Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 106

Your Honor 1.9: Screeching Up to a Last Stop Before Next Week's Finale

So as a measure of how good Your Honor 1.9 is, the least important segment in the long run, but a set little masterpiece in its own right, is the way the judge handles the unexpected witness who can testify how Carlo graphically bragged about killing Kofi.

And the rest of the episode moved to a screeching halt to whatever we may see in the finale next week.  Adam and Fia's love for each is becoming known to all the wrong necessary parties.   Jimmy knows about it, and Adam's on his way to seeing him.  Charlie knows it -- and, even more importantly, that Adam killed Rocco.  The way Charlie found that out, in the conversation he was having with Adam's teacher, to get her out of town, was a great scene, too.

All the pieces are starting to come together, but to what ending, what kind of ending, we still don't know.  Eugene knows that Kofi was taking a fall, but he doesn't yet know that, ultimately, Michael via Charlie set it up.  I have a feeling Eugene will play a crucial role in the ending.

It's hard, almost impossible, to tell how that ending will go.  A happy ideal ending would have Mr. and Mrs. Baxter killed, but that's not likely to happen.   What is likely is that someone will die, and maybe more than one.  I hope Michael and Adam and all their friends and family survive.  But that's very far from certain at this point.

Michael has been able to hold his own, often just barely, since he saw Jimmy Baxter in that police station, just as Michael was about to talk to someone there about Adam's hit and run, or the tragic events that were close to that.   I'd bet that he'll somehow manage to survive this, as will Adam.  But I'm also thinking that Michael may have a darker past than we've realized.  Could he have been involved in the murder of his wife?  Nah, I can't believe that.

But I believe I'll back here with a review of the finale next week.

See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday" ... Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link ... Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner ... Your Honor 1.5: The Vice Tightens ... Your Honor 1.6: Exquisite Chess Game ...Your Honor 1.7: Cranston and Stuhlbarg Approaching Pacino and De Niro ... Your Honor 1.8: Nothing More Important

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Bliss: The Music and the Acting Not So Much the Movie

Just saw Bliss on Amazon Prime Video.  In a phrase, it's another well-acted simulation movie, with an obvious, even hackneyed story, but it's very well acted by Owen Wilson (Greg) and Salma Hayek (Isabel), with an appearance by Bill Nye the science guy, and excellent music, especially a really beautiful, captivating song under the closing credits, written by Will Bates and sung by Skye Edwards.

Just to be clear: Bliss is no Matrix, not even close, but Matrix, the first movie in particular, is the best simulation movie ever made, which touches almost all of the bases and invents some while it's at it.  Bliss, in contrast, asks us once again what is real and what is simulation, and likely doesn't even provide an answer in the end, unless that answer is both are real, which is something we've also seen before.

But the micro-stories are good.  Greg and Isabel make an effective, even memorable couple, with Hayek giving one of the best performances of her career.  Isabel apparently is from the simulated, drug induced, or whatever engendered world, and she's ultimately in competition with Greg's daughter, who wants him back and with her in what presumably is the real world.  [Spoiler: It seems that blood is thicker than mercurial water.]

I have a suggestion: I think what I just saw in Bliss would have worked better as the debut of a 10-episode television series, rather than a standalone hour-and-three-quarter movie.  The problem is in the three quarters -- Bliss the movie seems like three quarters at best of a possibly much better narrative.

But I'd say, see it, because, who knows, we may get a couple of sequels.

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Podcast: Opinions, Lies, and Polarization

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 166, in which I discuss how opinions and lies compete with facts in today's media, and lead to increasing polarization.

Further reading:

Postjournalism by Andrey Mir Lying by Sissela Bok

Thanks University of Notre Dame for the image.

 

Check out this episode!

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Big Sky 1.7: The Montana State Trooper

Another sharp episode of Big Sky tonight -- 1.7 -- in which Big Rick gets back at least a piece of his mind in the hospital.

He knows he's a Montana State Trooper, and says so, several times.  He quotes from Jaws.  But he (apparently) has no memory of being part of a kidnapping ring or killing that fisherman.  I say "apparently" because I suppose it's possible that he's faking his amnesia, though I don't think so.  He was, after all, shot in the head.

Meanwhile, Ronald has dyed his hair and killed his mother, as I knew he would (kill his mother, that is -- I had no idea he would dye his hair).  He almost kills Rick's wife Merilee, when Jenny and Cassie show up at her door with a pretty good sketch of Ronald.  The episode ends with them at the door, but it's a good bet that Rick's wife will survive, and in fact I'm pretty sure I saw her in the coming attractions.

So here's where it looks like this story may be headed.  Rick continues his recovery, but still has no memory of what he was doing with Ronald.  In fact, he could be helpful in nabbing Ronald, wherever he may go after leaving Merilee's house.  The question then will be: when will Rick recover his lost memories, and realize he wasn't just a Montana State Trooper.

I'm still liking Big Sky, mostly now because it's less predictable than most narratives like this.  I mean, yeah, it was clear that Ronald's mother's days were numbered, but Rick's trajectory, especially his being shot in the head and its aftermath, is continuously surprising.  A good thing in a crime story.

See you back here next week.

See also Big Sky 1.1: A Pretty Big Deal ... Big Sky 1.2: The "Goods" and the Ruined Plan ... Big Sky 1.3: "You Kidnapped the Wrong Girl" ... Big Sky 1.4: Controls on Psychos ... Big Sky 1.5: Winter Finale Indeed! ... Big Sky 1.6: "Sweet Psycho"

 

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Your Honor 1.8: Nothing More Important

Your Honor 1.8 was a relatively quiet, highly cerebral episode, in which we see the judge struggle to preside over a fair trial for the brutal murder of Kobe by Carlo.   His problem, as he states to a juror he's getting thrown off the jury, because she's a sure bet to convict Carlo, is nothing is more important than protecting his son Adam -- not conscience, not devotion to justice, not even plain decency.   Although Jimmy Baxter thinks Judge Michael Desiato killed Rocco, Michael knows that it won't be long until Baxter realizes that Adam was behind the wheel.   (Frankly, the best thing Michael can do to protect himself and Adam is to have Jimmy Baxter and his wife killed.  Surely Michael knows that Jimmy will kill him even if Michael keeps Carlo out of prison.)

Meanwhile, Adam is falling so hard for Fia Baxter that he no longer wants to go to NYU, where he's just been admitted.  This creates more potential problems for the judge.  He wants his son out of of New Orleans, as far away from the Baxter family as possible.  Fortunately, Adam's godfather Charlie is beginning to realize what's going on with Adam -- that there's a girlfriend involved -- which with any luck should help Adam and therefore Michael out of this part of the mess.

A word about the acting.  I already said how superb Bryan Cranston and Michael Stuhlbarg are.  The truth is that every single performance of every single actor is brilliant in this series.  Episode 1.8 features Maura Tierney in the courtroom as prosecutor.   What a performance!  I haven't seen her since The Affair, and she is as reliably memorable in her role as ever.

Episode 1.8 was also the first episode that acknowledged COVID-19, unless I missed it in an earlier hour.  But tonight saw some masks in the courtroom, and words about COVID from the bench.  Interestingly, though, we also saw people crowded in restaurants with no masks.  This corresponds to what we've seen in NBC's Chicago shows, and Law and Order in New York City.  The inconsistency almost suggests that the COVID-aware scenes were put in after the main action was recorded at an earlier time.

But back to the plot of Your Honor: just two episodes left, in which anything can happen, and which I'm very much awaiting.

See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday" ... Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link ... Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner ... Your Honor 1.5: The Vice Tightens ... Your Honor 1.6: Exquisite Chess Game ...Your Honor 1.7: Cranston and Stuhlbarg Approaching Pacino and De Niro

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The Dig: An Amazing Story

My wife and I just saw and very much enjoyed The Dig on Netflix -- an unerring recommendation of my sister-in-law Alexandra.  It's the true story, by way of John Preston's novel, of a dig in Sutton Hoo, England in 1939 that unearthed a seventh century Anglo-Saxon ship buried on Edith Pretty's property.

The novel does a fine job of depicting the civilization of archeology against the impending soul-testing savagery of World War II.  Science itself is accurately portrayed as challenged by human pettiness and foibles.  The people who apply the science are all fallible, in one way or another, and some are lovable.

My favorite was Robert, Edith's young son, about 10, who has a love of outer space, replete with a copy of Amazing Stories.  That rang a nice bell with me -- my first professional science fiction sale was to Amazing Stories in 1992, and I've even sold a few to that magazine under its new editor Ira Nayman in the past few years.  In The Dig, Robert's love of space travel leads him to lie on his back in the excavated Anglo-Saxon ship with his mother and look at the stars above and imagine they are traveling out there in the cosmos.  It's one of the most effective scenes in the movie, and makes the connection between sailing around the world on this Earth and beyond this world in space ships.

As is well known, space travel received a big boost from Werner von Braun and the rockets he built for Nazi Germany.  They did plenty of damage to England in the Second World War.  Von Braun surrendered to America at the end of the war, and played a major role building the American space program that got humans to the Moon at the end of the 1960s.   Science and war have likely been married to each other, albeit not exclusively, since the get go.   It would be good if someone day they weren't, and The Dig offers a powerful tableau of the pain, even horror, of their living together.

The acting is excellent.  Basil Brown, the self-taught archeologist, is played by Ralph Fiennes, who has never been anything other than superb in any role he's played and I've seen.  Carey Mulligan was memorable as Edith, as was Lily James as young archeologist Peggy Piggott.  And good job Archie Barnes as Robert.

Further reading:  The Missing Orientation

and 

 

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Big Sky 1.6: "Sweet Psycho"

Well, Big Sky was back tonight with episode 1.6 tonight with one big reveal:

[Spoilers follow....]

Big Rick is still alive!  How is that?  Cassie shot him point blank in the head.  I guess some people can and do survive a bullet in the brain, if it lands in not some vital place, but I don't know, this move seems a little like a rabbit out of a hat or a cheap trick.

The story, meanwhile, has moved on.  The captives are free.   Cody's body has been found (as my wife pointed out, though, how did the police know exactly where to look, but ok), and Cassie and Jenny, against all odds, are growing closer.  Or, at very least, Jenny has agreed to work with Cassie on just one case: find the the kidnapping trucker.

Ronald remains by far the most interesting character.  As one of the freed captive girls says, he's sweet, but a psycho.  A "sweet psycho," her sister, also a freed captive, agrees.  That's an apt term for this guy, who usually seems on the verge of killing his mother, a not so sweet thing to do.

She's becoming increasingly important in this story, too.  She doesn't seem inclined to turn Ronald in.  To the contrary, she's trying to give him some helpful advice.  When push comes to shove, blood seems to be thicker than water with this crowd.  Same is at least a little true for Rick's wife and Rick.

So we have something of a good narrative emerging, and some good music in Big Sky, too.  See you next week with my review.

 See also Big Sky 1.1: A Pretty Big Deal ... Big Sky 1.2: The "Goods" and the Ruined Plan ... Big Sky 1.3: "You Kidnapped the Wrong Girl" ... Big Sky 1.4: Controls on Psychos ... Big Sky 1.5: Winter Finale Indeed!

 
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Podcast: Twitter Ban of Trump Was Right, Even Though It Violates the Spirit of the First Amendment

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 165, in which Brian Standing on WORT-FM Radio (Madison, Wisconsin) interviews me about why I think Twitter's banning of Donald Trump was the right thing to do, even though that violates what I call the "spirit of the First Amendment".  We also discuss why I think government should keep its hands off social media.

Further reading:

I'm A First Amendment Scholar, and I Think Big Tech Should Be Left Alone Paul Levinson On the Power of Power and Advertisers Over Media

Check out this episode!

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Tommy James, Morris Levy, and Ellie Greenwich's Ring

Excellent article in The Guardian about Tommy James and Morris Levy (mobster owner of Roulette Records), and how Levy never paid James for his hit records ranging from "Hanky Panky" to "Crystal Blue Persuasion" (thanks guitarist Glenn Conway for bringing the article to my attention).

I found James receiving no or a negligible payment for "Hanky Panky" especially interesting, because it doesn't jibe with what Ellie Greenwich told me she received as co-writer of that song with her then husband Jeff Barry.  (Ellie and Mike Rashkow produced my group The Other Voices aka The New Outlook -- two singles -- on Atlantic Records in the late 1960s.  Here's the most successful of those two singles, May My Heart Be Cast into Stone -- Stu Nitekman is singing lead and I'm singing falsetto.)

Anyway, Ellie wore a big beautiful ring -- she called it her Hanky Panky ring, because she said when she received her multi-thousand dollar check as co-writer of "Hanky Panky," she went out and bought that ring.  I have no idea what the ring cost and how much she and Jeff received for that song.  But I don't think she was lying, and she gave the impression that the ring cost at least a couple of thousand dollars.  But even if it was cost just a couple of hundred bucks, that means she received much more for that song than Tommy James says he received as its recording artist.

Songwriters those days received royalties from two sources: the record company, which paid the writer a penny per record sold, and the performance rights organization, which paid the writer a sum of money based on how many times the song was played on the radio (in Ellie's case, the organization was BMI).  "Hanky Panky" was a huge #1 record, but did it receive enough airplay for Ellie to buy a big ring from her BMI payments, if Morris Levy paid her just a pittance, or nothing?

Who knows?  Maybe Jeff Barry threw in his BMI royalties.  Ellie died, sadly, in 2009, but Jeff is still alive and kicking.  Which come to think of it, a group by that name had a big hit record with a song called Tighter, Tighter, written by none other than Tommy James, and released on Morris Levy's Roulette Records in 1970.

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One Night in Miami: A Good Movie for Tonight

This seemed like a good time to review One Night in Miami, which my wife and I saw and loved on Amazon Prime Video the other night -- a good time because Joe Biden is President, a human being back in the White House, and Kamala Harris, in effect his first appointment all those months ago, is Vice President, the first woman and person of color as VP.

One Night in Miami details a long meeting between Cassius Clay (soon Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke in a hotel room after Clay beat Sonny Liston to win the World Championship in 1964.  The meeting really happened.  The conversations in the movie were scripted (by Kemp Powers) and superb.  Same for the acting (Eli Goree, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr. in those four roles), and likewise the brilliant directing by Regina King.  And the story told can be a considered a preamble or foundation of Black people in power in America in the 21st century, Barack Obama to Kamala Harris.

Back in 1964, the ways to get that power were far from clear, and highly debatable.  Malcolm wants black people to stand on their own.  His greatest conflict is with Sam Cooke, who sings all kinds of sweet, catchy romantic ballads (which, by the way, I love), leaving it to Bob Dylan, much to Malcolm's consternation, to write and sing "Blowing in the Wind".  Jim Brown knows all about racism, but is in the game (football and soon movies) for personal success, at least to some extent.  The question is how much?  Clay on the verge of becoming Ali is just 22, high on his being "the greatest," but attracted to Malcolm's philosophy.

Pursuit of fame and money back then was and still is a soul-depleting business, unless you can figure out a way to pursue those goals, and keep them if you reach them, with your inner core intact, and devoted at least in part to loftier goals for yourself, your people, and the world.  The path isn't easy, and One Night In Miami portrays four black guys, incredibly talented and bright in different ways, on the edge of that path so well and memorably, it could have been a Socratic dialogue written Plato.   See it and learn and enjoy.

 

"Sam's Requests" in this anthology is about Sam Cooke!

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