Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing 3 Body Problem; American Rust; Bosch: Legacy; Citadel; Curb Your Enthusiasm; Fauda; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; House of the Dragon; Luther; Outer Range; Outlander; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Surface; The: Ark, Diplomat, Last of Us, Lazarus Project, Orville, Way Home; Tokyo Vice; True Detective; You +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

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

Thursday, December 31, 2020

Vikings Season 6 Part 2 (11-20): America

I thought I'd conclude my reviews for 2020 with Vikings Season 6, Part 2 (episodes 11-20) -- the end of the saga -- which I was able to binge on Amazon Prime Video the past two nights. I thought it was wonderful, with one truly outstanding interlude.

This second half of the final season actually comes in two parts. The first focuses on the Rus, with Ivar and Hvitserk in major play. And in the West, Ubbe gets to Iceland and points west with Torve. The second focuses on Wessex, again with Ivar and Hvitserk on centerstage for the Norse. And in the West, Ubbe and his crew make it all the way to America.

That last part had my favorite interlude: the way that Ubbe's group gets along so well with the indigenous people who live in America. As a counterpart and antidote to all the fighting and death we've seen all these years on this powerhouse historical series, there was one scene in which the Vikings and the people who already lived in this lush new world exchange gifts and get to know each other, at least a little. I have no idea if anything like that really happened. But it was good to see on the screen, good for the soul to see.

I've been predicting all along the Floki made it to America, and Ubbe's meeting with the master boat-builder was good to see, too. Ubbe was always the most like Ragnar -- at least, the son who was most like Ragnar when Ragnar was the most rational -- and when Floki and Ubbe are together, especially in that final scene, it was indeed like Floki and Ragnar were back together.

There were lots of fine realizations in this finale, too. For some reason, my favorite was that the old sage who knows everyone's future but never quite spits it out is actually in everyone's imaginations. That is, each of the Vikings who seek counsel with him are really seeking council in each of their own selves.

Back to America: you thought Leif Erikson was the first to make it America, right? Well, in terms of oral and then recorded history, he was -- a bit later than Floki and Ubbe. And we'll see his and related stories when Valhalla, the sequel to Vikings, gets back on the screen. And I'll be back here on the screen when it does.

historical science fiction - a little further back in time

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Four Publications

I've had four publications in the past week, and since all are available FREE online, I thought I'd list them for you right here:

Foreseeable -- brand new science fiction story in debut issue of Academfic
The Missing Orientation -- essay about space exploration, sense of wonder, and religion in Religions
Popper and Evolution Over the Decades -- how I met the great philosopher
Tetrads and Chiasmus: A Reclamation of the Tetrad Wheel -- a pathbreaking, scholarly new article by Matt Lindia and me in New Explorations

More Freebies from my science fiction, media theory, and music!

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

His Dark Materials 2.7: Lots of Action, Little Time

The second season of His Dark Materials concluded with episode 2.7 on HBO tonight. An odd number of episodes for any season, but they worked well enough, and HBO announced earlier this week that there would be a third and final season, which takes some of the pressure off tonight's finale to be definitive.

And it did answer some questions. Let's see, we know that the Spectres can take a sleeping witch. We know who Will's father is, even though now that "is" is "was". Lee was badly wounded, but it looks like another witch will bring him back. (Again, I haven't read the books.)

I thought the most interesting development was Lyra saying she's feeling that she's changing. In one scene, she's starting to look a lot more like her mother. She says the change has in part something to do with Will. She's changing into a woman.

Mrs. Coulter ended the season in the strongest position we've seen her in since the beginning of this story. Who or what is more powerful than the Spectres? Not the witches, though maybe a group of them will do better than just one, asleep. Not the Magisterium's Nazi soldiers. Coulter's power over the Spectres will make her a formidable force in the third season.

Mary had almost no role in this season finale. In many ways, she's our character, because she seems the most like all us here off the screen on our Planet Earth. I'm assuming she'll have a pivotal role in the final season. But there are still a lot of characters and story arcs at play. And in order for them all to be accommodated, we'll either need more episodes, or less time with the bear.

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner

Another wrenching, heart-in-your-mouth episode -- 1.4 -- of your Your Honor tonight, in which I thought the dinner at the Desiasto home, with the Judge and Adam, Grandma (good to see Margo Martindale!), the detective, the lawyer/the Judge's girlfriend, the Mayoral candidate, and even Django the dog all in attendance, was just a perfect set-piece for what is going on this riveting story.

The dog goes for the bloody rag he hid a few episodes ago. Only Michael knows for sure where that blood came from, and probably Adam, too. And, yeah, we the audience. But the other people around the table? As smart as they are, they have no idea. Nancy the detective realizes there's blood on cloth, but that could have come from a cut Michael or Adam had. There's no reason she or any of the other guests at that table would even think that it came the hit and run which is gradually eating this family up alive. Or rather, not the hit and run per se, but the Judge's understandable attempt to cover it up.

Which is already exacting an awful price. Kofi was killed because of it. And at the end of this episode, his home and who knows how many members of his family are burned up, as the mother of the hit and run victim exacts her revenge. On a family that had nothing to do with her son's death, because only we know the truth.

And because of that knowledge, we flinch every time the slightest thing happens to Adam. He gets into a fight in school. That kind of thing happens all the time with boys that age if a friend makes some kind of sexually provocative comment about someone the boy has a crush on. But we immediately worry that Adam is reacting to the hit and run, showing his guilt for something the Judge wisely wants his son to keep out of his mind, and certainly not act out in any public place, let alone a school.

A harrowing situation getting more so every episode. Just what we want to see in a narrative.

Bridgerton: Alternate Austen

My wife and I binge-watched Bridgerton the past two nights, and loved it. She's a devoted Shonda Rhimes fan, and has watched and is watching everything she's done on network television. I can take or leave these shows, and usually leave them. But I'm also a big Jane Austen fan, and enjoy historical drama, so I gave Bridgerton a try.

It does have a lot in common with Jane Austen's novels, taking place in the Regency era in England, but it has a bold alternate history element: people of color are in the aristocracy, including Simon aka the Duke of Hastings (one of the two leading characters) and Queen Charlotte. Actually, historians have been debating for at least fifty years about whether Charlotte had African ancestry -- see the 1761 portrait by Allan Ramsay -- so that part of Bridgerton is more aptly described as controversial history not alternate history. But Simon's character, along with other secondary characters in Bridgerton, is clearly alternate history, which is a plus in my book.

The other way in which Austen's novels differ from Bridgerton -- based on the series of best-selling novels by Julia Quinn over the past twenty years (which I haven't read) -- is the hot sex between Simon and Daphne Bridgerton that lights up several episodes. Simon's lust for Daphne, which he has to mediate with his vow (to his father) not to have children, in age in which the withdrawal method is by and large the only way to do that, is one of the fulcrums of the narrative, and is presented just short of graphically but effectively on the screen. And I'll say that the acting of both Phoebe Dynevor as Daphne and Regé-Jean Page as Simon was superb across a wide range of tempestuous and profound emotions,

The other notable element in Bridgerton is Whistedown (voice by Julie Andrews), a Regency gossip columnist who stirs the pot with her all-too-savvy reports. Her true identity is not revealed until the very end, and though my wife and I pretty much guessed it, it was still fun to see this played out.

The secondary characters and stories were well done, the cinematography was just gorgeous, and I'm glad there's a second season already in the works. Check back here in 2021 for the review.

Friday, December 25, 2020

Perfume: A Kind of Science Fiction

Perfume, a 2018 movie which my wife and I saw just last night on Netflix, starts out as a straight-up, if perverted, serial killer story, based on Patrick Süskind's 1985 novel of the same name. A beautiful singer is found dead, with her scent glands removed. There apparently is a murderer at large who gets off so much on scents, he (or she) needs literally cuttings of glands to satisfy the craving.

But as the six episodes of the limited series unfold, we gradually learn that there's much more than a homicidal psychosis at play here. In the world of contemporary Germany and France where this story takes place, sense of smell is so powerful that it can make someone fall in love with someone else, or at very least irresistibly need to have sex with them.

There's no doubt that, in our off-screen world, the olfactory sense is very powerful and under-estimated. But, as far as I know, it has nothing close to the power it conveys in this narrative, in which the scent conveyed is the equivalent of a magic spell that is cast. In fairness to the TV series, the 1985 novel, correctly billed as historical fantasy (the story in the novel takes place in the 18th century), tells a similar fantastical story. And I have nothing against fantasy, or its mix with detective mystery, in print or on the screen. I thus wished it had been, I don't know, better mixed in this series.

Otherwise, the story was quite good, especially the way police as well as suspects get caught up in the same olfactory problems. The resolution, however, was a bit rabbit of a hat, and so was less than thoroughly satisfying. That can be remedied by a second season, which I'd definitely see.

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

The Midnight Sky: Uplifting Downer

Well, you couldn't ask for a better movie than The Midnight Sky in these our Covid-ridden times. An Earth, in the year 2049, in even far worse shape than ours. Just about everyone on the planet dead, due to some kind of planet-wide catastrophe. A spaceship returning home to Earth from a habitable moon of Jupiter, unaware of what they are returning to. A very sick scientist on Earth, desperately marshalling his last energies to contact them, and tell the ship to turn around.

You know what? I think this movie, directed by and starring George Clooney, was a superb movie, and would've been outstanding, in any time, Covid or not. In other words, I strongly disagree with the one myopic critic, in Variety, I think, whom I happened to read yesterday, who panned the movie.

The idea of a spaceship returning to a dying Earth -- an Earth that was fine when the ship took off -- as at least as old Arch Oboler's 1956 Broadway play Night of the Auk. That was a masterpiece, too. It's a powerful theme, one that combines the heights and the deadly failures of human civilization. I haven't read the 2016 novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton, Good Morning, Midnight, on which Mark L. Smith's screenplay is based, so I can't tell you who deserves credit for what. But I can say the narrative was powerful and plausible, and very well directed by Clooney,

Truthfully, despite the many things that have gone very wrong in our world, in reality, I'm much more of an optimist about our planet's future than either Auk or Midnight Sky allow. But I'm always up for a provocative downer like his, if it's done right. Clooney was just right as Augustine. The spaceship crew were just right, too -- Kyle Chandler as Mitchell, determined to go back so he can at least be close to his family, gave one of his best performances in years. Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Damian Bichir (from The Bridge!), and Tiffany Boone as the rest of the crew were good, too.

[Spoilers below]

As to the fine point of the plot -- Sully on the ship is really Augustine's daughter, and the little girl who shows up and both inspires and protects Augustine is just his vision of her (my wife realized this early in the movie)-- well, sure, it was a little hoaky, but I think that worked very well, too. And the remaining big questions, like what kind of life will Sully and Adewole have with their baby on that moon around Jupiter, are ok, too. Because, I would recommend, if there is a sequel, that it turns out there are some humans alive with sophisticated tech back on Earth.

But, again I'm an optimist at heart. I don't know if you are, but see The Midnight Sky, and see what you think.

first starship to Alpha Centauri ... and they only had enough fuel to get there

Podcast Review of the Blumhouse Horror Quartet

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 162, in which I review four Blumhouse horror movies streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

If This Doesn't Put You in a Good Mood, I Don't Know What Will (Sneak Peak at Peter Jackson's Get Back)

the best part starts around 2min39sec...

Monday, December 21, 2020

His Dark Materials 2.6: The Hug and the Control

My two favorite scenes in tonight's altogether excellent episode 2.6 of His Dark Materials on HBO were the hug Mary gave one of those waif girls, and Mrs. Coulter learning she can control the Spectres.

Not much more to say about the hug, other than it was good to see, especially in this hug-reduced age of Covid. But Coulter controlling the Spectres calls out for a lot more to say, because it changes a lot, maybe even everything.

Up until that scene, Mrs. Coulter was almost a secondary character this season. She was all but beaten by her daughter Lyra last week. Now, suddenly, she has mastery of the one of most powerful and deadly forces in any alternate world. She's gained this control, she said, by suppressing her humanity, and now she's a major evil player again.

Though maybe not as evil as some, like the theocratic Magisterium. They're after Lyra. The witches and just about everyone else are on her side. So, too, is her mother. Will the Spectres be able to keep Lyra safe from the Magisterium? And what role will Will and his knife play?

There are so many factors and factions at play in this narrative that it's difficult to keep track. Let's get back to Mary. What role will her increasing understanding of the dust play in this battle? Perhaps we'll see next week, in the season finale. Or maybe not. But that's ok, because there'll definitely be a third season next year.... Right?

Nocturne: Deadly Player

I saw and enjoyed Nocturne last night, the fourth of four horror movies by Blumhouse on Amazon Prime Video, which four themselves are the first installment in a larger series to continue in 2021. Like the first three Blumhouse movies I saw and reviewed -- The Lie, Black Box, and Evil Eye -- Nocturne is a tightly drawn family drama. But Nocturne has the additional depth of being situated in music.

The story is about two fraternal twins, Juliet and Vivien, who are high school piano virtuosos and in constant fraternal competition. Well, Vivien's a virtuoso, and on her way to Juilliard. Juliet has problems expressing her talent. Fortunately (or, of course, maybe not), Juliet discovers a notebook with strange scribblings and depictions. Will these help her find her confidence and showcase her talent?

I'll say no more, except the sibling rivalry intensifies, affairs and almost affairs with boyfriends and teachers ensue, and the music is beautiful and haunting. The acting is fine, too, especially Sydney Sweeney as Juliet, and it was good to see Dexter's Julie Benz as the twins' mother. The ending was somewhat predictable, but it was effectively rendered, and I thought the real strength of Nocturne was not in the plot per se but in way the parts of this inevitable story were played out. Applause for Zu Quirke who wrote and directed.

So I'm all set for the next Blumhouse quartet next year. In a way, the more I see of these movies, the more they look like a 21st-century streaming Twilight Zone, with longer episodes.

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link

It became more clear than ever in Your Honor 1.3 that the weak link in the judge's plan to get Adam off the hook and out of harm's way of his hit-and-run of the mobster's son is Adam. Tonight he confesses to his teacher/lover. There's no telling what he might do next week and in the weeks ahead.

That's why, even if Kofi is killed -- and it looks like that's happening when this episode ends -- Adam will not be home free. Ordinarly, it would indeed mean a get-out-jail-free card for Adam. Neither the Baxters nor the police would be looking for the hit-and-run driver. But not with Adam torn apart and confessing to just about anyone who'll listen.

He did do pretty well with the cop who has the hots for the judge. Adam's a smart and resourceful kid. But the guilt that he has is unlikely to abate. What is his father going to do about that?

The New Orleans in this excellent series has dangers on every corner. No one can be trusted. What will Kofi's lawyer do if her client is killed. Just forget about all of this? Not likely, since she and Judge Michael are already kissing. And the last thing Michael needs is someone with legal smarts joining Nancy the cop within kissing distance of the awful truth.

So, at this point, it looks as if the judge is in an impossible situation. But he is incredibly resourceful, too. He thinks of pretty much every angle, and has been doing a pretty good job of erasing incriminating evidence. In the end, the question is who will prevail: the savvy judge or the guilt-wracked son?

The Mess You Leave Behind: A Rich and Deep Mystery

My wife and I binged watched The Mess You Leave Behind, a Spanish eight-episode series on Netflix. Nothing really messy about it. Instead, a rich and powerful narrative of love and crime, presented in a lovely tapestry that intertwines two engaging stories.

Each of those stories is about a beautiful high school teacher, of the same literature class. The first (Viruca) is found dead in the water, a presumed suicide. The second (Raquel) is her replacement, and has to deal with the same group of students, including a guy who was obsessively in love with Viruca. The cutting between the two stories is artfully done. We see Viruca and Raquel literally in the same classroom, standing before the same mirror, walking the same paths by the river.

Those paths lead to sex, love, and danger. Did Viruca really take her own life or was she murdered? If the latter, by whom? Is Raquel endangering her own life by increasingly wondering about and investigating these questions? The acting -- Bárbara Lennie as Viruca, Inma Cuesta as Raquel, and Arón Piper as Iago, the love-struck teenaged guy who has a violent edge -- is excellent. And the ambience is a creative blend of almost 19-century countryside and 21st smartphones and laptops, all of which play important roles in the twin, intertwining stories.

Carlos Montero gets the "created by" and some of the directing credits. The series is based on his novel of the same name, and its mix of Victorian and digital sensibilities, and the story it tells, is not quite like anything I've seen before. I highly recommend it. Take a look, and see if you agree.

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Darkness: Those Who Kill: Brutally and Rivetingly

It's been too long since I reviewed a Nordic Noir series -- Wisting on September 15 -- so I thought I'd jump back with a vengeance and tell you about the Danish Darkness: Those Who Kill, which my wife and I binge watched on Acorn via Amazon Prime Video the past few nights.

Vengeance is a good word for Darkness. So would brutal, harrowing, and riveting. A squad of ok not brilliant detectives in Copenhagen, assisted by a profiler who is sharp enough but also has some demons in her background, struggle to apprehend a serial kidnapper/killer. Who turns out to be not one but a serial kidnapper/killer partnership.

Take that literally. One is a kidnapper who keeps his young blonde female victims in chains in his cellar and his sex with them because he loves to the control them. He also has sex with his partner, a woman, who gets off on killing the kidnapped victims. The kidnappings and the sex are shown in brutal detail, in which the victims are usually subdued in a flurry of punches.

[Spoilers ahead.]

There's in-depth development of the killer's story, who was raped as a young teenager by her even younger brother, after leading him on. Being a woman, she's just not suspected as being part of this murderous spree, and in fact being the one who drives it and directs the kidnapper. It understandably take the police and the profiler a long time to catch on to what's going on.

There's edge-of-the-seat action in every episode, along with the punching and the degradation of the victims. Well worth watching, but not by the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. Good writing and creation by Ina Bruhn, good directing by Carsten Myllerup, with persuasive acting by Natalie Madueño as the profiler and Signe Egholm Olsen as the killer.

Friday, December 18, 2020

Evil Eye: Reincarnation Across Continents

Do you believe in reincarnation? Or, if not, are you open to accepting it as a premise for a taut, slow-burning family thriller that builds up to a clutched-by-the-throat ending? If yes, you're in for a rewarding 90 minutes with Evil Eye.

This is the third Blumhouse production my wife and I have seen on Amazon Prime Video in about as many nights. The Blumhouse "program" on Prime Video is presented in the promotional trailer as a quartet of "horror" stories. But, The Lie was straight-up crime. Black Box was science fiction -- nothing supernatural. Both were excellent, but neither was horror. I haven't yet seen Nocturne. Evil Eye was also excellent -- and, at last, horror! So, if that's your cup of strange tea, come and get it.

Here's the set-up: Usha in India is worried that her daughter Pallavi, in the U.S., is 29 and not yet married. That may soon be corrected, though, when she meets a cool, well-spoken, good-looking guy. But Usha has increasing misgivings, which we eventually learn derive from her being attacked on a bridge when she was pregnant (with Pallavi) by a ten-years former boyfriend. Usha survived the attack by pushing her former boyfriend off the bridge. Has he come back in America, transcending space as well as time, in the body of Sandeep, Pallavi's suave boyfriend, to exact some kind of revenge all of these years later on Usha?

Ok, that's all I'll tell you about the story. I will say that it's fleshed out by a family of appealing characters including Usha's husband, Krishnan, a man of science and therefore not a believer in reincarnation (good job by Bernard White, whom you may have seen on Homeland), Pallavi (well-played by Sunita Mani) who of course doesn't at first believe in reincarnation, either, and Usha, played by Sarita Choudhury, every bit as impressive as when we first saw her on the screen with Denzel Washington in Mississippi Masala way back in 1991.

Written by Madhuri Shekar, directed by Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani, Evil Eye serves up a narrative that blends current Indian and American flavor with ancient belief, in a story that would have fit well in any issue of the late, lamented Weird Tales.

McCartney III: Endearing, Strong, Memorable

I was never one to look for differences between the Beatles on their individual own and when they were The Beatles. To my ear and soul, Paul, John, George, and Ringo on their own sounded far more like The Beatles, captured and continued their extraordinary essence far better than any other artist. Sure, some solo numbers sounded more like The Beatles than others. I heard "Ticket to Ride" in Paul's "My Brave Face," and when someone on the Steve Hoffman Forum said it evoked "Things We Said Today," I could immediately hear it.

Maybe that's why Robert Christgau's dispeptic reviews in The Village Voice of McCartney's of first two solo albums felt so wrong to me that I wrote a Letter to the Editor objecting to it, which The Voice published as a straight-up article, which turned out to be my first writing published anywhere. I realized back then that professional reviewers get to where they are because they write well, not necessarily because they hear well (and the same applies to movie critics writing not necessarily watching well, etc).

So, although I've loved The Beatles more than any other music over all of these many years, I've loved Paul's work almost as much and sometimes just as much, and eagerly await everything he does. McCartney III, which I just listened to, was well worth waiting for.

The album, as I'm sure you know, is the third album in the McCartney (1970 - the one that Christgau didn't care for) and McCartney II (1980) series of recordings in which McCartney played all of the parts. One of the reasons why the new album is so endearing is that it evokes elements from both The Beatles and these solo all-McCartney albums.

Here are my favorites:

"Seize the Day": I just love the sound of "when the cold days come and the old ways fade," which could have come from any Beatles album. Not to mention the double rhymes (cold days and old ways) which I always strive for when I can get them in my own lyrics.
"Women and Wives": A strong song with a good melody and lyric ("chasing tomorrow")
"The Kiss of Venus": Another good melody, which Paul sings in falsetto. Look, his voice is obviously not as powerful or supple as it was for most of his years, but it's still enjoyable to hear. His phrasing and emotion come through fine.
"Deep Down Feeling": What I really like about this track is the way it shifts into acoustic/melodic in the last minute of the 8-minute-25-second song. That was one of the fabulous moves in "Admiral Halsey".

All of this is after only one listening to the album. It took me at least three or four hearings of Sgt. Pepper before I realized how great it was, and I still like Rubber Soul better. But there's no doubt that McCartney III makes a memorable contribution to Paul's astonishing lifetime of work, which continues to light up many a soul.

from the Steve Hoffman forum

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Black Box: With One Body You Can't Dance with Two Minds

Immortality via uploaded minds into computer systems has been a staple of science fiction for decades. It's rarely done as well on the screen as it is Black Box, on Amazon Prime Video since October.

Nolan's having trouble recovering his memories after surviving a severe car accident, which apparently initially left him brain dead. That's a start for this kind of narrative we've also seen many times before. But Black Box becomes memorable in the almost delicate, compassionate subtlety with which Nolan struggles to regain his self, and the traumatic and heart-warming surprises that await him.

The more specific problem for Nolan is he's recovering not only his memories but even more of someone else's. He goes to a specialist, Lillian, who's very understanding, and puts him through various procedures such as hypnosis and connections to arcane devices. We learn, the hard way -- or Nolan learns, the hard way --

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

that Lillian has actually downloaded another mind into his body, the mind of her son, Thomas, who died some months ago. Lillian uploaded his mind before he died, and she hopes to bring her son back to life, or his mind back to life, in Nolan's brain and body.

I've already given away too much of the story, in case you ignored the spoiler warning, so I won't say anything more, specifically. But I like the way Nolan, who retains some of his memories along with Thomas's, tries to work things out, as does Thomas in Nolan's body, too. There's an old Yiddish saying, with one tuchus you can't dance at two weddings. Black Box is in effect a story of with one body you can't do the dance of life with two minds.

Very well acted by Mamoudou Athie as Nolan, Amanda Christine as his precocious daughter Ava, and it was good to see Phylicia Rashad as Lillian. Fine story by Stephen Herman and directing by Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour. Highly recommended!

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

The Lie: Acting about Acting

My wife and I caught The Lie last night on Amazon Prime Video. A scalding little movie from Blumhouse, and from the brain behind The Killing (Veena Sud), with one of its big stars ( Mireille Enos).

[spoilers follow]

First, let me say that I guessed the big shocking reveal at the end -- foresaw this about halfway through the movie. The reason was two-fold: 1. We didn't see Britney actually being pushed to her death. 2. Britney's body wasn't recovered. And although the current was swift, the water didn't look particularly deep.

But this didn't spoil in the least my enjoyment of the movie, which grabs you by your collar as soon as Jay hears his daughter Kayla cry out, and keeps you there for the next ninety minutes. Further, the acting is really impressive, with a typical brilliant performance by Enos across a simmering and wild range of emotions.

Joey King as Kayla was also noteworthy. Her acting was, in effect, a double meta-performance. She has to act to her parents as if she did shove Britney to her death. And she has to pretend just the opposite to the police: that nothing untoward happened. And then the big reveal that she and Britney were putting this whole thing on: we need to believe, after that, that Kayla was acting about everything she said before.

I believed it, and so did my wife. If you've read this far, through the warned spoilers, you've already seen The Lie. If somehow you haven't, it's well worth seeing.

Playlists: Science Fiction and Fantasy Songs, Songs about DJs, Songs about Phones

Joel Iskowitz illustrator; Delin Gonzales model

Three playlists for your listening pleasure:

Science Fiction and Fantasy Songs

Songs about Disk Jockeys

Songs about Phones (from 1919-present)

Big Sky 1.5: Winter Finale Indeed!

Well ... [spoilers follow]

Tonight's episode 1.5 of Big Sky provided a winter finale indeed. A kind of rhyme with the end of the first episode, in which Cody was shockingly killed -- as in, out of the clear big blue sky. And at the end of tonight's episode, Big Rick is killed, with a bullet to the head, by Cassie.

Ok, it was completely of out of the clear blue as Cody's demise. Everything had been building up to this, including, especially, Cassie's suspicion and loathing of Rick, and her cool steel nerves. And there was no way she was going to let Rick gun her down. But it was still a big surprise, to see a major evil character, in fact, THE villain, shot down dead like that in the middle of a season.

Of course, the three kidnap victims, not to mention Cassie, are by no means out of the woods yet. The helpful human flesh-dealers from up north are just a few minutes away from the kidnap victims, Cassie, and Rick's body. And Cassie doesn't know they're close by. The victims know, but will they have time to alert Cassie?

Barely. And though Cassie is armed, she'll no doubt be outgunned by the human-traffickers. There's definitely more than one of them. So, we should be in for an exciting resumption of action in January.

Ronald will of course play a bigger role. Has he managed to get his impulses, as his mother calls them, under control? Will he show up at the scene before the Canadians arrive? No, not likely. Before they leave? Possibly. And if he doesn't, what will he do when he finds Rick dead and everyone missing? Will he think the Canadians killed Rick?

Lots of questions which can only be answered by watching the second part of the season, which I'll definitely be doing, and talking about it right here.

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

His Dark Materials 2.5: Daughter and Mother

The powers of good did well tonight in His Dark Materials 2.5, to the point that Lyra's daemon gave Mrs. Coulter's daemon quite a thrashing, which means the daughter thrashed the mother.

But that's not all. Will mastered the subtle knife, and used it to his and Lyra's advantage. And while Will and Lyra were at this, they managed to recover Lyra's alethiometer, too. What more could you ask for?

Well -- and again, I haven't read the novels, so all of this is new (and narratively exciting) to me -- I think Mrs. Coulter is increasingly beginning to work on the side of the good. This comes from the genuine love she has for her daughter. It's not clear if she knows the extent of the deadly hostility the Magisterium has for Lyra, but there's no doubt that Coulter will kill anyone who wants to hurt her daughter. Period.

Not that this an undilutedly good thing, either, however. The last thing that Coulter tells Lyra tonight is to stay away from Will. Is this solely because of his knife, which Coulter sees as dangerous to anyone around Will, or is there something more? Whatever Coulter's motives, Lyra and Will are clearly drawing closer, which means that Coulter and Lyra are still on a collision course.

There wasn't much in furthering our understanding of dust aka dark matter tonight, but it was good to see Mary on the case, and she's our best bet for discovering more about dark matter and explaining it in terms we can understand. In effect, Mary is our the audience's surrogate in this story, and that's one of the reasons she's become one of my favorite characters. (Good job Simone Kirby.)

Only two episodes remaining in this excellent short season -- like a human and a daemon? -- and I'm looking forward to both of them.

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday"

Just saw the second episode of Your Honor, courtesy of Showtime On Demand. It's about as powerful a chess game with life and death consequences as ever I've seen on television.

As part of his opening move, Judge Desiato tells his son Adam that they have to work to reset the pieces so that "today is yesterday". No, there's no time travel involved, but a well-thought out plan to set up a series of plausible alibis today for what happened yesterday, when Adam killed Jimmy Baxter's son in a hit-and-run. This involves getting someone to steal the car Adam was driving. And make it appear that the car was stolen yesterday. The result, if all worked well, would be that Adam would look like he was nowhere near the scene of the hit-and-run, and there would be another plausible candidate to take the rap if that was needed.

A very clever plan. But maybe not that well thought out, because real life has a mind of its own, and before the hour is over Desiato's plan leads to the guy who "stole" the car pleading guilty to the hit-and-run. This is not quite what Deiasto had foreseen. Certainly not so quickly. Kofi, who takes the fall, could be snuffed out in a minute by Baxter, with all those cops and who knows how many prison guards on his payroll. The best that Desiato can do is convince his lawyer to take Kofi's case. Not all that hard to do, since they have a romantic chemistry and an impending date, but dangerous insofar as she seems to be a pretty sharp cookie, and could well figure out at some point that Desiato is far more involved in this hit-and-run that just someone stole his car.

So what we have here is an edgy, on the edge of unraveling, story of the best laid plans. Stirred by top-notch acting and surprises popping out of the woodwork. My only regret at this point is that I can't binge-watch all the remaining episodes.

See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up

Saturday, December 12, 2020

I'm Your Woman: This Is Your Movie

I'm Your Woman, a movie up on Amazon Prime since just yesterday, is a real treat. A superb, different kind of take on a well-worn subject, brought to life on the screen by Rachel Brosnahan.

The set-up: Jean, played by Brosnahan, is surprised by a baby her husband Eddie brings home to her one day. She can't have children, and he wants them to have the joy of a family. He's some kind of mobster killer, though, and shortly disappears. People presumably on his side show up to help Jean and Harry the baby survive.

So, we've seen this kind of thing before, as I said, but not with the lead role and baby in Brosnahan's hands. She starts being clueless about everything, from how to fry an egg to how to take care of a baby, let alone defend herself and him, but gradually draws on awesome instincts that get her out of all sorts of perilous situations, and learns from them and the people who want to help her. The best part of those helpers are Cal, Teri, and Cal's father Art, who teach Jean everything from how to take care of a baby to how to shoot a gun.

I don't want to say more about the plot, because this is the kind of narrative in which a surprise will jump out and point a gun at you every couple of scenes. I will say that not everyone survives, and not everyone escapes unscathed. I'll also say again how good the acting is. Arinzé Kene as Cal, Marsha Stephanie Blake (See You Yesterday) as Teri, and the ever-effective Frankie Faison as Art are just right for their savvy, homespun, ruthless when-need-be parts. And when you consider that you last saw Brosnahan on Amazon Prime as Mrs. Maisel, about as different a character from Jean as you can imagine, you can get a good idea of what a first-class actor she is.

Well, actually, Midge Maisel and Jean do have one big thing in common. A lot of heart. And that's what makes both stories such a pleasure to see.

Hats off to director Julia Hart, writers Hart and Jordan Horowitz, and everyone else involved in making this movie.

"challenging fun"
- Entertainment Weekly

e-mail received from a reader:
Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchildren. Thanks! Tom

I of course happily replied...

42 reviews of The Plot to Save Socrates!