Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 183

She's Taking the NY Area by Storm!

The Blue Dahlia’s been taking the New York area by storm! Eleven concerts and counting in the past month!  All as prelude to release of her new album early this morning - La Tradition Américaine, which I raved reviewed here - and as ramp-up to her move to France later this month.

And ...  I’ll be joining her tomorrow night for the opening number - a special duet performance with the Blue Dahlia of my "Today Is Just Like You" - as she ignites her CD release and bon voyage party with her kicking band at Barbès in Park Slope, Brooklyn, at 7:30.   If you're in the area, come on by and say hello!  Hey, it's worth making a trip for (the album is fabulous).   But if can't come by, I'll be streaming our opening performance on my Periscope channel - you'll be able to see it here.

More details in this announcement from The Blue Dahlia last night:



en français !
The Blue Dahlia's new album 'La Tradition Américaine,' releases everywhere tonight at midnight!

Album release and bon voyage party this Saturday, Aug 11, 7:30pm at Barbes!Over three years in the making, and with the contributions of my amazing bands on both sides of the Atlantic, the new album 'La Tradition Américaine' releases everywhere tonight at midnight, plus CD's available from my website!

Read about the album HERE.

Come celebrate with us:
Saturday, Aug 11th,
starting at 7:30pm,
at the place where it all began:
Barbes, Brooklyn
(376 9th Street)
Free with $10 suggested donation.
*With a special opening song by writer/composer  Paul Levinson !

Then, The Blue Dahlia is followed by the most fun band I know, besides us, of course :),  Cumbiagra !
In addition, before departing for France, The Blue Dahliawill also perform these FREE, family-friendly, outdoor shows:

Tomorrow, Fri. Aug. 10th, 4-6pm at Ruppert Park
&
Sat., Aug. 11th, 12:30-1pm at  Summer Streets NYC , Midtown rest-stop (E 25th Street at Park Ave S)
Then, see The Blue Dahlia this summer-fall-winter in France!
Thank you for you love and support!

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

The Sinner 2.2: Heather's Story

The second episode of the second season of The Sinner, just on tonight, was mostly devoted to Heather.  She's Harry's de facto partner in the investigation.  And tonight we learn that, just as Harry has a strange past barely revealed, so does Heather - and hers concerns Mosswood Grove, the commune in which Julian, his mother, and the couple he (presumably) killed all lived.

We find that Heather had a friend who disappeared in some way on the commune.  More than that, her friend was her lover - or, at least, they were romantically involved - and her friend was clearly attracted to one of the men on the commune.  Beyond that ... who knows ... other than something likely no good happened to the friend.  And while we're at it, we don't know how much or what Heather knows about happened to her friends.  That's the way The Sinner rolls - doling out the bare necessity of information, which makes the narrative even more appealing.

Harry has a good conversation with Julian.  Conversation is Harry's strong suit.  He learns from every sentence, every facial expression of the person he's talking to.   In the first season, Cora mostly wanted his help.   Julian isn't there yet.  But I'm guessing at some point Harry will get through to him.

Julian's mother seems the likely villain at this point, but, knowing The Sinner, it just can't be as simple as that.  Is she really in or out of command in Mosswood, despite the impression she gives of being in control?  And, if so, who then - what person or group - is really calling the shots?

However well disguised that is, we can count on Harry to unravel it, and I'm looking forward to seeing how he does it.

See also The Sinner 2.1: The Boy

And see also: The Sinner season one: Wild, Unconventional, Irresistible Mystery

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Sharp Objects #5: Men in Badges

Another mostly lateral Sharp Objects on Sunday night - #5 - which didn't really move the investigation much along, but provided important detail about Camille.

We learn that she's actually carving words into her body when she cuts herself.  It's not clear yet if there's a message in them, but this certainly means she's more than a casual cutter, if we were ever inclined to think that for a minute.  Amma finds out about it, and this has the effect of bringing the two closer together.

About Amma, she goes missing for a little while, and I keep thinking she's going to be the next victim.   But, actually, I hope that doesn't happen, because I'm finding Amma to be a deeper, more important character with every new episode. Kudos to Eliza Scanlen here for fine acting in a pivotal role.

It was good to see Camille and Richard finally in bed together in the end, albeit in Camille's way.  One of the ladies at the Calhoun Day Event remarks earlier that the Crellin woman go for men in badges, which points to the chemistry between Adora and Vickery, and the possibility (even likelihood) that Vickery is Camille's father.  We'll see.

But we get no more evidence or insight into who did the murders.  Which leaves me free to flog my pet theory:  Alan's the killer.   Of course, we have no evidence for that, either.  And until we see the restriction on strength refuted - meaning, it's not the case that a woman couldn't have done the crime - we're left with just a mere handful of suspects.

See also: Sharp Objects 1 and 2: Serial Tennessee Williams ... Sharp Objects #3: Lateral ... Sharp Objects #4: "You Can't Change History"

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The Affair 4.8: I Don't Believe It

This review of The Affair 4.8 will have a spoiler from the hour that upended the entire series - so, seriously, if you don't want to know that, don't read on.

I entitled this review "I Don't Believe It" because I find it hard to believe that Alison is dead.  But for her not to be dead, the only thing I can think of was that Noah was lying when he identified her in the morgue.  And we've seen no motivation for him to do that.  So, although there is a slim possibility that we'll discover what that motivation is, I can't hold out much hope it.  (His crying in the dinner in his own very brief segment would then be crying for what he did to Cole, if Noah was lying in the morgue and after.  But much as I'd like to believe that, it seems very unlikely.)

I find it even harder to believe that Alison committed suicide.  This is certainly what Cole believes - that Alison wasn't a suicide. But if Alison didn't take her own life, who did?  I can think of three suspects - I'll list them in order of most likely, first -

Alison's father.  We know the least about him, and his motive could be that Alison refused to give him her kidney.   He seemed shocked when he got the news that Alison was dead, but he could have been putting on an act.Ben.  He's a liar for sure.  But a killer?  We've seen no evidence of any violence in him on a level of murdering someone.  Possibly he could have flown into a rage in a scenario in which Alison refused to continue her relationship with him.  I wouldn't be stunned if he killed her.  But his denial to Cole and Noah was pretty convincing.My wife suggested Luisa.   She has a strong motive - Alison alive is getting in the way of both her relationship with Cole, and her getting documented on the strength of being Joanie's adoptive mother.  But ... of the three suspects, she seems the least likely to kill Alison.So with three suspects, none of them terribly likely, maybe we should consider the logic of Alison's suicide.   She had her heart broken by Cole, Noah, and now Ben.  Plus, her father broke her heart in a different way.  That's a lot of heartbreak.  But ... sufficient for suicide, for leaving Joanie without her biological mother?

Tough call.  But I'm going to go with murder, at this point.

See also The Affair 4.1: Quakes and Propaganda ... The Affair 4.2: Meanwhile, Back on the Island ... The Affair 4.3: Dire Straits (Not the Band) in California ... The Affair 4.4: Ben ... The Affair 4.5: B'shert ... The Affair 4.6: "Good News and Bad News" ... The Affair 4.7: Noah and Janelle
And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris

And see also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer ... The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf ... The Affair 2.4: Helen at Distraction ... The Affair 2.5: Golden Cole ... The Affair 2.6: The End (of Noah's Novel) ... The Affair 2.7: Stunner ... The Affair 2.8: The Reading, the Review, the Prize ...And see also The Affair Premiere: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 1.2: Time Travel! ... The Affair 1.3: The Agent and the Sleepers ... The Affair 1.4: Come Together ... The Affair 1.5: Alison's Episode ... The Affair 1.6: Drugs and Vision ... The Affair 1.7: True Confessions ... The Affair 1.8: "I Love You / I Love You, Too" ... The Affair 1.9: Who Else on the Train? ... The Affair Season 1 Finale: The Arrest and the Rest

the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy
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The Sinner 2.1: The Boy

Great to see The Sinner begin its second season on the USA Network - for me, tonight, just a few minutes after my wife and I binge watched the first season on Netflix, which we thought was outstanding.  It's of course too soon to tell if the second season will be as brilliant and transfixing as the first, but it looks to have most of the ingredients.

Cora's case is over.  The perpetrator this time - presumably - is a 13-year old boy, who poisons his parents to death.   I say "presumably" because, unlike in the first season, we didn't actually see the act - the boy putting the poison in the tea he brought his parents - as we did with Cora stabbing Frank on the beach in the first season.  But the kid sure looks guilty.  He brought them the tea, and (so far) we know of no one who might have put in the poison without his knowledge.

And I guess you could also say "presumably" about the victims being his parents.  We know he was on some sort of religious commune, and it's likely that his parents took him away from that.  But, for all we know, his real mother is back on the commune, and the victims were not his parents.  A woman shows up at the end and says she's the boy's mother.

Fortunately, Harry's back on the case.  He's the essence of the series.  And, fortunately for the narrative, the double murder has taken place in his home town, affording him and us a chance to see what it was back then that deformed his childhood, and therein the rest of his life.

I'm very much looking to seeing and reviewing the rest of this season.

See also: The Sinner season one: Wild, Unconventional, Irresistible Mystery

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

The Sinner season one: Wild, Unconventional, Irresistible Mystery

My wife spotted an admiring review of The Sinner, which just began its second season on the USA Network.   Before watching that, we binge watched the first season on Netflix.  Herewith my review - and then in my next post, a review of The Sinner 2.1.

The Sinner (season one) is a police detective mystery like nothing I've seen before on television.  A seemingly happy woman, married and with a young child, stabs to death a guy on the beach, in front of everyone.   Cora, brilliantly played by Jessica Biel, knows that she did this, but hasn't really a clue as to why.  Clearly, she was the furthest thing from happy.  Fortunately for her, Detective Harry Ambrose, takes an interest in her case.

Bill Pullman does a great job playing Harry, a sort of modern-day Columbo, with the some same schlepish qualities as Columbo, and certainly as smart, but endowed with dark past that, as far we know, Columbo didn't have.  Against all odds, Harry pursues the case and discovers why Cora did what she did.

The burden of the story was enormous - how can someone, who we saw with our own eyes brutally murder a guy who was posing no immediate threat to anyone, have any justification for doing this? But the first season pays off amply and in full at the end, as the complicated motive and all the moving parts fit into place.  The result leaves of us wanting more of this indefatigable detective.

The name Sinner is no accident, since a crucial part of Cora's story is why she was motivated to take her sickly sister out of their house, with a mother whose religious bent crippled rather than supported her daughters.   The locale - the Kingston area of New York - also worked well for the ambience.  Harry would have had much more trouble getting his way had he been obliged to conduct the investigation in New York City.

Anyway, enough said about the plot, I don't want to give anything more away.  Snap this up if you're in the mood for a wild, unconventional, irresistible mystery.  And I'll be back in a few minutes with my review of The Sinner 2.1.

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Mission Impossible Fallout: Better (These Days) Than Bond

Just saw the 6th Mission Impossible movie - Fallout - with Tom Cruise in the lead role as Ethan Hunt.  I thought it was outstanding - the best of the movies so far - and, yes, better than the Bond movies these days.

The dominant philosophic theme was a refutation of the utilitarian principle that the good of the many outweigh, or should outweigh, the good of the few as a motive for action.   We see this refuted at least three times in the movie, which begins with Hunt blowing a mission to save one of his team.  He later takes precious time to make sure that a French woman police officer survives a deadly encounter.  And in the one of the scenes in the movie, Ilsa struggles with whether to thoroughly choke out an arch villain while Benji dangles from a nearby noose and looses consciousness.

There's some excellent double-agent moves in which good guys turn out to be bad guys and vice versa.  And the action scenes - in bathrooms in Paris to cliffs in Kashmir - are top-notch and in some ways better than usual.   In the bathroom, a single bad guy gets the better of both Hunt and another agent, until - well, I don't want to give too much away.  But that's more realistic than we often see in scenes like this.

There's the best balance of tongue-in-cheekness about Mission Impossible tropes and using them to effective purpose in the narrative.   An early scene features Wolf Blitzer delivering a news report on CNN.  I had a feeling he was making up the report for MI purposes, but didn't guess that he was actually one of the MI team wearing a Wolf Blitzer mask.  After that, the cracks by disbelievers that the MI strategy of masks which just Halloween had an especially delicious irony.

Tom Cruise, I have to say,  did another fine job.  I never got the criticism of Cruise in this or any other role.  He delivers his Ethan Hunt character with just the right mix of grit, determination, self-awareness, and even self-deprecation.    I guess comparing these MI movies to Bond is apples and oranges.   But I will say that I liked Fallout more than last few Bond moves, which were certainly good cinema.

See also:  Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol


the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Marcella II: Noir, with a Vengeance

Marcella - billed as Nordic Noir in English - is back with a vengeance in its second season on Netflix.  Which is to say, it is at least twice as dark, brutal, and violent as its first noir-season, which I reviewed here last year.

The denouement of the non-Marcella story - that is, the murders which she and her team are investigating, which don't personally involve Marcella - was sufficiently harrowing.  And it actually did personally involve Marcella at the end, since her son came razor close - or actually via something other than a razor - to becoming a victim.  The villain - a woman traumatized by the death of a friend when they were younger, to lobotomize kids to make sure they don't do horrible things when they grow up - was somewhat familiar (not the character but that kind of motivation), or something we've seen the likes on shows like Criminal Minds.  But the way our narrative gets there, with all kinds of twists and turns and unexpected deaths and lives ruined, was fresh and shocking.

The Marcella story - that is, the story of why she is having her blackouts - was barely developed until the non-Marcella story was resolved, but once it became center stage, in the last episode, its progress and resolution was about as grim as it gets.  Marcella under hypnosis remembers that she was responsible for the death of her baby, which she shook too hard in an effort to quiet the baby.  At least, that's what Marcella remembers - or thinks she remembers - but it wasn't 100% clear on the screen that Marcella's shaking of her baby actually killed her.

The immediate aftermath of this revelation was sheer adrenalin.   Marcella draws on a technique we saw in first season - DNA swapping (we saw several themes from the first season well woven into the second) - to fake her death, and join some other branch of British law enforcement.  This leaves more than enough room for a third season - which would be welcome to see, if only because Marcella would able to work without her black-outs.

Tour-de-force acting by Anna Friel in the title role, and memorable acting by just about everyone on screen.  Count on me being back here a review of the third season next year, or whenever it's aired.

See also Marcella (I): Offbeat and Compelling

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Sharp Objects #4: "You Can't Change History"

"You can't change history," Mr. Lacey tells Amma, as she tries her little best to seduce him - or begin to seduce him - in the 4th episode of Sharp Objects on HBO tonight.  If this were a time travel story, some character could set forth to prove Lacey wrong.  Well, there is a kind of time travel in Sharp Objects, but it's the metaphysical or mental kind, not what we saw in the recently cancelled Timeless series on NBC.

Not only that, Sharp Objects is one hell of a nasty show, with nasty characters saying nasty things in just about every other scene.   Adora tells Camille she smells "ripe" - the given title of this episode - after Camille puts Richard's hand in her pants after he tries to kiss her in the woods.  Nothing nasty about that - it's all good - but Adora's comment is nasty, and she's easily the nastiest character in this story.

She's hateful to Camille - still not clear why - and is no great shakes to her husband.  She all but carries on with the sheriff right in front of her husband, and generally treats him like trash, including saying no to his meekly amorous requests.  In the final scene, we see, among other things, that he might be getting more aggressive, and it will be instructive to see what comes of this.

In terms of the mystery of who is the killer, Adora would be a number-one suspect, given her sheer near insanity.  But the physical strength of the killer ruled out a woman early in this story, so that obliges us to look elsewhere.  I'm still thinking Adora's husband has a hidden violent streak, and he still looks like the best suspect to me - though, so far, no one has identified him as such.

Could a woman under some circumstances get the kind of strength necessary to pull out teeth?  I don't know.  But so far, figuring out who did this is like pulling teeth.  (And now it gets so quiet in the room, you can hear a pun drop.)

See also: Sharp Objects 1 and 2: Serial Tennessee Williams ... Sharp Objects #3: Lateral



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The Affair 4.7: Noah and Janelle

A superb Noah half hour on The Affair tonight - the second half hour in tonight's line-up.  As I think I've already mentioned in the reviews this season, Noah has really been at his best this year.  Compassionate, courageous, decisive, all the things you would want in a leading man.

And it was good to see Noah and Janelle finally consummate their flirtation.   For a variety of reasons, Janelle is the best woman for Noah that he's been involved with in lo these four seasons.  And that includes Helen - who, I've got to say, had another half-baked episode.   It's not Maura Tierney's fault.  The script is obliging her to do stupid things - including being nasty to Noah, who is trying to do the right thing for their kids.

Back to Noah: the resolution of his episode tonight was also outstanding, swerving from bringing Anton out to Princeton to getting the two into that car we saw at the beginning of the first few episodes.  In that car were Noah, Anton, and Cole - and they're looking for Alison.

Not to get too meta, but news was just announced a few days ago that there will be a fifth and final season of The Affair.  I was a little worried that, if this was the last season, Alison might not survive it.  Which would be a shame - she's the best character (with Noah moving up now to a close second).

So here are my predictions for what's left of this season:  Ben is the most likely reason for Alison's absence (though he seems a little too obvious to be such a major villain).  Of course, we don't yet know that Alison's missing is involuntary.   And back to Helen: I'd love to see Vic survive, but that's not likely.  What I do think is that Sierra will have his baby.   (Good name for a character - see The Plot to Save Socrates.)

And I'll be back next week with another review.

See also The Affair 4.1: Quakes and Propaganda ... The Affair 4.2: Meanwhile, Back on the Island ... The Affair 4.3: Dire Straits (Not the Band) in California ... The Affair 4.4: Ben ... The Affair 4.5: B'shert ... The Affair 4.6: "Good News and Bad News"
And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris

And see also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer ... The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf ... The Affair 2.4: Helen at Distraction ... The Affair 2.5: Golden Cole ... The Affair 2.6: The End (of Noah's Novel) ... The Affair 2.7: Stunner ... The Affair 2.8: The Reading, the Review, the Prize ...And see also The Affair Premiere: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 1.2: Time Travel! ... The Affair 1.3: The Agent and the Sleepers ... The Affair 1.4: Come Together ... The Affair 1.5: Alison's Episode ... The Affair 1.6: Drugs and Vision ... The Affair 1.7: True Confessions ... The Affair 1.8: "I Love You / I Love You, Too" ... The Affair 1.9: Who Else on the Train? ... The Affair Season 1 Finale: The Arrest and the Rest

the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music