Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 271

Heroes Reborn 1.3: Carly Fiorina meets Steve Jobs

Heroes Reborn continues to roll out nicely in episode 1.2, and its focus on Molly Walker as the secret weapon the  Renautas baddies are using to locate and likely kill if they can all of our surviving heroes.

Molly was an appealing character as a child in the original series.   She promises to be even more so as a woman in Reborn, now being used vehemently against her will.   My favorites in Heroes have always been characters with meta-powers - that is, characters whose powers are applied to other heroes.

Molly's being able to pinpoint the whereabouts of anyone with heroic powers is a great two-edged sword.  Yes, it can and is being used to hunt them down, but it can also be used to warn them, if someone like HRG aka Mr. Bennett is able to wrest Molly away from Renautas.   This makes Molly and her literally heroic GPS capacity an ideal pivot point for this reborn series.

Meanwhile, apropos pivotal, one of the most enjoyable components of Heroes Reborn is the ambiguity of some of its characters.  Is Harris Prime just a bad guy?  Well, he takes down Miko  - who's one of the best characters of Reborn - but is that only in service to Renautus?   And will his Clone be exactly the same on the ethical dimension (see Orphan Black for how that can manifestly and powerfully not be the case). Meanwhile, Miko herself is ambiguous - not about her morality but her parentage.   Although her father has a name - not Hiro - Miko has Hiro's sword, and it's tempting to think that she somehow is indeed Hiro's daughter, isn't it.

But there's also some viewing pleasure in unambiguously evil villains, and Erica, CEO of Renautas and its E.P.I.C locator based on Molly's powers, fits that bill just fine.  She looked like a blend of Carly Fiorina and Steve Jobs up there on stage, and promises to be a worthy opponent of HRG.

And I'll be back here with more next week.

See also Heroes Reborn: Good to Be Back

And see also Heroes Season 4 Premiere: Metaphysics, University, Carnival ...Heroes Meets The L Word in 4.5 ... Heroes 4 Mid-Season Finale  ... Heroes Season 4 Resumes ... Heroes 4.15: The Chess Game Continues ... 4.16: The Trial of Hiro ... 4.18: Penultimate  ... Heroes Forever

And see also reviews of Season 3 Heroes Gets Lost ... Heroes 3 Begins: Best Yet, Riddled with Time Travel and Paradox ... Sylar's Redemption and other Heroes and Villains Mergers ... Costa Nuclear ... Hearts of Gold and the Debased ... Seeing the Future Trumps Time Travel ... Superpowered Chess with Shifting Pieces ... Villains and Backstories ... The Redemption of Sylar ... Thoughts on the Eclipse, Part I ... The Lore of the Comic Book Store ... Hiro's Time Traveling Closure ... Augmented ... Shades of Recalibration ... Baby, Rebel, and Last Fantasy ... All that Shape Changes Remains the Same? ... Season 3 Finale: Hopeful Deceptions

Reviews of Season 2 Heroes: Episode 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 7. Heroes Meets 12 Monkeys ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Futures? ... 10. Penultimate for the Fall ... Heroes 2 Finale: Heroes Who Didn't Survive

And from Season 1: Heroes in Focus ... Heroes Five Years Gone: Triumph of Time Travel and Comics ... Heroes the Hard Part: Only the Pictures Not the Words ... Heroes Landslide: Winnowing and Convergence ... Heroes Volume One Finale

 
no heroes, but pretty strange Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Heroes Reborn 1.2: Carly Fiorina meets Steve Jobs

Heroes Reborn continues to roll out nicely in episode 1.2, and its focus on Molly Walker as the secret weapon the  Renautas baddies are using to locate and likely kill if they can all of our surviving heroes.

Molly was an appealing character as a child in the original series.   She promises to be even more so as a woman in Reborn, now being used vehemently against her will.   My favorites in Heroes have always been characters with meta-powers - that is, characters whose powers are applied to other heroes.

Molly's being able to pinpoint the whereabouts of anyone with heroic powers is a great two-edged sword.  Yes, it can and is being used to hunt them down, but it can also be used to warn them, if someone like HRG aka Mr. Bennett is able to wrest Molly away from Renautas.   This makes Molly and her literally heroic GPS capacity an ideal pivot point for this reborn series.

Meanwhile, apropos pivotal, one of the most enjoyable components of Heroes Reborn is the ambiguity of some of its characters.  Is Harris Prime just a bad guy?  Well, he takes down Miko  - who's one of the best characters of Reborn - but is that only in service to Renautus?   And will his Clone be exactly the same on the ethical dimension (see Orphan Black for how that can manifestly and powerfully not be the case). Meanwhile, Miko herself is ambiguous - not about her morality but her parentage.   Although her father has a name - not Hiro - Miko has Hiro's sword, and it's tempting to think that she somehow is indeed Hiro's daughter, isn't it.

But there's also some viewing pleasure in unambiguously evil villains, and Erica, CEO of Renautas and its E.P.I.C locator based on Molly's powers, fits that bill just fine.  She looked like a blend of Carly Fiorina and Steve Jobs up there on stage, and promises to be a worthy opponent of HRG.

And I'll be back here with more next week.

See also Heroes Reborn: Good to Be Back

And see also Heroes Season 4 Premiere: Metaphysics, University, Carnival ...Heroes Meets The L Word in 4.5 ... Heroes 4 Mid-Season Finale  ... Heroes Season 4 Resumes ... Heroes 4.15: The Chess Game Continues ... 4.16: The Trial of Hiro ... 4.18: Penultimate  ... Heroes Forever

And see also reviews of Season 3 Heroes Gets Lost ... Heroes 3 Begins: Best Yet, Riddled with Time Travel and Paradox ... Sylar's Redemption and other Heroes and Villains Mergers ... Costa Nuclear ... Hearts of Gold and the Debased ... Seeing the Future Trumps Time Travel ... Superpowered Chess with Shifting Pieces ... Villains and Backstories ... The Redemption of Sylar ... Thoughts on the Eclipse, Part I ... The Lore of the Comic Book Store ... Hiro's Time Traveling Closure ... Augmented ... Shades of Recalibration ... Baby, Rebel, and Last Fantasy ... All that Shape Changes Remains the Same? ... Season 3 Finale: Hopeful Deceptions

Reviews of Season 2 Heroes: Episode 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 7. Heroes Meets 12 Monkeys ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Futures? ... 10. Penultimate for the Fall ... Heroes 2 Finale: Heroes Who Didn't Survive

And from Season 1: Heroes in Focus ... Heroes Five Years Gone: Triumph of Time Travel and Comics ... Heroes the Hard Part: Only the Pictures Not the Words ... Heroes Landslide: Winnowing and Convergence ... Heroes Volume One Finale

 
no heroes, but pretty strange Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Limitless TV 1.2: Genghis Khan Gene

Limitless was a fine movie, released in 2011, starring Bradley Cooper as a guy whose intelligence is augmented to genius+ level by a drug NZT.   The movie was fast, funny, serious, and mainly featured Cooper's character Eddie Morra using his enhanced intellect to best a mobster, get back the love of his life, and turn the tables on a brilliant corporate exec played by Robert De Niro.

Limitless the television series, which debuted on CBS last week, shows signs in its first two episodes of being even better.  First and foremost, the series tells the story of Brian Finch, who also takes NZT, and his work with FBI, in particular with Agent Rebecca Harris, played by Dexter's Jennifer Carpenter.   The pace of the series is also fast and funny - Brian puts together a video compilation to help solve a crime, and puts in a little background music, because it's "cooler" - and takes on some cutting-edge issues, just the other side of the real into the realm science fiction (which makes sense, given that NZT is itself science fiction).   The story in episode 1.2, for example, features a virus designed to target descendants of Genghis Kahn, a prolific breeder.

But what makes this television series really notable is the way it integrates the movie.  The story of Eddie Morra - still played by Bradley Cooper, itself a real coup for television - indeed picks up on TV right where it concluded in the movie, with Morra a US Senator from the state of New York.   He supplies Brian with an injection that makes Brian immune to the destructive physical consequences of longterm NZT use, and proceeds to use that to run Brian.  But Morra's ultimate agenda is not yet clear in the TV series - which adds a layer of suspense and tension above the difficulties Brian has with his family and the FBI.

I can't recall a spinoff or sequel or remake ever set up or rolled out like this, and that alone would make me want to see how all of this develops.  But Limitless the TV series on its own is first-class viewing, and I'll be back with reviews throughout the season.  (Thanks to my Facebook friend Cie McCullough for calling my attention to the series.)

#SFWApro


all about genetically engineered viruses




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

Fordham University Press to Distribute Print Edition of Touching the Face of Cosmos; 1st Glimpse of Cover

Two very good pieces of news regarding Touching the Face of the Cosmos, the forthcoming anthology edited by Paul Levinson (me) and Michael Waltemathe:

1. Fordham University Press will be distributing the print editions of the book, which will appear in its Spring 2016 catalog, with a likely publication date in March.  Connected Editions will still be publishing all digital editions, with a likely publication date in November.   (A list of essays and stories can be found here.)

2.  Here's the cover - created by world-renown illustrator Joel Iskowitz.



And here's the catalog copy for the anthology -

Military advantage, scientific knowledge, and commerce have thus far been the main motives to human exploration of outer space. Touching the Face of the Cosmos explores what may be the best motive of all, largely untapped: the desire of every human being, essentially spiritual, to understand more about our place in the universe, how our lives on Earth are inextricably part of that bigger picture. Drawing on leading scientists, religious thinkers, and science fiction writers – including a new interview with John Glenn, and an essay by Director of the Vatican Observatory Guy Consolmagno, SJ – Paul Levinson and Michael Waltemathe have assembled a volume that puts space travel and religion on the map for anyone interested in outer space, theology, and philosophy. 

Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and author of 16 scholarly books and novels, including Realspace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet. 

Michael Waltemathe, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Religious Education, Department of Protestant Theology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, and author of Computer Worlds and Religion, and articles about science, religion, and outer space.

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

Masters of Sex Season 3 Finale: Cliffhanger

Masters of Sex concluded its third season with a real cliffhanger last night, almost reminiscent of the last scene at the airport with Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca.   Except Bill never quite makes it to the airport to intercept Virginia.

But the question is whether his profession of true love to her, earlier in the evening, will prevent her at the last minute from taking off in the plane with the perfume guy.   She's certainly thinking about it, looking over her shoulder, and she could well fly back from Mexico before she makes the mistake of marrying Logan.

It would certainly be a mistake, historically, because the facts of this story have Virginia not marrying the guy she had an affair with for years - an older man, presumably the basis of Logan - and in fact marrying Bill in 1971.

But that's a little in the future in our story on television, which leaves everything a bit up in the air.  As I've been saying all season, the advisory at the end explicitly says that kids' part of the narrative is fictitious, but that raises the question of what else is divergent from history in this powerful series.

If the kids are a fiction, then presumably the real Masters was never brought up on charges because of his son, but he and his wife did get divorced before he married Virginia.   The mixture of fact and fiction is an issue of every docudrama ever made, but it has been especially prominent this year in Masters of Sex.

In any case, it was a good season, if only because Bill and Virginia were so unlike their selves in earlier seasons, and, as the saying goes, if some of that is not true to history, who cares, it's still a good story.


See also Thomas Maier: Masters of Sex and Biography Come to Life ...Masters of Sex 3.1: Galley Slaves ... Masters of Sex 3.2: The Shah, the Baby, and the Book ... Masters of Sex 3.3: The Bookstore ... Masters of Sex 3.7: Going Ape ... Masters of Sex 3.9: Calling Hugh Hefner 

#SFWApro



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Hats Off to Brian Williams

Yesterday - Friday, September 25, 2015 - was an extraordinarily important day in news.  Pope Francis was at Ground Zero and Madison Square Garden and other places in New York City.   The President of China was in Washington, DC with President Obama.  And Speaker of the House John Boehner announced his resignation.

Any one of these would have been an occasion for breaking news reports.  John Boehner's resignation would have triggered in depth-reporting that dominated the news for most of the day.  And the Pope in New York City was a once-in-a-lifetime event for many people.

Brian Williams, back on television as MSNBC's anchor for breaking news, did a masterful job in commenting, interviewing people about, and all ways covering these three events.  His astute observations, his mix of historical contexts, eye and ear for detail, and humor, provided seamless hours of vidid reporting.   In the hands of a lesser master of anchoring, so many events to cover live could have a resulted in a confusing hodgepodge that reported well on none of them.

I went on record earlier this year, suggesting that Brian Williams' exaggeration of what happened to him in a combat zone was not the end of the world - certainly not enough to have him removed from his position as anchor of the NBC Nightly News.    He should have been called out and chastised for those statements indeed - but yanking him off the air was not only overkill, but a disservice to all who enjoyed and benefitted from his sage anchoring and reporting.

It was thus especially good to see him back on the air, and at a perfect time in terms of important events to be covered.  Reports say MSNBC had a nice ratings spike with Brian Williams at the helm - good, not surprising, and I hope to see much more of him on television.

See also I'm Glad Brian Williams Will Be Back on Television Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Heroes Reborn: Good To Be Back

Heroes had an iconic trajectory beginning nearly a decade ago on NBC.  Punching through the sky not only with someone who could fly, but people endowed with all kinds of intriguing and amazing powers, the series in its first season provided a much needed smash hit for NBC, and pushed Lost of its place as must-see television for those who love science fiction (and that included me).  And then the series faltered. Creator Tim Kring famously apologized to fans of Heroes for a season that "sucked".  He promised to do better, but the series although it had some excellent moments by and large got worse.  And ... well, the last thing we need is another autopsy on what went wrong in Heroes.

But as of last night, it turns out that any autopsy would be premature.  Heroes lives - it's been "reborn".   Will it reach the heights of that fabled first season?

That would be a very difficult task, maybe even requiring someone with truly science fictional heroic powers.   The innocence of that first season, of the characters and the audience alike first discovering the challenges and mysteries and joys and dangers and pain of heroic powers can never be recaptured. But, that said, Heroes Reborn has a freshness which I don't recall in the last few seasons of the original series.

There's an excellent stand-alone (at this point) story in Tokyo, featuring Miko and Ren.   Miko has some connection to Hiro, in many ways the most important character in the original series - at very least, she has the sword that we last saw in Hiro's possession.   Back in the USA, Noah Bennett, at this point the only character from the original series with a leading role in the sequel, is literally thrown into action by an explosion that nearly kills him and apparently (but likely not really) kills Claire, just as the father and daughter were about the reunite after years of separation.  This is a piece of the central plot of Heroes Reborn (so far), the attempt by nefarious non-heroic forces (though some of them have superhuman powers) to kill everyone with heroic powers - a continuation of much of what was going on in the concluding seasons of the original series.

But Heroes Reborn is bringing some new heroes onto the stage and into the action.   The most appealing, so far, is Tommy, who has a crush on Emily - my favorite of the new characters, because they recapture a lot of the wistful innocence which was so winning in that first, remarkable season of Heroes. Molly -  a child in the original series, with the capacity to know where everyone is, a sort of a global GPS in the brain - is back as a young woman (played by a different actress), and promises some good story lines.  There's a heavy, bald guy who makes people forget, after saying "a penny for your thoughts" (nice touch) - wait, wasn't that guy also in the original series? - I forget.

Lots of attractive pieces on the table in the two-hour debut of this mini-series last night.  I'm glad it's back, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Heroes Season 4 Premiere: Metaphysics, University, Carnival ...Heroes Meets The L Word in 4.5 ... Heroes 4 Mid-Season Finale  ... Heroes Season 4 Resumes ... Heroes 4.15: The Chess Game Continues ... 4.16: The Trial of Hiro ... 4.18: Penultimate  ... Heroes Forever

See also reviews of Season 3 Heroes Gets Lost ... Heroes 3 Begins: Best Yet, Riddled with Time Travel and Paradox ... Sylar's Redemption and other Heroes and Villains Mergers ... Costa Nuclear ... Hearts of Gold and the Debased ... Seeing the Future Trumps Time Travel ... Superpowered Chess with Shifting Pieces ... Villains and Backstories ... The Redemption of Sylar ... Thoughts on the Eclipse, Part I ... The Lore of the Comic Book Store ... Hiro's Time Traveling Closure ... Augmented ... Shades of Recalibration ... Baby, Rebel, and Last Fantasy ... All that Shape Changes Remains the Same? ... Season 3 Finale: Hopeful Deceptions

Reviews of Season 2 Heroes: Episode 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 7. Heroes Meets 12 Monkeys ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Futures? ... 10. Penultimate for the Fall ... Heroes 2 Finale: Heroes Who Didn't Survive

And from Season 1: Heroes in Focus ... Heroes Five Years Gone: Triumph of Time Travel and Comics ... Heroes the Hard Part: Only the Pictures Not the Words ... Heroes Landslide: Winnowing and Convergence ... Heroes Volume One Finale

 
no heroes, but pretty strange Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Blindspot 1.1: Good to See - Or, Coronet Blue meets The Illustrated Man

Good to see Blindspot begin on NBC last night - in fact, it was excellent.  Coronet Blue, the 1960s CBS summer replacement series fragment starring Frank Converse about a guy who washes up in New York with no memory and saying the words "coronet blue" was always one of my favorites, as is Ray Bradbury's 1951 anthology The Illustrated Man, about a vagrant whose tattoos each tell a magical, science fictional story.

Blindspot has elements of both, as well as Sullivan Stapleton (from Strike Back), an Australian with a great American accent, who plays Kurt, the lead FBI guy, whose name is tattooed on Jane Doe's the amnesiac's back.  She's played by Jaimie Alexander, who does well in her role, too.   The debut was fast-moving, and revealed enough important information to give hope for a compelling series.

Not enough information, being kept too much in the dark, is a pitfall with these kinds of shows, which Blindspot avoided.   We now know that Jane was/is some kind of Navy Seal - even though the Seals don't officially - yet - take women, though as FBI leader Bethany aptly remarks, maybe that's just their public stance.  And there's an evil guy with a beard afoot - who's apparently behind Jane's condition - though who knows for sure if he's entirely evil (and here Blindspot connects a little with NBC's other strange crime hit that begins with a B, Blacklist).

Back to The Illustrated Man, it looks as if given episodes of Blindspot might well be devoted to clues contained in the tattoos, which will be deciphered in series as the series progresses.  That's a good way of keep the stories fresh, as the underlying plot unfolds.

So I'm up for watching Blindspot.  I gotta say, though, that I liked Blacklist much better at the beginning than as the series went on, and I'm hoping Blindspot can avoid this kind of running out of tension and steam.

 
no tattoos, but pretty strange


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

Blindspot 1.1: Good to See - Or, Coronet Blue meet The Illustrated Man

Good to see Blindspot begin on NBC last night - in fact, it was excellent.  Coronet Blue, the 1960s CBS summer replacement series fragment starring Frank Converse about a guy who washes up in New York with no memory and saying the words "coronet blue" was always one of my favorites, as is Ray Bradbury's 1951 anthology The Illustrated Man, about a vagrant whose tattoos each tell a magical, science fictional story.

Blindspot has elements of both, as well as Sullivan Stapleton (from Strike Back), an Australian with a great American accent, who plays Kurt, the lead FBI guy, whose name is tattooed on Jane Doe's the amnesiac's back.  She's played by Jaimie Alexander, who does well in her role, too.   The debut was fast-moving, and revealed enough important information to give hope for a compelling series.

Not enough information, being kept too much in the dark, is a pitfall with these kinds of shows, which Blindspot avoided.   We now know that Jane was/is some kind of Navy Seal - even though the Seals don't officially - yet - take women, though as FBI leader Bethany aptly remarks, maybe that's just their public stance.  And there's an evil guy with a beard afoot - who's apparently behind Jane's condition - though who knows for sure if he's entirely evil (and here Blindspot connects a little with NBC's other strange crime hit that begins with a B, Blacklist).

Back to The Illustrated Man, it looks as if given episodes of Blindspot might well be devoted to clues contained in the tattoos, which will be deciphered in series as the series progresses.  That's a good way of keep the stories fresh, as the underlying plot unfolds.

So I'm up for watching Blindspot.  I gotta say, though, that I liked Blacklist much better at the beginning than as the series went on, and I'm hoping Blindspot can avoid this kind of running out of tension and steam.

 
no tattoos, but pretty strange


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Minority Report 1.1: Boding Well

Minority Report debuted on Fox tonight.   It's based on the 1956 short story by Philip K. Dick (a pure masterpiece) and 2002 movie by Steven Spielberg (quite good), but other than pointing that out, I'll try to say little as possible about these previous versions when I review this series, because comparisons to earlier incarnations aren't usually helpful.  The work under scrutiny must stand on its own two or more feet.

Yeah, I'm going to review the series because the debut tonight was also quite good.   The genius of Dick's idea is still there, and plays well in the pilot:  pre-cogs (three of them) can see the future, including crimes and murders.   Society once used them to arrest people seen in the future to be murderers, but stopped for a variety of reasons, including that the pre-cog visions weren't always right.  Indeed, the name of the narrative comes from a situation in which one of the pre-cogs sees something different from the other two - hence, a minority report of a future crime.

Though the pre-cogs as an official team have been disbanded, they're still very much alive.   The pilot centers on one of the pre-cogs, Dash, and the alliance he initiates with a detective, Lara, to stop a heinous mass murder.   Their success heralds a continuing relationship - but the going won't be easy, especially since the other pre-cogs see some dire dangers in what Dash is doing.

This is a nice set-up, and the environment of 2065 Washington DC where the action takes place is well sketched.   In fact, that part is so well rendered that our futuristic detective Lara, with all kinds of bio-enhancements at her disposal, would be interesting and fun to follow, even if there were no pre-cogs around.  But there are, and this adds to the foundation of a what looks like an appealing series.

Kevin Falls, who did such a good job with the late, lamented (by me and other discerning viewers) time-travel series Journeyman on NBC a few years ago, is Executive Producer for Minority Report, which also bodes well.

See that?  I can see something of the future, too, and I know for a fact that I'll be watching every episode of the new series - unless, wait, is there a minority report on that?



not pre-cog, but pretty strange Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music