Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 41
January 25, 2023
In-Depth Discussion of Golden Age Science Fiction
If classic science fiction is your cuppa tea, you might enjoy this in-depth interview about A. E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, capped off with a reading of my alternate history story about John Lennon, "It's Real Life", which can read in its entirety, for FREE, right here.
January 22, 2023
The Last of Us 1.1-1.2: The Fungus Among Us
So why would I watch yet another post-apocalyptic series -- apocalypse caused by some biological agent? I mean, aren't Station Eleven, Y, not to mention our real COVID-19 pandemic enough? And for that matter, the endless Walking Deads, which I stopped watching a while before COVID hit? Well, yes. But something moved me to watch the first two episodes of The Last of Us on HBO Max, and here I am reviewing them, and telling you I'm going to watch the rest of the episodes of this inaugural season.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
I mean, this new series, based on a game I've never played, doesn't fool around. Joel, one of the lead characters, sees his daughter shot to death in the first attempts of our military to stop the spread of the fungus that turns anyone who's bitten in a violent monster. That was at the beginning of the first episode. And tonight, at the end of the second episode, we see Anna Torv's character apparently killing herself because she was bitten and needs to stop of hoard of fungus heads. She's an icon of science fiction, having burst on the scene and distinguished herself in Fringe. Well, maybe she's not dead, given my principle that if you don't see someone blown to bits they could still be alive. Or, maybe we'll see more of Torv in flashbacks.
Meanwhile, Joel, portrayed by Pedro Pascal who was so good in Narcos, is alive and kicking, as he and the spunky, wisecracking young Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are maybe heading West. Ellie at this point looks to be carrying the cure to this fungus, which so far has resisted all medications and vaccines. She has been bitten and so far has not gotten sick or fungus-head homicidal. Joel is beginning to appreciate this.
I do have a question about Ella, though. She said she was what, 14? But the fungus hit some 10 years ago. So, how did she get what seems to be such good knowledge of history and culture -- which presumably began crumbling pretty quickly after the fungus took hold. Could a four-year old have been that precocious?
We'll just have to see. And I'll be back here with more reviews after I see more of this series.
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Chasing the Ghost: A Horror Movie with a Drug Warning
So how's this for a low-budget movie with actors I've never seen on the screen before, a horror movie that is in effect a nearly two hour PSA (public service announcement) on the dangers and damages of drug addiction not just to you but your family and close friends? I'd say Chasing the Ghost, which I just saw for free here on tubi (also a site I'm seeing for the first time) does a pretty good job of it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'd say this odd, compelling movie is memorable.
The set-up is the curse that's put upon our hero: either stay constantly high, or your beloved family and close friends will die, one by one, in no predictable order, so there's really no way you can warn them. How Clay deals with this I won't tell you (hence no spoiler warning), and I certainly won't tell you the ending, which was a bit of a twist, but I guessed would happen, but that's ok, the movie still worked for me just fine.
The narrative is fleshed out by all kinds of nice touches, ranging from light through Venetian blinds on characters that makes them look a bit like extra-terrestrials to a hot sex scene with an even hotter sex song that I also never heard before. (I couldn't find any identification of the singer or the songwriter either in the credits at the end of the film or on IMDb). And most of the action takes place in front of buildings that look like the Grand Concourse in the Bronx back in the 1950s -- which adds a Gothic flavor these days -- but probably is someplace much else.
Don Pesta as Clay was excellent, as was Nicole Alexander as his significant other Neveah, and Solo Lucci as Dion (not from Dion and the Belmonts, this Dion is the entity who puts the curse on Clay). The rest of the acting was ok, as was the background music, which had a suitable 1950s B-movie ambience.
I can even imagine this movie being shown in schools as an effective warning about drugs. On the other hand, that sex scene with that song ...
January 21, 2023
Fauda 4: Very Much Alive and Wounded
Fauda is like no other military, espionage series I've ever seen, showing so many sides of a story in so much life and death and depth, in this case, Israelis, Palestinians, and other peoples in the area and further away. Watching a season is an immersion in these cultures, and an exploration of complex personal relationships under pressure, interspersed with breakneck military battles and operations.
[And that's the most I'll say before I alert you to spoilers ahead.]
Fauda 4 opens up with Doron and other members of his team in various stages of wanting to retire. This only progresses as the 12 episodes unfold.
The kidnapping of Gabi, and the plan of the Palestinian team that kidnapped him to launch missiles against Israel, are the main objects of our team's focus on stopping. As in previous seasons, let's just say that they don't succeed as quickly and as entirely as they would like, if they succeed at all. Again, this reflects Fauda's uncompromising mirror of reality, however painful that may be.
Lior Raz, star of the series as Doron, and co-creator with Avi Issacharoff, once again puts in a powerhouse performance, as does everyone else in Fauda 4, in all sides of the physical and psychological battles. As Gabi points out to Doron, he has a tendency to start to fall in love with women who are good human beings, whether Arab or Israeli, because he has such a big heart. This time, that's Maya (very well played by Lucy Ayoub), a Palestinian whose brother is behind Gabi's kidnapping, whose Israeli husband is in the Israeli military, and she herself is an Israeli cop -- this is what I mean about the personal relationships in Fauda being complex. But not so complex as to get in the way of the riveting narrative, which will keep you glued to the screen (I haven't used that old metaphor in years, if ever).
The ending is about as wild as it gets. Just about everyone on the team lying on the ground, badly wounded but alive -- and speaking of metaphors, that pretty much is the story of life that Fauda continues to tell: badly wounded but very much alive. I'm very much looking forward to a season 5 and more.
See also Fauda: Beyond Homeland ... Fauda 2: Another Unforgettable Visit ... Fauda 3: Blood, Tears, Humanity
January 17, 2023
Hunters Season 2: Alternate History Hitler
I just binged the eight-episode second and final season of Hunters on Amazon Prime Video. I liked it a lot more than the first season, and I liked the first season a lot, with some reservations. Indeed, though the first season was an intensely personal story set in all-too real world, the second season was even more personal and managed also to be about the real world, our current real world, in fact.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
The first season ends with the revelation that Hitler and Eva Braun are alive and well and planning to take over the world from their secret compound in Argentina. That revelation comes after the upending unmasking of Nazi-hunter Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino) as the German concentration monster Wilhelm Zuchs aka The Wolf. The second season picks up the backstory of Offerman/Zucks but shows its mettle in the Hitler/Braun story, and how our band of Hunters finally brings them to justice.
It does such a good job of this, on so many levels, that I'd say it lifts Hunters into The Man in the High Castle TV series territory, and lands just slightly behind it. The relationship between Hitler and Braun -- their mutual contempt, with Braun thinking she's the logical leader of the Fourth Reich and Hitler telling her at some point that the most important accomplishment of her life will be that she married him -- is both surprising and convincing. The battles of the Hunters and Nazis are exciting and unpredictable.
But the biggest strength of the second season, right up there with its achievement as alternate history, is the way it links its 1979 story by strong implication to the resurgence of Naziism and white supremacy that grips our country and our world today. The January 6, 2021 attack on Congress, the shootings of New Mexico Democrats by a Republican who lost the 2022 election, reported just in the past few days, show how looming and dangerous fascism is in the United States right now. Putin says his savage attacks on Ukraine are to root out Nazis but he and his military are the ones employing Nazi tactics in their atrocities and propaganda. In the very last scene of Hunters, Jonah looks across a table at an outdoor cafe at someone who looks like Hitler. We last saw Hitler locked up in a high security prison in Europe, so there's no reason to think the man at that table was Hitler. But there's every reason to think that the imprisonment of the real Hitler has not put much of a dent in the would-be Hitlers at large in 1979 -- and even more so today.
If I had one quibble with this powerful story, it is that too many of the characters on both sides seem to be able to easily survive being hit and even riddled by bullets. I could accept this happening once. But even twice is too much, in terms of stretching credibility.
But there were also some masterpieces of scenes and episodes in this second season. I thought the ninth episode, nearly a standalone story of a German couple who give shelter to several families of Jewish people, could easily have been an Oscar-winning movie in itself. And the battle scenes throughout the narrative were as good as they get.
Inevitably, the question arises of how about another season? I thought Amazon cancelled The Man in the High Castle a little too quickly after four seasons, and that's certainly the case for Hunters after two seasons and the crucial story it's been telling. Given the precarious condition of the world in which we now live, I have a feeling we'll be seeing a continuation of the Hunters story in some format and venue before too long.
See also Hunters: Praise and Reservations
my interview of Rufus Sewell about The Man in the High Castle
an alternate history short story -- get it on Kindle, or read it free on Vocal
January 15, 2023
Podcast Review of The Pale Blue Eye
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 348, in which I review The Pale Blue Eye on Netflix.
Read this review.
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
January 14, 2023
The Pale Blue Eye: Splendid Secret History of Young Poe
A murder mystery with all kinds of twists featuring a young Edgar Allan Poe quoting from Thomas Grey's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," my all-time favorite poem, what more could I ask for? Well, The Pale Blue Eye has that, as well as a first class story of life at West Point in the1830s, so I couldn't ask for much more regarding a movie indeed.
This gem of a movie is in effect a secret history of Poe, that is, a story of what happened to him in the 1830s which could have happened, but no doubt didn't, why is why we don't know anything about it. We find Poe already a published poet at this time, and his involvement in a case in which hearts and other organs are removed from bodies, and his success in figuring out who the ultimate villain was (who was also and mostly a good guy), provides a brilliant case study of how Poe already had and further developed the chops to become the father of the mystery writing genre in our real history.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Meanwhile, the mystery story is first class. The ultimate solution is that one person was the murderer (for the sake of revenge) and two other people dismembered the dead bodies. This is itself a solution that the real Poe in our history, and for that matter, Agatha Christie, would have approved of.
The West Point and surrounding upstate New York ambience in the 1830s feels just right, at least from what I know of it from my late 20th-century early 21st century experience. There's nothing quite like the Hudson River at the point, with the cliffs and the trees and that upstate shade of green. John Crowley captured it well in his science fantasy trilogy, as did Scott Cooper who directed and wrote the script The Pale Blue Eye, based on Louis Bayard's novel of the same name (which I haven't read). And while we're at it, Harry Melling, whom I recall from the Harry Potter movies and The Queen's Gambit was excellent as Poe, even looking like him, as was Christian Bale, whom I've seen in a ton of movies, as retired NY detective Andor.
If you're at all a Poe fan, you won't regret seeing this movie. I'm a huge Poe fan, and count it was one of the best films I've seen in years.
Poe figures in this alternate history short story -- get it on Kindle, or read it free on Vocal
Your Honor 2.1: Scorching
Your Honor returned for its second and final season on Showtime yesterday, and it was about as brutal, wrenching, and ugly as it comes. Even more so than the first season? Yeah, especially with the judge being force-fed in prison.
[Probably some spoilers ahead ... ]
One thing I didn't particularly like was the jumping between the future (when the judge is in prison) and the present, which picks up right where season one left off. The jumping makes the searing story, already complex and multi-faceted, a little difficult to follow.
But that said, both stories, of course interconnected, are riveting. Rosie Perez plays a new character, Detective Delmont, who gets Desiato out of prison in return for his cooperation in her attempt to put Jimmy Baxter behind bars. As we increasingly saw in season one, it's Baxter's wife Gina who is truest villain in this story. Hope Davis as Gina and Michael Stuhlbarg as Jimmy are excellent, as they were last year.
In the part of the story that is close to the present, it was good to see Eugene escape, even though I of course hate what he did to Adam. But that was an accident. The interaction among the various members of that rival crime family is an important counterpart and contributor to the battle between the judge and the Baxters.
But Eugene escaping is not quite the biggest surprise in this first episode of the second season. That would be Fia being pregnant with Adam's baby. This of course means that when this second season concludes, the Desiastos and the Baxters will be literally bound together, in the best way possible. Given the deep grim gravity of this story, the smile of a baby would be much welcome.
See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday" ... Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link ... Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner ... Your Honor 1.5: The Vice Tightens ... Your Honor 1.6: Exquisite Chess Game ...Your Honor 1.7: Cranston and Stuhlbarg Approaching Pacino and De Niro ... Your Honor 1.8: Nothing More Important ... Your Honor 1.9: Screeching Up to the Last Stop Before Next Week's Finale ... Your Honor 1.10: Final Irony
Jurassic World Dominion: Enjoyable, Exciting, and Even Profound
So I watched Jurassic World Dominion on the small screen of my laptop, a far cry from a movie theater screen and even a television screen, where I've seen and enjoyed all the previous Jurassic Parks. And you know what? I thought the movie was quite good!
The key idea sprung out, literally, at the end of the previous movie in the franchise, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: the dinosaurs are no longer on that fabled island, they're now out and about in the world! The opening scene of Dominion picks up right where Fallen World left off: there are dinosaurs in our oceans. And Dominion ends with some excellent scenes of dinosaurs living right alongside the creatures large and small that currently inhabit our off-screen world. My favorite is a triceratops or maybe stegosaurus (I'm no expert) walking right along with a herd of elephants.
The key ethical lesson in all of this is cooperation. Current mammals and prehistoric reptiles now back to life can live together. Owen commits to returning the young raptor to its mother, and he delivers. In another meaningful final scene, Owen and the mother raptor exchange glances of understanding.
Of course, the toughest kinds of cooperation are between we humans ourselves. Some of us, like Dodgson, CEO of Biosyn (well played by Campbell Scott) are incorrigible. But just about everyone else proves to be amenable in the end. And speaking of acting, it was excellent to see Jeff Goldblum as Malcolm, Laura Dern as Settler, and Sam Neill as Grant back in action (and, yeah, I think Settler and Grant make a good couple).
The action was outstanding, as it always is in Jurassic Park movies. Indeed, some of the chases, especially those involving vehicles on the ground and in the air, were reminiscent of James Bond movies. All of which is to stay: the series is still vibrant, and I look forward to the next installment.
January 13, 2023
Echo 3 Season 1 Finale: The Other Shoe
The season one finale of Echo 3 up on Apple TV+ today -- at least, I hope it's the season not the series finale, because I'd really like to see more -- was a compelling mix of escape from Colombia, and our seeing if Amber will come back to herself after being liberated from her time in cruel captivity. In effect, then, Amber's was also an escape story, an anguishing treatment of whether she could really escape from his immediate past.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
The physical escape from Colombia offered another heart-in-mouth extended action sequence, in which our trio manages to escape a troop of Colombian soldiers out to kill them in a marketplace. The action scenes in Echo 3 have been consistently top-notch, and this final scene was one of the best. I was relieved and delighted to see our three heroes make to the speed boat and out of imminent danger.
Amber's escape from her past unfortunately didn't go as well. She started not even wanting to talk to Prince and Bambi, but seemed to come to -- to be more like herself -- in the marketplace action, only to tell Prince at the end that he needed to accept that she didn't want to be with him anymore. Prince understands what Amber has been through, and is willing to give her time, but doesn't want their marriage to end.
He gives it his best shot, after seeing her in a nice bathing suit, and maybe as a result wrongly assuming that she's coming back to her normal, pre-kidnap self. But she's unbending. Her bathing suit may be a sign that she wants to live, but she's saying to Prince that she doesn't want to live any more with Prince.
He says he's heartbroken, but what can he do? Well, it seems to me that we need at least another season to get the answer to that question.
See also Echo 3 1.1-1.3: Bondian Flavor and Pure Adrenalin ... 1.4 Welcome to the Jungle ... 1.5: Currents ... 1.6: Fighting Back ... 1.7: Your Mother Should Know ... 1.8: The Past ... 1.9: Yes!
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