Paul Levinson

Parables come in all kinds of platforms. The Platform, a Spanish film with English subtitles now on Netflix, is a story about the essence of humanity tested to its very limits. That’s a worthy parable, to say the least. Unfortunately, this movie’s unique way of telling it is disgusting, in the literal sense of that word. The question is: was that kind of stomach-turning story necessary to convey such a crucial message?

In the old days, they used to have something called B-movies. They were intended to accompany the A-movie, the main attraction, in the double features that played in neighborhood movie houses, before television came along and ate their lunch and closed them down. Many of those B-movies were quite enjoyable, but they weren’t exactly Oscar material. I don’t think there were any B-television shows, certainly none on cable and none on Netflix, Amazon video, and other streaming services. But if ever there were a streaming television series that felt like a B-movie – in this case, a six-episode movie serial – it would be Into the Night, which went up on Netflix in May 2020.

Lots of important, even game-changing events in episodes 1.6-7 of Raised by Wolves, up on HBO Max Thursday night:

News broke yesterday that ByteDance rejected Microsoft's offer to buy TikTok, and instead will "partner" with Oracle to run TikTok in the United States.

I thought the 4th and 5th episodes of Raised by Wolves were really good, especially the 5th, because it gave us a nice big origin story about Mother -- how she was created, and endowed/programmed with her mission. Her maker tells her she's humanity's last hope, a nod to Star Wars mythology.

I often say to my students, when we talk about which is the most powerful, predominating medium in our political world, that you shouldn't count older media out. Trump made Twitter his medium, because he had a talent for the short, vehement missive, and it allowed him to communicate directly to his followers, without the intervention of the press (Hitler loved radio and its affordance of direct broadcasts from him for the same reason).