Paul Levinson

Gideon Raff is best known for Homeland, soon to begin its final season on Showtime. In its first few seasons—its best few seasons, by far—Homeland told the story of an American who was brainwashed in Iraq, to hate Americans and identify with terrorists, who returns to the US as a war hero and moves to within a heartbeat of the Presidency. It was all fiction, of course, but...

The Deuce was back last night with its final season on HBO with another step into the future: New Year's Eve 1985, that is, the last day and evening of 1984. The big villain, at this point, is AIDS. Bobby's afraid he has it (he likely doesn't, at least yet). Gene seems set up to get it. And a lot of people, including Abby on the East Coast and Lori on the West Coast, aren't feeling too well.

Maybe I'm a sucker of steam punk—I am—but Carnival Row, the science fiction, science fantasy, mystery/ detective, searingly political relevant eight-episode series that debuted this weekend on Amazon Prime, is much more than that. As those adjectives suggest.

I just saw the news, that a Breitbart reporter, Joel B. Pollak, who actually is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News, was ejected, apparently for no valid reason (he wasn't being disruptive, though his mere presence was deemed as such) from a Beto O'Rourke speech at Benedict College.

I just saw See You Yesterday, the Spike Lee production, directed and co-written by Stefon Bristol (with Fredrica Bailey), which came out on Netflix this past May. As a time-travel story, it's good enough. As a narrative about the continuing murder of African-American young men in American cities by cops, as told through the mechanism of time travel, it's a crucial masterpiece.

I just saw Mortal Engines on HBO. It was released here in the US in December 2018, and received almost universal criticism from the usual group of myopic and tone-deaf self-appointed experts. According to Wikipedia, "It was the biggest box-office bomb of 2018 (one of the 10 biggest of all time, as of August 2019)."