Altered Carbon 2: Timeless

I really enjoyed the first season of Altered Carbon.  I enjoyed the second season even more.  It was sharper, tighter, more effective in narrative in just about every way.

I did miss Joel Kinnaman as Takeshi Kovacs.  In a universe in which brain, soul, whatever you want to call it - in Altered Carbon it's become "stack" - can be relatively easily inserted into any sleeve aka body, it's not surprising to see Tak in a new sleeve in Season 2.  Not to mention that he gave up his Kinnaman sleeve at the end of Season 1.  Anthony Mackie does a fine job as Tak in the new sleeve in the new season.  And we get the benefit of two Taks in the second season - a younger Tak played by Will Yun Lee - who has a much larger role in the second season.  But I miss Kinnaman, whose acting I've admired since The Killing.

But my favorite character is the AI Poe, perfectly played by Chris Conner.  He had an appealing mix of vulnerability and savvy, loyalty and stubborn independence in the first season, and all of this is heightened in the second season, by his digital mind not being all there, literally, having been damaged in the first season.  I can't think of an AI I've liked more in any science fiction on the screen, maybe only Star Trek: The Next Generation's Data, if we consider an android an AI, though the two kinds of artificial beings are very different in many ways.  Season 2 also has the addition of Dig 301, well played by Dina Shihabi.  Dig makes a great apprentice, guardian angel, and eventually loving partner for Poe.

The master plot is fast moving and hard hitting, with Simone Missick doing a good job as Trepp on the gritty ground, and Renée Elise Goldsberry effective as Quellcrest, more tortured than ever by what turns out to be the Elders, an indigenous intelligence with super powers on Harlan's World, where the action takes place and Tak urges her to change her modus operandi of fixing things then dying. Torben Liebrecht rounds out the crucial cast as Carrera, an at once brutal and cunning military man, with his own very complex axe to grind, a condition common to all the major characters in a story in which the only way any human can succumb to death is via destruction of the stack at the base of the head.

I was talking to a reporter from The Washington Post the other day about what it's like to watch television in our Coronavirus age.  Series that take place in our present, such as any hospital show, seem oddly out of synch with what is going on in our world - they have no mention of Coronavirus, since it was not yet known when the episode was made.  I mentioned Altered Carbon as a series which doesn't have that effect, since it takes place so far in the future.  "How far in the future?" the reporter asked.  "Thousands of years," I unthinkingly replied. (Here's the article.)  Actually, Altered Carbon takes place less than 400 years from now.

It's a measure of how well Altered Carbon has created its future world that it feels so timeless.  Back to our own 2020 world, if you're home and looking for a high-concept, engaging, story-book colorful series, I'd recommend Altered Carbon, both seasons.

See also Altered Carbon 1: Roads, Spit, and Immortality



"As otherworldly, mystical and far-out as the subject
matter may be, the songs burst with love and warmth
and humanity."  -- Evan LeVine, Swan Fungus, 3 February 2020

IO: Tenacious Earth

IO's a quiet gem of a movie - on Netflix - which reverses the usual pattern of humans embarking out into space, to the edges of our solar system and to neighboring star systems such as Alpha Centauri, so humanity can survive a dying Earth.  I'm vividly in favor of humans going out into space - see Touching the Face of the Cosmos - but not at the expense of our planet.  I want to see humanity thrive both on our planet and off it in the universe beyond.

And IO explores and makes this point beautifully.  Earth is apparently dying.   Sam (well played by Margaret Qualley) believes in her father's view that the Earth is not irrevocably dying but slowly coming back to life, regenerating itself via bacteria and bees that can live in the toxic air and even make it breathable again.

But time's running out.  Micah (well played by Anthony Mackie, to appear in season 2 of Altered Carbon), who believed in her father's vision, comes to kill him, because he saw lots of people including his wife die, as they waited for our planet to revive.   But it turns out that Sam's father is already dead, and Micah changes his quest to saving Sam by getting her to leave this planet via one of the last space vehicles.

I won't tell you how this ends, but the answer is wrapped in poetry and art and queen bees and human reproduction, too.  And amidst all the ruin abounding in the movie, and the temptation of all humanity decamping Earth for the moon around Jupiter and the Earth-like planet around Proxima Centauri, it's good to see a vote of confidence in this planet.

See IO, stay with it until the end, see how escaping versus staying and rejuvenating plays out.

1st starship to Alpha Centauri ... with just enough fuel to get there

All the Way on HBO and its Relevance to Hillary

I saw All the Way on HBO last night.  I thought this movie about the Texas politician and Vice President who became President on the day of what I still see as the worst public event in my lifetime - the assassination of JFK in November, 1963 - was outstanding for at least part of the way, in its portrayal of LBJ's mastery of domestic policy.  But it was frustrating for what it barely addressed - how Lyndon Baines Johnson messed up so badly in foreign policy, in Vietnam.

I came of age in the 1960s.  Not only was I devastated by the murder of JFK and his zest and idealism, but I appreciated and cheered the way Johnson came back with extraordinary Civil Rights legislation and all kinds of pathbreaking law for life in America, such as Medicare.  For a very short time, it looked as if the future could survive what happened to JFK. And then the Vietnam War, not started by LBJ but prosecuted and expanded by him, shattered all of that forever, or certainly at least until this very day.

All the Way does a great in job in showing how Johnson brought into being those domestic miracles, how he played the necessary Senators and recalcitrant parts of the country like a chess master moving pieces on a board.  Bryan Crantson gives an astonishingly  good performance, capturing every bit of Johnson's swagger, political cunning, vulgarity, wisdom, and insecurity.  Anthony Mackie and Bradley Whitford are spot-on and memorable in their portrayals of MLK, Jr. and the hapless Hubert Humphrey.   The deliveries and demeanors of the Senators and other players in this movie don't miss a beat.

Did LBJ really believe in civil rights and other domestic revolutions he championed and succeeded in putting into Federal law?  At the time, I was pretty sure he did, and All the Way - assuming that LBJ's words and expressions in the movie are based on truth - reinforces and satisfies that sense.

But what went wrong with LBJ in Vietnam?  All the Way provides little more than a shadow of that calamitous development, and thus not much help in understanding how and why it happened that the U.S. got drawn into this unconstitutional, disastrous war.   When it has happening, my best explanation was that Johnson was just over his head when it came to foreign policy, unable to navigate and parse what his generals and advisors were telling him, and above all not wanting to appear weak or indecisive. He just lacked the requisite experience.

Which brings this movie back to 2016 and its relevance to a decision facing all Americans today.   Though Hillary Clinton is not without her failings, including in foreign policy, she has far and away the most foreign policy experience of the three candidates still standing - easily more than Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump's experience in foreign policy is zero.  Hillary Clinton, as a former Secretary of State, has more experience in seeing to America's best interests in the world than anyone other than a former President or Secretary of State.

LBJ's error in Vietnam, just hinted at like a hurricane on the horizine in All the Way, changed the United States for the worse in a way that has endured to this very day.  Given the challenges that our country now faces in the world, we need someone in the White House with enough experience to avoid making an equivalent mistake in the next few years, which could have far worse consequences than what happened in the 1960s.   Thank you HBO for bringing home this point so effectively, though it was likely not your intention.   In the short and long run, All the Way may be more important for what it didn't actually show on the screen.