Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 14

Aporia: Firing Back in Time

Readers of this blog will know that my favorite genre -- as a viewer, reader, and author -- is time travel, and its close relative alternate history. You'll know this because I say it in just about every other post. But you would also know this because, at least by my lights, excellent and even good examples are not easy to find (and, I'll immodestly or modestly say, as an author, to write).

But Aporia, a 2023 movie I saw last night on Hulu, is an excellent example. The heart of its narrative is that a would-be inventor (later, inventors), of a time machine discovers that the clanky machine he's struggling to build in his home can't quite do it -- it's not powerful enough to hurtle a human back in time -- but it can send a subatomic particle back to a specific time and place (the time just a handful of years or a little bit in longer into the past), where it will cause a very minor explosion. And the inventor realizes that if the place in the past where the subatomic particle lands is inside someone's head, well, what he the inventor has created is a gun that can reach back and kill someone in the past, by putting one of these time-travelling particles into the target's head.

[And I'll here I'll tell you that there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

So, there are three main characters in Jared Moshe's movie (which he wrote and directed): Jabir and Mal were working on the time machine in Jabir's home, when Mal was killed by a drunk driver. This of course left his wife Sophie desolate. Jabir is desperate to ease her pain, and restore her life, and comes up with a plan: send one of those lethal subatomic particles back in time, to land in the drunk driver's head, before he gets into the car and accidentally kills Mal. And the plan works!

But that's when Aporia really gets riveting and ethically wrenching, as Sophie struggles with the fact that although she got her husband back, she had to take another human life to do it. She reaches out to the drunk driver's widow. They become friends, and so do their daughters. And here the movie excels in depicting how the people who know the original reality, and know that it has been altered, deal with the new reality they now inhabit. As Sophie gets to know the drunk driver's family, she finds she can't bear the fact that she was responsible for killing the drunk husband and father, however much he may have deserved it ... but any attempt to change the past again by killing someone else with a time-traveling particle could have unforeseen consequences ...

Aporia resonantes in all kinds of ways. The build-your-machine-at-home continues the tradition started by H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, and furthered more recently by Primer and just a few months ago Quantum Suicide. The idea of sending something rather than people or living things back in time was put to good use by Gregory Benford in his 1980 award-winning novel, Timescape, in which information could be sent back in time. And the idea of apprehending criminals, not because they committed a crime, but because you know they will commit a crime, was of course memorably developed by Philip K. Dick in his novel The Minority Report.

But Aporia has a story and an ambience all its own, brought to life by really excellent acting by Judy Greer as Sophie, Edi Gathegi (who has been great in For All Mankind, and before that, StartUp) as Mal, and Payman Maadi as Jabir. And all of this builds up to a top-notch ending, in which a smile tells us almost everything.

watch the movie on Amazon Prime Video -- read the novelette here

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Published on December 01, 2024 12:34

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.

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Published on November 30, 2024 20:16

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

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Published on November 30, 2024 10:47

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 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. 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". 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.

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Published on November 29, 2024 20:47

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

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Published on November 28, 2024 11:39

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

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Published on November 28, 2024 11:39

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.
See also Dune: Prophecy 1.1: Compelling Prequel ... Dune, Part One: Half the Movie, Twice the Power of Most Other Complete Films ... Dune, Part Two: Not As Good as Part One Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

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Published on November 26, 2024 21:02

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.

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Published on November 22, 2024 20:12

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

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Published on November 20, 2024 17:44

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 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.

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Published on November 19, 2024 19:36