Time Cut: Meets the Sine Qua Non of Paradox and Surmounting It

So, Time Cut went up yesterday on Netflix.  It's a time travel movie, so I had to see it.  The story of a younger sister who goes back in time in 2024 to prevent the murder of her older sister in 2003 by a serial killer at first seemed a little trite, even more so with the high school shenanigans in which the story is situated.  But--

The story respected the paradoxes of time travel (a sine qua non for me in a time travel narrative) -- one of the savvier characters correctly says you might stop your sister's murder and in so doing cause World War III -- and the story becomes emotionally profound when--

[And here I'll warn you about some spoilers ahead ... ]

The younger sister, Lucy, from 2024 in 2003 knows that her parents had her only because her older sister Summer was killed.  When Lucy asks her parents who in 2003 don't know they will have another child if they're planning on having another child, they tell her no, and that sounds like a fait accompli. Lucy instantly realizes that if she prevents Summer's murder, that she, Lucy, will cease to exist.

I would have liked to have heard someone in the movie -- Quinn, the teenaged science nerd, and more -- voice the new conclusion that Lucy's realization engenders: that Lucy's very existence shows that somehow it might be possible that Summer survived, and Lucy was born, anyway.  Instead, we get the emotional turmoil that Lucy goes through, wanting to save her sister, and continue living herself.

But that's ok, it all makes sense at the end, and we find out who the masked serial killer is, which I guessed, but only pretty close to its revelation in the movie.  And we even get some clever dialogue, like when Lucy tells her as yet unknowing parents after dinner, "Thanks for having me". All of which is to say, Time Cuts is eminently worth seeing.

 

Don't Move: Keep Watching

Here's a short, mostly non-spoiler review of Don't Move, the movie just up on Netflix this week.

This is an original, high-anxiety movie that will keep you guessing until the very last minute. Which is an impressive accomplishment, given that we've seen something like the overall plot on the screen at least dozens of times before: a woman kidnapped by a handsome, highly intelligent, articulate, fiendish stranger.

Ok, that gives something away, but it happens close to the beginning, and is touted in the trailer and tagline for the movie.

It happens out in the country, not the big city, with rivers, rugged terrain, and leafy green trees as background.  A cabin in the woods, a gas station, and everyday cars play major roles.  Our victim receives help from unexpected and expected sources, but you'll be unlikely to guess what happens in the end.

The movie in its own way has Hitchcockian flavor, and a Nordic noir ambience, too, though it all takes in America.

But I've said enough.  Don't move once you start watching Don't Move.  You'll be rewarded.

Paul Levinson interviews Gerrit Van Woudenberg about his new movie Quantum Suicide

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 397, in which I interview Gerrit Van Houtenberg about his new multiple universe feature film, Quantum Suicide, debuting on Amazon Prime Video on October 18.

Relevant links:

• my review of Quantum Suicide
• The Chronology Protection Case movie on Amazon Prime Video
• The Chronology Protection Case novelette

Check out this episode!

Paul Levinson interviews Bob Hutchins: An Optimistic Discussion of AI

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 396, in which I interview Bob Hutchins about AI.  My guess is you'll find this discussion much more optimistic about AI than what you'll usually hear.

Discussed or mentioned in this interview:

• "On Behalf of Humanity: The Technological Edge" my 1996 article
• The Media Ecology Association
• New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication
• my review of Confronting the Presidents

 

 

Check out this episode!

Patrick Rands interviews Paul Levinson about It's Real Life on WZBC Radio

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 395, in which Patrick Rands interviews me about It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles on his WZBC Radio program Abstract Terrain.

• more about It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles here
• say hello at the Meet and Greet at Big Red Books, 120 Main Street, Nyack, NY, Sunday, October 6, 12noon-2pm 
• Anne Reburn's cover of Real Love
• my interview with Anne Reburn
• Yoko Ono's Cambridge 1969

 

Check out this episode!

Confronting the Presidents: A Review of Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard's New Book

I started reading Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard's new 400+ page book on Friday.  I finished it last night -- Monday night.  That should give you an idea of how important and captivating Confronting the Presidents is. 

It is subtitled "No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden".  But that obscures what the book actually is: assessments of US Presidents from Washington to Obama, co-written by O'Reilly and Dugard, followed by assessments of Trump and Biden written by O'Reilly, and assessments of Trump and Biden written by Dugard.  I'll explain near the end of this review why I think that distinction is crucial.

First, let me begin by saying I was on the O'Reilly's Fox show, The Factor, several times over 20 years ago (here's the video of my first appearance in January 2004), and four times on O'Reilly's No Spin News podcast several years ago.  We have strongly different political opinions, but I very much enjoyed our conversations.  O'Reilly has written numerous best-selling books, and O'Reilly and Dugard have a best-selling series (the "Killing" series about assassinations, attempted assassinations, killings of terrorists, etc), which I haven't read, but based on the writing in Confronting the Presidents, I expect that I eventually will, or at least read some of the books.

That writing is crisp, informative, and even exciting.   In part because most of it is in the present tense -- "At the start of Jefferson's second term, he is sixty-one years old.  He is no longer the young idealist...."  And in part because it has so many facts, big and little, that I didn't know and, after reading them in Confronting the Presidents, I think I should have known.  Like Theodore Roosevelt planning to run for a third term as president in 1919, before he died, and LBJ having a decades-long affair with Alice Glass, which Lady Bird knew about, and only ended when Alice left him because she was so furious about the Vietnam War.

We learn what each president ate for breakfast (right, I find that interesting), what kind of exercise they preferred, and how they died.  There's lots of humor in the book, but cradled in an underlying gravity and mortality.   And this is not because of what happened to Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and JFK, and almost happened to several others, but because as the authors make clear, the job of president, given the power to make one's dreams come true, is almost guaranteed not to be fulfilled, meaning your dreams will end up broken, their only chance being some future president may pick one up and carry it to victory in some more hospitable time.

Another salient point of history which I already knew as a media historian, and Confronting the Presidents makes abundantly clear, is that the intense polarization in our current world, (wrongly often blamed on social media, I would say), actually has been in the United States of America from the very beginning.  Editors of newspapers were prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Act that John Adams signed into law, and O'Reilly and Dugard tell us that Alexander Hamilton wrote that Adams was "a mere old woman and unfit for president".

As a professor and lifelong student of communication and media studies, I was also glad to see that Confronting the Presidents notes that First Lady "Carrie" Harrison brought electricity to the White House but she and her husband Benjamin (1889-1893) were afraid of being electrocuted, radio began to have a big influence on politics in the 1920s, and of course TV took center stage in the 1960s.  (See my continually updated McLuhan in an Age of Social Media for how and when television gave way to the social media president.)

***

But this powerhouse book, brimming with fascinating, useful, and important information, concludes its confrontation of presidents with Barack Obama.   An "Afterword" briefly gives O'Reilly's and Dugard's assessments of Trump and Biden independently.  The reason for this change in format isn't given, but it must be because Trump's presidency may not be finished (he's currently running for a second term), and at the time the book was written, neither was Biden's (he had not yet withdrawn from the current election).

I'm making such a big deal about this because O'Reilly's assessments of Trump and Biden are the first in the book I strongly disagree with.  No mention is made of Trump's treatment of COVID, and the attack on the Capitol he instigated on January 6, 2021 is barely mentioned, as a political mistake, not the fundamental attack on our democracy that it was.  Even more incredibly, O'Reilly ranks Biden as the second worst president in American history (after James Buchanan).  

As I said at the beginning of this review, O'Reilly and I are on opposite sides of the political spectrum.  But I was nonetheless taken aback by what he said about Biden and didn't say about Trump because I found his joint assessments with Dugard about other progressive presidents like Obama and Clinton, and conservatives like Nixon, to be right on key.  

Obviously, Dugard was a moderating factor, and he had plenty to say in his own assessment of Trump about January 6, 2021 (because of this, he ranks Trump the worst president, one below Herbert Hoover).  Dugard also had some praise for Biden, and went so far as to say he hopes Biden wins in 2024 (the book was completed, again, before Biden withdrew from the race).

So what you'll get from Confronting the Presidents is a fair and balanced -- to use that Fox cliche -- assessment of every American President prior to Trump.  Then, for Trump and Biden, separate assessments from each author, which taken together accurately reflect the current polarization of this country.

I'm not sure what I would have suggested to the two authors prior to publication about how to conclude this book.  Maybe conclude with Obama with no Afterword.  Or maybe struggle to find some common ground as the authors did for every other president.  But I can say I recommend this book to anyone who'd like to have a handy, accessible guide to the people who have been at the top of our noble, imperfect experiment with democracy.