Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 15

A Poem: "I Fell in Love with a Robot"

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Silo 2.1: The Post- Apocalyptic Ladder

Well, Hugh Howey's Silo is back on Apple TV+ for its second season -- which will happen one episode at a time -- and it couldn't have come back at a more appropriate time.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

Juliette escaped/was thrown out of the silo at the end of the first season. She and we knew that the air wasn't really poisonous outside, but, hey, you can never be sure.  But she and we were right, and after we discover/confirm that it's not quite the world that has gone to hell, Juliette makes her way into and through another shelter or whatever it is, within easy walking distance from the silo with Sims and all those other characters we saw so much of last year.  One question that immediately arises: why are these two silos so close to one another?  What is it about this particular area?

But there ensue three parts to Juliette's journey now: 1. She uses a series of rusty ladders to get over the huge caverns in the shelter she enters (she's an engineer -- the title of this episode -- so she knows how to position a ladder across cavern and make her way across it with almost by not getting killed).  2. She hears a song faintly in the background, which gets louder as she walks on  -- it's "Moon River," you can't go wrong with that, though "You'll Never Walk Alone," especially Patti Labelle and the Blue Bells' version, with that impossibly high note she hits at the end, would have worked well, too.  3. And we learn that someone has been playing that song -- it's not some remnant of Spotify that's been programmed in the future -- and that someone ends this episode with a threat to kill Juliette if she opens the door.

I'll mention here (in case you haven't read my reviews of the first season, for which, see below) that I haven't read any of Hugh Howey's books, and once I started watching and enjoying the series, I didn't want to, because I wanted to enjoy all the twists and turns in the TV series.  So I don't know who any of the characters who are new to the second season are.  All we see of the man who plays the music and makes the threat are his eyes.  I thought the actor playing him might have been Steve Buscemi.  But it turns out the actor is another Steve -- Steve Zahn (a fine actor, I first noticed him in Treme).

Anyway, the return of Silo is off to a good start, with a nearby silo, and fine music and acting likely to take place there, and I'll be back here likely every week with a review of each episode.

See also Silo 1.1-1.2: A Unique Story, Inside and Out ... Silo 1.3: Like Chernobyl, Repaired ... 1.4: Truth, Not Quite ... 1.5: Revelations ... 1.6-1.7: The Book and the Water ... 1.8: What Really Happened ... 1.9: I knew It! But What Then? ... Silo 1.10: Three Truths

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The Diplomat 2: West Wing Meets Bond, Part 2

I just finished watching the six episode second season of The Diplomat, which went up on Netflix on the last day of October.  Here's a review with no specific spoilers, and therefore no warning.

Let's begin at the end.  It's got the best surprise ending I've seen in at least the hundred seasons of any television show, on traditional network, cable, and streaming.  I don't know ... maybe make that five hundred.

Now, it's important to state the obvious, and keep in mind that this second was finished before the results of our election for President a few days.  So think of this second season as capturing the ambience and reality of the American President, VP, and staff maybe a year or six months ago, replete with a pretty old old American President, and a somewhat younger female VP.

I say American, even though the story takes place in Britain.  But American leaders appear in person and on video calls,  And of course the central characters are Kate Wyler, recently appointed US ambassador to the UK, and her husband Hal Wyler, former ambassador to Lebanon.  Unsurprisingly, both parts are played to perfection by Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell (who sounds, as always when he wants to, as American as I am).

Indeed, every bit of the acting was top-notch, especially Rory Kinnear as the British PM, and Allison Janney as the US VP.  But don't get me wrong.  I didn't love every last scene in this second season, such as when one character explaining something to another character says it's a case a correlation not causation, and the other smugly says no one really gets what that means.  In off-screen fact, that's actually a very easily comprehensible concept, with an obvious example: there may be sunspots when the stock market crashes (correlation) but that doesn't mean the sunspots caused the crash (causation).  (Here's a video from CNBC in which I explain the concept to an anti video-game crusader.)

Now banter like that, whether clumsy or astute, serves in this series to give it a cutesy, savvy flavor.  But the story is so bold and powerful, it doesn't need any help from the cutesy side.  Further, honestly, it couldn't have come along -- this second season -- at a better time for we Americans, and a lot of the world, as we try to make sense out of what just happened in our election.

See? No spoilers.  And do see this second season of The Diplomat.  After you've seen the first (and maybe read my review, see the link below).  You'll be in for a treat.

See also The Diplomat 1: West Wing Meets Bond

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Disclaimer: Media vs. Reality

I just finished watching Disclaimer on Apple TV+, the seven-episode series adapted from Renée Knight's novel of the same name, which I haven't read.  The short series has so many twists and turns, that I'm really going to try to give you a review with no spoilers, and try hard to confine myself to the powerful and deep generalities that animate the narrative.

Well, I will say this about the first episode, which I suppose constitutes a spoiler of sorts.  I had almost no idea what was going on in that opening episode.  It wasn't until the end of the second episode that I began to get a glimmer of what was going on.  And by the third episode, I was coming to the conclusion that Disclaimer is one outstanding series, the likes of which I can't quite recall ever seeing on any television or laptop screen before.

It's erotic, reminiscent of the first R-rated movies I saw in theaters with my girlfriend now my wife many decades ago.  It's also an increasingly breathtaking mystery, with lives almost literally hanging in the balance.  But it's most of all a story about media, about the circumstances under which we may take them for reality, and the very deadly dangers of so doing. I'm not talking about fake news, though I suppose Disclaimer does have some connection to the rash of fake news that's been plaguing this world and our lives for years now.

But I was thinking more specifically of the photograph, which thanks to our mobile phones, has become as easy and ubiquitous as the blink of an eye.  As I often point out in my books and in my classes at Fordham University, the painting is an interpretation of reality, in contrast to the photograph, which is of reality.  But how much of it?  Certainly not all of reality, or even more than a split second of it.  If we want to capture a bigger time slice of reality, we need to move from photo to video.  But even a video has a beginning and an ending, and it doesn't capture what happened an instant before or after the video.

And then there's the written memoir.  Now words on a page or screen quite obviously are not reality, they are at most descriptions of reality.  But that knowledge doesn't stop us from taking memoirs seriously, as truthful accountings of what really happened.  But how can we tell the difference between a memoir that is utterly factual and a novel that is pure fiction?   Not as easily as you might think, especially if the work has not been published as yet, and in that process has been officially labelled as memoir or novel.  (I recommend Caroline Shannon Davenport's Terror at the Sound of a Whistle as an example of an excellent memoir that reads like a novel.)  And what of a book published as a novel but thought to be a truthful memoir by the publisher?

Well, I hope you see enough of where I'm going with this -- but not too much -- and if these issues and questions interest and even fascinate you as much as they do me, and you're in the mood for an R-rated series brought to life by outstanding acting and directing,with Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline in unforgettable leading roles and Leila George as the erotic interest, and Indira Varma with a narrating voice, created by and directed to perfection by Alfonso Cuarón -- trust me, you can't go wrong with Disclaimer.

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Some Thoughts on the Results of the US 2024 Election

 Some thoughts after the most consequential US election in my lifetime:

1. The pollsters got it wrong -- for the third time in as many US Presidential elections.  The vote tallies were not razor thin, or even just plain thin by any margin.  Donald Trump won the popular vote by more than 5 million votes, and the Electoral College by 292 to 224 at this moment.  He won the swing states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with Arizona and Nevada still too close to call.  He lost New York State, but Kamala Harris did much more poorly than Joe Biden in New York four years ago.  The polls predicted none of this.  Maybe it's time to stop paying so much attention to them -- or any attention at all.

2. Maybe all the Democrats who hounded Joe Biden out of the race after his unsettling performance in his debate in June with Trump should have thought twice about coming after Biden.  I said at the time that debate performance has nothing to do with Presidential decision-making and governing.  But everyone from George Clooney to Adam Schiff* were so sure that just about anyone other than Biden would do better than the man who was born in Scranton -- one of the reasons that Biden did so well in Pennsylvania in the 2020 election -- that they went on and on in the media as if it were their sacred duty to make sure Biden stepped down.  Kamala Harris would have made a great President.  But she would have been far more likely to beat Trump or any opponent four years from now, after she had served another term as VP in a second Biden administration.  Of course, no one can know now if Biden would have bested Trump in yesterday's election, but I and everyone who expressed concern about Biden being driven out of the election can't help but think that he might well have done better, much better, in the election just concluded, given his success against the same opponent in 2020.

*No doubt influenced by the same polls that later said the Harris/Trump run for the White House was way too close to call.

3. The US House of Representatives is still up for grabs.  If the Democrats don't retake control of the House, we can expect unobstructed Republican rule, with the courts as the only check on their power. And we've already seen more than once where the Supreme Court stands on that.

I may have some further thoughts as the day goes by.

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Paul Levinson interviews Andrew Hoskins about AI and the End of the Human Past

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 398, in which I interview Andrew Hoskins about the new book he is writing, The Deadbot Society: AI and the End of the Human Past.

Relevant links:

"AI and Memory" an article by Andrew Hoskins the AI-created video I mentioned in our conversation more about McLuhan in an Age of Social Media

Check out this episode!

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Time Cut: Meets the Sine Qua Non of Paradox and Surmounting It

So, Time Cut went up yesterday on Netflix.  It's a time travel movie, so I had to see it.  The story of a younger sister who goes back in time in 2024 to prevent the murder of her older sister in 2003 by a serial killer at first seemed a little trite, even more so with the high school shenanigans in which the story is situated.  But--

The story respected the paradoxes of time travel (a sine qua non for me in a time travel narrative) -- one of the savvier characters correctly says you might stop your sister's murder and in so doing cause World War III -- and the story becomes emotionally profound when--

[And here I'll warn you about some spoilers ahead ... ]

The younger sister, Lucy, from 2024 in 2003 knows that her parents had her only because her older sister Summer was killed.  When Lucy asks her parents who in 2003 don't know they will have another child if they're planning on having another child, they tell her no, and that sounds like a fait accompli. Lucy instantly realizes that if she prevents Summer's murder, that she, Lucy, will cease to exist.

I would have liked to have heard someone in the movie -- Quinn, the teenaged science nerd, and more -- voice the new conclusion that Lucy's realization engenders: that Lucy's very existence shows that somehow it might be possible that Summer survived, and Lucy was born, anyway.  Instead, we get the emotional turmoil that Lucy goes through, wanting to save her sister, and continue living herself.

But that's ok, it all makes sense at the end, and we find out who the masked serial killer is, which I guessed, but only pretty close to its revelation in the movie.  And we even get some clever dialogue, like when Lucy tells her as yet unknowing parents after dinner, "Thanks for having me". All of which is to say, Time Cuts is eminently worth seeing.

 

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Don't Move: Keep Watching

Here's a short, mostly non-spoiler review of Don't Move, the movie just up on Netflix this week.

This is an original, high-anxiety movie that will keep you guessing until the very last minute. Which is an impressive accomplishment, given that we've seen something like the overall plot on the screen at least dozens of times before: a woman kidnapped by a handsome, highly intelligent, articulate, fiendish stranger.

Ok, that gives something away, but it happens close to the beginning, and is touted in the trailer and tagline for the movie.

It happens out in the country, not the big city, with rivers, rugged terrain, and leafy green trees as background.  A cabin in the woods, a gas station, and everyday cars play major roles.  Our victim receives help from unexpected and expected sources, but you'll be unlikely to guess what happens in the end.

The movie in its own way has Hitchcockian flavor, and a Nordic noir ambience, too, though it all takes in America.

But I've said enough.  Don't move once you start watching Don't Move.  You'll be rewarded.

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Paul Levinson interviews Gerrit Van Woudenberg about his new movie Quantum Suicide

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 397, in which I interview Gerrit Van Houtenberg about his new multiple universe feature film, Quantum Suicide, debuting on Amazon Prime Video on October 18.

Relevant links:

my review of Quantum Suicide The Chronology Protection Case movie on Amazon Prime Video The Chronology Protection Case novelette

Check out this episode!

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Paul Levinson interviews Bob Hutchins: An Optimistic Discussion of AI

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 396, in which I interview Bob Hutchins about AI.  My guess is you'll find this discussion much more optimistic about AI than what you'll usually hear.

Discussed or mentioned in this interview:

"On Behalf of Humanity: The Technological Edge" my 1996 article The Media Ecology Association New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication my review of Confronting the Presidents

 

 

Check out this episode!

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