sopranos

My favourite kinds of imperialism

Matt2 Comments

We’re getting close to the end of The Sopranos. Both Rome and Carnivale only have one more season to offer us. And at the speed at which we’re going through West Wing, President Bartlett will have finished his second term in record time.

How to find good, new series? Used to be, I could pretty much get three out of four HBO series on DVD and be happy for the next year or so. Even if some of them found an untimely end, the journey was absolutely worth it.

Now, though? Can’t say I’m all that interested in Hung, and I’m not sure I would enjoy Big Love (which may be due to my lack of trust in Bill Paxton’s acting abilities – “Game over, man!”, indeed…). What about all these new series starting on other channels, though? The Elmore Leonard series Justified sounds like it might be fun, and I’m definitely hoping to get Caprica, provided that it doesn’t get cancelled after one series.

However, HBO seems to be stepping up its game, with not one but three series premiering this year. The one I’m currently most excited about is the one I only found out about five minutes ago: Boardwalk Empire, by Sopranos alum Terence Winter and Martin Scorsese – yes, you read that right, the Raging Bull of mob cinema himself! Check out the trailer, which looks like the murderous bastard child of Once Upon a Time in America and The Sopranos:

Also looking quite promising, although in a more Norman-Rockwell-meets-Interracial-Slaughter way: The Pacific, which seems to be a sort of companion piece to Band of Brothers. Oh, and it stars the little kid from Jurassic Park, all grown up. Listen, boy, you should know better than to return to island jungles! (Cue bad “Doyouthinkhesaurus?” jokes about jungle warfare…) Again, let me peruse YouTube:

Finally, the creators of my favourite series (it shares the pedestal with Six Feet Under) are doing a new show on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It’s called Treme and it’s got the usual awesome cast of actors, including Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters. It’ll be good to see Lester Freamon and Bunk Moreland back in action!

The end is the beginning is the end

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HBO has been known to do some killer season finales – no pun intended, although it would be a perfectly accurate one in the case of the last episode of Rome‘s first season. The lead-up to the murder of Caesar is masterfully composed and reminiscent of another plot to have a leader and father figure killed in another HBO series: Livia Soprano’s planned killing of that disappointment of a son. (Is it a coincidence that Livia was named for another larger-than-life mother from ancient Rome?)

Throughout the season I’ve been impressed with Ciaran Hinds’ layered portrayal of Caesar, a man whose fierce intelligence, pride and ambition inspire awe even when he’s at his most arrogant and dismissive. His death, even though it’s clear that it’s coming, is startling in its force and brutality – not just in terms of blood and gore, but in terms of the story and the characters. Another favourite of mine (other than Titus Pullo, of course, who’s just a big sweetie when he isn’t murdering people in a jealous rage) is Brutus, who is portrayed by Tobias Menzies with a fascinating mix of hurt pride, bitterness, self-loathing and, strangest of all, genuine love for Caesar.

Another HBO series finale that pushed all the right buttons with me was Generation Kill‘s final episode, “Bomb in the Garden”. It’s rare for a series that is so documentary in its approach to manage its story and character arcs so deftly, but David Simon and Ed Burns have done a brilliant job. The final scene recalls another work by Simon and Burns, namely the ending of The Wire’s season 2, both scenes using a Johnny Cash song (in both cases making me think that perhaps, just perhaps, I ought to check out that Cash guy’s music). And yes, I am quite okay with admitting my considerable man-crush on Alexander Skarsgard.

With all these endings, it’s only fitting that I finally finished Grand Theft Auto IV. So much has been written about the game already that I won’t add anything other than this: I enjoyed the latest installment of Liberty City. If there’s a more convincing, living and breathing city in any game, I haven’t played it yet. Take it away, Philip.

Shame I’ve already used “A Death in the Family”…

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Anyway, it’s really two deaths I’ll be writing about. And the whole notion of family… well, let’s put it this way. It’s complicated.

I’m currently rewatching The Sopranos and I just finished season 3 (“… In which an old friend’s son is shot in the back of the head and Meadow interrupts a sentimental song with thrown chunks of bread and a rendition of a Britney Spears classic”). While the series dealt in ambiguities from the very beginning, season 3 is perhaps the first one where the audience’s complicity is brought to the fore. We root for Tony Soprano, paterfamilias to two families, but for all his charm and for all our sympathy for him (when he’s not being an asshole to the people around him) he is evil – if he is defined by who he is and what he does, he’s evil. Less so than the outright psychos in his entourage (I’m mainly looking at you, Paulie and Ralphie) and more self-aware, but he enables them and depends on them and their actions for his own success.

Up to the end of season 3, we’ve never seen him quite this manipulative and hypocritical, and now it’s seeping into his children more and more. Knowing quite well on one level that her idiot ex was killed because of the system her father upholds, she now defends it – to the face of idiot ex’s sister and with a degree of self-righteousness that is nauseating.

He's behind you!

The problem I have with rewatching The Sopranos, though, is that differently from, say, Deadwood, Six Feet Under or (most of all) The Wire the episodes and seasons are pretty much exchangeable. There’s very little character development – which may be the point, but if you could watch the episodes in pretty much any order and the only thing you can determine by whether it’s season 1, 3 or 6 is how old the kids are and whether Pussy Bompensiero is around? In my books that diminishes the lasting appeal and success of the series.

Talking of deaths in series: since Switzerland is a couple of months behind the States with respect to TV, we only got to see the House season 4 finale now… and what a downer that one was. Even though season 4 was the shortest season of the series ever, most of the episodes after House had chosen his new team felt like retreads (or, in fact, re-re-retreads), but the two finale episodes, “House’s Head” and “Wilson’s Heart”, were among the best and definitely the emotionally strongest episodes. I remember pretty much hating Robert Sean Leonard in Much Ado About Nothing, but together with Hugh Laurie he carries the series even in its most generic episodes. Give him material such as this and he absolutely shines. (And I don’t know what it is, but give me a well-acted man crying his eyes out in a series and I get a big lump in my throad…)

I still don’t think that Kate Beckinsale is talented or particularly beautiful, though, so there.

Give me Emma and Kenneth any time. Please.

Godfather of Funk

Matt2 Comments

Last night we watched The Godfather Part III, for completeness’ sake. When I first watched it, I’d been prepared for something abysmal, so I ended up thinking it wasn’t very good but neither was it that bad. Rewatching it, though, I hardly could believe that it was made by the same people who’d worked on the first two Godfather movies.

Enough has been said about Sophia Coppola’s horrible acting in the film, and it’s a good thing that she’s decided to continue her movie work on the other side of the camera. What struck me this second time was how un-cinematic the film is. Both The Godfather and its first sequel are beautiful films to behold. They have an “Old Masters” glow to them. They look like they come from Hollywood’s glory days.

The Godfather 3, by comparison, looks dowdy. They’ve got some nice sets (or they were allowed to film in gorgeous interiors) – but they’re all presented very flatly, and this flatness is heightened by the often pedestrian editing. Granted, there are scenes that look good and that are edited well, but then there are so many others (especially in the half of the film before they go to Sicily) that feel like ’80s television. Especially dialogues are edited with no feel for tension or flow: character A has a line, finishes it, cut to character B doing his or her sub-standard line, cut to character A again. Yup. Bad television editing.

Checking out IMDB, I find it amazing that the film was nominated at the Academy Awards for its cinematography and editing, and I can only believe that the nominations were the Academy’s form of commiserating what had happened to the venerable series and the equally venerable craftsmen working on it.

But I have to wonder: what happened to the Francis Ford Coppola who directed the first two Godfather movies? Or Apocalypse Now? Or The Conversation, a masterfully told tale of paranoia?

P.S.: I don’t get the praises and nominations for the writing either. If the previous Godfather movies were Shakespearean, this one was largely day-time soap… and its attempts at political intrigue were muddled, implying larger schemes but ultimately feeling like so much sound and fury signifying nothing.

What’s in the box?!

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I’ve thought before that Al Swearengen would make a good shrink (if shrinks took to stabbing their more annoying patients or slashing their throats, that is). I now think that the Indian head in a box he’s got might do an even better job; at the very least, it’s doing a great job of calming down Swingen’s temper. Or perhaps it’s gleets that do that to you.

A man and his head

I have to admit though that I wasn’t too keen on “Childish Things”, last night’s episode of Deadwood. There was something off about the writing and some of the acting – somehow it felt more like someone trying to imitate the Deadwood style and not quite managing. I wonder whether that’s also down to the director, Tim van Patten, who’s done quite a lot of Sopranos but no Deadwood. Added to which he directed some of the weaker episodes of the late, great HBO mobster series.

Still, there was a lot to like or even love about “Childish Things”. There was the gripping scene between Francis Wolcott and Joanie Stubbs in the darkened front room of the now defunct Chez Amis. (One of the things that make Wolcott so fascinating is that you really never know what he’ll do next. He doesn’t seem to know himself, and there’s this subtle trace of sadness at his own ignorance in him.) There was the priceless scene where Dan finds out about Al’s favourite rotting head-in-a-box. There was the moving scene where Charlie Utter confesses to Wild Bill’s grave just how worried he is about Calamity Jane. And there was Ellsworth sweet proposal to Alma Garrett.

But damn, boy, Bullock and his wife ought to go and see a marriage counsellor real soon. Who knows, perhaps Al and his amazing head could give the two of them a good talking to…

P.S.: No points for those who guessed what film the title quote is from. Anyway, perhaps you specifically need an Indian head to get the positive effects; Gwyneth Paltrow’s may have more of a “Must shoot the smug bastard several times and then go bonkers!” effect on people. Or at least on Brad.

What’s that? Jennifer Aniston?