Sopranos

That’s making a show for that era of HBO, I think: making the audience feel smart + feel like an insider in the world of the show (Sopranos, Wire, Sex and the Coty, etc.).

You want Tony to be smarter? Or the audience to be dumber?

I think Chase absolutely is saying something about these characters (and by proxy, America) by having everyone on the show be dumb af.

you're flexiiiiiiiiiiiiin

Stripper, on stage at the Bada Bing upon hearing the tv news report on the death of Jackie Aprile: "I'll always remember where I was!"

What's Ralph Cifaretto's favorite Dr Seuss book?

Horton Hears a Who-re

Corey Stoll as Uncle Junior in the movie seems pretty good choice. He was awesome in House of Cards.

yeah I always liked Stoll. last thing I saw him in was the first Ant Man though lol

watching Funhouse episode, they turn a tender moment with Carmela comforting a depressed Tony following an existential nightmare with him running to the toilet violently farting.

and then the heartbreaking "not in the face".

No real spoilers, but if you want to go in cold, skip this.

Good idea, as always, to forgot the series, beyond knowing who is who. The tone, humour, etc.--can't capture that.

Not terrible, though. Performances I liked: 1) Having said that about forgetting the series, Vera Farmiga gets Livia exactly right. A couple of line readings were uncanny; 2) Alessandro Nivola (Dickie) and Leslie Odom Jr. (Harold) were both good; 3) Michela De Rossi had to be exceedingly beautiful, and she was. Also, Ray Liotta #2 was pretty good, making up for Ray Liotta #1.

I was so preoccupied with trying to figure out where I knew Michael Gandolfini from (not even thinking about his father, because I had forgotten all about that)--it's The Deuce, which I just finished--that got in the way for me. But at times, I could see Tony. Again, I had forgotten who I was watching.

The soundtrack is mostly random and not particularly effective. "Astral Weeks" worked well. (I'll also mention the last/end-credits song. Probably obvious for most people, caught me by surprise. It's a song I've always disliked, but I thought it actually worked here.)

Best "Of course!" moment: Carmela. (Speaking of which, who is the guy Tony pummels in that scene, beside the phone booth? Was that teenage Richie? Teenage Tony Blundetto? I didn't catch a name.)

I couldn't take Corey Stoll seriously, even though he looked like Junior. He's House of Cards for me. I thought whoever played Silvio gave far and away the most affectatious performance. Not bizarre and funny affectatious, though, like Steve Van Zandt. Just affectatious.

The guy with Carmela and Tony was Jacky Aprile. But the only reason I even know this is thanks to Rolling Stone's (bizarrely detailled and obsessive) recap. I have no idea how they worked it out (maybe just from credits?)

But for those of a bent for fan-obsessive detail its not a bad read:

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/many-saints-newark-recap-spoilers-1232129/

Thanks...Jacky, yeah--died of cancer in the first season.

Also liked the overlap with American Gangster, although this Frank Lucas couldn't have been more different from Denzel's.

knocked out the first three seasons in under a week. It holds up surprisingly well! Lots of smart touches, constantly compelling (if somewhat repetitive) storylines. what i'm consistently most impressed by is the sharp plotting and the acting from everybody but especially gandolfini and falco. they are so fucking good it's ridiculous.

a major downside of watching 32 hours of the sopranos over five days is that i've got the tetris effect going on where i end up saying "why ya bustin my balls heah?" to my mother.

i got a neck procedure done today at my pain doctor and they put me out then apparently escorted me out to a group recovery room and when i came to, there was a huge italian-looking guy sitting in the chair across from me moaning and writhing in a chair that was far too small for him and i had a weird confused moment of thinking I fell asleep watching the show and this was a melfi/tony scene that i had fallen into

Watched "The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti" (S1 E8) which has Christopher's hilariously wrong summation of Keanu Reaves' character arc in the movie "The Devil's Advocate".

thinking about many saints of newark intermittently since I saw Sunday night in the theatre and it just seems worse and worse on reflection. a total turd

lol, all I can retrospectively think about it is: just how fucking shite it was. They did a decent flashback to Tony's dad/Junior back in the day episode in one of the latter seasons and all this had to do was continue in a similar vein for a bit longer, but without all the very tedious fan service. But then again this type of shit needs to stop tbh. I feel like a guileless rube for even thinking it might be good!

Why was Steve buscemi on this show. HBO contract I guess

Loved him and his padded-shoulder white sportcoat.

Probably my favourite season

"M'boy are you fat"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcIcNu-ahXQ

Why was Steve buscemi on this show. HBO contract I guess

David Chase was a big fan of Trees Lounge (a couple of cast members end up on The Sopranos too) and hired him to direct (Pine Barrens is his first episode) before adding him into the cast.

My favorite funny line from the show: 'It's an idea, I don't know. Who knows where it fucking came from? Isaac Newton invented gravity because some asshole hit him with an apple.'

Buscemi was great in the show!

sure was

woke up this morning

Feeling around for my shoes

I like the recurring S1 bit where Tony storms out of therapy session at least 1x per episode only to show up with his tail between his legs at his next appointment.

[to Dr. Melfi] “Last week I called you a whore...That might have been overstating the case a little bit.” -Tony

— The Sopranos Quotes (@thesopranosNJ) October 11, 2019

Hate your mudder

of course there was also the episode where he destroyed her furniture and almost physically assaulted her

The Columbus Day episode >>>>>>>> Many Saints of Newark

Maybe obvious, but the absolute funniest moment in all of Sopranos to me is Chrissy's monologue at Livia's wake, esp with his stoned affect

They say there's no two people on Earth exactly the same. No two faces. No two sets of fingerprints. But do they know that for sure? Because they would have to get everybody together in one huge space and obviously that’s not possible, even with computers. And not only that, they’d have to get all the people who've ever lived, not just the ones now. So they got no proof. They got nothing. Mrs. Soprano may have passed but who’s to say there isn’t another Mrs. Soprano just like her, or will be? Maybe not with the same fears and paranoia but the same.

FWIW in the Chapo ep on Many Saints of Newark, one of them (I think Felix?) had a good read on all the stupidity and malpropisms that it isn't just fun at the expense of the characters but shows how removed these guys are from normal society. But I also think it serves a function of demystifying the mafia, which is something the show tries to do a lot -- i.e. these are not brilliant supercriminals, they're hacks. "More of a glorified crew" if you will, except of course even the New York gang isn't too bright, just sharper by comparison.

they're often good tacticians (on the show at least) but they often don't know how the rest of the world works and they appear so fish out of water.

like Tony Soprano getting angry af about being charged a co-pay despite cancelling the session

right, I think the show sees them largely as instinctual beings -- often with strong instincts -- but without much understanding of things beyond "their thing."

all the stupidity and malpropisms that it isn't just fun at the expense of the characters

I don't think it's ever been about fun. The stupidity is just an example of how their venality corrupts them and everyone around them.

In other words, this is America, we're dumb as rocks and twice as evil/greedy, and if you aren't careful, we will drag you down to our level.

It feels post-post-watergate to me. All the institutions are rotten to the core. Even the mob.

they're basically the type of people that, when not doing their mob duties, are mass forwarding emails about DO NOT BUY GAS AT CITGO, ARABIAN TERRORISTS HAVE PUT NEEDLES UNDER THE PUMP to family members

I had to look up the quote, but not knowing how the world works reminded me of this in Goodfellas: "And we were also very close. I mean, there were never any outsiders around. Absolutely never! And being together all the time made everything seem even more normal."

“Even with computas “

Buscemi was good, maybe even great, in R dogs, but no way does he belong in this show

I did not like the Buscemi subplot. Generally felt like the "here come the guys who got out of jail" stuff was ill-conceived and underrealized.

Wow, I thought it was really good, Tony S having to break from his past all over again, digging into his insecurities, Tony B so out of sync with current reality, almost naively so. And the resolution genuinely shocked me. Really one of the great arcs of the show for my money.

And knowing Tony B couldn’t keep living a straight life, would have to break sometime, but was working so hard with his flash cards to get his massage license.

I don't think it's necessarily true that Tony is stupid- in some ways he's the sharpest character in the whole show. He's a good businessman (even those his business is rent-seeking and extortion backed up by violence), he's an effective politician, and to some extent he understands "how things work" and how he has come to be what he is- from one perspective the whole show is about him trying to better understand himself and break free from the life, though obviously he never fully achieves that. As for the other main characters, his crew are arguably dumb but know how to play the game even if some of them (all of them?) ultimately lose. And the women characters, including Livia, by and large have better self-knowledge than any of the men, even if they too make bad decisions and are both victims of circumstance and active participants in The Family.

but yeah I take the point that another theme is the general coarsening and degradation of American life under late capitalism, and that the characters are products of those processes

My favorite malapropism is when when of the old bosses finds out Tony is seeing a shrink and reassures him 'There's no stigmata about that type of thing these days.'

ooooohhh, I'm looking forward to that one.