Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing 3 Body Problem; Black Doves; Bosch; Citadel; Criminal Minds; Dark Matter; Dexter: Original Sin; Dune: Prophecy; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; House of the Dragon; Luther; Outlander; Presumed Innocent; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Surface; The: Ark, Day of the Jackal, Diplomat, Last of Us, Way Home; You +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

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

Saturday, November 30, 2024

Outlander 7.10: The Nature of Deaths on TV Series

Well, let me begin my review of Outlander 7.10 by saying there will be spoilers galore in what I have to say about this powerful episode.

And let me add another reminder that I have yet to read any of the Outlander novels, so I have no idea how the story this TV adaptation is based upon unfolded and progressed.

And I'll also add that I have a firm principle that if you don't see a character's head blown off in a TV series or movie, there's a fair chance the character has not been killed, regardless of what anyone else says or does.

So, with all of that in mind, let me say that I don't believe for a moment that Jamie died on that ship which went down and on which "all hands were lost". There are more than a few explanations of what really happened, and resulted in Claire receiving that terrible report. The ship didn't really go down at all, and the report that it did is some kind of ruse the English or the Americans are perpetrating on behalf of their war effort. Or, if the ship did go down, Jamie was in fact not on it. Or, if he was indeed on it, he survived after all -- probably the most likely explanation, which would account for why they didn't find his body, alive or dead.

I'm sure we will see Jamie sooner or later walk back into Claire's life. Of course, she'll be a married woman by then, because she'll of course agree to marry Lord John Grey. Because Claire has confidence in what her heart tells her, that Jamie is still alive, and marrying John is the best way to protect herself and her future with Jamie.

Meanwhile, it's good to see young Ian -- now the only Ian -- back with the new love of his life. And it's fun to see how Roger is doing in the past, meeting other time travelers and other-aged-versions of characters he has come to know in his various travels through time and space. This looks to be moving into one of the most powerful second half of seasons in the series so far.

Podcast Review of Beatles '64

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 400, in which I review the Beatles '64 documentary that just went up yesterday on Disney+.

Here are links to some of the many people and things I discuss in the podcast:

my 1972 article about Murray the K in The Village Voice
my 1971 article about Paul McCartney in The Village Voice
the song I wrote and recorded about Murray the K
my podcast reviews of Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back
my podcast review of Maestro
McLuhan in an Age of Social Media
It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles
Evan Levine's 25 November 2024 written interview with me

Check out this episode!

Friday, November 29, 2024

Beatles '64: The Real Thing

Just saw Martin Scorsese's Beatles '64, up today on Disney+. It's everything you would expect from a master like Scorsese and his masterful 1978 The Last Waltz, but much more, given what the Beatles were and are to so many millions of people on this planet. As I began saying in the 1970s, that impact will last for thousands of years, right up there with Socrates and Shakespeare, even though at one point in the documentary, a young Paul scoffs at The Beatles having anything to do with "culture," preferring instead to say that what The Beatles are about are "laughs".

Here are some of the highlights of Beatles '64, made possible by some of the footage the late Albert and David Maysles brothers took of The Beatles first trip to America -- for their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, concert in Washington DC, and concert back in New York in Carnegie Hall -- that had special resonance with me. I present them in more or less chronological order in the movie:

A girl fan in New York City tells about the gifts she brought for each Beatle. For Ringo, it's two "science fiction books". She doesn't say which ones, but even so, it's good to hear.
Another girl says Elvis "is old anyway". I think Elvis was great, but I get what she means.
Yet another girl, who goes to Julliard, explains that "we don't usually like rock 'n' roll ... [but] The Beatles are the greatest". See below about Leonard Bernstein and his CBS special and his daughter Jamie for more on this point.
Ronnie Spector, interviewed probably ten or so years ago, says "Murray the K was downstairs [saying] you gotta get me upstairs to meet The Beatles." My second published article was about Murray the K (in The Village Voice in 1972 -- my first was about Paul McCartney in the same weekly newspaper a year earlier in 1971), and I even wrote a song about Murray the K that he played on his WNBC-AM radio show. Beatles '64 had a lot more to say about Murray, which I'll discuss below.
I loved seeing the Ronettes hold the Phil Spector Christmas Album, which has two recordings by the Ronettes -- "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "Frosty the Snowman" -- that I still play on YouTube all time.
A nasty NYPD cop tells two girls to get off the floor The Beatles were on, in their hotel, to walk down the stairs "before I throw you down the stairs". An unfortunate parallel to the London bobbies who go up to the roof to break up The Beatles last concert that we see in Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back, also on Disney+, and now a perfect pair with Beatles '64.
Black teenage girls love The Beatles; black teenage boys do not, one of them saying, "I think they're [The Beatles are] disgusting." (But see Smokey Robinson, whom I'll discuss below.)
Murray the K appears throughout the movie. The Beatles tend to think he's too "loud," John mocks him in the movie, and George Harrison remarks in an interview probably conducted in the mid-1980s that Murray, in effect, just glommed on to The Beatles and their first visit to New York. I actually worked with Murray in the early 1970s -- he invited me to come work with him after he read my 1972 article about him -- and I didn't find him too loud at all. He likely had mellowed by then.
Smokey Robinson does an endearing performance of McCartney's "Yesterday" in the 1960s, and in a very recent interview explains that The Beatles had a tender, feminine way of expressing their emotions, which Smokey found very admirable. Jamie Bernstein (Leonard's daughter) and Betty Friedan echo and elaborate on this perceptive view. Clips from Leonard Bernstein's pathbreaking 1967 CBS show on The Beatles and the "rock revolution" appear throughout Scorsese's film (here's my review of Maestro which, amazingly, said nothing about that TV show).
Back to Murray the K: he gets George in 1964 to introduce James Ray's "Got My Mind Set on You". Unsaid in the movie is that of course George would have a big hit singing the song in 1987. Hey, Murray at least deserves credit for introducing the song to George.
Marshall McLuhan appears a lot in the second half of the movie, saying things like "JFK was the first TV President" and interviewing John and Yoko in Toronto at the end of 1969. I worked with McLuhan at the end of the following decade -- he was also the real thing, the most perceptive scholar I've ever had the chance and pleasure to work with (more on McLuhan in my just updated McLuhan in an Age of Social Media). Beatles '64 sets up The Beatles coming to America as the immediate sequence and desperately needed healing musical salve to the crushing depression caused by JFK's assassination, which indeed it was. McLuhan's breakthrough book, Understanding Media, arrived at same time. The Beatles helped heal America, McLuhan helped us understand what was happening.
Harry Benson, a now 94-year-old photographer, tells us that Lennon "used to speak, of all things, about Lee Harvey Oswald ... he was worried about violence" directed against him and The Beatles in America. That brought me to tears. (I say more about Lennon's assassination, and how it brought me to write It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles, in this interview conducted just last week.)
But on a lighter note, speaking of tears, I had to laugh when I heard that "George Harrison was near tears" when he and The Beatles were dissed at a reception for them at the British Embassy after their Washington DC concert. McCartney had a much better response.
Also on a lighter note, and putting on my media theorist hat, I was pleased to hear the word "cassette," long before there were little tape recordings, back in 1964, used to describe a place that cans of soda inhabited, when someone said, "draw it [the soda can] out of the cassette".
But the documentary returns to the assassination of JFK, which, along with the assassination of John Lennon, were the worst public events in my life. At the end of the movie, satirist and critic Joe Queenan, who appears throughout the film, tells us that his "father never recovered from Kennedy's assassination but we did". And that of course was because we had The Beatles. The "we" is my generation, and what Queenan says is all the more trenchant, since he earlier tells us that his father beat him, and also decreed that Queenan couldn't watch The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, which Queenan said was worse. But he managed to watch at his uncle's place.

I could say more about this documentary, but you get the picture, and if you loved or love The Beatles, and feel the same about Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back, see this movie, Beatles '64, at least once.

in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover

in Kindle and paperback

More books about McLuhan the media at Connected Editions

Thursday, November 28, 2024

Podcast Review of Dune: Prophecy 1.1-1.2: The Hart of the Matter

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 399, in which I review Dune: Prophecy 1.1-1.2 on HBO Max.

written review of Dune Prophecy 1.1-1.2

Check out this episode!

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Dune: Prophecy 1.2: The Hart of the Matter

Well, there will be spoilers in this review of Dune Prophecy 1.2, because there's nothing I have an interest in talking about that takes place in this remarkable episode that doesn't contain spoilers.

I said in my review last week of episode 1.1 that Desmond Hart, played by Travis Fimmel, was my favorite character, in part because Fimmel is a uniquely memorable actor, in part because the character he is playing was starting to do some remarkable things. Not just the horrible thing of killing the boy by making him burn from the inside out -- which I would just as soon not have seen -- but the far more extraordinary thing of burning Kasha, a Bene Gesserit member at the same time, "halfway across the universe," as was remarkable upon in 1.2

That's a power that far exceeds what the Bene Gesserit can do, and in episode 1.2 we see Hart has another extraordinary power: he is able to defy Valya's order, delivered via Voice, to slit his own throat -- the same command via which Valya permanently silenced Dorotea in episode 1.1. (Well, not quite permanently -- we see Dorotea talking to/at Sister Lila, when Lila is in that never never land that the poison she has ingested, which she is supposed to break into non-poisonous "molecules," is coursing through her body and brain. But you know what I mean.)

Episode 1.2 also gives us at least a partial answer of how Hart got to have such power. He says he was ingested via a sandworm and came out alive and in possession of his powers. That of course leaves open the question of who is Hart that he survived such a power-bestowing ordeal. But it's a good start.

Meanwhile, in other highlights of this episode, there was a legitimately good sex scene between Constantine Corrino (an illegitimate son of the Emperor) and Lady Shannon Richese (older sister of the slain boy -- much older, she's not a child). This happens in contrast to a subsequent scene in which Kieran Atreides (who of course is bound to have an important role in this series) and Princess Ynez (a legitimate princess) elect not to have sex, which almost certainly means they eventually will.

So Dune: Prophecy is off to a very good start, indeed, and I'll see you back here with reviews of subsequent episodes in the weeks ahead.

Friday, November 22, 2024

Outlander 7.9: Powerful Separations

Outlander 7.9 was finally up on Starz tonight. It was an episode high on emotion, low on battling, and medium on time travel.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

As readers of this blog will know, time travel and alternate history are my favorite kinds of stories, as a reader, a viewer, and an author. Outlander has always had a powerful time travel component -- it's of course the very basis of the story -- but often kept in the background (I'll remind everyone that I've watched every episode but not read a page from the books).

Episode 7.9 actually had a little more time travel than usual. Claire feels terrible that she can't do anything to help Ian's father (also named Ian) with his advanced tuberculosis. There's an implied time travel in this difficult situation. She doesn't say this (and apparently doesn't think this), but she could travel to the future and come back with some powerful antibiotic. That's probably why she tells old Ian's wife (Jenny) that it's too late to do anything to help old Ian. But I think there's a slight possibility that she could change her mind and take a trip to the future to get some antibiotic. As it is, she does make a decision to travel to America to help Jamie's son who has a wound she can do something about. And it's great that young Ian is accompanying her, for reasons of the heart.

But the big time travel piece comes from Roger, who along with Buck go back in time to rescue Roger's son Jemmy from the kidnapper Rob. Not that I like to see couples separated -- I'm a hopeless romantic and like to see couples together -- but I've always thought the best stories in Outlander happened when couples were apart in time, desperate to get reunited. The Atlantic was a big ocean to transverse back then, so Claire going to America has some of that power that comes from separation, but I'm especially looking forward to seeing what Roger's journeys in the past bring him and therefore us.

It was also good to hear Claire tell the family about the dangers of going to France, given what she knows about the impending French Revolution and its Reign of Terror.

As for the non-time-travel, it was very good to see Jamie's family at close hand. I'm glad Outlander is back on television. And I expect to be reviewing every episode of this second half of the the seventh season.

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Tom Cooper's Wisdom Weavers: The Lives and Thought of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Dune: Prophecy 1.1: Compelling Prequel

I just watched the first episode of Dune: Prophecy on HBO Max. Here's a non-spoiler review:

This prequel to the Dune series takes place 10,148 years (you can look up whether that's Earth years) before the birth of Paul Atreides, we're told near the beginning of this first episode. Now the Dune series of novels is second only to the Foundation series of novels, I've thought ever since I started reading science fiction many years ago. And the first episode of Dune: Prophecy has a lot in common with the first Dune novel. Both have some scenes I'd rather not have read or seen. And both start off way too slowly. But Dune proceeded to be monumental in its story and impact, and Dune: Prophecy looks like it could be headed in that direction, too.

The essence of Dune: Prophecy is the establishment and growth into power of the Bene Gesserit, one of the most compelling components of the future Dune saga. The characters in this powerful order that seeks to guide and control the universe by breeding the most appropriate humans for the job are well introduced in this first episode, but my favorite character is Desmond Hart, played by Travis Fimmel, whom I first noticed in his incandescent role of Ragnar Lothbrok in Vikings. He has a way of speaking and acting that dominates every scene he's in, and leaves an indelible impression.

Someone on some social media site remarked that Dune: Prophecy was just Game of Thrones in outer space. I did hear someone comment in Dune: Prophecy about "bending" someone's will, and, as I said, there was a scene or two I would rather not have seen, but the Dune story first came out in two serials published in Analog Magazine in 1964 and 1965, followed by the novel in 1965, so if Game of Thrones and Dune: Prophecy have any connection, it's that Thrones was influenced by the narrative qualities of Prophecy rather than vice versa.

And Dune: Prophecy has a freshness and some unexpected turns -- which I won't tell you about -- all its own. I will tell you that Mark Strong as Emperor Javicco Corrino is memorable -- the Emperors have always been among my favorite Dune characters -- as are Emily Watson and Olivia Williams as the Harkonnen Sisters, who play such important roles.

So if you've been a devotee of the Dune saga, well, you can't go wrong with Prophecy. And if you haven't read or watched yourself into the Dune universe, well, you don't know what you're missing.

A Poem: "I Fell in Love with a Robot"

Read the rest of New Explorations, vol 2 no 4 over here.

Friday, November 15, 2024

Silo 2.1: The Post- Apocalyptic Ladder

Well, Hugh Howey's Silo is back on Apple TV+ for its second season -- which will happen one episode at a time -- and it couldn't have come back at a more appropriate time.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

Juliette escaped/was thrown out of the silo at the end of the first season. She and we knew that the air wasn't really poisonous outside, but, hey, you can never be sure. But she and we were right, and after we discover/confirm that it's not quite the world that has gone to hell, Juliette makes her way into and through another shelter or whatever it is, within easy walking distance from the silo with Sims and all those other characters we saw so much of last year. One question that immediately arises: why are these two silos so close to one another? What is it about this particular area?

But there ensue three parts to Juliette's journey now: 1. She uses a series of rusty ladders to get over the huge caverns in the shelter she enters (she's an engineer -- the title of this episode -- so she knows how to position a ladder across cavern and make her way across it with almost by not getting killed). 2. She hears a song faintly in the background, which gets louder as she walks on -- it's "Moon River," you can't go wrong with that, though "You'll Never Walk Alone," especially Patti Labelle and the Blue Bells' version, with that impossibly high note she hits at the end, would have worked well, too. 3. And we learn that someone has been playing that song -- it's not some remnant of Spotify that's been programmed in the future -- and that someone ends this episode with a threat to kill Juliette if she opens the door.

I'll mention here (in case you haven't read my reviews of the first season, for which, see below) that I haven't read any of Hugh Howey's books, and once I started watching and enjoying the series, I didn't want to, because I wanted to enjoy all the twists and turns in the TV series. So I don't know who any of the characters who are new to the second season are. All we see of the man who plays the music and makes the threat are his eyes. I thought the actor playing him might have been Steve Buscemi. But it turns out the actor is another Steve -- Steve Zahn (a fine actor, I first noticed him in Treme).

Anyway, the return of Silo is off to a good start, with a nearby silo, and fine music and acting likely to take place there, and I'll be back here likely every week with a review of each episode.

Sunday, November 10, 2024

The Diplomat 2: West Wing Meets Bond, Part 2

I just finished watching the six episode second season of The Diplomat, which went up on Netflix on the last day of October. Here's a review with no specific spoilers, and therefore no warning.

Let's begin at the end. It's got the best surprise ending I've seen in at least the hundred seasons of any television show, on traditional network, cable, and streaming. I don't know ... maybe make that five hundred.

Now, it's important to state the obvious, and keep in mind that this second was finished before the results of our election for President a few days. So think of this second season as capturing the ambience and reality of the American President, VP, and staff maybe a year or six months ago, replete with a pretty old old American President, and a somewhat younger female VP.

I say American, even though the story takes place in Britain. But American leaders appear in person and on video calls, And of course the central characters are Kate Wyler, recently appointed US ambassador to the UK, and her husband Hal Wyler, former ambassador to Lebanon. Unsurprisingly, both parts are played to perfection by Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell (who sounds, as always when he wants to, as American as I am).

Indeed, every bit of the acting was top-notch, especially Rory Kinnear as the British PM, and Allison Janney as the US VP. But don't get me wrong. I didn't love every last scene in this second season, such as when one character explaining something to another character says it's a case a correlation not causation, and the other smugly says no one really gets what that means. In off-screen fact, that's actually a very easily comprehensible concept, with an obvious example: there may be sunspots when the stock market crashes (correlation) but that doesn't mean the sunspots caused the crash (causation). (Here's a video from CNBC in which I explain the concept to an anti video-game crusader.)

Now banter like that, whether clumsy or astute, serves in this series to give it a cutesy, savvy flavor. But the story is so bold and powerful, it doesn't need any help from the cutesy side. Further, honestly, it couldn't have come along -- this second season -- at a better time for we Americans, and a lot of the world, as we try to make sense out of what just happened in our election.

See? No spoilers. And do see this second season of The Diplomat. After you've seen the first (and maybe read my review, see the link below). You'll be in for a treat.

Friday, November 8, 2024

Disclaimer: Media vs. Reality

I just finished watching Disclaimer on Apple TV+, the seven-episode series adapted from Renée Knight's novel of the same name, which I haven't read. The short series has so many twists and turns, that I'm really going to try to give you a review with no spoilers, and try hard to confine myself to the powerful and deep generalities that animate the narrative.

Well, I will say this about the first episode, which I suppose constitutes a spoiler of sorts. I had almost no idea what was going on in that opening episode. It wasn't until the end of the second episode that I began to get a glimmer of what was going on. And by the third episode, I was coming to the conclusion that Disclaimer is one outstanding series, the likes of which I can't quite recall ever seeing on any television or laptop screen before.

It's erotic, reminiscent of the first R-rated movies I saw in theaters with my girlfriend now my wife many decades ago. It's also an increasingly breathtaking mystery, with lives almost literally hanging in the balance. But it's most of all a story about media, about the circumstances under which we may take them for reality, and the very deadly dangers of so doing. I'm not talking about fake news, though I suppose Disclaimer does have some connection to the rash of fake news that's been plaguing this world and our lives for years now.

But I was thinking more specifically of the photograph, which thanks to our mobile phones, has become as easy and ubiquitous as the blink of an eye. As I often point out in my books and in my classes at Fordham University, the painting is an interpretation of reality, in contrast to the photograph, which is of reality. But how much of it? Certainly not all of reality, or even more than a split second of it. If we want to capture a bigger time slice of reality, we need to move from photo to video. But even a video has a beginning and an ending, and it doesn't capture what happened an instant before or after the video.

And then there's the written memoir. Now words on a page or screen quite obviously are not reality, they are at most descriptions of reality. But that knowledge doesn't stop us from taking memoirs seriously, as truthful accountings of what really happened. But how can we tell the difference between a memoir that is utterly factual and a novel that is pure fiction? Not as easily as you might think, especially if the work has not been published as yet, and in that process has been officially labelled as memoir or novel. (I recommend Caroline Shannon Davenport's Terror at the Sound of a Whistle as an example of an excellent memoir that reads like a novel.) And what of a book published as a novel but thought to be a truthful memoir by the publisher?

Well, I hope you see enough of where I'm going with this -- but not too much -- and if these issues and questions interest and even fascinate you as much as they do me, and you're in the mood for an R-rated series brought to life by outstanding acting and directing,with Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline in unforgettable leading roles and Leila George as the erotic interest, and Indira Varma with a narrating voice, created by and directed to perfection by Alfonso Cuarón -- trust me, you can't go wrong with Disclaimer.

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Some Thoughts on the Results of the US 2024 Election

Some thoughts after the most consequential US election in my lifetime:

1. The pollsters got it wrong -- for the third time in as many US Presidential elections. The vote tallies were not razor thin, or even just plain thin by any margin. Donald Trump won the popular vote by more than 5 million votes, and the Electoral College by 292 to 224 at this moment. He won the swing states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with Arizona and Nevada still too close to call. He lost New York State, but Kamala Harris did much more poorly than Joe Biden in New York four years ago. The polls predicted none of this. Maybe it's time to stop paying so much attention to them -- or any attention at all.

2. Maybe all the Democrats who hounded Joe Biden out of the race after his unsettling performance in his debate in June with Trump should have thought twice about coming after Biden. I said at the time that debate performance has nothing to do with Presidential decision-making and governing. But everyone from George Clooney to Adam Schiff* were so sure that just about anyone other than Biden would do better than the man who was born in Scranton -- one of the reasons that Biden did so well in Pennsylvania in the 2020 election -- that they went on and on in the media as if it were their sacred duty to make sure Biden stepped down. Kamala Harris would have made a great President. But she would have been far more likely to beat Trump or any opponent four years from now, after she had served another term as VP in a second Biden administration. Of course, no one can know now if Biden would have bested Trump in yesterday's election, but I and everyone who expressed concern about Biden being driven out of the election can't help but think that he might well have done better, much better, in the election just concluded, given his success against the same opponent in 2020.

*No doubt influenced by the same polls that later said the Harris/Trump run for the White House was way too close to call.

3. The US House of Representatives is still up for grabs. If the Democrats don't retake control of the House, we can expect unobstructed Republican rule, with the courts as the only check on their power. And we've already seen more than once where the Supreme Court stands on that.

I may have some further thoughts as the day goes by.

Saturday, November 2, 2024

Paul Levinson interviews Andrew Hoskins about AI and the End of the Human Past

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 398, in which I interview Andrew Hoskins about the new book he is writing, The Deadbot Society: AI and the End of the Human Past.

Relevant links:

"AI and Memory" an article by Andrew Hoskins
the AI-created video I mentioned in our conversation
more about McLuhan in an Age of Social Media

Check out this episode!

"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!