La Brea 1.1: Pros and Cons of Falling into the Past

Well, I thought I'd take a look at La Brea, which debuted a few hours ago on NBC.  One on the one hand, a time-travel sinkhole story is right up my alley.  On the other hand, science fiction on network television all too often turns out to be annoying.  Or, if not -- like Debris, which was pretty good -- it's cancelled after one season.  Gone are the days of Star Trek the original series on NBC, or Lost on ABC.  But it's time travel.  I won't say no to at least giving a time travel series on network television a chance.

And the good news is there's what to like in La Brea.  The premise is sound: a sinkhole opens in the La Brea tar pits of Los Angeles.  Humans who fall in end up in the prehistoric past.  Prehistoric birds fly out into our present.  The set-up definitely has possibilities.

The characters who fall into the past also have possibilities.  As one of them notes, their plight is indeed reminiscent of those people on the island in Lost.   They're a good assortment of people of various ages, relationships, professions, talents, and situations.

Not quite as promising are the people left in our present.  The government officials are trite, almost ridiculous cutouts.  The husband (Josh) whose wife (Eve) and son (Jack) fell into the past has a not very believable story of somehow having true visions of his wife and son and other people in the past.  At this point at least, his story is sheer fantasy, which doesn't jibe well with the science fiction of a wormhole in present La Brea to the past.

But there are some good actors in this show.  Jon Seda who plays an MD in prehistoric La Brea is always welcome on screen, as is Natalie Zea as Eve.  So, yeah, I'll give this series a chance, for now.  It's time travel.

 

American Rust 1.3: Highs and Lows of Life at the Same Time

A superb third episode American Rust on Showtime last night.  I like the way the show has a way of juxtaposing the best and the worst on the screen at the same time, exemplified in the concluding scenes last night of Billy in bed with Lee (she came over to his place, after saying the love they made last week never happened) and the guy who drove to West Virginia phoning in to the sheriff that he saw Billy punch out the former cop who wound up dead.

Except the caller didn't say that he actually saw Billy kill the ex-cop, and there's no guarantee at all that Lee will keep being with Billy, so it's not quite the worst or the best for Billy, and that ambiguity amidst the life and death is one of the best part of this series.

I also especially liked two of the many good conversations that animate the narrative.  Del's telling Grace why he left Pittsburgh provided a crucial insight into his life, helpful to Grace and us in understanding him.  And the young woman recounting her recollection of the man who fed his dog one night and "barbecued" it the next is not only a priceless little piece of Americana, but a good entree (pardon the expression) of what will be a significant relationship for Isaac, based on the coming attractions.

Meanwhile, the whodunnit of the murder still looms large.  Here's my current best guess: it's neither Billy nor Isaac, but the caller heading into West Virginia.   That would be his motive for calling the sheriff -- get the law to focus on someone other than him.  But, it's only the third episode, and we'll just have to see.  I have a feeling American Rust is going to take its own sweet time in making this ultimate revelation, and the trimmings in this narrative are so compelling, I'd say that's all for the better.

See you back here next week with my next review.

See also American Rust 1.1-2: Pennsylvania Noir

The Defeated: Moral Complexity in the Ruins

My wife and I just saw The Defeated aka Shadowplay on Netflix.  A powerful, riveting, brutally honest, at times brutal, at times tender, eight-episode 2020 mini-series that takes place in Germany just after the Nazis lost the war in 1945.  Co-produced by German and Canadian companies, it's evocative of both Babylon Berlin and Hunters, with an on-the-scene Rome: Open City ambience and a piercing morality all its own.

Like all powerful, complex narratives, The Defeated has characters with all shades of loyalties and goals.  They range from Max (NYPD cop on hand to help out in Germany, but really there to find his brother) and Elsie (a German cop determined to do the right thing), to Max's brother Moritz (a psychotic Nazi hunter) and Tom (Max's boss, lining his pocket with proceeds from smuggled art that the Nazi's stole during the war) to the "Angel Maker" (a Nazi doctor who preys on young women) and Karin (a young woman who assists and urges the Angel Maker to do even more).

The action is literally searing and bone crunching, and the acting delivers.  Taylor Kitsch puts in his best performance as Max since we saw him as Riggins in Friday Night Lights.  Nina Hoss, whom I haven't seen before, is excellent as Elsie.  They and any character with a shred of decency struggle to navigate this strange new world in Germany, where the Nazis are officially gone but the ideology noxiously lingers, and those who are free of the ideology wonder how they can bring a more sane, decent life into being.

From our current vantage point, it seems like they succeeded.  But the deeper lesson of The Defeated may well be that the Nazi perspective lingers still, because indeed it does, as we see in many places, like the continuing mistreatment of immigrants seeking refuge and freedom at the southern border of the United States.

There is supposed to be a second season of The Defeated in the making.  I'll be back with a review when it's streaming.

Podcast Review of Foundation 1.1-2

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 192, in which I review the first two episodes of Foundation, just up today on Apple TV+

• earlier podcasts about Foundation: July 17, 2021: Thinking about Asimov's Foundation Series on AppleTV+ ... March 12, 2009:  Asimov's Foundation and Herbert's Dune Trilogies as Sources of Philosophy
• written blog post review of Foundation 1.1-2
• postcard from Isaac Asimov to me in 1979 about the Foundation trilogy

 

Check out this episode!

Foundation 1.1-2: Mathematics, Man of the People, and Cleon's Clones

I've been saying on Twitter and Facebook and anyplace with an eye or an ear that I've been waiting most of my life to see Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy and then series on a screen.  That's surely a prescription for disappointment.  But I just watched the first two episodes of Foundation on Apple TV+ and I thought they were superb.  Not perfect, but more than enough to be not disappointed but thrilled.

First, let me say that, in general when I review a movie or TV series based on a novel or story I previously read, I try not to get tied up in comparisons.  The screen and the page are, after all, very different media, with different necessities of expression and portrayal.   But Asimov's stories are so incandescent, it's not possible to ignore them when thinking about the television series.

And I think the first two episodes of the series do capture the best parts of the Asimov stories.  The primacy of mathematics in predicting the broad currents of history, but not the actions of individuals, come through powerfully in the first two episodes.   Especially in the stunning ending of the second episode.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

That would be Hari Seldon murdered by his adopted son Raych, on the ship to Terminus.  I don't know if I liked that -- actually, I do know, I didn't -- and I'm not sure it was well enough motivated.   But it certainly was traumatically shocking, and amply demonstrated the unpredictability of individual behavior.

Cleon's clones, though, on the other hand, were somewhat predictable, certainly the cruelty of Brother Day.  But the relationship between the boy (Dawn), the old man (Dusk), and Day was interesting, even fascinating, and one of the best parts of the TV series not in the Asimov stories.  

I also really loved the scene on the ship to Terminus with Hari talking to the workers in the laundry room.  It was good and comforting to see the esoteric mathematician being such a true man of the people.  Seldon was never fleshed out on Asimov's pages, and Jared Harris did a fine job of doing that in the first two episodes.  As I was watching them, it occurred me to me that Foundation in these first two episodes was most like David Goyer's Da Vinci's Demons, which makes sense, since Seldon and Da Vinci were both geniuses who predicted the future. The trial of Hari was also effective, as it was in Asimov, evoking Galileo on trial for his life and ideas in the Vatican.

In addition to Harris,  Lou Llobell does a fine job as Gaal Dornick, who has an excellent expanded role in the TV series as not only a mathematician but a human being.  And Lee Pace is powerful and believable as the powerful Brother Day.   Robots played no role in the original Asimov trilogy, and an increasing role in the sequels.  I'm not sure what I think as yet of Laura Birn's Demerzel on the TV screen.

I'll tell you more when I review the third episode right after I see it next Friday early morning.  And here's my audio podcast with some further thoughts about the first two episodes:

See also Foundation 1.3: Clonal Science Fiction, Hari Seldon as V. I. Lenin ... Foundation 1.4:  Slow Hand, Long Half-Life, Flipped Coin ...  Foundation 1.5: What We Learned in that Final Scene ... Foundation 1.6: Folded Variations ... Foundation 1.7: Alternate History/Future ... Foundation 1.8: Divergences and Convergences ... Foundation 1.9: Vindication and Questions ... Foundation Season 1 Finale: Right Up There

American Rust 1.1-2: Pennsylvania Noir

My wife and I just had a chance to see the first two episodes of American Rust on Showtime.  We'll definitely be watching the ensuing six episodes.

It occurred to me that American Rust is part of what may be called Pennsylvania Noir, joining Mare of Eastham (which received three impressive Emmys the other night) and Your Honor (which should have received some Emmys).  American Rust is the most down in the dirt, depicting a way of life under siege from poverty and the elements, with characters who know what's good even if they can't have it, and escape to New York City if they can.

The acting that portrays those characters is outstanding.  Jeff Daniels is Chief of Police Del Harris.  He's on some kind of PTSD-control drugs, in love with Grace Poe (played by Maura Tierney), who is married to a jackass husband Virgil (Mark Pellegrino), but Harris still manages to do his job with a moral code that transcends the law.   But I think my favorite character is Billy Poe (played by Alex Neustaedter), somehow involved in a murder which I'm guessing he didn't commit, and reminding me a lot of Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) on Friday Night Lights, which is a very good thing.

More on the murder: the whodunnit is the heart of narrative, and so far it has some compelling players. Harris will bend the rules to the point of breaking them to protect Billy, and it's not clear at this point what Harris really believes.  Billy's in love with the sister of the guy who may have committed the murder with Billy, or maybe did it just on his own, and I was glad to see the two of them totally together again, even for just a night, because I'm a hopeless romantic.  It was sweet to see Lee (Julia Mayorga) fall asleep in Billy's arms as they were dancing at a wedding.

So there's a lot of story to see in American Rust, and I'll be back here with weekly reviews.

Podcast Review of Star Trek: Discovery season 3

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 191, in which I review Star Trek: Discovery season 3.

• written review
• The Missing Orientation
• podcast review of Picard season 1, and Discovery seasons 1 and 2

Check out this episode!

Star Trek: Discovery 3: Fulfilling the Promise

Checking in with a review of Star Trek: Discovery season 3, which was on CBS All Access now Paramount+ nearly a year ago, but I just had a chance to binge-watch the past few days. 

The first 10 of its 13 episodes were a mix of good, ok, and very good.  The final three episodes were pure gold, with outstanding hand-to-hand combat, and some of the best personal stories and trials and tribulations in any Star Trek, of whatever vintage, on whatever kind of screen.

First, it was ingenuous to move the storyline in this season from before the start of Star Trek: The Original Series to further in the future than any other Star Trek narrative has been located.   I won't give away too much of the plot in this review, but I will say that although we've seen plenty of time travel in many a Star Trek season, the goal of Discovery in staying in this far future -- what it must do -- is original, unexpected, and sufficiently cosmic to motivate all the twists and turns and surprises in the story.

The continuing characters, especially Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Saru (Doug Jones), really come into their own.  And lots of memorable new characters this season, too.  My favorites were Booker (David Ajala), Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr), Osyraa (Janet Kidder), and Kovich (David Cronenberg -- yes!).   There was good integration of Vulcan and Romulus into the story, and a nice shout-out to "City on the Edge of Forever," with Paul Guilfoyle (CSI's Jim Brass) playing the Guardian of Forever.

I've come to realize -- and I may have said this is in an earlier review, but it's worth repeating -- that the Star Trek franchise is more than a superb one-of-a-kind series of television series and movies.  It's a blueprint for our future, a blueprint which is helping that future come into being, by being such a continuing inspiration.  Or, as I said my essay, The Missing Orientation, published late last year, "my lifelong commitment to doing what I could via writing and speaking to help lift our species off this planet was baked in for life by Star Trek in the mid-1960s."

The third season of Star Trek: Discovery amply continues that inspiration.  I'll be back here with a review of the fourth season, which will start on Paramount+ on November 18, and everything Star Trek that comes after.

See also Star Trek: Discovery 2: Tour de Force Story and Characters ... Discovering Star Trek: Discovery ... Star Trek: Picard: Non-Pareil

The Voyeurs: Not Rear Window, But Still Worth Looking Through

We caught The Voyeurs -- not real people, the movie that just went up on Amazon Prime Video -- and enjoyed it.  It's been compared by critics -- unfavorably, of course -- to Hitchcock's 1954 masterful Rear Window, but it's still worth watching, looking through, choose your metaphor.

And though The Voyeurs lacks the dramatically harrowing tension of Rear Window, it's a pretty enthralling, attractive mystery, with some good surprises, mostly stacked up near the end.  The cinematography, the ambience, and the bodies all work well.

[SPOILERS AHEAD ...]

I guessed the first big surprise, and that gets at the one underlying problem in the plot.  I had a feeling Julia wasn't dead, and she and Seb were just acting that out to amuse and ensnare Pippa and Thomas.  I was also a little not quite believing that Thomas took his life, though the funeral made it clear that he was dead.  But in both Julia's and Thomas's cases, taking their own lives seemed a little extreme.  Yes, they would have been hurt, even devastated, by the infidelity of their partners, but there wasn't quite enough psychological development to make their suicides plausible, at least to me.

That said, though, I was impressed with what Pippa was able to pull on Seb and Julia in revenge.  That effective twist, a good way to cap off the movie, was due to Sydney Sweeney's convincing portrayal of Pippa as a sweet young woman with a raging libido just waiting to be tapped.  In all the scenes prior to her turning the tables on her tormentors, she was able to convey an interpersonal and erotic vulnerability.

Back to Hitchcock -- he's in a class by himself.  His movies are peerless, and François Truffaut's Hitchcock/Truffaut (1966), an extended interview with Hitchcock in which he talks about his many movies, is far and away the most instructive book about film I've ever read.  (I'll review the 2015 HBO documentary here soon.)  So don't let the primacy of Rear Window get in the way of your watching The Voyeurs, and enjoying it, if you have a heartbeat.

The Chair: Hilarious, Sage, and Close to the Truth

My wife and I saw The Chair last night -- six episodes, thirty minutes each, on Netflix -- and loved it.  It's billed as a comedy drama, and that's what it is -- a depiction of college professors, administrators, and students -- at a fictitious university, Pembroke, not quite Ivy League.  It's also close enough to the truth that it could have been a documentary of any university I've ever taught at, all these years.

Sandra Oh, always superb,  plays Ji-Yoon Kim, who has just become Chair of the English Department.  Her primary nemesis is Dean Paul Larson (that is, he's a Dean) perfectly played by David Morse.  He's interested in money.  Which means he's out to get -- as in get them to leave -- elderly professors who pull in high salaries and few students.  He's smart, articulate, and other than money his only other goal is to protect the image of the university.  If you're a professor, who has served time as Chair of your department, as I have, you'll instantly recognize Larson.  He, along with the university public relations hack -- another instantly recognizable character -- provide the drama that spices up the comedy.

Kim must also deal with another recognizable academic problem: the short shrift that women have been given over the decades in their professorial roles.  Holland Taylor plays sassy Joan Hambling, one of the oldsters Larson has on his hit list.  She's stymied by the university's computer technology -- who isn't -- but puts up a fight, and conducts it with style and bon-vivance

Social media are whipping boys for everything these days, and The Chair is no exception.  A professor explaining to his class how fascism arises gives a sieg heil to demonstrate a point.  That's captured by a student's phone, sent out to social media, and the professor soon finds himself condemned as a Nazi.  Larson of course wants to fire him, even though he has tenure, draws in lots of students, and is not that old.

Lots of other all-too familiar academic gambits just slightly exaggerated, if at all, in The Chair, which makes not only for continuous good laughs but a blueprint for change in academe.

discussion of The Chair begins at 12min 28secs in this interview

Podcast Review of Sweet Girl

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 190,  in which I review the movie Sweet Girl.

• written review of Sweet Girl
• thank you Phil Merkel for the Public Service Announcement about Music Beats Cancer
• more on Music Beats Cancer here

Check out this episode!

Music Beats Cancer

A worthy cause ... campaign runs from 6 September 2021 9:00 am Eastern time (EST) through 30 September 2021 11:59 EST ... 

Music Beats Cancer is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Tax ID #45-4642925

Donation form and details here.

The Innocent: One of Harlan Coben's Best

I've never seen a Harlan Coben movie or television series -- that is, a movie or TV series based on Coben's novels -- that I didn't really like.  And The Innocent -- more precisely, El inocente, a Spanish-language eight-episode short series based on Coben's novel The Innocent, on Netflix since the end of April -- is one of his very best.

The narrative is a tightly woven multiple-suspect murder, prostitution, true love story, with at least three protagonists: Mateo Vidal, now very happily married, but served four years in prison because he accidentally pushed a young man to his death in a fight when Mateo was younger; Olivia Costa, Mateo's loving wife, pregnant with his baby, having left her earlier life as a prostitute; and Lorena Ortiz, also with a complicated past, now a detective, fighting to do the right thing in a male-chauvinistic and in part corrupt police force.  The performances of  Mario Casas, Aura Garrido, and Alexandra Jiménez in these three roles were outstanding, as was the acting of everyone else in this series.

As is the case with all of Coben's stories, characters are hit by improbable events and do improbable things, but you're wise as a viewer to follow your instincts -- i.e., what you get from the subtleties of the people and their interactions, sometimes barely perceptible but always there -- because it all fits together and makes sense in the end.  That's the way Coben rolls.  Pushes you pretty far out, but with just enough platform to hang in there and follow the clues as they inexorably stack up.

[SPOILER AHEAD....]

The one reservation I had -- actually, my wife mentioned it first, and I agreed -- was with Jaime (the father of the young man that Mateo pushed and accidentally killed) as the villain, who set Mateo up for most of the near brushes with death he has in the series.  Jaime's motivation is one-hundred-percent clear and understandable.  But his expertise in what he repeatedly tried to do to Mateo, in different but related ways, was not apparent or developped in the narrative.   My wife said, "so this guy is a criminal genius?"  He is in fact, an MD -- a good way for him to find out that Mateo and Olivia are expecting a baby -- but where does he get his criminal savvy?  This could have been remedied by making Jaime some kind of forensic doctor, I'd say.  But, ok, one reservation in a sea of characters who worked together with precise plausibility is a small quibble.

So see The Innocent, and enjoy.

Sweet Girl: Pretty Good

Once again: panned by myopic critics, liked by me.  Just to be clear: I don't think Sweet Girl is a great movie.  But I thought it was pretty good.

Jason Momoa is a father bent on vengeance and justice for a slick high-tech pharmaceutical company that withholds a life-saving treatment for his wife, who dies.  He's Jason Momoa.  Don't expect Marlon Brando or even Liam Neeson.  Momoa delivers his lines and is an imposing presence on the screen.

Isabela Merced is the daughter, of course also aggrieved, and bent on both helping her father and keeping him from going too far, i.e., endangering what's left of the family, her and her father.  I thought Merced, whom I recall from Sicario, put in a strong, convincing performance.

Now as to the plot ...

[BIG SPOILERS AHEAD]

True, we've seen it before, but it was done pretty well in Sweet Girl.  The "it" being that a lot of the time we saw Jason Momoa in action (playing the father, Ray Cooper), it was really Isabela Merced (playing his daughter Rachel Cooper, who could be called Ray for short).  Now this is a bit of a stretch, for sure.  Rachel was that good, that competent in all kinds of combat?  Well, since she certainly had the element of surprise in close hand-to-hand combat -- her opponents didn't expect that much from her -- maybe her success was at least somewhat well founded.

Anyway, it worked for me.  Rachel is a sharp witted, empathetic character, with now well-honed combat skills, and it would be fun to see her in another movie.

Podcast: Cuomo, Health Care, Online Education

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 189, in which Captain Phil on WUSB-FM Radio (Stony Brook, New York) interviews me about Andrew Cuomo, heath care, online education, Rufus Sewell, and much more (a series of unrelated but currently significant topics).  Also, at the end of podcast, Rorie Kelly reads here poem, "Glasses".

Further --

• my 90-minute interview with Rufus Sewell: video ... book
• Online Education -- Even Better Than I Expected (scroll down)
• Plagues and Peoples (William McNeill)

 

Check out this episode!