Paul Levinson

Doing a narrative of a younger version of a famed older character is a tricky business. Without going into which ones worked and which ones did not, and why, let's just say that some of them, maybe even most of them, did not.

My wife and I just finished binge-watching Away, a 10-episode series, on Netflix. I can't recall a better movie or television series about missions to Mars or early human settlements on Mars, and that includes contenders like The Martian, The Martian Chronicles, and Total Recall.

I just watched Raised by Wolves 1.2 and 1.3, on HBO Max. It's all that is available there now (along with the first episode that I saw and reviewed here the other night), but the three are more than enough to convince that this will be a major science fiction series, with a complex, multi-level, intriguing narrative.

I finally had a chance to take a bite out of Apple TV+'s reboot of Amazing Stories (it's so quiet when I write, you can sometimes hear a pun drop), and I thought I'd tell you what I thought of it.

No, this is not a review of a new science movie I just caught on Netflix, though it could have been, a few years ago, before the explosion in video technology and savvy which has created on whole new genre of music video now lighting up YouTube. Covers have been a staple of YouTube since it came into our lives in 2006, but now they're being done, of Beatles and Beachboy songs and records by slightly lesser known artists, by just one person, singing all the parts and sometimes even playing all the instruments. They're all always fun to see and listen to, but Anne Reburn's, with what she refers to as her "clones," are in a class by themselves. The handful that I've seen so far are just fabulous, on all kinds of levels.

I saw Raised by Wolves 1.1 last night, courtesy of HBO Max, where the series is set to debut tomorrow, September 3. In a sentence, it's a big concept, altogether excellent combination of fast action and deep philosophy, as befits Executive Producer Ridley Scott, and especially well-suited to our pandemic ridden time, when the very fate of humanity could well be at stake if things get much worse.