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 (744)
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Review of 'You' Final Season
I just finished binging the final season of You. Some thoughts: [No spoilers ahead, until I warn you about them.] For some reason in this final (5th) season of this series about the deeply complex serial killer Joe Goldberg (though I guess most or even all serial killers are complex), I began thinking a lot about its comparisons to Dexter and its spin-offs (my all-time favorite serial killer series, and one of my all-time favorite TV series, period -- in the Top 5 all-time, I'd say). Now, I may have made comparisons of You to Dexter in my reviews of the first four seasons of You, but I'd rather write this review right now than read over those earlier reviews, which of course you are welcome to, if you like (see the links at the end of this review).
By Paul Levinson10 months ago in Geeks
Review of David Browne's "Talkin' Greenwich Village". Top Story - January 2025.
If ever there was a time-travel ticket to a past and a place that you knew so well you could still see the sun glinting through the tree leaves, hear the din of the eateries as you walked by, and, most important, still hear the music that actually defied any given time or place, it would be David Browne's book, Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital. That's because Browne has a way of writing, an eye for detail, a penchant for commentary, that draws you in to fill the background you in one way or another actually experienced, or, what Marshall McLuhan called "cool".
By Paul Levinsonabout a year ago in Beat
Review of 'Aporia'
Readers of my posts here on Vocal will know that my favorite genre -- as a viewer, reader, and author -- is time travel, and its close relative alternate history. You'll know this because I say it in just about every other post. But you would also know this because, at least by my lights, excellent and even good examples are not easy to find (and, I'll immodestly or modestly say, as an author, to write).
By Paul Levinsonabout a year ago in Futurism
Review of 'Dune: Prophecy' 1.3-1.4
Lots of dramas on TV give us flashbacks to the earlier lives of current characters, to give us a sense of who they are and their motives, but Dune: Prophecy is doing that better than most, and in episode 1.3 devotes most of an entire episode to the younger Valya and Tula sisters, at the time Reverend Mother Raquella, the first Reverend Mother and founder of the Bene Gesserit, was still alive and very much in charge.
By Paul Levinsonabout a year ago in Futurism
Review of "Beatles '64"
Just saw Martin Scorsese's Beatles '64, up today on Disney+. It's everything you would expect from a master like Scorsese and his masterful 1978 The Last Waltz, but much more, given what the Beatles were and are to so many millions of people on this planet. As I began saying in the 1970s, that impact will last for thousands of years, right up there with Socrates and Shakespeare, even though at one point in the documentary, a young Paul scoffs at The Beatles having anything to do with "culture," preferring instead to say that what The Beatles are about are "laughs". Here are some of the highlights of Beatles '64, made possible by some of the footage the late Albert and David Maysles brothers took of The Beatles first trip to America -- for their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, concert in Washington DC, and concert back in New York in Carnegie Hall -- that had special resonance with me. I present them in more or less chronological order in the movie:
By Paul Levinsonabout a year ago in Beat
