Paul Levinson
Bio
Novels The Silk Code, The Plot To Save Socrates, It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles; LPs Twice Upon A Rhyme & Welcome Up; nonfiction The Soft Edge & Digital McLuhan, translated into 15 languages. Prof, Fordham Univ.
Stories (742)
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Review of 'Timeless' 2.1
Last night's Timeless roared back from the jaws of oblivion—aka cancellation by the mothership, its network NBC—with a new episode that was far better than anything we saw the first season. And it did most of this in its final few minutes.
By Paul Levinson8 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Counterpart' 1.7
A truly masterful Counterpart 1.7 last night; a perfect spy science fiction story in many overlapping ways. First, it occurred to me as we watched the young Clare in spy training on the other side that there's a strong something of The Americans in Counterpart. Except, whatever Elizabeth's original name was in The Soviet Union (I forget) as she trains to be the adult Elizabeth in America, passing as an American, the ante in Counterpart is much higher, because we get Clare training not to be some rival or enemy nationality but her alternate self. This, again, as I've said before, comes from this deft mix of spy story and science fiction story.
By Paul Levinson8 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'I Thought You Would Last Forever'
I Thought You Would Last Forever - the English title of Ya dumal, ty budesh vsegda, a 2013 Russian feature-length time-travel romance, now streaming free with English subtitles on Amazon Prime -- is no Anna Karenina. But it tells a pretty good time travel story of broken hearts and quietly heroic attempts to repair them, and is imbued with the fatalistic but deeply human Russian spirit.
By Paul Levinson8 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'The Cloverfield Paradox'
Well, there really wasn't any paradox in it (things going very wrong does not equate to paradox), and the story was at least much horror as science fiction, but The Cloverfield Paradox on Netflix was pretty good science fiction of the alternate-reality variety anyway.
By Paul Levinson8 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Alistair1918'
Alistair1918 from 2016 is charming, special, altogether superb little feature movie (on Amazon Prime) with a frame on time travel you don't find very often if at all. The Alistair in the title is a British soldier on the Western front in 1918, who gets blown into a wormhole and ends up in present-day Los Angeles. There's no action at all in France. It's all in LA, where Alistair is befriended by a wannabe documentary film maker — Poppy (played by director Annie K. McVey) — who works with her estranged and skeptical husband, a dedicated young cameraman, and eventually a French scientist (Sophie, played by Amy Motta who appeared on Mad Men) who understands time travel, in an effort to get Alistair back to 1918 and his beloved wife.
By Paul Levinson8 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Counterpart 1.4'
A really superb episode 1.4 of Counterpart last night—my favorite so far—in which the two Howards switch sides. Again, the acting of J. K. Simmons is Emmy-worthy. Here the kind Howard from our world has to play the tough Howard from the other side, and vice versa, and both do it just right. This series is a pleasure to see just because of Simmons' acting.
By Paul Levinson8 years ago in Futurism
