Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 119

Amazing Stories (2020) 1.2: "The Heat": Life after Life

Life after death stories - the departed coming back to help, haunt, or otherwise interact with the living - are a dime a dozen. Amazing Stories' (2020) second episode, "The Heat," manages to visit this well-trodden path with a story that is at least somewhat original, even if that originality relies upon yet another very well-worn gambit in fiction.

Tuka and Sterling are track athletes and best friends, until a typical teenager argument leads to Tuku getting killed in a hit-and-run, right before Sterling's horrified eyes.  Most of the rest of the episode tells the story of Tuka's ghost connecting with Sterling, and helping her run and compete again, and maybe win in crucial track-meet race.

Except, Sterling doesn't, and here's where "The Heat" veers into both originality but some kind of ultimate cliche.  The originality is in Sterling's not winning, which would be the expected result in what had come before. But what happens after that, when the ghostly Tuka tries to comfort and inspire Sterling is, well ...

It turns out - at least, I think that's what's going on - that Tuka wasn't really killed in the hit-and-run.  She's just temporarily stunned, and comes back to full consciousness and life after she asks Sterling to kiss her, tenderly on the lips, aka romantically,  Now I thought the kiss was excellent because it showed the two young women had a deeper connection that just friends, and it harkened back to the fairytale ending of kissing the deceased back to life.

But that ending also means that everything we saw earlier in the episode was, what, going on in Tuka's mind while she was unconscious on the street?   That kind of ending - that what transpired was a protagonist's dream - is even more cliched that the dead coming back as a ghosts.

So, all in all, a mixed bag of an episode as far as originality.  But "The Heat" did have heart - as it turns out, a never unbeating one - and Hailey Kilgore and Emyri Crutchfield put in good performances as Tuka and Sterling, so I'd  recommend it.

See also Amazing Stories (2020) 1.1: "The Cellar": The Tops

 

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Raised by Wolves 1.1: Fast Action and Deep Philosophy

I just saw Raised by Wolves 1.1, courtesy of HBO Max, where the series is set to debut this Thursday, September 3.  In a sentence, it's a big concept, altogether excellent combination of fast action and deep philosophy, as befits Executive Producer Ridley Scott, and especially well-suited to our pandemic ridden time, when the very fate of humanity could well be at stake if things get much worse.

The narrative features androids and space travel (the action) and a conflict between true believers and atheists (the philosophy) who have left a dying Earth.  As such, the series is one big step more promising than Westworld, at least to my science fictional tastes, because it tells a story not only of humans and androids, but sets it way out in space, on a planet around another star.   The flavor is therefore closest to 2001 than anything else, even though Raised by Wolves has not much else in common with Clarke's story and Kubrick's movie.

The special effects and overall cinematography are excellent to the point of being breathtaking at times.  The acting is also fine, and it was good to see Travis Fimmel from Vikings back on the screen.   Amanda Collin is fine as Mother the android, and her character comes with the awesome power of killing everything around her with a scream (reminds me, in an odd way, of the episode "Sound that Kills" in the ancient Science Fiction Theater television show).  Munro Lennon-Ritchie and Jadon Holdsworth as Campion put in good performances, and it will be fun to see how this crucial character - a young boy whose allegiances to belief have not been settled as yet - develops.

I'd add that if ever there was a series I wanted to binge-watch to the end - at least, of this first season - Raised by Wolves appears to be that.   But I'll take it the way its being presented, and will be back here with subsequent reviews.

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Amazing Stories (2020) 1.1: "The Cellar": The Tops

I finally had a chance to take a bite out of Apple TV+'s reboot of Amazing Stories (it's so quiet when I write, you can sometimes hear a pun drop),  and I thought I'd tell you what I thought of it.

First, I should mention that I haven't read any of the reviews.  I really have no idea if people loved or hated this episode. or just felt blah about it, and the same about the other four episodes in this inaugural season.   As readers of this blog will know, I'm often at odds with myopic, dyspeptic critics, and that would be the case for this first episode, because, well, I really enjoyed it.

In part, that's because I'm a sucker for most time travel stories, being an author of same myself, and a fan long before I started publishing.   But there's a difference between liking and loving.   In order for me to really thoroughly enjoy a time travel story, it has to be done right.  Meaning, it has to take some account of the inherent paradoxes in time travel, and make some attempt to deal with them.

So let's begin with the general observation that there are two types of travel-to-the past stories.  One, in which the protagonist tries to do something to improve the course of history, like killing Hitler before he got to power or saving Socrates from the hemlock (a course I chose in The Plot to Save Socrates).  The other is do something in the past to improve your subsequent personal life (as in the movie, Peggy Sue Got Married).  "The Cellar" is the latter.

In order for such a time travel story to work, you have to have appealing, sensitive characters, and if on the screen, played by actors who project that.  Dylan O'Brien does a good job of that as Sam, who renovates houses with his brother, and travels instantly 100 years into the past (2019 -> 1919), when a fierce storm causes some extreme drop in pressure when Sam's in the cellar.  (I think Frequency had some kind of storm as the time-travel or communication back in time trigger.  Fine with me).  Victoria Pedretti who played a completely kind of character in You plays Evelyn in "The Cellar," and does a great job of playing a young woman in 1919, which isn't easy.   The dress, music, and other aspects of 1919 life in Iowa were spot on, as far as I know, and that made for a crisp, colorful, believable narrative.

I won't say anything more about the plot, except the obvious that of course the course of true love never did run smooth, and that's especially true when it comes to time travel.  But the twists and turns are not predictable, and the ending even tucks in an alternate reality which is always nice to see in a time travel tale.

I'm definitely going to watch the other four episodes of this series, and I'll be back here with reviews.

 
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Lovecraft Country 1.3: Anthology

It should be apparent by now that Lovecraft Country is an anthology of separate stories set on a foundation of a continuing underlying story, rather than just a straightforward continuing story.  This has the effect of making the underlying story more difficult to follow, but allowing the series to explore a lot more than one classic horror trope.

Last night, episode 1.3 brought us a deeply haunted house.  Leti buys it, a real fix-me up, on the white side of Chicago.  She not only encounters all manner of ghostly inhabitants in the basement, but white racist hoodlums who put up a burning KKK cross on her lawn and do their best to frighten her into leaving the house.  She of course isn't frightened by them - she has the ghosts to worry about - and before the episode is over, the racists get their due comeuppance.

Meanwhile, the underlying story has at least once excellent development:  Leti and Atticus have at it.  This is handled with grace and sensitivity and vulnerability.   Amidst all the horror around them, it's good to see human relationships triumphing.

Unfortunately, it looks like Uncle George is indeed dead.  But when you're dealing with magic and horror, it's always important to keep in mind that dead isn't the same as in our non-magical world, in which the horror can and does have irrevocable effects.   So can we look forward to George returning, and, if so, in a fully corporeal human not ghostly fashion?

Just one of the things I'll be watching for in the weeks ahead.

See also Lovecraft Country 1.1: Racist Police Get Horror Comeuppance ... Lovecraft Country 1.2: Malleable Dreams

 
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We Hunt Together 1.4: No Murder, But ...

There was no murder in We Hunt Together 1.4.  But the build-up to it made for an outstanding episode, since it unveiled and moved forward lots of crucial things.

For instance, Jackson's wife is having an affair and Jackson knows about it.  This is revealed after Jackson substitutes his own specimen for Lola's, so she can pass a drug test (good thing they don't test for DNA and gender in those kinds of tests).  And this in turn occurs after we learn why Lola is a druggie: it's to bury guilt she feels for killing a mother and daughter in an auto accident on a "roundabout" - an accident that as Jackson points out was a really an accident and not so much Lola's fault.  All of that is quite a powerful packet of information.

Meanwhile, we learn an equivalent amount about Freddie.  Her real name is Lily, and she took the name Freddie because the real Freddie, Lily's best friend, took her life, after a music teacher - whom Lily (our Freddie) later pushed down the stairs - did something inappropriate (as in sexual) to the original, real Freddie.

All of this is important because Freddie (originally Lily) has brought Babu back to her school, to meet the music teacher, now in a wheelchair, because Freddie wants Babu to kill the music teacher.  This is a good thing - not ethically but plot-wise - because Jackson and Lola may well need another murder to keep their investigation going.   Bad luck and Lola going for a swig of drug got in the way of Lola seeing Freddie and Babu together, which would have cracked the case wide open right there.

See what I mean about this being one fine episode even without a murder?  Back with another review next week.

See also We Hunt Together 1.1: Compelling Pairs ... We Hunt Together 1.2: Upping the Game ... We Hunt Together 1.3: Fine Tuning

 
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The Petersens: Sunshine

 I thought I'd tell you about The Petersens, a piece of sunshine in music, always welcome, but especially so in these deeply dangerous times.

The Petersens are a family group, three sisters, their brother, their mother, and a friend, who do splendid covers of country, folk, and gleaming pop songs.   Family groups are nothing new, ranging from the Andrew Sisters to the Isley Brothers to the Cowsills.  They have a natural advantage in vocal harmonies that seem linked together since birth, because they are.  The rhythm of their instruments sound like they are all being played by the same person because, well, they almost are.

But The Petersens also have subtle and winning differences in their vocal timber, which makes it a special treat to hear one or the other, usually a sister, sing lead.  Julianne, the youngest, plays mandolin and has a perfectly expressive voice sounding like an instrument itself. Here she is singing Fields of Gold.  Ellen, the middle sister, plays an unerring banjo, and delivers a cover of Jolene almost as good as Dolly's and at least as good as Miley's.  Katie is the oldest sister and the leader of the band.  She plays a killer fiddle and has a straight-up beautiful country voice.  Here she is singing Country Roads, up on YouTube at the end of May, already almost 6.5 million views, one of my all-time favorite songs.

Matt the brother plays guitar and puts in harmony like honey.  Karen aka Mama plays an ever-bouncing stand-up bass.  And Emmett Franz, the friend, plays dobro, sort of like a slide guitar, but much better picking.  (Hey, here I am raving about this group, and I usually don't even listen that much to this kind of music.)

But one of the best things about watching and listening to The Petersens is not the music they play and the songs they sing, but how they so very much enjoy doing it.  There's not a video of them on YouTube in which one or more of them is not smiling from ear to ear as one of their siblings sings lead or steps up to the microphone with a choice bluegrass part.

Highly recommended, because truly a pleasure.  I'll leave with you The Petersens, Katie in the lead, singing James Taylor's "Carolina in My Mind".

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Podcast Report on Day Two of the 2020 Republican National Convention

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 143, in which I offer my assessment of the second night of the 2020 Republican National Convention: lies.

Further reading (blog post):

Report on Day 2 of 2020 Republican National Convention: Lies

Further listening:

Four nightly assessments of the Democratic National Convention:

Podcast take on 2020 Democratic National Convention, Day One Podcast take on 2020 Democratic National Convention, Day Two Podcast take on 2020 Democratic National Convention, Day Three Podcast take on 2020 Democratic National Convention, Day Four

Check out this episode!

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Written Report on Day 2 of 2020 Republican National Convention: Lies

I didn't watch much of last night's First Night of the 2020 Republican National Convention.  I made up for that by watching just about all of the Second Night of the convention, tonight.  Here's what I saw and heard: lies.

Lies from Senator Rand Paul, who praised Trump for bringing home our troops.  The truth: Trump has brought home no troops, as far anyone in the public knows or the press has reported.  I've been against overseas American military involvement since Vietnam.  Trump has done nothing to reduce that.Lies from Director of the U. S. National Economic Council Larry Kudlow, who said that Biden wants to raise everyone's taxes.  The truth: Biden only wants to raise taxes on people who earn more than $400,000.   That leaves me out.  What about you?Lies from former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said the Chinese Communist Party "covered up" the deadly COVID-19 virus.  The truth: No evidence for that.  Although the Chinese government may not have been as helpful as they could have been in alerting the world to COVID-19, Chinese scientists were the first to publicly let the world know about the deadly disease.Lies from Eric Trump (Donald Trump's son), who said Biden will raise taxes on over 80% of Americans.  See what I pointed out about Kudlow above, and do the arithmetic: those in America who earn more than $400,000 a year are a small fraction of the American people, not 80%.  Ok, I did the research and math: those earning more than $400,000 a year are in the top 1%.Lies from Melania Trump, First Lady, who said Donald Trump "loves" this country.  I don't believe that.  I think the truth is that Trump loves only himself.  But I'm willing to acknowledge that this is a difference of opinion, not an outright lie.  So perhaps, technically, Melania Trump didn't lie tonight. But even if Melania Trump didn't actually lie, she would be the only one of the speakers mentioned above.  That's a very poor percentage for truth in what we heard tonight.

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Report on Day 2 of 2020 Republican National Convention: Lies

I didn't watch much of last night's First Night of the 2020 Republican National Convention.  I made up for that by watching just about all of the Second Night of the convention, tonight.  Here's what I saw and heard: lies.

Lies from Senator Rand Paul, who praised Trump for bringing home our troops.  The truth: Trump has brought home no troops, as far any in the public knows or the press has reported.  I've been against overseas American military involvement since Vietnam.  Trump has done nothing to reduce that.Lies from from Director of the U. S. National Economic Council Larry Kudlow, who said that Biden wants to raise everyone's taxes.  The truth: Biden only wants to raises taxes on people who earn more than $400,000.   That leaves me out.  What about you?Lies from former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said the Chinese Communist Party "covered up" the deadly COVID-19 virus.  The truth: No evidence for that.  Although the Chinese government may not has been as helpful as they could have been in alerting the world to COVID-19, Chinese scientists were the first to publicly let the world know about the deadly disease.Lies from Eric Trump (Donald Trump's son), who said Biden will raises taxes on over 80% of Americans.  See what I pointed out about Kudlow above, and do the arithmetic: those in America who earn more than $400,000 a year are a small fraction of the American people, not 80%.  Ok, I did the research and the math for you: those earning more than $400,000 a year are in the top 1%.Lies from Melania Trump, First Lady, who said Donald Trump "loves" this country.  I don't believe that.  I think the truth is that Trump loves only himself.  But I'm willing to acknowledge that this is a difference of opinion, not an outright lie.  So perhaps, technically, Melania Trump didn't lie tonight. But even if Melania Trump didn't actually lie, she would be the only one of the speakers mentioned above.  That's a very poor percentage for truth in what we heard tonight.

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Captain Phil interviews Paul Levinson about the 2020 Democratic National Convention

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 142, in which the inimitable Captain Phil (on WUSB Radio) interviews me again, this time about the 2020 Democratic National Convention, conducted virtually, which concluded last week.  Special treat: Phil plays "Samantha" from my new album, Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time, right before the interview.

Further listening:

1. Four nightly assessments of the Democratic National Convention:

Podcast take on 2020 Democratic National Convention, Day One Podcast take on 2020 Democratic National Convention, Day Two Podcast take on 2020 Democratic National Convention, Day Three Podcast take on 2020 Democratic National Convention, Day Four

2. More about my music:

a taste of Welcome Up on YouTube lyrics to all the songs on Welcome Up complete album on Spotify and Bandcamp multi-color limited pressing vinyl (100 copies) from Light In the Attic Records CDs rave review of Welcome Up in Ugly Things Magazine

Check out this episode!

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music