Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 79

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 08, 2021 15:48

Podcast: The Theater of the Mind: Paul Levinson interviews Dan Abella about his New Book

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 223, in which I interview Dan Abella about his new book, The Theater of the Mind.

Among the topics we discuss: Marshall McLuhan, Julian Jaynes, Gestalt psychology, ideas for inventions and music in dreams, the power of the spoken word and the acoustic, the history of motion pictures, the essence of "poetic faith," how art reduces stress, and much more.

More about The Theater of the Mind here and here.

Publications and Music mentioned in the interview:

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes) The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (Hugo Münsterberg) Biographia Literaria (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) (free article) "McLuhan's Space" (Paul Levinson) (music) "Welcome Up" (Paul Levinson)

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 08, 2021 12:52

Hightown 2.7: Getting Down to Business

Whew, storm clouds really gathering over Cape Cod in last night's powerful Hightown 2.7 on Starz.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Frankie realizes that Jorge was murdered. He says it's come down to him and Renee against the world now. He still doesn't know about Renee and Ray. And it's not one-hundred percent clear how Ray feels about Renee, and what exactly he's doing with her. He's powerfully attracted to her, and loves to sleep with her, yes. Probably he really loves her, too. But he loves his job, too -- his now former job of being a detective, which he wants more than anything else to get back. Would he use Renee, even sacrifice her, to get back his job? I wouldn't say definitely, one-hundred percent no.

Meanwhile, Jackie has hit rock bottom, as she tells Ray. Her rapprochement with her father was short lived, extinguished by his easy willingness to use her as a prostitute. With no father now added to no lover (Leslie), Jackie turns to Ray for support. She even wants his support physically, in bed with her. And in the denouement of this great scene, she jokes that it it's ok if they make out, but none of that "dick" business.

In perhaps the only undilutedly positive development, it was good to see Osito's relationship develop with the physical therapist. It occurred to me, as I saw him reading a book in his cell, that Osito is Hightown's Stringer Bell -- drugsters with a literally literate intellect.

See you back here next week.

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 06, 2021 19:10

Dexter: New Blood 1.5: No Satisfaction for Serial Killers

Another outstanding episode of Dexter: New Blood -- 1.5 -- in what from the beginning was an excellent reboot, and is just getting better and better.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

In a headline, Dexter's new life is unraveling. And in many ways the most exquisite part of this is the return of Batista (great to see David Zayas back), at least for this episode. He's now a captain of detectives in Miami, and he tells Angela Dexter's faked story -- that he's dead -- and that he left a son by the name of ... Harrison. It's a fairly uncommon name, and enough, along with the rest that Angela knows (what Audrey told her Harrison said, that Jim is not Jim's real name) to search on what happened in Miami all those years ago, and come up with a picture of Dexter, who of course looks like Jim.

To be clear, the jig is my no means up for Dexter. He can and no doubt will come up with a plausible explanation for why he faked his death. Likely he'll say it was to protect his son. But Angela is sharp and tenacious police, and sooner or later she'll begin to realize more about Dexter. And there's no way that, to save himself, he'll kill her. That would be a violation of the code that would dwarf all the other violations Dexter has done, and, besides, he close to loves Angela, and maybe actually does,

Meanwhile, the other serial killer in town, Kurt, is in high sicko gear. He kills another young woman -- not that way he wants to, so he gets no satisfaction -- and now he's briefriended Harrison. He kills women not men, but Harrison under Kurt's wing is no good for Dexter and his genuine fatherly love. Tonight, a combination of that love and Dexter's killer appetite got Dexter to kill the drug dealer, but not in the way that gave Dexter's dark passenger any satisfaction, either.

Dexter's best bet for taking Kurt out of action is Angela, who also discovered in New York that Kurt was lying about hearing from his son Matt in New York City. Should be an exciting five more episodes of this superb season ahead.

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 05, 2021 18:15

Podcast: Page to Screen: Dune, Foundation, The Man in the High Castle, The End of Eternity

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 222, in which I share the talk I gave yesterday in Krakow, Poland via Zoom at PhilosophyCon about the aesthetics and philosophy of assessing the screen adaptations of the science fiction classics Dune (1984, 2021), Foundation (2021), The Man in the High Castle (2015-2019), and The End of Eternity (1987).

Thanks to Michal Tadeusz Norworyta for moderating.

Q & A at conclusion.

Relevant videos:

The complete PhilosophyCon panel Cora Buhlert, Joel McKinnon, and Paul Levinson discuss the first season of Foundation (also available in audio podcast) Paul Levinson interviews Rufus Sewell about The Man in the High Castle

Relevant blog posts:

Review of Dune (2021) Review of The End of Eternity (1987)

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 05, 2021 14:04

The End of Eternity (Soviet, 1987, Konets vechnosti): Surprisingly Good

I saw a thread on Reddit about a 1987 Soviet adaptation of Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity -- my favorite time travel novel, published in 1955 (which I first read as a kid in 1959) -- and of course I had to see it. Fortunately, it's available free, in two parts, on YouTube.

I don't speak or read Russian, but the movie has English subtitles. It's surprisingly good. When I review movie or TV series adaptations of novels and stories, I usually don't go into point by point comparisons with the source material. I try to assess the adaptations on their own terms, and stick to generalities and sprinkle in a few specifics as far as comparisons go. I'll do that here, as well as avoid specific spoilers, for those who haven't read the novel.

I say Andrei Yermash's movie is surprisingly good, because adaptations are difficult to do. The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime was superb, but in part because of the introduction of a new character not present in Philip K. Dick's novel, John Smith (see my conversation with Rufus Sewell, who brilliantly played the part ). There's widespread feeling that the best part of the recently concluded first season of Foundation was the clonal Cleon triumvirate, also not present in Asimov's novels and stories (see my conversation with reviewers Cora Buhlert and Joel McKinnon about this). Yermash's The End of Eternity was powerful and enjoyable and stayed pretty close to Asimov's account of a group of people, The Eternals, who use time travel to control and improve history -- according to their standards, which include stopping our movement off this planet into space -- but are challenged by one of their own who puts falling in love above all else.

Asimov's "allwhen" council of The Eternals works well in Yermash's Russian, and its evocation of the Soviet politburo. The movie also depicted my favorite gambit in the novel, communicating to the future via an ad in a news magazine. The acting was pretty good, with Oleg Vavilov as protagonist Andrew Harlan and Vera Sotnikova as his lover Noyes Lambent. And there was some nudity (I guess the Soviet Union wasn't that puritanical -- on the other hand, Konets vechnosti was made in almost the closing days of the Soviet regime.)

So my recommendation, if you like Asimov and even more so time travel, is see this movie. It's not as good as on screen as The End of Eternity is to read, but it conveys enough of the novel with style and flair to be in the upper echelon of time travel movies.

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 03, 2021 22:13

Podcast Review of Invasion 1.9

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 221, in which I review the ninth episode of Invasion on Apple TV+.

Earlier podcasts about Invasion:

November 30, 2021 Review of Invasion 1.8 ... November 20, 2021 Review of Invasion 1.7 ... November 13, 2021 Review of Invasion 1.6 ... November 6, 2021 Review of Invasion 1.5 ... November 2, 2021, Review of Invasion 1.4 ... October 26, 2021, Review of Invasion 1.1-3

Written blog post review of Invasion 1.9 is here.

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 02, 2021 23:47

Invasion 1.9: Tables Turning

A block-buster penultimate episode of Invasion -- 1.9 -- in which it looks like the tables may be turned, or may be beginning to be turned ...

[Spoilers ahead.]

But let me see if I have this right. Over in Tokyo, Mitsuki's sure she's in contact with Hinata, but everyone else doubts that, including her father (who's an engineer) and an audio specialist who concludes that what Mitsuki and the people in the control room are hearing is a synthetic replication of Hinata's voice. But, at the beginning of the episode, we see that David Bowie's "Major Tom" is very significant in Mitsuki and Hinata's relationship -- Hinata thinks Mitsuki looks like Bowie -- and, later, at a decisive moment in the control room, Bowie's "Major Tom" is suddenly broadcast from space, when Mitsuki prompts "Hinata" to play it.

This convinces Mitsuki that Hinata is indeed alive. It convinces the American military guy that this is the time to launch the attack on the invaders -- he says Mitsuki bought Earth some valuable time -- and the attack succeeds. Here I'd just say: what kind of invaders are these, that they would so succumb so easily to the attack on them from Earth?

There are excellent action scenes in the hospital in London and the forest in the New York area, where the (presumed) destruction of the Invasion mother ship stops the invading creators here on Earth, dead in their tracks. Unfortunately, not in time to save Ahmed, who sacrifices his life to save Aneesha and the kids, and perhaps not Casper, either, whose survival is uncertain, given that the destruction of the invaders destroyed or disrupted a part of his mind.

And the question remains: how much if any of the invaders survived, and what kind of damage can they still mete out to us here on Earth?

But that's what season finales are for -- and I'll see you back here next week with my review.

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 02, 2021 22:32

The Sinner season 4: The Festering Seaside

The Sinner starring Bill Pullman as Harry Ambrose came to a hard end last night -- hard in terms of it's not only the end of the season but the series (unless another enlightened network or streaming service picks it up), and hard in terms of everything is difficult for Harry, as he tries to navigate his life through the murders and mayhem he's always prone to investigate.

Harry is really a detective like no other. Plagued with his own problems, including his masochistic taste in sex, utterly devoted to his investigations, to seeking the truth, with or without a badge, no villain or pervert wants Harry on his or her case. But each investigation, even though it results in the truth at last revealed, takes its toll on Harry.

At the beginning of the fourth season, Harry is so distraught he's on the verge of taking his own life. What saves him is witnessing a suicide, as Percy, whom Harry has briefly established a connection with as some kind of kindred sufferer, jumps off a cliff, literally, before Harry's very eyes. He cannot help but be drawn into an investigation of why that happened, even though it's not a murder. His investigation uncovers all sorts of underbellies of life, in a sleepy seaside town in Maine festering with crime, resentment, dysfunctional families, and touches of depravity. Fans of Hightown will recognize the environment.

Harry finds some peace in the end in working through the labyrinth to finally understand why Percy jumped. But he doesn't yet have much peace in his soul, and this means there's ample opportunity for future stories in the world of The Sinner, Harry's world. I hope we can see them sooner rather than later. But Harry is such a timeless character, and Pullman brings him to life so well, that I'd be up for seeing more of Harry any time that's on a screen.