Your Honor 1.8: Nothing More Important

Your Honor 1.8 was a relatively quiet, highly cerebral episode, in which we see the judge struggle to preside over a fair trial for the brutal murder of Kobe by Carlo.   His problem, as he states to a juror he's getting thrown off the jury, because she's a sure bet to convict Carlo, is nothing is more important than protecting his son Adam -- not conscience, not devotion to justice, not even plain decency.   Although Jimmy Baxter thinks Judge Michael Desiato killed Rocco, Michael knows that it won't be long until Baxter realizes that Adam was behind the wheel.   (Frankly, the best thing Michael can do to protect himself and Adam is to have Jimmy Baxter and his wife killed.  Surely Michael knows that Jimmy will kill him even if Michael keeps Carlo out of prison.)

Meanwhile, Adam is falling so hard for Fia Baxter that he no longer wants to go to NYU, where he's just been admitted.  This creates more potential problems for the judge.  He wants his son out of of New Orleans, as far away from the Baxter family as possible.  Fortunately, Adam's godfather Charlie is beginning to realize what's going on with Adam -- that there's a girlfriend involved -- which with any luck should help Adam and therefore Michael out of this part of the mess.

A word about the acting.  I already said how superb Bryan Cranston and Michael Stuhlbarg are.  The truth is that every single performance of every single actor is brilliant in this series.  Episode 1.8 features Maura Tierney in the courtroom as prosecutor.   What a performance!  I haven't seen her since The Affair, and she is as reliably memorable in her role as ever.

Episode 1.8 was also the first episode that acknowledged COVID-19, unless I missed it in an earlier hour.  But tonight saw some masks in the courtroom, and words about COVID from the bench.  Interestingly, though, we also saw people crowded in restaurants with no masks.  This corresponds to what we've seen in NBC's Chicago shows, and Law and Order in New York City.  The inconsistency almost suggests that the COVID-aware scenes were put in after the main action was recorded at an earlier time.

But back to the plot of Your Honor: just two episodes left, in which anything can happen, and which I'm very much awaiting.

See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday" ... Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link ... Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner ... Your Honor 1.5: The Vice Tightens ... Your Honor 1.6: Exquisite Chess Game ...Your Honor 1.7: Cranston and Stuhlbarg Approaching Pacino and De Niro

The Dig: An Amazing Story

My wife and I just saw and very much enjoyed The Dig on Netflix -- an unerring recommendation of my sister-in-law Alexandra.  It's the true story, by way of John Preston's novel, of a dig in Sutton Hoo, England in 1939 that unearthed a seventh century Anglo-Saxon ship buried on Edith Pretty's property.

The novel does a fine job of depicting the civilization of archeology against the impending soul-testing savagery of World War II.  Science itself is accurately portrayed as challenged by human pettiness and foibles.  The people who apply the science are all fallible, in one way or another, and some are lovable.

My favorite was Robert, Edith's young son, about 10, who has a love of outer space, replete with a copy of Amazing Stories.  That rang a nice bell with me -- my first professional science fiction sale was to Amazing Stories in 1992, and I've even sold a few to that magazine under its new editor Ira Nayman in the past few years.  In The Dig, Robert's love of space travel leads him to lie on his back in the excavated Anglo-Saxon ship with his mother and look at the stars above and imagine they are traveling out there in the cosmos.  It's one of the most effective scenes in the movie, and makes the connection between sailing around the world on this Earth and beyond this world in space ships.

As is well known, space travel received a big boost from Werner von Braun and the rockets he built for Nazi Germany.  They did plenty of damage to England in the Second World War.  Von Braun surrendered to America at the end of the war, and played a major role building the American space program that got humans to the Moon at the end of the 1960s.   Science and war have likely been married to each other, albeit not exclusively, since the get go.   It would be good if someone day they weren't, and The Dig offers a powerful tableau of the pain, even horror, of their living together.

The acting is excellent.  Basil Brown, the self-taught archeologist, is played by Ralph Fiennes, who has never been anything other than superb in any role he's played and I've seen.  Carey Mulligan was memorable as Edith, as was Lily James as young archeologist Peggy Piggott.  And good job Archie Barnes as Robert.

Further reading:  The Missing Orientation

and 

 

Big Sky 1.6: "Sweet Psycho"

Well, Big Sky was back tonight with episode 1.6 tonight with one big reveal:

[Spoilers follow....]

Big Rick is still alive!  How is that?  Cassie shot him point blank in the head.  I guess some people can and do survive a bullet in the brain, if it lands in not some vital place, but I don't know, this move seems a little like a rabbit out of a hat or a cheap trick.

The story, meanwhile, has moved on.  The captives are free.   Cody's body has been found (as my wife pointed out, though, how did the police know exactly where to look, but ok), and Cassie and Jenny, against all odds, are growing closer.  Or, at very least, Jenny has agreed to work with Cassie on just one case: find the the kidnapping trucker.

Ronald remains by far the most interesting character.  As one of the freed captive girls says, he's sweet, but a psycho.  A "sweet psycho," her sister, also a freed captive, agrees.  That's an apt term for this guy, who usually seems on the verge of killing his mother, a not so sweet thing to do.

She's becoming increasingly important in this story, too.  She doesn't seem inclined to turn Ronald in.  To the contrary, she's trying to give him some helpful advice.  When push comes to shove, blood seems to be thicker than water with this crowd.  Same is at least a little true for Rick's wife and Rick.

So we have something of a good narrative emerging, and some good music in Big Sky, too.  See you next week with my review.

 See also Big Sky 1.1: A Pretty Big Deal ... Big Sky 1.2: The "Goods" and the Ruined Plan ... Big Sky 1.3: "You Kidnapped the Wrong Girl" ... Big Sky 1.4: Controls on Psychos ... Big Sky 1.5: Winter Finale Indeed!

 

Podcast: Twitter Ban of Trump Was Right, Even Though It Violates the Spirit of the First Amendment

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 165, in which Brian Standing on WORT-FM Radio (Madison, Wisconsin) interviews me about why I think Twitter's banning of Donald Trump was the right thing to do, even though that violates what I call the "spirit of the First Amendment".  We also discuss why I think government should keep its hands off social media.

Further reading:

• I'm A First Amendment Scholar, and I Think Big Tech Should Be Left Alone
• Paul Levinson On the Power of Power and Advertisers Over Media

Check out this episode!

Tommy James, Morris Levy, and Ellie Greenwich's Ring

Excellent article in The Guardian about Tommy James and Morris Levy (mobster owner of Roulette Records), and how Levy never paid James for his hit records ranging from "Hanky Panky" to "Crystal Blue Persuasion" (thanks guitarist Glenn Conway for bringing the article to my attention).

I found James receiving no or a negligible payment for "Hanky Panky" especially interesting, because it doesn't jibe with what Ellie Greenwich told me she received as co-writer of that song with her then husband Jeff Barry.  (Ellie and Mike Rashkow produced my group The Other Voices aka The New Outlook -- two singles -- on Atlantic Records in the late 1960s.  Here's the most successful of those two singles, May My Heart Be Cast into Stone -- Stu Nitekman is singing lead and I'm singing falsetto.)

Anyway, Ellie wore a big beautiful ring -- she called it her Hanky Panky ring, because she said when she received her multi-thousand dollar check as co-writer of "Hanky Panky," she went out and bought that ring.  I have no idea what the ring cost and how much she and Jeff received for that song.  But I don't think she was lying, and she gave the impression that the ring cost at least a couple of thousand dollars.  But even if it was cost just a couple of hundred bucks, that means she received much more for that song than Tommy James says he received as its recording artist.

Songwriters those days received royalties from two sources: the record company, which paid the writer a penny per record sold, and the performance rights organization, which paid the writer a sum of money based on how many times the song was played on the radio (in Ellie's case, the organization was BMI).  "Hanky Panky" was a huge #1 record, but did it receive enough airplay for Ellie to buy a big ring from her BMI payments, if Morris Levy paid her just a pittance, or nothing?

Who knows?  Maybe Jeff Barry threw in his BMI royalties.  Ellie died, sadly, in 2009, but Jeff is still alive and kicking.  Which come to think of it, a group by that name had a big hit record with a song called Tighter, Tighter, written by none other than Tommy James, and released on Morris Levy's Roulette Records in 1970.

One Night in Miami: A Good Movie for Tonight

This seemed like a good time to review One Night in Miami, which my wife and I saw and loved on Amazon Prime Video the other night -- a good time because Joe Biden is President, a human being back in the White House, and Kamala Harris, in effect his first appointment all those months ago, is Vice President, the first woman and person of color as VP.

One Night in Miami details a long meeting between Cassius Clay (soon Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke in a hotel room after Clay beat Sonny Liston to win the World Championship in 1964.  The meeting really happened.  The conversations in the movie were scripted (by Kemp Powers) and superb.  Same for the acting (Eli Goree, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr. in those four roles), and likewise the brilliant directing by Regina King.  And the story told can be a considered a preamble or foundation of Black people in power in America in the 21st century, Barack Obama to Kamala Harris.

Back in 1964, the ways to get that power were far from clear, and highly debatable.  Malcolm wants black people to stand on their own.  His greatest conflict is with Sam Cooke, who sings all kinds of sweet, catchy romantic ballads (which, by the way, I love), leaving it to Bob Dylan, much to Malcolm's consternation, to write and sing "Blowing in the Wind".  Jim Brown knows all about racism, but is in the game (football and soon movies) for personal success, at least to some extent.  The question is how much?  Clay on the verge of becoming Ali is just 22, high on his being "the greatest," but attracted to Malcolm's philosophy.

Pursuit of fame and money back then was and still is a soul-depleting business, unless you can figure out a way to pursue those goals, and keep them if you reach them, with your inner core intact, and devoted at least in part to loftier goals for yourself, your people, and the world.  The path isn't easy, and One Night In Miami portrays four black guys, incredibly talented and bright in different ways, on the edge of that path so well and memorably, it could have been a Socratic dialogue written Plato.   See it and learn and enjoy.

 

"Sam's Requests" in this anthology is about Sam Cooke!

Just Published: Twitter Was Right to Ban Trump, Even Though It Violates the Spirit of the First Amendment

I'm a First Amendment scholar – and I think Big Tech should be left alone

Twitter’s ban of Trump has concerned free speech advocates across the political spectrum. 

Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Paul Levinson, Fordham University

Twitter’s banning of Trump – an action also taken by other social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat – has opened a fierce debate about freedom of expression and who, if anyone, should control it in the United States.

I’ve written and taught about this fundamental issue for decades. I’m a staunch proponent of the First Amendment.

Yet I’m perfectly OK with Trump’s ban, for reasons legal, philosophical and moral.

The ‘spirit’ of the First Amendment

To begin, it’s important to point out what kind of freedom of expression the First Amendment and its extension to local government via the Fourteenth Amendment protect. The Supreme Court, through various decisions, has ruled that the government cannot restrict speech, the press and other forms of communications media, whether it’s on the internet or in newspapers.

Twitter and other social media platforms are not the government. Therefore, their actions are not violations of the First Amendment.

But if we’re champions of freedom of expression, shouldn’t we nonetheless be distressed by any restriction on communication, be it via a government agency or a corporation?

I certainly am. I’ve called nongovernmental suppressions of speech to be violations of “the spirit of the First Amendment.”

Every time CBS bleeps a performance of a hip-hop artist on the Grammys, the network is, in my view, engaging in censorship that violates the spirit of the First Amendment. The same is true whenever a private university forbids a peaceful student demonstration.

These forms of censorship may be legal, but the government often lurks behind the actions of these private entities. For example, when the Grammys are involved, the censorship is taking place out of fear of governmental reprisal via the Federal Communications Commission.

When governmental suppression is sanctioned

So, why, then, am I OK with the fact that Twitter and other social media platforms took down Trump’s account? And, while we’re at it, why am I fine with Amazon Web Services removing the Trump-friendly social media outlet Parler?

First, a violation of the spirit of the First Amendment is never as serious as a violation of the First Amendment itself.

When the government gets in the way of our right to freely communicate, Americans’ only recourse is the U.S. Supreme Court, which all too often has supported the government – wrongly, in my view.

The court’s 1919 “clear and present danger” and 1978 “seven dirty words” decisions are among the most egregious examples of such flouting of the First Amendment. The 1919 decision qualified the crystal-clear language of the First Amendment – “Congress shall make no law” – with the vague exception that government could, in fact, ban speech in the face of a “clear and present danger.” The 1978 decision defined broadcast language meriting censorship with the even vaguer “indecency.”

And a government ban on any kind of communication, ratified by the Supreme Court, applies to any and all activity in the United States – period – until the court overturns the original decision.

In contrast, social media users can take their patronage elsewhere if they don’t approve of a decision made by a social media company. Amazon Web Services, though massive, is not the only app host available. Parler may have already found a new home on the far-right hosting service Epik, though Epik disputes this.

The point is that a corporate violation of the spirit of the First Amendment is, in principle, remediable, whereas a government violation of the First Amendment is not – at least not immediately.

Second, the First Amendment, let alone the spirit of the First Amendment, doesn’t protect communication that amounts to a conspiracy to commit a crime, and certainly not murder.

I would argue that it’s plainly apparent that Trump’s communication – whether it was suggesting the injection of disinfectant to counteract COVID-19 or urging his supporters to “fight” to overturn the election – repeatedly endangered human life.

Be careful what you wish for

Given that Trump was still president – albeit with just a few weeks left in office – when Twitter banned him, that ban was, indeed, a big deal.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter, appreciated both the need and perils of such a ban, tweeting, “This moment in time might call for this dynamic, but over the long term it will be destructive to the noble purpose and ideals of the open internet. A company making a business decision to moderate itself is different from a government removing access, yet can feel much the same.”

In other words, a company that violates the spirit of the First Amendment can “feel much the same” to the public as government actually violating the First Amendment.

To be sure, I think it’s concerning that a powerful cohort of social media executives can deplatform anyone they want. But the alternative could be far worse.

Back in 1998, many were worried about the seeming monopolistic power of Microsoft. Although the U.S. government won a limited antitrust suit, it declined to pursue further efforts to break up Microsoft. At the time, I argued that problems of corporate predominance tend to take care of themselves and are less powerful than the forces of a free marketplace.

Sure enough, the preeminent position of Microsoft was soon contested and replaced by the resurgence of Apple and the rise of Amazon.

Summoning the U.S. government to counter these social media behemoths is the proverbial slippery slope. Keep in mind that the U.S. government already controls a sprawling security apparatus. It’s easy to envision an administration with the ability to regulate social media not wielding that power to protect the freedoms of users but instead using it to insulate themselves from criticism and protect their own power.

We may grouse about the immense power of social media companies. But keeping them free from the far more immense power of the government may be crucial to maintaining our freedom.

Paul Levinson, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

=====================================

Added 24 January 2020:  Comment and Response on LinkedIn

Comment from Will Huff:

I’m with you on the right of Twitter and Facebook, but where does this slope stop for private businesses? They are essentially denying service to those they don’t agree with. Is this discrimination based on political ideology. Is discrimination ok if it only about things agreed with or does it end up becoming ok for everything? Could Walmart say that people wearing Trump shirts can’t shop there? Or Biden shirts? Could a baker deny baking a cake?

Response from Paul Levinson:

Thanks for the comment, and a very good question. A private business cannot refuse service for illegal discriminatory reasons (such as the customer seeking service being Black). I don't know of any cases in which a customer was refused service because of a political statement on a shirt. Certainly a public service, like a Post Office or a city bus, could not do that, because such refusal of service would be from a government agency and the refusal would therefore indeed violate the First Amendment. But conceivably a private business could refuse service, because the business is not the government. In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), the Supreme Court said a private bakeshop could refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple, but only because the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed a religious bias in siding with the gay couple. So this decision in a sense pitted freedom of religion vs. discrimination.

Your Honor 1.7: Cranston and Stuhlbarg Approaching Pacino and De Niro

Let me start off my review of Your Honor 1.7 by saying the scenes between Cranston and Stuhlbarg -- the Judge and the mobster -- were so good, they could have been between Pacino and De Niro.  Two outstanding actors acting their hearts and souls out in this one-of-a-kind drama, playing two fathers, one who wants at all costs to protect his son, the other wanting both revenge for the son who died and protection for the one who has just been arrested for murder.

The Judge again shows himself adept and quick-witted when the situation calls for it.  Why didn't you turn yourself in, Baxter asks the Judge.  I was going to, I was at the police station, the Judge replies, and then I saw you.  The best lies are the ones closest to the truth in these one-on-one situations, and the Judge was indeed in that police station, ready to bring in his son Adam.

I don't get Baxter's strategy in another scene, though,  Why not give Big Mo her $150,000 back?  Why say she has to eat it, and risk a war, right when he's trying to get his son Carlo out of justice's way, and get back to making the Judge pay?  He doesn't want to appear weak, I know, but he's not as smart as any of the lead mobsters in the Godfather or Goodfellas.

Adam, however, is as sharp as his father.   He doesn't believe the Judge's story.  He wisely has not told him that he and Fia are falling in love, and you know that's going to have a decisive role in how this brilliant series ends.  The Judge is a master strategist.  He managed to get Sarah off the Carlo case by feeding her single malts in the bar.  But he can't control everything, and it's still an open question of who will be left alive, who will be left out of prison, when this series concludes.

I'm very glad there are three more episodes.

See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday" ... Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link ... Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner ... Your Honor 1.5: The Vice Tightens ... Your Honor 1.6: Exquisite Chess Game

Lupin, Part 1: Suave Crime

Lupin's five episodes -- Part 1 -- were easy to binge last night on Netflix.  The French series is a perfect caper revenge story, with elements ranging from Bondian combat on a train to Mission Impossible masks to the dynamics of any number of French cop series such as Spiral.

Omar Sy is the suave, brilliant Assane Diop, determine to seek revenge for his father Babakar, found hanging when Diop was a teenager.   The villain is Pellegrini, a millionaire wheeler and dealer, who is responsible for Babakar'a death, and may have killed him.  He's not taking Assane's capers lightly, and in fact has sent a hitman after him.

The third element in this narrative are the Parisian police.  On the one hand, they're after Diop.  On the other hand, they have a varying series of motives, ranging from wanting to nab Diop as a con man to working for Pellegrini.   Diop has to stay one step ahead of all of that.

His allies and family (wife and son) are also in the sights of Pellegrini's hitman.  Diop's smile and smarts can get him into all kinds of places, and out of all kinds of predicaments, but they're not as effective against a cool, professional killer.   Part 1 ends with a double cliffhanger -- about which I'll say no more -- but I will mention I would've liked to see Part 2, and am not a fan of Netflix's occasional practice of splitting up a TV series season into two parts, as it did for the revived Unsolved Mysteries.

I'll be back here with a review of Part 2, as soon as it's up on Netflix.

Podcast: Insurrection, Trump, Impeachment, More

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 164, in which Captain Phil on WUSB-FM Radio (Stony Brook, New York) interviews me about last week's storming of the U.S. Capitol, Donald Trump, the prospects of his impeachment, and more.

 

 

Check out this episode!

Your Honor 1.6: Exquisite Chess Game

The exquisite chess game ramped up in Your Honor 1.6, making it one of the best shows -- the most tightly and harrowingly plotted -- ever seen on television.

Here's what happened, and where the story now stands:  The Judge cleverly tracked down his blackmailer, and had a plan to keep him quiet, without killing him -- and without the Judge knowing that he was being followed by Baxter and his hit-man.  At the same time, Lee got testimony and DNA evidence that Carlo killed Kofi in prison, and let's the Judge know about this.  When Baxter is about to kill the Judge, he tells Baxter that his surviving son is about to be arrested for murder and the Judge can help.  Baxter thinks it over and kills the blackmailer (not because he's a blackmailer, but because the Judge tells Baxter the blackmailer knows "everything").

What a series of moves!  The blackmailer dead is better for the Judge than the plan he had worked out, where the blackmailer could have changed his mind at any time, despite what the Judge told him.  So where do we go from here?

Baxter still think the Judge killed his son.  Adam and Fia are falling in love.   Fia doesn't know yet that Adam is the Judge's son, that her father thinks the Judge killed Rocco, but in fact it was Adam behind the wheel on the terrible morning.  Meanwhile, let's not forget Big Mo, who is getting into a drug dead with Carlo, and won't hesitate to kill Carlo or his father if she gets a clear chance that won't stick to her.  That's a pretty good asset for the Judge, which he doesn't yet know about.

One of the excellent things about this narrative is how every time the deck is even slightly cleared, there's even more simmering, more bombs waiting to go off, than before.  See you back here next week, when we'll see what's standing.

See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday" ... Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link ... Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner ... Your Honor 1.5: The Vice Tightens

Unknown: Fast Moving and Effective

I noticed that Unknown, a 2011 movie, is on Netflix's top 10.  My wife and I saw it a few nights ago, and very much enjoyed it.

Liam Neeson plays a professor (Martin) who gets separated from his wife Elizabeth (Mad Men's January Jones) and then loses part of his memorable when he's in a car accident.  He has enough of it to know he is married and to whom, but when he meets up with his wife, he finds she's with another man, who has Martin's name, and the couple claim to have no idea who the Neeson Martin is.

That's a good set-up for an action adventure, and Unknown follows through very well.  The action takes place in Germany, and Martin, wanting to find out what's going on with his wife, stays one step ahead of being killed.  Diane Kruger plays Gina, who becomes an ally of Martin's, and the narrative is peopled with oddly memorable characters, including a hotel factotum and a former East German member of the Stasi.

[spoilers ahead]

Unknown also does a good job of sprinkling in clues which are foundations for the surprise ending.  For example, Martin seems to be a very sharp fighter and driver for a professor, and that's because ... as revealed at the end, he's a secret agent not a professor.

The action is non-stop and effective, there's no telling who will live or die, and I very much recommend Unknown.

 

The View Looks Better from Here

I wrote here the morning after the election in November that there were grounds for optimism -- Biden was gaining in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona, which provided enough votes to win in the Electoral College. The last stage of that anachronistic, indirectly democratic process, but the only process we have right now, was completed last night.

I don't like Vice President Pence in the least.  He's enabled and promoted four years of Trump's fascist regime.  But, in the end, he did his job in Congress certifying the electoral vote yesterday.  It's a measure of how far we've gone away from decency and integrity in the Trump regime that a Vice President deserves praise for doing his job, but there you have it.

Yesterday also brought the news that the Democrats will control the Senate, and therefore both houses of Congress.  Warnock's and Ossoff's victories in George are profound game changers, which will open the way for Biden with Harris's help to enact all the major components of his rebuilding a better America. (In addition what needs to be done in making health care universal, countering racism, gun control, protecting the environment -- I've also long yearned, on a relatively minor, personal level, for a rail system in the United States as high-speed and effective as the ones in Europe and Japan, and I think that will now finally happen.)

There's still an enormous amount of danger to be dealt with, ranging from every minute Trump is still in the White House to the tap root of fascism Trump called forth* to the still-raging pandemic.  But we've finally reached the light at the end of one of the long, deep tunnels we've been struggling the navigate, and the view looks better from here.

*The storming of the U.S. Capitol, which happened a few hours after this blog post, is a tragic and infuriating example of what this fascism can do.  See my comments in the NY1 video below:

3022: Worthy Entry in a Bleak Genre

For some reason, 3022 is the second movie I've seen in as many weeks about astronauts stranded in deep space, unable to return to an unexpected dead or dying Earth. The Midnight Sky was the first, and both reprise Arch Oboler's (great name) masterful Night of the Auk from the 1950s.   I loved Oboler's play, but I'm generally not a fan of these apocalypse astronaut scenarios.   But like The Midnight Sky, 3022 gave me some reasons to like it.

First and foremost, Omar Epp's performance as John Laine, captain of one of the crews out there in the solar system, was really excellent.  So was Kate Walsh as Jackie Miller, engineer and in a romantic relationship with Laine.  Believability, dependent on actors providing the requisite range of human emotions, is essential in these kinds of life-and-death stories in outer space, and Epps and Walsh are up to the task.

Now one of the reasons I generally don't care for these end-of-the-world astronaut stories is that scant or no reason is given for why the Earth is kaput.  The Midnight Sky didn't, and neither did 3022.  Night of the Auk, by the way, did -- nuclear war.

So with the action on Earth a fait accomplis, we're left with the people in space in 3022 to tell us a captivating story.   The usual narrative, which we've seen many times, are the long-term effects life in space has on the body and mind, and even the soul.  We get a good rendition of this in 3022, with happy astronauts evolving towards falling to pieces.

I won't tell you the very end, which we get in the very last minute.  But I will recommend 3022 as a worthy entry in a bleak genre.   Good writing by Ryan Binaco, good directing by John Suits, as well as the fine acting.

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

Podcast Review of Bridgerton: Alternate Jane Austen

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 163, in which I review Bridgerton, and say it's an alternate history Jane Austen story.

Read this review:  Bridgerton: Alternate Austen

 

 

 

Check out this episode!

Your Honor 1.5: The Vice Tightens

So I realized, as my wife and I were watching Your Honor 1.5 on Showtime, that this whole series is about honor.  Not just the judge's title, but the honor -- or lack of -- of just about every character and their actions.

Big Mo has a lot of it.  She takes in the one survivor of the blast that killed every other member of his and Kofi's family.  She goes to see Baxter, because she wants to tell him what actually happened in the death of his son, and how Kofi couldn't have done it, because she doesn't want all-out war.

That war may be averted, but the daggers are closing in on Judge Diasato.  The episode ends with Baxter now knowing 100% that Diasato was involved in the death of Baxter's son.  And the blackmailer was in the car behind Adam at the gas station Adam went to after the fatal accident, and took a video of it.   Hard for Your Honor to maintain honor with life-and-death facing you at every turn.

Adam, however, continues to draw on an unexpected reservoir of cool.  When Baxter's daughter asks him what emotionally big event happened to Adam other than the death of his mother, Adam suavely responds that he met an impressive girl.  That kind of quick thinking may or may not save him and his father as the vice tightens.

At this point, halfway through the series, just about everything else is going wrong for Adam and his father.   All the attempts the judge made to direct attention away from Adam are having just the opposite result.   Does he have any more moves?   Hard to say.  But what is becoming increasingly clear is he has decreasing time to make them.

See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday" ... Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link ... Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner

 

Rust Creek: Not Rusty or Creeky

We saw Rust Creek, a 2018 movie, on Netflix last night.  Neither rusty nor creeky, and in fact a quite good rendition of the well worn theme of a young woman drives off the road in some backwoods area, and is accosted by guys ranging from criminals to miscreants.

The first thing I liked about Rust Creek is the reason Sawyer (the young woman) winds up off the road: a lame GPS system that directs her to a closed road, and then provides no coherent way of getting back to the highway.  How many times has that happened to you, right?

The miscreants, who are meth dealers, are no great shakes in originality, but the cook -- the guy who makes the meth -- turns out to be a decent, likeable, highly intelligent and reliable character.  In his own way, he turns out to be the hero of the story.

The anti-hero is a local sheriff, genial and ... deadly.   He's actually running the meth show, and the ease with which he kills anyone who gets in his way provides some surprises in the narrative.  I realized, as I was watching this movie, that Sheriff O'Doyle could have been a template for Big Rick, the genial sheriff in Big Sky who will also kill anyone he perceives as a danger to his illicit business.  (I have no idea who in the making of Big Sky saw what in Rust Creek, but I'm just saying the two characters seem cut from the same cloth.)

So, all in all, Rust Creek is an enjoyable movie, well directed by Jen McGowan, with good acting by Hermione Corfield (who was also good as the villain in We Hunt Together) as Sawyer and Jay Paulson as meth-cook Lowell and Sean O'Bryan as O'Doyle, and good writing by Julie Lipson and Stu Pollard.  I say see it.

 

Equinox (2020 TV series): Touches But Misses Kierkegaard and Darko

There have been a handful of movies and TV series named Equinox - check out the disambiguation page on Wikipedia -- but I thought I'd devote my first review here on Infinite Regress in 2021 to a Danish TV series by the name of Equinox that just debuted on Netflix on December 30, 2020, or two days ago.

The story begins with the sudden disappearance of high school kids on a bus, which could have made Equinox an entry in one of my favorite genres, Nordic Noir.   But crime is not in play in Equinox, unless you're talking about crimes of the soul, or, if you're inclined to be unkind, crimes of narrative.

Not that the narrative isn't compelling, which it often is.  But the mainspring of the narrative is fantasy, and not in the alt-science fiction way of His Dark Materials or Game of Thrones.  No, the fantasy at work in Equinox is some kind of mythological rite of Spring, an inchoate demon of something that demands to be satisfied when frustrated.

There are elements in this story, which apropos its Danish provenance, partakes of Kierkegaard, who is indeed mentioned at one point, but not really explored (that is, his brilliant philosophy of dread isn't intertwined in the story).  There are also elements of Donnie Darko in Equinox, but other than the demon who looks from some angles like the Darko rabbit, there's no time travel, however torturous it is in that 2001 classic.

What we do get in Equinox, which is good, and may make it worthwhile viewing for some people, is an intricate, powerful family relationship story, exploring the connection of sisters, mother and daughters, father and daughters, at younger and older ages.   But I crave a plot that weaves these relationships, if not into a current or historical reality, into a crime story that takes place in our real world, or a science fiction tale in a world that is plausibly ours or someone else's.

Instead, Equinox pins its exploration on a map of grade D fantasy (on a grading scale of A to F), which makes it disappointing in my book.