Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 202

Knightfall 1.2: Grail and Tinder

Knightfall is shaping up as a powerful, wheels-within-wheels kind of story, simmering with all kinds of intrigue and crossed loyalties in just its second episode, 1.2

And we get a new, charismatic character, Pope Boniface, commandingly played by Jim Carter aka Carson (from Downton Abby),* ready to use his authority to shape Europe as God through Boniface thinks best.  He has a worthy antagonist in the irreligious lawyer De Nogaret, close adviser to the King of France.  In this round, Boniface succeeds in averting his own death, and letting the lawyer know that the Pope knows exactly what De Nogaret tried to do.

*Come to think of it, Tom Cullen playing Landry is from Downton Abby, too, as is Julian Ovenden as De Nogaret!

But De Nogaret fares better with Brother Gawain, who will do almost anything - not betray the Knights, but tell De Nogaret about the Grail - for the promise of getting his leg healed.  We know that won't happen, which means that Gawain in on the way to a world of guilt and grief.

By the way, I've got to say that I think the Holy Grail is a weak grand motivator of so much in this story so far, but I'm willing to accept it as the McGuffin.  Far more interesting are the loves and battles of the major characters, and the Pope's vision of a new crusade to liberate the Holy Land once the Grail is retrieved (but why is the Grail so essential for that?).

The love between Joan and Landry of course can't run smooth, and Landry is already showing signs of not letting anything get in the way of his being Master of the Order, including a rendezvous with the Queen.  Significantly, the Pope knows about their affair, which makes him even more powerful. And just for good measure, we have the, I don't know, flirtation of Isabella with her Uncle (coming from Isabella).  Age-wise, she'd go better with Parsifal, but he's still mourning the love of his young life, and she's now betrothed to the Prince of Catalonia.

All of which is good, smoldering tinder for what now promises to be an excellent season ahead.

See also: Knightfall 1.1: Possibilities

 
historical science fiction - a little further back in time

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Vikings 5.4: Four or More Good Stories

As we know from history, the Vikings ventured almost all over the world - indeed, if you consider North America, further than even the Mongols - and therefore we shouldn't be surprised to find Vikings in its fifth season pursuing so many of those disparate good stories, likely (eventually) to weave together.  These tonight in episode 5.4 included -


Bjorn in Sicily, soon to Africa, with a Byzantine chieftain on the way to meet a powerful Arabic leader.  This part of the world is now bursting with Islamic conquest, but Byzantium aka the Eastern Roman Empire is at its zenith, too, so there's fertile ground here for intrigue and Bjorn to get some kind of foothold.  Not to mention a beautiful Greek priestess who holds some strong cards.Ivar manages to outsmart Heahmund at least one more time, leaving him rats rather than Norse corpses when the English retake York.  Where have the Vikings gone?  Likely through some Roman tunnels that Ivar hints he discovered. But to where?Floki makes the right decision for history - he's not going to die on Iceland, but will go back back to the world of men, and bring some of his brothers to this land of the gods he's found.  From our vantage point, this is the beginning of the Norse reach to North America.Back in Scandinavia, we have all kinds of stories brewing.  What are those terrible circumstances in which it is foretold that Lagertha will see her son Bjorn again?  Who will remain loyal to her?  When will the King of Norway openly confront her in battle, now that he's cemented his reign with a Queen?I'm enjoying this season of Vikings more than last year's, and we have yet seen anything of Paris.  Maybe that's because Paris is the center of Knightfall, which I'll be reviewing the next episode of soon.

See also Vikings 5.1-2: Floki in Iceland ... Vikings 5.3: Laughing Ivar

And see also Vikings 4.1: I'll Still Take Paris ... Vikings 4.2: Sacred Texts ...Vikings 4.4: Speaking the Language ... Vikings 4.5: Knives ... Vikings 4.8: Ships Up Cliff ... Vikings 4.10: "God Bless Paris" ... Vikings 4.11: Ragnar's Sons ... Vikings 4.12: Two Expeditions ... Vikings 4.13: Family ... Vikings 4.14: Penultimate Ragnar? ... Vikings 4.15: Close of an Era ... Vikings 1.16: Musselman ... Vikings 1.17: Ivar's Wheels ...Vikings 1.18: The Beginning of Revenge ... Vikings 4.19: On the Verge of History ... Vikings 4.20: Ends and Starts

And see also Vikings 3.1. Fighting and Farming ... Vikings 3.2: Leonard Nimoy ...Vikings 3.3: We'll Always Have Paris ... Vikings 3.4: They Call Me the Wanderer ... Vikings 3.5: Massacre ... Vikings 3.6: Athelstan and Floki ...Vikings 3.7: At the Gates ... Vikings 3.8: Battle for Paris ... Vikings 3.9: The Conquered ... Vikings Season 3 Finale: Normandy

And see also Vikings 2.1-2: Upping the Ante of Conquest ... Vikings 2.4: Wise King ... Vikings 2.5: Caught in the Middle ... Vikings 2.6: The Guardians ...Vikings 2.7: Volatile Mix ... Vikings 2.8: Great Post-Apocalyptic Narrative ... Vikings Season 2 Finale: Satisfying, Surprising, Superb

And see also Vikings ... Vikings 1.2: Lindisfarne ... Vikings 1.3: The Priest ... Vikings 1.4:  Twist and Testudo ... Vikings 1.5: Freud and Family ... Vikings 1.7: Religion and Battle ... Vikings 1.8: Sacrifice
... Vikings Season 1 Finale: Below the Ash

 
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My List of the Top 10 Television Series of 2017

Continuing the tradition - just started two years ago - here is my Top 10 list for 2017,  from who knows how many series I've seen this past year on network television, cable, and streaming (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Acorn):

Honorable mention (narrowly not making the list, for a variety of reasons):  On the list last year: Vikings was on my Top 10 list last year (that would be season 3).  Season 4 was excellent, but not quite as good in previous seasons.  (Season 5 has just begun, and I'm already liking it a little more than Season 4.) Returning in honorable mention: Chicago Fire is still superb, but still suffers from the limitations of network television.   Apples and oranges: Veep is still hilarious, but it's impossible to rank a comedy with dramas, so I put it here in honorable mentions. Same for the return of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is in an hilarious class of its own. Closest runners-up: Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime): sequels, especially broadcast years later, are always a difficult proposition, but Twin Peaks did this insanely well, literally;  Game of Thrones (Season 7) (HBO): best season so far, we finally got to see the dragons in action; Ozark (Netflix): an original, engrossing crime drama in an unlikely place; The Break (Netflix): top-notch Belgian noir, The Crown (Netflix): peerless drama of the first years of Queen Elizabeth II;  Mindhunter (Netflix) think Criminal Minds, unhindered by network mores

And now the Top 10:

10. 19-2 (final season, Acorn): back on the list from last year, one of the best cop shows ever on television; sorry to see it conclude

9. The Deuce (HBO): a gritty, in-your-face look at prostitution and the dawn of the porn industry in 1970s New York City, as only HBO can do it

8. Big Little Lies (HBO): sly, well-acted, delicious, brutal, and criminal

7. Four Seasons in Havana (Netflix): Cuban noir, based on four novels, about the exploits of detective with a secret life as a writer - you can't go wrong with this gem

6. Narcos (Season 3) (Netflix): 3rd year in a row on my Top 10 list, you can't beat the pace, the realism, and the sarcasm of the DEA-agent narrator

5. Dark (Netflix): there was a lot of time-travel on television in 2017 (12 Monkeys, Timeless, Time After Time, Somewhere Between, Outlander), but this German outing was the best, and wove at least half a dozen major paradoxes into the story

4. The Orville (Fox): the closest thing ever on television to the original Star Trek series, with some of The Next Generation on board with equivalent characters; and The Orville is often laugh-out-loud funny

3. Fauda (Netflix): a brilliant, riveting Mossad spy story, swat-team narrative, which treats Israelis and Arabs with almost equal sensitivity

2. Longmire (final season, 6) Netflix: this series just got better and better every every season, and saved the best for last with a truly satisfying story that tied up most of the loose ends

1. Sense8 (season 2) Netflix: telepathy is a relative rarity in science fiction, and Sense8 did it masterfully and memorably; destined to become a classic which will be watched for decades to come

See also My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2015 and My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2016 Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Hope for Humanity: Doug Jones Wins in Alabama!

CNN and The New York Times just called the Alabama Senate election for Doug Jones!

Hope for humanity!

One of the most conservative states in America, which voted overwhelmingly for Trump, decided not to follow his endorsement and voted instead for the Democrat.

Alabama said no to a child molester.  No to someone who thinks America was better before the Civil War.  No to the worst instincts of the human species.

The U. S Senate will now be 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats, making it much harder for the Republicans to destroy Obamacare, "reform" the tax system to give millionaires more money, and all kinds of retrograde things.

Most important, this is the beginning of the end of Trump and his regime.  By 2018, the Democrats will take back the Senate and maybe even the House.  Congratulations Doug Jones - and Joe Trippi, who managed the Jones campaign (and managed Howard Dean's run for the President in 2004 - the first "Internet candidate," a little head of his time, before the advent of social media in 2006, as I detail in New New Media).

I have a few friends in Alabama.  They all voted for Jones.  Here's a toast to all of you.  The American people, and the good people of this world, thank you.


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Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media

I forgot to mention this in September - my original doctoral dissertation, "Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media" (New York University, 1979), has been been published in paperback and Kindle.




from the blurb -

This is my original doctoral dissertation, which I submitted to New York University and successfully defended in  the Fall of 1978. The dissertation presents my "anthropotropic" theory of media evolution (anthropo = human; tropic = towards) which argues that as media evolve, they become increasingly human in function. Thus, telegraph gives way to telephone (we hear words not dots and dashes), photography changes from black-and-white to color, etc. The theory also explains why some media survive the advent of successor media and others do not: radio survived the advent of television because hearing without seeing is a natural mode of human communication (it gets dark every night and we still hear, we can easily close our eyes and continue to hear), whereas silent movies were obliterated by talkies (it is very difficult in the natural world to see without hearing something or other). The theory also predicts the creation of media that will enable us to access all kinds of information from any place in the world, any time, regardless of where we and that information might be - or, exactly what we now do with smartphones. Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Advantageous: Shimmering Teardrop from the Future

For some reason, I missed Advantageous (Netflix, 2015), and just found it on Uproxx and saw it tonight after searching for the best science fiction movies on Netflix.  It's an apt description.  In fact, Advantageous is an excellent science fiction movie anywhere.

It's been compared to Seconds, the brilliant, pathbreaking 1966 movie, in which older personalities are transferred or cloned into younger bodies.  But Advantageous, though it's about the same theme, is much more hi-tech - in a quiet way - and thus bears resemblances to Blade Runner (original and sequel) and even The Matrix.

But Advantageous is different from all of those movies in that it's more personal.  Gwen wants to transfer her persona into a younger body not for vanity, nor because she's dying or sick or (like the character in Seconds) just bored with her existence.  She needs to transfer because she needs the money she'll receive from it.  She needs this to send her daughter Jules to a good school in this future world.  She'll otherwise lose her job, and her family has let her down.

Director Jennifer Phang does a deft job of portraying Gwen and her daughter close-up, against a backdrop something like Bladerunner and a phone system maybe a few decades into the future.  In addition or underneath or maybe overlay would be a better description there's a watercolor ambience that runs through a lot of this, including a scene that looks like a reflection of Monet's lily pond. Phang co-wrote this with Jacqueline Kim who gives a sensitive performance as Gwen.  Even Samantha Kim (I don't know if they're related) does a fine job as Jules, as does James Urbaniak as her boss and Freya Adams (New Amsterdam!) as Gwen2.

So what we have in Advantageous is a delicately rendered, highly intelligent and provocative science fiction movie.  It may be a minor classic already, on  its way to being just a softly focused, shimmering-like-a-teardrop classic, period.

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...
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The Walking Dead 8.8: Unkindest Bite

Well, if you haven't seen the Season 8 midseason finale of The Walking Dead, read no further.

Because .... [spoilers ahead]

We got a clue when Carl was practically taunting Negan to kill him - he wasn't just being extraordinarily brave.   And a few episodes ago, or whenever, when Carl was saving that guy in the woods, being attacked by walkers all around.

But ... the last scene was still a shocker.  Is there any way Carl can survive that bite?  Only if it's a not a bite from a walker, and that would be pulling a ridiculous rabbit out of a hat.  Or, if someone could come up with a cure - but that's not going to happen in time to save Carl, either.  I suppose Eugene might have the smarts, but he's not that kind of scientist.

The Walking Dead has delivered shockers in the past, but this was the unkindest shock of all.  Carl survived so many close encounters with death, including being shot in the forest near Maggie's father's farm.  He deserved to live.

But that's not the story of The Walking Dead.  Lots of good people deserved to live, and did not, including Carl's mother.  In order for an apocalyptic story to pack a plausible punch, it has to not only take lives, but lives that should not be taken.

I'd much rather have seen The Walking Dead take another deserving life, not Carl's, but I'll still be watching in February to see how it goes.  I wonder what would happen if Carl now bit Negan, who certainly wouldn't see that coming.

See also: The Walking Dead 8.4: The King's Not Smiling ... The Walking Dead 8.5: True Confessions

And see also:  The Walking Dead 7.1 ... The Walking Dead 7.7: Negan and the Kids

And see also: The Walking Dead 6.1: The Walking Herd ...  The Walking Dead Season 6 Finale: Who Was It?

And see also: The Walking Dead 5.1: The Redemption of Carole ... The Walking Dead 5.3: Meets Alfred Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone ... The Walking Dead 5.4: Hospital of Horror ... The Walking Dead 5.5: Anatomy of a Shattered Dream ... The Walking Dead 5.6-7: Slow ... The Walking Dead 5.8: Killing the Non-Killer ... The Walking Dead 5.9: Another Death in the Family ... The Walking Dead 5.11: The Smiling Stranger ... The Walking Dead 5.12: The Other Shoe ... The Walking Dead 5.13: The Horse and the Party ... The Walking Dead 5.15: The Bad Guy ... The Walking Dead Season 5 Finale: Morgan and Optimism

And see also The Walking Dead 4.1: The New Plague ... The Walking Dead 4.2: The Baby and the Flu ... The Walking Dead 4.3: Death in Every Corner ...The Walking Dead 4.4: Hershel, Carl, and Maggie ... The Walking Dead 4.6: The Good Governor ... The Walking Dead 4.7: The Governor's Other Foot ... The Walking Dead 4.8: Vintage Fall Finale ... The Walking Dead 4.9: A Nightmare on Walking Dead Street ... The Walking Dead 4:14: Too Far ... The Walking Dead Season 4 Finale: From the Gunfire into the Frying Pan

And see also The Walking Dead 3.3 meets Meadowlands ... The Walking Dead 3.4: Going to the Limit ... The Walking Dead 3.9: Making Crazy Sense ... The Walking Dead 3.10: Reinforcements ... The Walking Dead 3.11: The Patch ... The Walking Dead 3.12: The Lesson of Morgan ... The Walking Dead 3.13: The Deal ... The Walking Dead 3.14: Inescapable Parable ... The Walking Dead 3.15: Merle ... The Walking Dead 3.16: Kill or Die, or Die and Kill
And see also The Walking Dead Back on AMC ... The Walking Dead 2.2: The Nature of Vet  ... The Walking Dead 2.3: Shane and Otis ... The Walking Dead 2.4: What Happened at the Pharmacy ... The Walking Dead 2.6: Secrets Told ... The Walking Dead 2.7: Rick's Way vs. Shane's Way ...  The Walking Dead 2.8: The Farm, the Road, and the Town  ... The Walking Dead 2.9: Worse than Walkers ... The Walking Dead 2.11: Young Calling the Shots ... The Walking Dead 2.12: Walkers Without Bites ... The Walking Dead Season 2 Finale
And see also The Walking Dead 1.1-3:  Gone with the Wind, Zombie Style ... The Walking Dead Ends First Season



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Counterpart 1.1: Fringe on Espionage

One of the best parts of the late, lamented Fringe - in fact, maybe the best part, tied for first place with its time travel - was its alternate reality.  It was brought about by Walter some years earlier - actually, not brought about, but Walter brought into being the bridge - which in turn brought us access to an alternate reality in which JFK wasn't assassinated, Walter was sane, and lots of cool things like that.

Counterpart - the first episode of which was on Starz tonight as a sneak peak preview - has a lot of that Fringy quality, but so far, nothing as major in the two realities as JFK survived in one of them.  Instead - and instead of the science fiction that inhabited every scene in Fringe - we get what could be a first class espionage story.

The other Howard Silk - perfectly played by J. K. Simmons - tells our Howard Silk (also perfectly played by Simmons) - that one reality split into two due to some Cold War experiment gone wrong 30 years ago.   So both Silks were exactly the same until that split, sharing not only identical DNA but identical memories.

One nice part of this story, so far, is that it's not completely clear which reality is ours - that is, which one is the reality I'm now in as I write this review.  Well, I guess since the show Counterpart exists in neither of the two realities in the show Counterpart, the answer is I'm now in neither.

But you know what I mean when I wonder which reality on the screen is ours, and I'd say it's the one in which Howard is a tough spy not a Caspar Milquetoast.  There's also an excellent twist at the end of the first episode pertaining to the tough Howard, but I won't spoil it for you.

I will be back in January with more reviews when Counterpart resumes.




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Outlander 3.13: Triple Ending

A superb season 3 finale of Outlander tonight, with an ending in three acts:

1. Claire kills Geilles - though it's not clear if she means to.  She wants to stop her from jumping into the time portal in a pool in the woods of Jamaica.   (I'll let slide the convenience that there just happens to be a time portal there, this episode was so good.)  Geillis wants to kill Brianna.  Claire not only wants to stop that - of course - but has a powerful yearning (also of course) to see her daughter again.  It was a prime moment when she looked into the pool, drawn to it, drawn to her daughter, Jamie's daughter, but let Jamie pull her away.  (Again, what would have happened had she and Jaime both jumped into the pool?  Could Geilles' blood have prepared it for not one but two time travelers?)

2. Claire and Jamie making love in the boat was a nice season ending, too.  They've been much better together this season than in any prior time together.  Absence made their hearts grow fonder.

3, But in some ways the best was the ship overturning in the storm, and Jamie nearly losing Claire.  We knew that couldn't happen, but it was powerful to see the way it played out.  And the ending up in colonial Georgia was a nice icing on this cake.  It certainly puts Jamie and Claire a lot closer to Brianna, at least geographically.

As for time - well, there could well be another portal somewhere on the way from Georgia to Boston, which existed back then, too (hey, even Harvard did).  Now, I don't mind this proliferation of time portals - they open up a lot more possibilities - but I'd like to see some explanation or logic behind where they are.

And I'm going through a portal right now.  It will seem just like a split second before I'm back with my next review of Outlander - the debut of season 4, whenever it's back on in 2018.

See also Outlander Season 3 Debut: A Tale of Two Times and Places ...Outlander 3.2: Whole Lot of Loving, But ... Outlander 3.3: Free and Sad ... Outlander 3.4: Love Me Tender and Dylan ... Outlander 3.5: The 1960s and the Past ... Outlander 3.6: Reunion ... Outlander 3.7: The Other Wife ... Outlander 3.8: Pirates! ... Outlander 3.9: The Seas ...Outlander 3.10: Typhoid Story ... Outlander 3.11: Claire Crusoe ... Outlander 3.12: Geillis and Benjamin Button

And see also Outlander 2.1: Split Hour ... Outlander 2.2: The King and the Forest ... Outlander 2.3: Mother and Dr. Dog ... Outlander 2.5: The Unappreciated Paradox ... Outlander 2.6: The Duel and the Offspring ...Outlander 2.7: Further into the Future ... Outlander 2.8: The Conversation ... Outlander 2.9: Flashbacks of the Future ... Outlander 2.10: One True Prediction and Counting ... Outlander 2.11: London Not Falling ... Outlander 2.12: Stubborn Fate and Scotland On and Off Screen ... Outlander Season 2 Finale: Decades

And see also Outlander 1.1-3: The Hope of Time Travel ... Outlander 1.6:  Outstanding ... Outlander 1.7: Tender Intertemporal Polygamy ...Outlander 1.8: The Other Side ... Outlander 1.9: Spanking Good ... Outlander 1.10: A Glimmer of Paradox ... Outlander 1.11: Vaccination and Time Travel ... Outlander 1.12: Black Jack's Progeny ...Outlander 1.13: Mother's Day ... Outlander 1.14: All That Jazz ... Outlander Season 1 Finale: Let's Change History

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

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Sixties Spectacular at the Tarrytown Music Hall: A Personal Review

Tina and I just back from the Sixties Spectacular at the Tarrytown Music Hall.  We both enjoyed it, but I liked it a little more than did Tina, for reasons which will become clear in this review.

Bob Miranda, the original lead singer of The Happenings, opened the show.  He was in pretty good voice, and the back-up singers and band were excellent.  The group's best known songs from the 1960s - especially "I've Got Rhythm" and "See You in September" - always appealed to my love of harmony.  Not only that.  Stu Nitekman (later known as Jonathan Hatch) and I wrote a song (one of our first), "Please Don't Cry Little Dove," which was very much in The Happenings style.  So much so that the late Tash Howard took us into a studio and recorded a demo.  He got us and the song a couple of bites from record companies, but no contract.  Here it is, in case you like that kind of sound (that's Stu singing lead, I'm doing falsetto, and Ira Margolis a lower harmony - we called ourselves The New Outlook):




Next up were The Vogues, with original lead singer Bill Burkette, and two other guys whose harmony was tight as a drum and a fine rendition of the original Vogues.  "You're the One," the first hit for the Vogues, was always one of my favorite song.  So much so that, yes, I wrote a song for The Vogues (words and music) -- "Unbelievable (Inconceivable) You" -- sold it to a big publisher, and they actually recorded it and planned to release it as a single.  Until Reprise Records bought them out from Co & Ce Records, and decided that The Vogues should go in a more easy-listening direction.  They did have some huge hits with that new sound.  But I never cared for it, especially given that it meant that my song would never be released by them.  But here's a rough mix of the original master:





Dennis Tufano, the original lead singer of The Buckinghams, then took the stage.  I have no personal or professional connection with the group.  But I'll say that I always thought that they had great harmonies and arrangements, and the tritest lyrics on Earth.  Their song Susan typifies that, but the sound is so good that it's always been one of my favorite records.

Terry Sylvester of The Hollies was at the British Invasion concert we saw at the Tarrytown Music Hall a few years ago.  He was good then, and pretty good tonight.  He hits most of the notes, and The Hollies' songs - especially "He Ain't Heavy" - are good to hear again, and live.

And then there were The Lovin' Spoonful - or, what they've now become.  Steve Boone, the original bass player and sometimes vocalist, was the only original member in original place.  The reason I put it that way is that Joe Butler, the original drummer, was also on stage tonight - but not as drummer.  As lead.  And though he sounds close enough to John Sebastian, he just not.

This is no one's fault.  It's life getting in the way, as it often does.  Zal Yanovsky died way too young in 2002.  And John Sebastian's voice is no longer as magical as it was (see the 2017 performance below).  But - yeah, I would have rather seen him sing lead tonight than Joe Butler, even though Butler did a very good job on the vocals.  Tina and I both loved the Spoonful, but I was little less put off by Sebastian's absence than was she.

Anyway ... here's Sebastian singing "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice" this past August.  And, yeah, Stu and I wrote a song very much in the Spoonful style - "Sunshine's Mine" - this time with me doing lead, and Stu and Ira the harmony.  And of course I'll put it here at after Sebastian's performance, thanks for asking.



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