The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

yeah it should be a smellovision poll

Was Deadwood the one where everyone was always all "you have to watch it for the language and dialect, they're so unique and almost Shakespearean?" Because that does sound up my alley, but on the other hand (a) it is Deadwood and (b) I don't often get along with westerns.

i dunno, nabisco, aside from some stuff in season 1 w/wild bill hickok it doesn't really feel like a trad western in any way.

the language is amazing

the amazing shakesperean awesomeness of the language, or whatever, was fun at first but i eventually got really, really weary of it.

it feels like the language got denser as the series went on, if that makes sense. Farnum's language and raps and stuff=the highlight of the series for me.

nothing like a good western-style shakesperean rap!

they have those at subway now right

in the first season the language was really natural in a way, extremely well written but not show-offy in a noticeable way. the second season is where it started to get just a little bit too mannered, season 3 was admirable for being so weird but i can't say i enjoyed it, exactly. it mostly had to do with the dialogue.

yeah i really got into the dialogue and the ideas at play about social order etc -- how people make a character of themselves in public, how language responds to and creates power. i can see how this would be really unenjoyable to ppl but i loved it.

I am torn between my love of weird mannered dialogue and that thing where all western-type programs just remind me of boring middle-school field trips to local forts and sites of Indian massacres.

xpost - haha okay, "Foucauldian western" is possibly an exception I can make

we all remember when hal called falstaff a 'cunt-crazed maniac'

yes they swear a lot too! tee hee

lol ive never watched rome nor had the desire to but a fashion design friend of mine went fuckin crazy on it for using spaghetti straps on some of the costumes

cunt-crazed maniac

sub-Gregory Corso at best

in the commentaries milch goes on this long rambling riff about westerns and hollywood and the hays code and how it fucked up our perception of the west. the 'laconic cowboy' was an invention since everyone knew, or used to know, that cattle people and miners and settlers and all that were outrageously verbose, like every other victorian, even tho they were filthy. the same kids writing those amazing civil war letters home grew up and went west, etc.

i don't know if i buy it or if it's even true but it's interesting

yeah i kinda always figured it was true

i think i have to watch deadwood, if it's all about mannered dialogue. it's a good thing tim olyphant is dreamy.

he's got this perfect hollywood grill that sticks out completely

trixie's use of cursing seemed oddly forced to me and overdone. but I loved the dialogue for the most part.

Ok, so I've been watching The Sopranos in order because I'd only ever seen the occasional episode and hadn't seen it properly and this thread reminded me I needed to see it all. It's not as good as The Wire, because of all the stupid dream sequences etc. but up until the end of season 2, it's still almost perfect. And then, without knowing, the start of season 3 is fucking odd. The pacing is all wrong, the storyline just seems rehashed (oh, so another person not as important as tony but still important is more ruffless and crazy and seems unsure of tony's position etc) and most importantly, the livia episode! I never knew what had happened (spoiler: .............................she dead) so watching that scene of just rehashed livia quotes put on a fake body was the creepiest and oddest experience i can remember on fictional television. I'm sure there are great episodes coming so I'm going to continue but, really, people think this is better than The Wire?

oh, so another person not as important as tony but still important is more ruffless and crazy and seems unsure of tony's position etc

is to 'the sopranos' what 'what? the top brass want to shut down the investigation? just as we're getting close?' is to 'the wire'.

ha, ok, i totally agree.

I think it's better, yes. Keep watching, because season 3 is the best of the lot, I think. I never believed in any of the Wire's characters (even though I do like it a lot) in the same way as I believed in The Sopranos - still, what the fuck do I really know about any of these people, living in Cardiff?

yeah, it was more about me wanting to comment on how creeped out i got after watching that scene with tony talking to old livia clips was than anything.

yeah it is a shame that scene is so weird. i'm amazed nobody noticed that her parting keeps changing sides.

"season 3 is the best of the lot"

Totally and completely untrue.

ya fully untrue.

i'd say 5 at this point.

watch something like the opening montage of season 6 and compare it to the workmanlike filmmaking of the wire and it amazes me that anyone would thing the latter is a better show.

and if you think the sopranos is good despite "all the stupid dream sequences" you might as well give up now.

unfair, or at least missing the point to compare cinematography of these shows - sops eps were often used as showcase portfolio pieces by whatever director was doing that particular ep, so full of arty swoopy stuff - they usually kinda wanted to be film-like, the wire never did (i.e. the wire knows it's tv, wants to be tv, i.e. is better tv)

i'm not talking about cinematography.

i'm talking about visual ideas, staging, editing, direction. if you think it's better tv to throw those things out the window you might as well acclaim three-camera sitcoms as the best of tv.

the wire didn't throw those out the window, the sopranos just had more obvious cinematic tics.

i mean you can compare the two if the wire was trying to do the same thing as the sopranos, but it wasn't so in the end the comparison on those grounds is a little off-base. i think at some point it's just a matter of personal taste. do you prefer the style of the sopranos or the style of the wire? plus i think a lot of the preferences come down to characters w/r/t these two shows. it makes total sense why someone would prefer the wire imo!

you are obviously biased OMAR

naw it's just buggin' me how ppl dismisss the sopranos so out of hand when it so clearly, to me at least, such a monumentally fuckin awesome work of art

watch something like the opening montage of season 6 and compare it to the workmanlike filmmaking of the wire and it amazes me that anyone would thing the latter is a better show.

i no what u mean and maybe agree with u in general but i think "workmanlike" is really unfair here. like, just thinking of there's a shot in the third season of the wire where it goes from something static and tv to swooping out to track all the beer cans on the roof of the western that was really beautiful. the wire had fewer of these moments but they were there its not like its 2.5 men or w/e

shit gettin heated

slocki is so blatantly o the fucking m here.

my real complaint with visual stuff re: the wire is that the symbolism was pretty heavy-handed like just super-composed shots of ppl being framed by metal detectors in the FBI building or those under the overpass drinking shots

unfair, or at least missing the point to compare cinematography of these shows - sops eps were often used as showcase portfolio pieces by whatever director was doing that particular ep, so full of arty swoopy stuff - they usually kinda wanted to be film-like, the wire never did (i.e. the wire knows it's tv, wants to be tv, i.e. is better tv)

completely untrue about 'the sopranos' which was pretty consistent tbh anyway. one of the sops' main directors, tim van patten, also directed on the wire. anyway it's complete, ahistorical bs to say there is a 'cinematic' look and a 'televisual' look and ne'er the twain shall meet.

the idea of preferring mediocrity because it's somehow realer tv is bizarre dude, it's approaching rockist levels of misguided authenticity worship

wait slocki if you're not talking about cinematography what are you talking about?

ALSO WHY ARE YOU CALLING THE WIRE MEDIOCRE I'LL KILL YOU

to prove a point

morbs bait xxxpost

the shows are trying to do two different things, and their visual characteristics reflect that. I think there are duff moments in the Sopranos for time to time, but overall, it is a pretty amazing piece of work. Sopranos might be bit more rewarding on 4th or 5th rewatch than the Wire, but both shows are just too good to really put into an 'either/or' context.

basically it's a good thing that tv has busted out! in the same way that it was a good thing that, some time in the 1910s, people figured out that you didn't have to shoot people feet-to-head; or, in the 1920s, that you could move the camera.

xposts

when people say 'cinematography' they usually mean it like it's an additional extra, rather than the actual texture of the thing we're talking about.

i am genuinely interested to know what you meant, slocki! i am stupid about this stuff.

mise en scene?

oh okay i think it's what enrique said. i agree with Lamp that there was a lot that was artful about the way the wire looked. i guess the differences are down to the formal stuff that got discussed upthread; i agree that the differences aren't about movies v. tv.

(i will say that i grew to kind of hate david simon listening to a season one commentary where he sneers about tv and basically spends a lot of time belaboring how the wire is so very not tv like. both false and made him sound like an insecure dick.)