saga of Agent Mike Banning overcoming traitors and what seems like hundreds of armed commandos against him to save the U. S. President, now Allan Trumbull, played by Morgan Freeman, who has moved up from Speaker of the House, to Vice President, to now President in the trilogy.  I enjoyed the first two movies a lot, but didn't review them, for who knows why.

What I liked most about Angel Has Fallen is Nick Nolte, who puts in an appearance as Clay Banning, Mike's father, a hermit with munitions savvy whom Mike aptly characterizes as one step away from the Unabomber.   But Clay plays a crucial strategic role in this story, and I'm maybe only slightly exaggerating when I say this may be Nolte's best performance and part since Rich Man, Poor Man in 1976, though I truthfully can't think of another movie or television series in which Nolte was so surprisingly effective.

Also notable in this movie is Danny Huston, who has been one my favorite villains since his Ben Diamond in the all-too brief Magic City TV series (2012-2013).  He projects a combination of intelligence, moral structure that allows him to do great evil, with an underlying adherence nonetheless to some kind of code with some trace of, if not integrity at least its style, that makes him the ideal ultimate antagonist for Mike Banning.

Freeman as Trumbull of course makes an angel to devil comparison of what's now in the White House in our off-screen reality, but there was an eerie suggestion of Trump nonetheless in Trumbull's Vice President, played by Tim Blake Nelson, who reminded me of current U. S. Secretary Steven Mnuchin.   Check out the photos below if you think I'm crazy:

Steven Mnuchin

Outer Banks: Top Notch Waves and Intrigue

As I mentioned in my review a couple of weeks ago of the first episode of Hightown, I'm always up for a TV series or movie that takes place in a sea town on the East Coast of the United States.  But with the lockdown keeping me and family from going up to Cape Cod, it's especially good to see those Atlantic waves splashing around a narrative.

So, I would've likely liked Outer Banks, which takes place on the string of islands off the North Carolina coast, in any case.  But by the time the 10-episode first season of the series concluded on Netflix, which my wife and I binged the past two nights, I found myself riveted to the screen and loving it.

Outer Banks actually starts off just ok, not great, a mildly diverting story of teenage shenanigans, rivalries, and romance on one of those islands.  But there's a dark undercurrent from the beginning - the father of one the lead players, John B, has been missing for months - which soon turns into a powerful story of parent-child relationships and edge-of-your-seat pursuit of lost treasure with all manner of plausible, sharply focused heroes and villains.

The acting was also surprisingly excellent - surprising, because I didn't know most of the actors.  I did know and liked Charles Esten from Nashville, and he brings to Outer Banks an unexpected range.  Chase Stokes was excellent as John B, as was Madelyn Cline as his girlfriend Sarah.  The two were very impressive in portraying a relationship that progressed from dissing to flirting to running for their lives.  The supporting cast was also top-notch, with especially notable performances by Jonathan Daviss, Rudy Pankow, and Madison Bailey.  But everyone in this vibrant cast made an impression on me, and I'll be looking for them from now on when I coast through Netflix and Prime Video.

I won't say anything more about the plot - because I don't want to give anything away - except that you can always distinguish a well-written narrative from the others in that surprises in the well-written narrative seem thoroughly plausible when you think of them in retrospect.  Outer Banks has a lot of large and small moving pieces, which are brought together perfectly in the end.  Hey, it's not as good as jumping in the cool waves off Cape Cod Bay, but I'll take it.

Uncut Gems: Drama at the Speed of Light

I realized years ago when I saw Milton Berle in a serious dramatic role - I think in The Oscar in the 1960s - that, contrary to what you might think, comedians can make excellent dramatic actors.  Robin Williams confirmed this decades later, with a vengeance, in Insomnia.

Adam Sandler plays a serious role in Uncut Gems so frenetic that's it's almost beyond serious.  But it's certainly not comedic. at least for the most part.  Howard Ratner's a jeweler and a gambler, with a keen sense of both.  But he moves so quickly that he's almost always out on a limb, in danger of being beaten or worse, and this applies to his personal as well as professional life.

His main adversary is his brother-in-law, played by Eric Bogosian, who is dead serious as Arno, and moves at a tenth of Sandler's speed, all of the time.  Julia Fox puts in a good, even lovable performance as Howard's girlfriend Julia, and Idina Menzel has the perfect face and expressions for Howard's cheated-on wife.   There's a great seder scene, and I'm always a sucker for Yiddishkite.

Back to Howard, the thing is that he knows what he's doing, as a jeweler as well as a gambler.  He has almost limitless confidence, however, and although it's often borne out, it also leads him to make difficult and dangerous bets.   The formula leads Howard to near misses with fortune and death, and a face that looks increasingly like a punching bag.

But basketball not boxing is the sport in this fast-paced movie, and it all builds up to a crucial, complex, multi-faceted bet on a basketball game.

You can bet on it yourself if you like, but you'll never guess how the movie ends.

Joker: Fantasy and Canon

Checking in with a late review of Joker (2019), which the wife and I saw on HBO last night.

Let me stipulate several things:

• Joaquin Phoenix was brilliant, inspired, incandescent, whatever superlatives you can find, in the title role.  He eminently deserved the Oscar he won for that.
• I know a middling amount of Batman canon, but am no expert.
• I thought the movie held together very well as movie, which means I disagree with, for example, the inanely critical review in the New York Times, as I often do.

I do have question about the ending, though.  And the fact that I have questions makes me think that maybe the movie would have been better ending before this ending.

Arthur Fleck, having actualized his impulses and become the Joker, is seen talking to his state-appointed shrink or social worker, but in a less dingy setting than at the beginning of the movie.  One explanation of this scene, which I'd like to think is correct, is that Fleck, after escaping the cops in what I was wish was the closing scene, is nonetheless apprehended at some time in the future, and is now in some kind of penitentiary serving a life sentence for his crimes (or is he maybe on death row?).

But there's an alternate explanation (which my wife wondered about, and now I'm thinking about it too).  We already saw, in the movie, that Fleck imagined making love and all the good things he did with his neighbor down the hall, Sophie.  This establishes that Fleck's fantasies played a major part in the narrative we see on the screen.  Is it possible that everything else we saw in the movie - Fleck's killing of De Niro's Murray Franklin (who, to me, is just as much Joe Franklin - believe it or not, I was once on his show, talking about my album, Twice Upon A Rhyme - as Murray is Johnny Carson), etc - were also just in Fleck's mind?   Or, at least more of the major sequences than just Sophie as girlfriend?

In at least one Batman movie, if memory serves, the Joker kills Bruce Wayne's parents.  In Joker, one of the myriad angry people with a clown face does the deed.   This suggests that Fleck did not make all of this up - another clown killing Bruce Wayne's parents is consistent with the historical Batman canon of his parents being killed.

In any case, I rate this movie as maybe a masterpiece, and, the more I think about it, the more I think that's right.

Snowpiercer 1.2: Freezing Prospects

So, the second episode of Snowpiercer - 1.2 - didn't pierce too many veils, snowy of otherwise.

We learned that

• the administration is a cruel bunch, freezing off a tailee's arm (but we already knew they were cruel) by sticking it out of the speeding train into the freezing cold
• Andre and his former wife are still good in bed together (of course they are)
• thawing someone out of the cryogenic drawings is no quick or easy process

But on that last point, I do find those drawers worthy of more unpacking.  It's interesting that, in a frozen world, the people on the train use freezing to take people found guilty of murder out of circulation.   I wonder if there are cryogenic drawers anywhere on frozen Earth outside of the train?  Hey, it's apparently so cold out there that you might not need any special cryogenic process to freeze anyone.   Maybe there are hundreds, thousands, even millions of people unintentionally cryogenically frozen, or frozen by nature not technology.

Also, this may have been explained and I missed it, but why don't they just execute someone found guilty of murder, rather than freezing them.  Were there some doubts about the condemned?  We already know how brutal the administration is, and it must cost plenty of energy to keep someone cryogenically frozen.

And, while we're on the subject of cryogenics, why not just freeze a whole bunch of people and send them on a ship to Alpha Centauri?  Better than dying here on Earth, right?  And better than a train. Well, maybe there wasn't time for a space launch, but surely the snowpiercer took some time to put together.

Looking forward to seeing how some if any of these frozen prospects pan or thaw out in the weeks ahead.

See also Snowpiercer 1: Promising Hybrid

first starship to Alpha Centauri, with just enough fuel to get there

Killing Eve 3.7: The Omelet

My favorite scene in Killing Eve 3.7 tonight was the omelet near the beginning - more specifically, the way Carilyn uses the omelet as a token of her approval or not, withdrawing it from Mo, then giving it to Eve, then withdrawing it from Eve, because she's so obsessed with Villanelle.  And the omelet is spoken of again, in close to Mo's last words, before he is killed.  The symbolism is good.  The writers/directors/producers of whoever came up with it have no eggs on their faces.

The killing of Villanelle's handler might have been my favorite scene, except she wasn't quite killed, and, sure enough, turns up later alive if not well in a hospital bed.  Right next to Konstantin, who also could have died of a heart attack on the train station, but didn't.  Make that a semi-major and a very major character who are villainous and could have died in this episode, almost died, but didn't.  And who does die?  Mo, who was a good guy, if not a major player.

Indeed, the only reason to kill Mo is that it's more reason to unhinge Carolyn, after what happened to Kenny.  And she more or less takes it in stride, upset, for sure, but only breaking some valuable vases or whatever they were to express her inner anguish after prodded by her daughter.   If the killings of Kenny and Mo were both for the purposes of testing Carolyn's cool, that strikes me as too high a price to pay.  On the other hand, wasn't it V. I. Lenin who said that if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs?  Yeah, but I guess that's a metaphorical omelet.

And next week is the season finale.  Eve and Villanelle tonight were like ships passing in the night, once again, or ships passing on the train, or trains passing in the night, or strangers in the night, to quote Sinatra.  I have a feeling, the way this season is going, that not much more will be resolved between them in the finale.  But I do think that the brunette who killed poor Mo will play a role, or maybe a roll, if another omelet is involved.

See also Killing Eve 3.1: Whew! ... Killing Eve 3.2: Bringing It Into Focus ... Killing Eve 3.3: The Third Time's the Charm ... Killing Eve 3.4: Tip Toe Through the Tulips ... Killing Eve 3.5: The Darkness ... Killing Eve 3.6: Wounded

And see also Killing Eve 2.1: Libido and Thanatos ... Killing Eve 2.2: Villanelle as Victim ... Killing Eve 2.3 Lipstick ... Killing Eve 2.6: Billie ... Killing Eve 2.7: Death and Sex ... Killing Eve Season 2 Finale: Possibilities After the End

And see also Killing Eve: Highly Recommended (Season 1)

Hightown 1.2: Sludge and Sun

What's becoming even more clear in Hightown 1.2 is how vulnerable, flawed, anti-heroic, take your pick, the two main heroes, Jackie and Ray, are.   This makes the story more realistic, more intriguing, as appealing in its narrative as in its Cape Cod locale.

Jackie gets into a fight in rehab, because she can't resist an attractive patient that another patient had her eye on.  Fortunately, she's able to leave, but that leaves her less likely to resist drinking, which she nonetheless manages to resist.  And she manages to get to Barnstable to pursue a lead in the murder case.

Ray doesn't yet know that Jackie is working on this, and he has problems of his own.  He's falling for Renee, masturbating as he listens to her and Frankie, unable to resist walking into her club, while she's working, until he sees that Osito is there, too.  When he later confronts Renee about that, she realizes he was spying on her, and of course is none too happy with that.  The course of true lust never did run smooth, and there may be something deeper than lust in their feelings.

The important thing for both Jackie and Ray - what'll help them keep their heads above water - is making progress on the murder.  But their adversaries on the Cape, as beautiful as it is, are a nasty, ugly bunch.   Osito seems always on the verge of killing someone.  And his boss Frankie is one tough operator. 

Junior is right in the middle of these flawed good guys and unremitting bad guys.  He dumped Sherry's body but wants out of that work.  He's a more reformed alcoholic than Jackie.  But he's still under Frankie's thumb, and it's tough to say what he'll do if Frankie insists that Junior do something worse than unsavory.

All of which adds up to a cop show knee-deep in sludge with the bright sun above.

See also Hightown 1.1: Top-Notch Saltwater and Characters

My Amazingcon Schedule

100% virtual, online ... attendance is FREE! ,,, but you need to Register here

June 13, Saturday, 2pm
PANEL: ST: PICARD. DID AN SF AWARD WINNING AUTHOR AS SHOWRUNNER MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
Michael Chabon, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, ran the show for Star Trek: Picard.  Join the panel as they discuss whether or not having an insider behind the wheel made a science-fictional difference.
With Dave Creek, Paul Levinson & Erin Wilcox

June 13, Saturday, 6pm
PAUL LEVINSON IN CONCERT
Author, songwriter & singer, Professor Paul performs live from his recently released album, Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time, and his 1972 album, Twice Upon A Rhyme

June 14, Sunday, 10am
PANEL: WORLD BUILDING 101 SESSION C
World building is a fundamental skill for science fiction, fantasy and horror writers.  Listen in as world builders discuss their tricks and techniques.
With James Cambias, Paul Levinson, Rosemary Claire Smith & T.B. Jeremiah

June 14, Sunday, 12noon
READING: PAUL LEVINSON & BUD SPARHAWK
Paul Levinson will read from Robinson Calculator, followed by Q&A


full schedule & free registration here

Homecoming 2: The Perils of Forgetting

Just saw Homecoming 2 on Amazon Prime Video, and I wanted to review it before I forgot what I just saw.

Sorry, couldn't resist, but Homecoming 2 is even more about forgetting than was Homecoming 1.  It features Alex, who wakes up at the very start of the narrative not knowing who she is, and Walter, back from Season 1, sans Julia Roberts' character, still wanting to know who he is, i.e., what he forgot.

The cause of all of this amnesia is some kind of juice from a plant grown on the Geist farm.  When used as cream, it's almost miraculous in helping the skin heal.  When taken internally, either by food or drink, it makes you forget.

Just how long your mind is lost is not clear.  It could be forever.  It certainly is long enough that Alex does not stop her lover and partner Audrey from drinking the red drink with the drug, after Walter and Geist have spiked everyone's punch at the big party.   Alex not only has lost her intellectual memory of the woman she loved, she's lost that lovin' feeling.  I missed hearing the Righteous Brothers sing that great song, with that masterful Phil Spector production, in background.   (But here is it now, if you'd like to hear it.)

Since no such plant with those effects exist, Homecoming, especially this season, is almost as much science fiction as it is thriller, which is always fine with me.  Of course, it's not impossible that I at some point in my life consumed such berry juice, and I've forgotten not only that I consumed it, but such a juice even exists.  Hey, after sheltering in place at home for more than two months, almost nothing would surprise me.

Excellent acting in this second season, even though I missed Julia Roberts.  Stephan James was just superb as Walter, able to modulate from sweet to angry in an heartbeat.  Janelle Monáe was also excellent in the dual role of Alex before and after she lost her memories.   And Chris Cooper was perfect as Geist.

I've always liked narratives about memory - so much so that I wrote The Consciousness Plague - and Homecoming 2 is a most worthy addition to the genre.

See also Homecoming 1: Memory Spliced, in Ten Short Parts

Review of Brett Petersen’s The Parasite from Proto Space & Other Stories: The 2020 Anthology from Before the Golden Age

Kindle and paperback


Brett Petersen’s The Parasite from Proto Space & Other Stories has been compared to the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, and Charles Bukowski, among others. Suppose I told you that I not only agreed, but added Frank Herbert, Sam Delany, and Olaf Stapledon to that lustrous list, and added them after reading just the first two stories in Petersen’s anthology. In the words of Ringo, would you stand up and walk out on me? If you did, that would be your loss.

Because Peterson’s stream-of-consciousness, metaphor-of-metaphor prose hits all of that at times, and sometimes more. The 2020 anthology feels like it was written sometime in the 1930s to the early 1950s, that is, before the height of the Golden Age of Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke, even though its stories were written just a few years ago. The parasite in the title story is what used to be called, before and during the Golden Age, a bug-eyed-monster, except this BEM offers observations such as, “He turned the doorknob, which felt like one of Frosty the Snowman’s testicles.” Ok, there’s no way that could have been published in the 1930s. But that’s what makes The Parasite so strikingly original. It feels as if was written almost a hundred years ago, when Hugo Gernsback was riding high, but its attitudes and language smack your ... face with today.

Other stories feature worms from another dimension that eat our memories (not computer worms eating computer memories); a sentient goat, eppes (my word, Yiddish, tough to translate), that also gets hijacked to another dimension, apparently connected in some way to the one with the memory-eating worms; and— well, I’m not going capsule-summarize every story in this gonzo book.

Nor do I love every tale in this anthology. There’s a dark neo-pre-cyberpunk ambience coursing through the stories, sometimes too dark for my usually sunny taste. A father tells his son, “it won’t always be like this” (so good), and that proves true with an ugly vengeance. I prefer a little more hope. Another story features a murderous building, but its inherent black humor—the tenants “yank their window shades down like a skirt blown up by an undercurrent from a sewer grate”—is overwhelmed by the grim. The truth is that there is just one story with an unambiguously happy ending in this anthology, a space-faring tale in which an unlikely hero stops an extra-terrestrial construction from shattering “every preconceived notion we had about the universe” and then humanity. And perhaps one more with an uplifting ending, if an afterlife story can really be happy. I would have preferred more than one and a half of these happy-ish endings.

But be that as It may, Petersen’s way with words is superb, his dark imagination boundless, his eye for detail and logic in fleshing out these paranoid visions keen and impressive. If this sounds like your cup of dark tea, pick it up.

Snowpiercer 1.1: Promising Hybrid

With the summer heat approaching, it's always good to see a show about the cold.  Even better, in this time of Coronavirus lock down, a series in which some of the people are crowded together, and one character even yearns "to be alone for one hour," is very welcome.

But does Snowpiercer, a series about what's left of humanity on a frozen Earth hurtling around the world on a huge, myriad-car train, have what it takes aside from the summer and COVID-19?  Based on the first episode (I haven't seen the 2013 movie or read the graphic novel on which the movie and hence the series is based), I'd say: Yes!

And that's not because of the science fiction, at least thus far, which is pretty standard and thin, for a dystopian thriller: a bit of suspended animation, cars that grow lush food, and the train itself.  But Snowpiercer has promise in the detective part of its story: a "tailee" (people who weren't invited onto the train, got on by jumping on, and are kept in the back) who was a homicide detective before the Earth grew cold, called upon by the people in charge on the train to solve a murder.

In other words, the post-apocalyptic train could be a real winner, not because of the train itself, but because of the great backdrop the train provides for a murder story.  I've always been a big fan of science fiction/detective hybrids - Isaac Asimov's robot detective stories, John Stith's "Nick Naught" detective stories - which inspired me to write my own blend of the genres in The Chronology Protection Case, The Silk Code, and other stories.

So, I'm up for watching and reviewing the rest of Snowpiercer, especially after the big twist at the end of the first episode.  I'll see you back here in a few days, after the second episode airs on TNT.

Extraction: The Perfectly Ambiguous Ending and the Determining Quote

Hey, if you're up for an adrenalin rush and almost two hours of fast-paced machine-gunning action, you can't do better than Extraction on Netflix.  [spoilers follow]

Though, actually, Extraction is more than that.  It's a story of how a Rambo and the boy he's attempting to rescue against all odds form a real bond in the interstices of the non-stop action.  It's a story of betrayals and loyalties and just and unjust deserts.  A tale of irrepressible human emotion amidst all the bullets and blades.

But that's not what makes Extraction exceptional, and what I liked best about this movie.  It's the very ending.  We see Tyler, having just about brought Ovi to safety, get shot in the neck, and either fall or let himself fall off a bridge into the deep river below.   We see nothing, no one, rise up to the surface.  But eight months later, Ovi jumps into a pool, sits at the bottom, and swims back up to the surface.  He and we see a figure standing on the side of the pool.  It's not clear what Ovid sees.  But we the audience see a blurry figure who could be Tyler.   So the question is: Did Tyler really survive?  Or is what we are seeing just Ovi's imagination?  A perfectly ambiguous ending.

But where's what I think, and why.  Earlier in the movie, Ovi gives Tyler some advice.  "You know, you drown not by falling into a river.  But by staying submerged in it".  It's a quote from a book Ovi read in school.  And my guess is that's exactly what Tyler did when he jumped, badly wounded, off the bridge into the water below.  He fell into the river, but summoned all his strength to not stay submerged in it.  Why would the writer (Ande Parks), director (Sam Hargrave), or whoever it was, put this in the movie if not to provide this clue.

There's word that there will be a sequel, or maybe a prequel.  The filmmakers of course can go whichever way they choose.  But I think that in their hearts they know that Tyler survived.

Decades Apart: Worth Keeping Close

I thought I'd resume reviewing one of the hidden little treasures of Amazon Prime Video: literally little, as short to very short, time-travel movies.

Decades Apart is a little under 20-minutes.  The 2018 short tells the story a phone call made by Diane in 1953 that unintentionally reaches Nathan in 2018.  A tender, charming, understandably awkward conversation ensues, and that's the movie.  Well, there's a little more.  When Diane runs out of coins to feed the telephone in the train station that has long been abandoned in 2018, Nathan rushes to what's left of the station to see her.  I won't tell you how that works out.

The strength of the movie is that tender, even touching, conversation, and the two cellos (by 2Cellos) that provide musical accompaniment.   Deborah Hahn is fine as Diane, and Martin Tylicki as Nathan. The telephone as an extra-sensory, even extra-dimensional instrument is something that goes back to the beginning of the 20th-century, and figured in music and postcards.  That was the part of Decades Apart that I liked best.

But there are let's call them temporal clunkers in the dialogue.  Diane protests that she's not a "telemarketer".  That term didn't come into common use until the 1970s.   The two talk about "landlines".  That term didn't come until use until the 1980s and later, when mobile phones began to become massively popular.

But I still found this little movie worth watching.  Kudos to director Andrew Di Pardo, and writers Andrew Di Pardo and Gilbert T. Laberge.  I look forward to seeing more of their work.

 

Seberg: The Long Arc

Donald Trump almost daily attacks the FBI as criminal lowlives.  Ironically, back in the late 1960s, when the FBI was still under the racist J. Edgar Hoover's control, those Trumpian ravings were not untrue.

Seberg tells one of those true and outrageous stories.  Jean Seberg, a beautiful, young, blonde American actress wanted to do more than just act.  She wanted to really do some good in the world.  Her way of doing that was to give money and support to the Black Panther Party. That in itself would have infuriated Hoover's FBI.  But when she slept with a black activist, that really drove many in the FBI out of their minds and what little integrity they may have had.  They surveilled and hounded Seberg to the point where she attempted suicide.

Seberg tells that story, with the converging counterpoint of Jack, the one FBI man with a conscience. He reluctantly goes along with the increasing persecution of Jean Seberg until, eventually, after her unsuccessful attempt to take her life, and his wife's encouragement of his ethics, he can't persecute her any longer.  I have no idea if his character is based on a real character, a composite of people, or totally made up.  That's the way it is with docu-dranas.  But whatever his resemblance to the truth, Jack makes for a powerful dramatic character.

And Kristen Stewart, best known for her work in the Twilight movies, does an excellent job as Seberg, conveying the combination of resolute social decency and vulnerability to those who wanted to bring her down, that made her life both eminently worthwhile and so painfully difficult to continue.  If there's any consolation in her story, if that we've become at least a somewhat more just society over the years.

But we're by no means there yet, and, pending the results of the election this coming November, we may have a longer way to go than most people would have predicted just a few years ago.

 

The Goldfinch: The Burden of Immortality

My wife and I saw trailers for The Goldfinch in those bygone pre-Coronavirus days last Spring, when we went out to the movies.  But we didn't get a chance to see it in the Fall.  It therefore was a real pleasure to finally see it on Amazon Prime Video last night.  The movie is a tour-de-force, even a masterpiece, about the intersection of timeless art and the vicissitudes of human life.  "The Goldfinch" is a real Dutch Golden Age painting by Carel Fabritius, a student of Rembrandt's. The movie is based on a real novel by Donna Tartt about a series of fictitious events surrounding the painting, which I haven't read.

The narrative begins when a terrorist's bomb kills young Theodore Decker's mother during their visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (another place I miss even driving by in these locked-in months).  He leaves with a painting that also survived the bomb, "The Goldfinch," which an old man, another victim of the bombing, urges Theo to take.  The next decade or more of his life, and the rest of the movie, is dedicated to Theo's keeping himself and the painting alive.  He navigates, sometimes expertly, the various family members, girls, women, friends, and players in the fine art and and antique business.

Oakes Fegley as young Theo and Ansel Elgort as his older self are just superb.  My favorite character other than Theo is Jeffrey Wright as James "Hobie" Hobart, whose explanations about the enduring differences between antiques and repros, and it the difference between mortal humanity and an immortal painting, and why it is therefore so crucial that the immortal painting survive, are non-pareil, in movies or anywhere.  And Wright delivers these talks perfectly - indeed, I like his performance in The Goldfinch even more than in Westworld and various commercials,  Other memorable performances include Ashleigh Cummings as Pippa, Theo's truest love, and Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard as young Theo's friend young Boris, who will play a game-changing role in Theo's later life.  For her part, Cummings manages to convey the deep, complex love she has for Theo, which may be immortal but doesn't always lead to happy endings.

There's a great artistic ambience in The Goldfinch, including the music of Glenn Gould (if you're interested in his virtuoso work and its continuing impact, check out Alida Altemburg's DMajor TV and her Glenn Gould page). And the New York City ambience, the restaurants and the busy streets, make me want to get out there and back there even more.   But like the painting, The Goldfinch movie transcends current catastrophes and even the pandemic, my guess it will be watched and appreciated forever.

 

Baptiste 1: Logic, Passion, and Unflappability

If you loved Julien Baptiste and his talent for finding missing children in the two seasons of The Missing (reviewed by me here and here), you'll love him in the spinoff he has on PBS, under his own name, Baptiste.

The second season of The Missing ended with Baptiste struggling to solve the missing-girl case with a tumor in his brain.  He solves the case, brilliantly.  But his future as a consulting detective is far from clear.  In Baptiste, we learn that "he's not the man" he was, but gets pulled into a another missing girl case, which soon becomes much more than that, as Baptiste finds himself battling some European mega-gang that threatens not only him but his family.

And it turns out that, despite his protestations, he's every bit as sharp as he needs to be.  And he needs to be sharp indeed, as the case develops, and everyone involved including members of his family and other police become suspect.  Tchéky Karyo is just perfect in the lead role, cementing Baptiste's place as an all-time logical, compassionate, usually unflappable, unique detective.

Tom Hollander, who made an excellent contribution to The Night Manager and many other series, puts in another memorable performance in Baptiste as Edward Stratton who until almost the very end walks a fine line between villain and hero.   And he's not the only character who may be playing both sides, offering a never-ending challenge to Baptiste's considerable powers of deduction.

Most of the action takes place in Amsterdam, where the world-renown Red Light District, aka der Wallen, provides an ideal backdrop for Baptiste's and the good guys' battle against the flesh-dealing gang, whose propensity for swiftly killing anyone who gets in their way seems almost preternatural.  Among the police, Europol's Genevieve, well played by Jessica Raine, was my favorite.

There's always been a Sherlock Holmesian quality to Julien Baptiste.  If that's your cup of tea, don't miss this.

See also The Missing 1: Worth Finding and The Missing 2: Unforgettable

Killing Eve 3.6: Wounded

Well, wounded applies to at least two major characters in Killing Eve 3.6, just on BBC America tonight.

First. as I intimated in my review of episode 3.4, Niko wasn't killed by the pitchfork in his neck, after all.  As I often say, in the metaphysics of television drama, someone is not 100% dead for sure unless you see the head literally blown or cut off (and, even then, if it's 24...).  Since Nico got prongs only in his neck, I figured there at leas was a fair chance he survived.  Which he did.  But not his wanting to be with Eve, although that was already pretty well gone, too.  But now we hear him, in a voice reminiscent of the late Stephen Hawking, tell Eve just what he'd like her to do.  Not stay with him, in terms a little more vivid.

But there's another wound suffered tonight, this one by Villanelle.  Not that she hasn't been hurt before on the job, but this stab in the arm carries a big symbolic significance:  she doesn't want to do this kind of work any more.  She's been saying that since the beginning of this season.  She wants to assign people to do the killings, not do them herself.

But speaking of killings, Konstantin's daughter happily does one, too, before the episode is over.  He figures in a lot of different subplots tonight, the most interesting (to me, at least) actually being not his own daughter, but what is going on exactly between him and Fiona's daughter.  He may be Kenny's father.  Would he sleep with Fiona's daughter, knowing that there's even a chance that she could be his daughter, too?  This means either he knows for certain that he's not her father, or they didn't sleep together, or both.

Provocative possibilities.  Now that I'm all caught up with Killing Eve, I'll try my best to get in my reviews of the last two episodes of this season in a more timely way.

See also Killing Eve 3.1: Whew! ... Killing Eve 3.2: Bringing It Into Focus ... Killing Eve 3.3: The Third Time's the Charm ... Killing Eve 3.4: Tip Toe Through the Tulips ... Killing Eve 3.5: The Darkness

And see also Killing Eve 2.1: Libido and Thanatos ... Killing Eve 2.2: Villanelle as Victim ... Killing Eve 2.3 Lipstick ... Killing Eve 2.6: Billie ... Killing Eve 2.7: Death and Sex ... Killing Eve Season 2 Finale: Possibilities After the End

And see also Killing Eve: Highly Recommended (Season 1)