Fallen Angel: Poem with Wings

With UFOs in the news and the skies of the U.S. and Canada, and the great sequel to The Man Who Fell to Earth this past Spring and Summer, James Harris's just-shy-of-five-minute film poem, Fallen Angel, is very much relevant and welcome. And altogether haunting and beautiful. It's vividly appropriate to our time.

The poem, beginning about a minute and a quarter in, written and narrated by Harris, is rife with destiny and the puzzles of time and space.  Harris, a talented songwriter and singer, could have put this to music with memorable result.*  Instead, it's put to speech and film (and good background instrumentation by Snowkitten) in the underneath of Birmingham, England.  Not quite hell, but the reality that all of us unwinged beings experience in one way another.

Fallen Angel is making the rounds of film festivals.  It deserves a place in any science fiction and fantasy venue.  You can watch it above on YouTube, or here with some additional information on its Film Freeway site.

*Harris has written two new songs with will appear in music videos with footage from Fallen Angels.  I've listened to them, and they're superb.  I'll post links to them here as soon as they're up.   In the meantime, here's James singing another song that may sound familiar to you:

7 March 2023: And here's James Harris's video, Lost Soul

The Man Who Fell to Earth: Season 1 Finale: Unique and Tender

I just want to begin by saying The Man Who Fell to Earth 2022 TV series was one of the most beautiful, unusual, almost tender pieces of science fiction that has ever come to the screen.  And the season finale on Showtime last night excelled in all those virtues.

[Spoilers ahead ...]

Newton finally became almost a mentch, admitting he had love for Faraday.  And although Newton keeps saying they're won't be any room on the ship from Anthea to Earth for any drones, Faraday is going to make sure he gets his family on board, anyway.

But speaking of family, I very much liked the way Faraday and Justin parted.  The two clearly love each other, too. The big story may be the tale of two different worlds, one on the verge of death, the other not that from it.  But the people we've met, and see in action especially in this finale, are very much alive and have lots of life ahead.

Back to Newton.  First, what an acting job by Bill Nighy!  And what delightful details.  One of my favorite lines in the overall series is Newton saying maybe it's time to kick the habit of smoking.  As I said, he's becoming a mentch.

And rather than commenting on the rest of the finale, let me instead say how much more there is to this story.  Faraday blasted off.  Wouldn't it be great to see what happens when he gets back to Anthea?  Wouldn't it be satisfying and fun to see what happens when he gets back to Earth?

The answer of course is yes.  So bring on another season.  And in the meantime, kudos to everyone who helped make this first season so good.  In addition to Nighy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clarke Peters, and Naomie Harris were great in their roles.  Tell us more!

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed ... 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... " 1.4: "Tell my wife I love her very much ... " ... 1.5: Co-Mingling ... 1.6: Music of the Spheres ... 1.7 Game Changes ... 1.8: Battle at the Nunnery ... 1.9: Just Deserts

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.9: Just Deserts

Well, episode 1.9 of The Man Who Fell to Earth on Showtime tonight shows I right about two important developments in 1.8:

[Spoilers follow ... ]

1. Lisa is ultimately in the employ of ... Newton.  And in the last scene, Bill Nighy never looked better in the role and more like David Bowie.   Which is one and the same thing, and a very good thing to see.

2. Josiah survived.  But in sad touch that makes perfect sense, he lost all of his Anthean qualities, and is back on the road to soon dying as completely human.  I'm hoping Faraday gets a chance to give him some more of his Anthean essence before the finale ends.

Some other points:

• I was glad to see Lisa kill Spencer.  He was one despicable character.
• Edie turns out to be a tough character after all, pushing her ill father over a cliff, after he tells her that he's leaving the company to her brother Hatch.  This has to serve some purpose in the finale, which I'm eager to see.

And now I'll make a typical plea.  I'd like to see a second season of this series.  It's compelling and original, difficult for a sequel in which the actor who played the original central character can't be on the screen because he's no longer with us.  I don't think I've ever seen a series quite like this one, and I'd very much welcome more.

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed ... 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... " 1.4: "Tell my wife I love her very much ... " ... 1.5: Co-Mingling ... 1.6: Music of the Spheres ... 1.7 Game Changes ... 1.8: Battle at the Nunnery 

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.8: Battle at the Nunnery

An all-cylinders firing episode 1.8 of The Man Who Fell to Earth on Showtime this past Sunday night, featuring what may be the penultimate (next to last) battle between Faraday's supporters and Spencer and his assassins.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

Quite a battle at Mary Lou's nunnery.  They held off Spencer and his killers long enough for Faraday and Justin to escape.  And that only happened because Faraday, after being badly wounded at an earlier place, received a transfusion of Josiah's now Anthean blood.   Those nuns not only were impressive fighters, they had crucially life-saving medical savvy.

Two big questions remain:

1. Did Josiah survive?  He says his survival was by no means assured.  In a powerful scene, we see him on the operating table as the badly wounded Mary Lou slips away (she was shot point blank by that horrendous Spencer).  She dies happy, feeling that she fulfilled her mission and may be going to a better place.  Josiah is still alive, last time we see him, and I'm hoping he survives.

2. Who is Lisa talking to, reporting to, on the phone?  Possibly Edie or her brother Hatch, but I'd put my money on the inscrutable Newton.  He remains a pivotal character in this story.  Mary Lou loved him.  She felt guilt for getting him crazy.  But it's by now clear that he's more than crazy.  He holds some crucial cards, and I'm looking forward to seeing how he plays them in the final two episodes of this season or series.

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed ... 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... " 1.4: "Tell my wife I love her very much ... " ... 1.5: Co-Mingling ... 1.6: Music of the Spheres ... 1.7 Game Changes

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.7: Game Changes

A game-changing episode 1.7 of The Man Who Fell to Earth on many fronts on Showtime last night.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The biggest reveal is Faraday's realization that Newton's ultimate plan is not to get help to the inhabitants of Anthea back home, but rather to bring the Antheans here to Earth.  This sounds like the makings of an interstellar invasion, which would completely change the contours of this story.

We also learned a lot more about who Spencer is.  He's the son of a Russian terrorist -- his mother -- here in the United States, and he was brought up and raised under the wing of Finch, whom Spencer now turns on in a crucial scene.   Suddenly, Spencer seems and indeed has become much more powerful.  He's more than the CIA.  I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere down the line he's had more to do with the Antheans than we already know.

Meanwhile, Josiah is in the process of becoming an Anthean.  And this provides a significant counterweight to Faraday, who in effect is becoming human.  He's now come to believe that his best defence against the CIA is to become famous.  In a vivid moment, he realizes that the CIA thrives in darkness, and the light of publicity is the best defense.  That's a human insight, if ever there was one.

I really like the fact that, at this point in the story, the end of the seventh episode, I really have no idea how this story is going to turn out.  That's an indication of a carefully crafted narrative, with complex characters and agendas, that is being unpacked with precision.

I'll see you back here next week, with my review of the next episode, and my sense of where we then stand in this fascinating story.

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed ... 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... " 1.4: "Tell my wife I love her very much ... " ... 1.5: Co-Mingling ... 1.6: Music of the Spheres

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.6: Music of the Spheres

An usually beautiful, powerful, erudite episode 1.6 of The Man Who Fell to Earth this past Sunday on Showtime, in a series in which every episode has had a rich helping of those qualities.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

Music of the spheres -- the idea since at least the time of Pythagoras in Ancient Greece that the mathematically describable motion of the planets describe a kind of music, if not necessarily hearable, definitely knowable by the soul -- has given rise to all manner of philosophic speculation since then.  I'm neither astronomer nor mathematician, but the idea has always appealed to me in some fuzzy, consoling way.

And it provides the solution to the problem vexing Faraday and his allies -- how to turn those equations into a workable energy generator.  And that solution is: music, or, more precisely, jazz.  The essence of jazz, as everyone knows, is improvisation.  Josiah turns out to have been a jazz man -- literally, in this case -- via the infusion of Faraday's Anthean DNA.

Let's rewind a little.  Faraday cured Josiah, made him whole, by giving Josiah some of Faraday's DNA.  Josiah always loved and gravitated to jazz.  But with Faraday's DNA, Josiah's music, fed into a computer, is able via Faraday's and Justin's brilliant orchestration to implement Newton's vision.

Now, I doubt that's quite what Pythagoras had in mind, but his whole theory, after all, is a kind of magnificent science fiction.  Meanwhile, this episode was also animated by Faraday's video letter to his Anthean wife, which provided a droll and incisive commentary on human nature and custom.

The episode ends with Spencer in maximum threatening mode, and, frankly, given the luminescence of the rest of this narrative, I'm beginning to find Spencer and his threats more of an annoyance than anything.  But such is the nature of even cable television these days, and the rest of The Man Who Fell to Earth, especially this past Sunday, was so sublime, I'll take Spencer and his irritations.

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed ... 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... " 1.4: "Tell my wife I love her very much ... " ... 1.5: Co-Mingling

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.5: Co-Mingling

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.5 features an important revelation.  To wit:

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Earth and Anthea have had some kind of co-mingling in the distant past.  Antheans carry with them some element of humanity deep inside, and presumably vice versa.  This explains why Faraday, despite his linguistic and cultural faux pas (I mean that as a plural), is ultimately so sympatico in his understanding of we human beings.  And it may explain why Justin is so understanding of Faraday, and more than that, as her daughter Molly asks Justin if the Anthean is her boyfriend.

Digging deeper, the relationship of the two planets may explain why the Antheans chose to come to Earth for help.   They certainly didn't pick our planet randomly, or even just because the Antheans reckoned we had the degree of technology necessary to save them.  It now seems that Earth and Anthea are two brethren or at least cousin worlds, that go back a long way.

With that mind, Molly's question takes on a more profound light.  Could Faraday and Molly's mother have children?   How about Newton and whomever?  Are any of the characters we're now seeing in the story the result of such interstellar unions?

The bad guy in all of this still remains Spencer.  He seems to be doing more than just doing his job.  So far, he hasn't done any lasting damage that we know of, but he has a lot of venom for the Antheans and their science if they or anyone other than the CIA has any control over it.

Again, we know from the first scene of the very first episode that Faraday will come up on top of all this.  I'm sorry we saw that, because if the show has any suspense in the episode that shows us Faraday giving that speech, that would be because something unexpected and bad happens to the Anthean right after.

Which I'm hoping doesn't happen.  But I'll see you back here with my review of the next episode next week.

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed ... 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... " 1.4: "Tell my wife I love her very much ... "

first spaceship to Alpha Centauri from Mars

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.4: "Tell my wife I love her very much..."

How cool and meta-perfect is The Man Who Fell to Earth new series on Showtime?  Well, in episode 1.4, just up last night, we learn that Thomas Newton, who came to Earth all those years ago, in the 1976 movie starring David Bowie in the role, lost his memory, or most of it, including of his wife back on Althea, way out there in outer space.  And in episode 1.4 Newton, now played by Bill Nighy, tells Faraday in a little hovering ball of a recording made as his memory was fading, "Tell my wife I love her very much".  The very request that Major Tom made to his listeners in David Bowie's iconic 1969 "Space Oddity" recording.   "Ain't Jenny so cool ..."  Well, not only Jenny Lumet, but Alex Kurtzman, Jane Maggs (who wrote the story Lumet and Kurtzman made into the teleplay) and everyone who put this unique sequel series together.

Bowie's presence and essence has been integrated into this new series from the very first episode, which was entitled "Hallo, Spaceboy" -- just a comma more than Bowie's 1995 song "Hallo Spaceboy".   At this point in the series, I've got to say I can't think of a better, more multi-valent TV series sequel to a movie.

And we got some important Justin backstory in this episode.  She invented a cold fusion process -- an incredible achievement, that duly impressed Faraday -- but paid for it with the loss of her daughter's father, who died of radiation poisoning.  Along with Newton's loss of memory, this was one of the two most powerful heart tugs of the episode.

Spencer has another night of flexing his CIA muscle, but the highpoint is his encounter with Mary Lou, another memorable character from the 1976 movie, played back then by Candy Clark.  She and Newton shared a love of sorts, and in his absence she's become Sister Mary Lou, now played by Juliet Stevenson.  Spencer's conversation with her was one of his best moment so far in the series, but I could've done without the bee in her mouth.

The Man Who Fell to Earth continues to be one of the most refreshingly original science fiction shows on television.  That's quite an accomplishment, given that the series is a sequel, but it draws you into its spider web to the point that you're really feeling, on a visceral level, the interstellar interplay that is at the heart of this story.

See you back here next week with my next review.

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed ... 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... "

first spaceship to Alpha Centauri from Mars

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.3: "I've come with a prototype ... "

The Man Who Fell to Earth just keeps getting better and better.  The last few minutes of episode 1.3 were the best so far in this very fine series.  Faraday tells the audience -- assembled in the narrative and whoever's watching the episode on Showtime or Amazon Prime or any way else on Planet Earth -- "I've come with a prototype for a quantum fusion process," and proceeds to make good on his claim by lighting London up in the night.  England swings like a pendulum do.

Faraday is progressing well.  He's a big drinker -- of water, which gets him to expel the poison that he took in last week to cure Josiah.  Before the hour is over, he and Justin are in London, brought there by Hatch Flood, ousted a few years ago by his sister Sonya from a science tech behemoth, and that's how Faraday got that crucial audience.

At this point, the bad guys seem way behind.  Spencer is driven and smart, Lisa seems even smarter, but if this is a battle between the CIA and big tech to get control of the quantum fusion process I don't see how the CIA can overcome the combination of Faraday and Sonya's company unless ... well, I guess unless the CIA got the inscrutable Thomas Newton to work with them, but why would Newton do that?   The last we saw he was being tortured by the CIA all those years ago.  

I'm beginning to think that Newton, the man in The Man Who Fell to Earth in David Bowie's 1976 movie, will be far more than just the foundational character who so far has been hovering around the edges, in effect passing off the narrative to Faraday.  The truth is, I didn't quite buy what he told Faraday in episode 1.2.  And tonight we learned that  his failure to complete his mission was not due to his getting "distracted" here on Earth, although I guess you could consider having your face peeled off an extreme kind of distraction.  (By the way, that black and white old film reminded me of The Man in the High Castle, just saying.  They had color back then, didn't they?)  The gist of all of this is that it's not clear that helping Faraday is now Newton's ultimate goal.

Well, there's nothing like keep watching the series to get answers to these and other open questions, and that's exactly what I intend to keep doing.  See you back here next week.

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start ... 1.2: The Ending We Needed

first spaceship to Alpha Centauri from Mars

The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.2: The Ending We Needed

Well, I just loved the second episode of The Man Who Fell to Earth, especially the ending.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

I mean, with the world and this country in the states that we're in, it was especially good to see this happy ending on the science fiction screen.  And it was set up perfectly.  Faraday aka The Man Who Fell to Earth had said earlier that it was time for Justin's father Josiah (always great to see Clarke Peters) to die.  He had lived his purpose.  And we'd previously seen that guy up in Alaska take his life, after almost killing Spencer.  So ...when Faraday walked into Josiah's room, and put his hands on Josiah, asleep ... well, I thought the worst.  And instead: Faraday cured him, draining out and taking in what had wrecked Josiah's body.  And he was whole and healthy again.   Good to see on this day.

And though Faraday was on the floor and his hands were curled, we know he's going to get better because we saw him in the first episode making that speech in the future.  And though I was annoyed with that kind of start when I first saw it last week, and said so in my review, now I'm glad I saw it.

It also was good to meet Thomas Newton at the beginning of this episode (always great to see Bill Nighy, too).  He came from Faraday's planet and has been on Earth 40+ years and got too distracted to carry out his mission.  That's totally understandable, and that's why Faraday so urgently needed to come here.  Newton's character in this new series makes it a sequel to David Bowie's 1976 The Man Who Fell To Earth movie, in which Newton was The Man Who Fell.  My only regret, of course, is, as good as Nighy is, it would have been great to see Bowie reprise his role.

Back to Spencer for a moment: I'm not sure, at this point, whether he's a good guy or a bad guy.  His conversation with Drew in the diner was unsettling (good to see Kate Mulgrew, too -- for some reason, women tend to have names that men usually have in this story).  At this point, it looks like those two could be bad news.

Last, for now: wasn't that scene with "Poppa Was a Rolling Stone" in the car and everyone singing great to see (and hear)?  Yeah, it was.  And I gotta say, those voices in the car worked really well with the Temptations.

See you back here with my review of the next episode next week.

See also The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start

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The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start

The Man Who Fell to Earth, which debuted tonight on Showtime as a ten-episode television series, has a long and distinguished history.  The novel of the same name by Walter Tevis was published in 1963 to critical acclaim.  I didn't read it, because I had switched as a teenager by then from science fiction to rock music as my passion, and didn't go back to science fiction until a few decades years later -- Philip K. Dick's 1962 The Man in the High Castle had made it just under wire.  Meanwhile, The Man Who Fell to Earth was made into 1976 movie starring David Bowie which I saw and loved, and which also received critical acclaim.  A 1987 made-for-television movie followed, which I'm pretty sure I didn't see, and certainly can't remember.  A now this new Showtime series.

I just saw the first episode and really liked it.  In addition to the multiple provenance of the story from the novel, this new series also has echoes of the superb 1984 movie Starman starring Jeff Bridges and the also superb movie, also from 1984, The Brother from Another Planet starring Joe Morton.  So, to be clear, saying that the first episode of this new series is reminiscent of those two great movies is high praise indeed. Both movies have lots of humor, poking fun at the mores of the day, and the new Man Who Fell to Earth looks to have plenty of the same.  Both movies also have some serious punchlines, and it looks like the new series has those, too.  And, like The Brother from Another Planet, this Man Who Fell to Earth is Black, and his initiation into the culture of our planet will be mainly through people of color in the United States.

Like all of these other narratives, this visitor from a distant planet is both very bright and mostly clueless about our customs here on Earth.  We may or may not find out the reason for this cluelessness during the series -- usually, it's some variation of the crisis was so severe on that planet far out into space, that the visitor and/or his people didn't have time to properly research us.  (If the scientists on this other planet had submitted their plan for Earth to an academic journal, it would probably wouldn't have passed peer review.) The new series begins with the visitor addressing an assembled group of dignitaries or whomever, speaking in perfect English, strutting around like some kind of combination of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, with flashbacks to the time he first got here.  I think this kind of flashback approach is overdone in narratives these days, and the story would have been better off if told in real sequence, but that's ok.

I thought Chiwetel Ejiofor was excellent as the man who fell, as was Naomie Harris as the woman who reluctantly helps him but you know that will be much more, and it's too soon to tell about everyone else. But I'll definitely be back here next week and after to tell you what I think of the ensuing episodes.

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