Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 28

Podcast Review of Bosch: Legacy 2.7-2.10

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 362, in which I review Bosch: Legacy, episodes 2.7-2.10, on Amazon Prime Video.

Read this review (with links to reviews of earlier episodes and seasons, including the very first season of Bosch).

Check out this episode!

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Who Killed JFK?: A Review of the First Three Episodes of this Podcast

Rob Reiner and I have a lot in common regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 -- the awful anniversary of which is tomorrow, as I write this.  Reiner first learns about the assassination, as he tells us in the podcast he's doing with Soledad O'Brien, in his high school physics class, when he was 16.  I first found out about the assassination in my calculus class, which I was taking as a freshman in the City College of New York, when I too was 16.  (In fact, we were both born in March 1947 in The Bronx. I was in the "SP"s, which New Yorkers might recall meant that you skipped 8th grade, which would explain why I was a year ahead of Reiner.)   We both read and were very impressed by Mark Lane's Rush to Judgement, the 1966 book that attacked the Warren Commission's conclusion that one man, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been responsible for killing JFK.  And most important, Reiner and I both felt and feel to this very day that the Warren Commission and the American government has been lying to us all these years about who killed JFK.

To be clear about the impact that assassination had on me, Reiner, and who knows how many more Americans and people around the world, that assassination was "the end of the innocence," to quote one of Don Henley's best songs, about the end of a true love affair.  All of us 16 and younger and no doubt at least some years older found we instantly had a new view of the world, a sad, wise, and cynical view, the moment we heard Walter Cronkite or whoever it was deliver this terrible news.  Cynical because, well, it's tough to see your optimism shattered, leaving you feeling naive to have had it in the first place.  No amount of Beatles and landing on the Moon could change that, and the murder of John Lennon in 1980 only reinforced that horror in the soul.

Reiner seeks, if not to remedy that (it can never really be remedied), at least perhaps to reduce it, by getting at the truth of what really happened on November 22, 1963.  In the first two episodes of his podcast, which O'Brien helps him deliver, Reiner explains how and why the CIA came to loathe and fear JFK.  He didn't back it up to its satisfaction when it tried to wrest Cuba from Castro, and he let that attempt end in the Bay of Pigs.  He started working hard to get a real peace with the Soviet Union, when he saw how close we came to destroying our civilization in the Cuban missile crisis.   Reiner tells us of the note the newly widowed Jackie sent to Khrushchev.  That's all in the first episode.  And in the second, we learn of the various attempts, from people ranging from Geraldo Rivera and Dick Gregory, and others I hadn't heard of before, like Dick Russell, to get at the truth.

I'll be listening to every remaining episode of this important podcast.  Its tone and intelligence scratch an itch that will always be there. I have no idea if Who Killed JFK? will address a question I've had since that day in Dallas when the curtain came down on my unbridled optimism about the good guys always winning.  Why didn't Robert F. Kennedy, who remained Attorney General until September 1964, do everything in his power to find out what happened to his brother?  Perhaps he would have, as President, if he hadn't been murdered himself in 1968.

Added 22 November 2023:  Review of Episode #3

And today is the 60th anniversary of JFK's assassination.  I would have thought about him and that heinous event on this day, anyway, but having listened to and reviewed the first two episodes of Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien's podcast last night, the assassination and the government "narrative" about it has been especially on my mind.

In the third episode, Reiner says "narrative" is a good word for what our government told us about the assassination, because so much of the government's story was fiction.  Coincidentally, I've been thinking and reading a lot about alternate history recently -- and writing some of it -- and I found myself agreeing with the authors quoted in Jack Dann's Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History that a lot of our so-called real history is fiction.

In the third episode of Who Killed JFK?, Reiner details how the findings of what he aptly calls "the most important autopsy in American history" were not only kept from the American people, but deliberately bent to support what the government didn't want us to know -- that more than one shooter was firing at JFK in Dallas 60 years ago.  We learn that Dr. James J. Humes, one of the two pathologists who performed the JFK autopsy, burned his first autopsy report, presumably because it contradicted the "single bullet" theory that our government was pushing.  Reiner, O'Brien, and the experts they interview systematically explain why the single bullet theory is absurd -- way too much damage was done to Kennedy and John Connally, who was sitting in the front seat of Kennedy's limousine.  We also hear convincing testimony that some of JFK's wounds came from the front, obviously impossible if Lee Harvey Oswald, firing from behind, was the only shooter.

So, today, November 22, has been and always will be a sad day for those of us who were cognizant the day that JFK was assassinated.  But the Who Killed JFK? podcast is a welcome ray of hope that maybe we're finally getting close to the truth of what happened 60 years ago.

Here's an interview I did with Walter Herbst, who published a book on this subject two years ago.

And here's an alternate history I wrote, "It's Real Life," in which John Lennon was not murdered.

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

Who Killed JFK?: A Review of the First Two Episodes of this Podcast

Rob Reiner and I have a lot in common regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 -- the awful anniversary of which is tomorrow, as I write this.  Reiner first learns about the assassination, as he tells us in the podcast he's doing with Soledad O'Brien, in his high school physics class, when he was 16.  I first found out about the assassination in my calculus class, which I was taking as a freshman in the City College of New York, when I too was 16.  (In fact, we were both born in March 1947 in The Bronx. I was in the "SP"s, which New Yorkers might recall meant that you skipped 8th grade, which would explain why I was a year ahead of Reiner.)   We both read and were very impressed by Mark Lane's Rush to Judgement, the 1966 book that attacked the Warren Commission's conclusion that one man, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been responsible for killing JFK.  And most important, Reiner and I both felt and feel to this very day that the Warren Commission and the American government has been lying to us all these years about who killed JFK.

To be clear about the impact that assassination had on me, Reiner, and who knows how many more Americans and people around the world, that assassination was "the end of the innocence," to quote one of Don Henley's best songs, about the end of a true love affair.  All of us 16 and younger and no doubt at least some years older found we instantly had a new view of the world, a sad, wise, and cynical view, the moment we heard Walter Cronkite or whoever it was deliver this terrible news.  Cynical because, well, it's tough to see your optimism shattered, leaving you feeling naive to have had it in the first place.  No amount of Beatles and landing on the Moon could change that, and the murder of John Lennon in 1980 only reinforced that horror in the soul.

Reiner seeks, if not to remedy that (it can never really be remedied), at least perhaps to reduce it, by getting at the truth of what really happened on November 22, 1963.  In the first two episodes of his podcast, which O'Brien helps him deliver, Reiner explains how and why the CIA came to loathe and fear JFK.  He didn't back it up to its satisfaction when it tried to wrest Cuba from Castro, and he let that attempt end in the Bay of Pigs.  He started working hard to get a real peace with the Soviet Union, when he saw how close we came to destroying our civilization in the Cuban missile crisis.   Reiner tells us of the note the newly widowed Jackie sent to Khrushchev.  That's all in the first episode.  And in the second, we learn of the various attempts, from people ranging from Geraldo Rivera and Dick Gregory, and others I hadn't heard of, to get at the truth.

I'll be listening to every remaining episode of this important podcast.  Its tone and intelligence scratch an itch that will always be there. I have no idea if Who Killed JFK? will address a question I've had since that day in Dallas when the curtain came down on my unbridled optimism about the good guys always winning.  Why didn't Robert F. Kennedy, who remained Attorney General until September 1964, do everything in his power to find out what happened to his brother?  Perhaps he would have, as President, if he hadn't been murdered himself in 1968.

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

Podcast: Foundation 2nd Season: Cora Buhlert, Joel McKinnon, and Paul Levinson discuss

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 361, in which Cora Buhlert, Joel McKinnon, and I talk about the second season of Foundation on Apple TV+.

Relevant links:

our discussion of the first season of Foundation my reviews of the 2nd season of Foundation (with links to reviews of the 1st) Cora Buhlert's reviews of the 2nd season of Foundation Joel McKinnon's Seldon Crisis podcast

Check out this episode!

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

The Lazarus Project season 1: Time Travel Done Superbly Right

So, a friend in the UK -- James Harris -- who knows how much I enjoy time travel stories (as a reader, a viewer, and an author) recommended The Lazarus Project, and sent me a link to a trailer, for its second season.  I figured before I watched even a trailer for the second season, I might as well watch the first season, which I just did -- and thought it was brilliant -- and then discovered that although the second season debuted in the UK this month, it has not yet made it over to this side of the Atlantic.  Why TV series can't be released at the same time all around the world, I have no idea.  But rather than keep complaining about that, I thought I'd tell you why I not only think the first season of The Lazarus Project (which I binged on TNT) is brilliant, but the best time-travel series I've ever seen on television, bar none.

[And there may be some spoilers ahead, but I'll try to be as general as possible.]

First, the ambience was great, reminiscent of Utopia (the UK version), and its unique mix of gravity and humor, life-and-death situations leavened with nonchalance.  But it's the story, and the attention it gives to consequences of time travel, that puts it on the very top.

Here's the set-up, which I'll enumerate to make as clear as possible:

1. There's a time travel process -- not a "machine" per se, but some kind of process, which isn't quite revealed -- that sets time back to 12 midnight, July 1, from whatever time the process is invoked in the subsequent year.  So, if the switch or whatever is flipped right now, our world would go back to 1 July 2023. And we and just about everyone in the world would be doing whatever we were doing on that midnight.

2. Just about everyone in the world has no idea that this, the reversal in time, is happening.  We have no idea we're going through this time a second, third, or who knows how many times.  But a very few people -- mutants -- are aware of this Groundhog syndrome, and a serum has been invented/discovered which opens up the awareness of a few other people to the repetitions in time.

3. Numbers 1 and 2 above are the basis of the Lazarus Project, which seeks to protect the world or least we humans in the world from extinction events.  And the head of the Lazarus Project -- at least as far as we know -- gives the order to invoke the time shift.  

4. But remembering the lost time is a heavy burden, which can become excruciating in all kinds of ways.  A baby born during a year that is later erased won't exist after rollback.  Imagine how the parents who remember that year -- parents who are in the Lazarus Project -- would feel.   Or, if you lost any loved one during that year, you might well want the time set back as soon as possible, to give you a chance to do something to prevent that death.

5. But the problem is the Lazarus Project also has a principle of setting time back as infrequently as possible, and only to derail mass extinction events.  To give an example that's mentioned early in the narrative -- September 11, 2001 didn't qualify, as terrible as it was.  But COVID did, and the speed with which the vaccines were rolled out in our reality is cleverly explained as due to the Lazarus Project buying more time by literally setting time back, giving microbiologists as much time as they needed to come up with the vaccines.

But ok, I'm coming close to spoiler territory, so I'll just also tell you the acting and production were excellent, and I'll leave you with this recommendation: if you're a fan of time travel, see The Lazarus Project.  Not only will you not be disappointed, you'll be glued to the screen and thrilled.  And the good news is that if you want to see it again, you won't need some kind of switchback in time to do that.

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For All Mankind 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev

Well, I said last week in my review of For All Mankind 4.1 that I was very glad to see Gorbachev still in power in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 21st century.  In that alternate reality, we might well have avoided Putin and his savage attack on Ukraine.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

But at the very end of For All Mankind 4.2, up on Apple TV+ tonight, it looks like the tolerant Gorbachev may not be in power much longer or at all in that alternate history, after all.  Margot encounters some kind of very serious unrest in Moscow, which ends up in police knocking her to the ground, taking her into custody, and leaving her glasses broken on the street, never a good sign.

I was unhappy to see that scene, but it certainly was the most exciting in this episode, at least in terms of the course of history.  The runner-up and most of the other action took place in Mars, which has become no bed of roses, or maybe not yet a bed of roses, since it had no home-grown flowering shrubs to begin with.  But this track in the episode at least had a happy ending.  With communication back-and-forth with Earth not working because a satellite needed repair and rebooting, Poole orders Baldwin shortly after she arrives to make fixing the satellite a highest priority, and Baldwin gets his crew to fix it.  The denizens of Mars now have dmail and video-mail, as they call those modes of communication in this alternate reality.

Of course, though communication may be necessary, and the source of essential connections between the people on Mars and their relatives and friends back home, this doesn't mean that the people on Mars will be happy.  Miles, the best new character at this point, certainly isn't happy, and it will be interesting to see how his story plays out.

But as I said last week, it's the alternate reality more than the space exploration that keeps me most eager to watch For All Mankind, and I'm now especially eager to see what happens in the Soviet Union in next week's episode.

See also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End

get the paperback or Kindle of this alternate history here

or read the story FREE here
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Black Snow: Sinister Histories

I consider Travis Fimmel a must-see actor.  His unique, edgy style lit up his starring roles in Vikings and Raised by Wolves (canceled much too soon by HBO, in my arrogant opinion).  So I would have watched Black Snow, an Australian cold-case crime drama, for that reason alone, but the series pays off not only with Fimmel but all kinds of other good reasons.

Fimmel in Black Snow plays police detective Cormack, who is drawn to investigate the murder of Isabel Baker, 17, back in 1994, because the murder took place the same day that Cormack's brother went missing.

[Spoiler's ahead ... ]  

By the time the series of six episodes ends (or the first season of the series), it looks like there is no connection between Isabel and Cormack's brother.  But there's at least another season of storytelling in Cormack searching for his brother, and I'd be happy to see it.  And the first season establishes Cormack as a not only intelligently edgy and driven character (Fimmel's specialty), but also someone with a possible romantic relationship with Isabel's younger sister Hazel, who by 2019 (the date of the present in the series) is a totally suitable age for Comack.  And the two do have a chemistry.

Black Snow has all kinds of suspects with all kinds of real and imagined motives, but on the chance that you haven't seen it, I won't reveal the killer to you.  I can tell you that in addition to Fimmel's convincing acting, the rest of the cast is good, too.  Talijah Blackman-Corowa has a thousand-watt smile that makes you regret Isabel's murder even more, and Jemmason Power delivers the range of emotions needed for Isabel's sister who has grown up a lot since Isabel was murdered.

As I mentioned above, there's plenty of room for a second season, and my wife and I will be watching it as soon as it's up on Acorn via Amazon Prime Video.

                   another kind of police story 

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Podcast Conversation about The Beatles 'Now and Then'

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 360, in which Joel McKinnon and Cora Buhlert join me for a conversation about The Beatles' "Now and Then".  We had reconvened for a conversation about the second season of the Foundation series on Apple TV+ -- I had asked them to join me to talk about the first season back in 2021 -- but Joel, who's been in a band for decades, asked me what I thought of The Beatles new single, and this led to a conversation about the new single, The Beatles in Hamburg, AI and recording, and lots of observations you won't hear any place else.  (And look next week for the conversation about Foundation that ensued.)

Relevant links:

my review of "Now and Then" our 2021 conversation about the 1st season of Foundation

 

Check out this episode!

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The Killer: Highly Recommended with Questions

It's rare to see a movie about an assassin that surprises you.  But The Killer does that, and in more than one crucial way.

Before I get to the most crucial part, and warn you about spoilers, here are two things I found especially enjoyable that don't entail spoilers:

1. The 1hr 58min movie comes in chapters, in different cities, with different settings and pacings.

2. Indeed, the first chapter consists entirely of the assassin's thoughts.

Now let's get to the spoilers ...

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The Killer -- most of the major characters have no names, and go by The Target, The Brute, The Expert -- but The Killer, very well played by Michael Fassbender, is extremely efficient, but misses his first mark through no fault of his own... Or is that right?  The Target is a man,  but when the The Killer finally sees him, The Target is with a woman.  The Killer waits for a clear shot, but the woman is still in the room, and she takes the bullet when she unexpectedly approaches The Target.  The Killer's failure to deliver sets the whole rest of the story in motion.  But why didn't he wait until The Target was alone?  Maybe because he was being pressured to finish this job already.  But if that was the reason, maybe he should have mentioned this to us, the audience, in his later musings.

The other, even bigger question, comes at the end.  Why did he not kill The Client, as he easily could have done?  This certainly leaves open a reason for a sequel, but I'd like to know The Killer's logic in this movie -- especially because sparing The Client violates The Killer's principle of no empathy.

And while we're at it, The Client has a name -- Claybourne.  So does The Lawyer, Hodges.  So in addition to one being spared but not the other, why were these two characters given names, but not the others?

Questions like these only show how much attention I've invested in this movie, which is exactly what the makers of the movie want.  The movie was directed by David Fincher, who directed House of Cards and all kinds of other great works.  The story was derived from a graphic novel series.  So there's lots of material here for a continuing story, and I'll watch it as soon as it starts streaming on Netflix.

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Bosch: Legacy 2.7-2.10: The Highs and the Powerful Lows

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A superb quartet of concluding episodes of the second season of Bosch: Legacy, put up last week and tonight on Amazon Prime Video.  Every one of these episodes had the masterful dialogue, riveting action, and mix of surprise and satisfaction that comes from seeing characters behave as you ultimately expect -- all of which typify Bosch at its best, which this second season of Legacy certainly is, as I've been saying all along.

Here are some of the highlights for me:

[And of course here's an advisory about Spoilers ahead ... ]

1. Maddie saves Harry, literally, just as Harry saved her at the beginning of this season, albeit in very different circumstances.  Maddie gets even closer to her father as a result.  But one of the fundamental, seemingly inviolable principles of this series and these characters is the two can't be happy together at the end, however close they may have become.  Whatever demons Maddie maybe be able overcome in her relationship with her father, which means everything to do her, he will always do, or will always have done, something that can and maybe does undermine that father-and-daughter unity.  It's tough to see, but realistic, given who Harry is.

2. I said in an earlier review that it was good to see Mo get some love.  Well, it turns out that the love was not physical, and worse than that, the attraction was not completely mutual.  But Mo is put in a position where he would have had to turn on Harry and Honey, and of course he's not going to do that, and so he can't continue with the woman he was falling for, even though she truly had at least some feelings for him.  Tough world, tough life -- there's that word again -- for just about all the main characters in this series.

3. Speaking of Honey, she's on her way to an unexpectedly big job.  At least, she hopes so, and I hope so, too.  Will be fun to see her in this new job next season.

4. As I've been saying in these reviews, the acting this season was outstanding, and especially impressive was Madison Lentz as Maddie.  By the conclusion of this season, I'd say she was on a par with Titus Welliver as Bosch, which is high praise indeed.

5. But speaking of acting, it was good and sad to see Lance Reddick one more time in his role of Irvin Irving in the season finale.  A great actor in everything from The Wire to Fringe, and I'm glad we all got a chance to see him one more time, filmed before he left us in March of this year.

See also Bosch: Legacy 2.1-2.4: Better and Better ... Bosch: Legacy 2.5-2.6: Maddie Steps Up

See also Bosch: First Half: Highly Recommended ... Bosch: Second Half as Fine as the First ...  Bosch Season 2: Dragnet with Uber ... Bosch 3: Best Season So Far ... Bosch 4: Delivering and Transcending the Genre ... Bosch 5: Room with a Killer View ... Bosch Season 6: The Best Police on Television ... Bosch Season 7: Can't Let Go ... Bosch: Legacy: Even Better than Bosch

                   another kind of police story 
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