My Thoughts on Season 1 of "The Sopranos"

 Spoilers on Season 1 of "The Sopranos" Below:

Imagine a family. In this family there are two brothers, born not too far apart from one another. The older brother down the line becomes a bit of a success; his parents are heaping on the praise, his business is doing well, he’s got a wife and kids; white picket fence; the whole nine yards. The younger one lives in the shadow of his brother his whole life. He’s a bit of a lovable screw up. Every now and again he does something right. Makes a nice investment here and there. But he just isn’t getting the same recognition as his brother from friends and family. In later years though, the older brother’s success begins to play against him. He gets complacent, a bit doughy, fat, and greedy. His business starts to waver and people in his industry begin to doubt his ability. The younger brother finally has an opportunity to get out from under his big bro's shadow. He begins to make a few notable business deals; he gets a girlfriend, and he doesn’t have the big house like his brother but he has a nice apartment and it’s clear that he’s on his way to getting engaged. Suddenly, his older brother is looking like the failure of the family.

If that whole parable didn’t make any sense, let me put it a bit more clearly: it’s the (slightly flourished) story of movies (the older brother) and television shows (the younger brother). As film studios became strapped for cash they pushed out middle of the run films (and the creative talent associated with them – including David Chase) that weren’t big budget block busters but, though not independent films, were creatively impressive. Even though the marginalized talent still believed in the greatness of cinema, they perceived of an opportunity to be had in television. Always a bit more cash strapped than the film studios, television networks became a breeding ground for quality visual media. So much so that many have argued that the past 15 or so years have ushered in a golden age of television that began to put television in many instances on the same creative tier as movies. Nowhere was this example more obvious than David Chase’s The Sopranos. 

To say The Sopranos was influential on television dramas is like saying that The Beatles were influential on music. Though the series is deeply indebted to many series that became before it (Hill Street Blues played around with the serialization that the show would go on to use so effectively, Oz told an antiheroism narrative that the show would come to adopt, and Twin Peaks was one of the first series to have the distinct stamp of one unique, auteuristic vision), it was so audacious and so flippantly breaking television conventions more than any series that came before it that it became impossible for it to not be part of the conversation at the time it was on the air. The Sopranos in turn opened the flood gate for a slew of excellent dramas; FX created The Shield because HBO proved that this type of drama could be successful; AMC was similarly inspired in its decision to take a risk on Mad Men and Breaking Bad (whose antihero elements are deeply indebted to the series); even Lost’s complex, intricate storytelling owes tribute to The Sopranos convincing television networks that given the right formula, people are willing to watch slow burn, long, complex television stories.    

A recent convention has cropped up where hating on The Sopranos and being cynical and angry at it (for the shortcomings in later seasons and its ending, which considerably divided and pissed off many) is almost the accepted norm. But that refusal to remember and acknowledge how damn good the show was and how much quality, ambitious, interesting television the show provided over the series’ run is unfair. The show had its flaws, no question about it (the depiction of race in "A Hit is a Hit" is very caricature, and the storylines for the kids were always just shy of being cliche). But come on: James Gadolfini and Edie Falco were acting powerhouses. And in the hands of the incredibly capable and competent hands of David Chase and his writing staff (including a burgeoning Matt Weiner who would go on to create Mad Men) the best of their, and the rest of the casts’ (particularly Nancy Marchand as Livia Soprano, who is an absolute monster), acting abilities were allowed to shine very bright in deed. 

So what made the series so groundbreaking? Well, for starters, it amped up the moral greyness, in its characters, in its themes, in its plot, in the questions in its audience asked themselves (David Chase has a dreadfully negative view of humanity and everybody in the show is on one level or another a bit of an asshole). This doesn’t seem like a big deal, until one considers the fact that for some 70 odd years’ prior, next to every tv series played it safe. They didn’t try to make you think deeply or complexly. They instead aimed to attract the broadest base of an audience to sell ads (I'm being purposefully noninclusive and broad in this statement here. Many would argue that television has been constantly forced to evolve to survive changing trends and tastes). The Sopranos had little intention of pleasing or appealing to anyone. 

It was a gangster show that wasn’t about gangsters. It featured gangsters and their dirty work, but In fact, the show arguably had more to do with Tony dealing with his personal life (his mother, his wife and kids, living in suburbia, talking to his shrink); most of the mafiosa business stuff tended to be in the subplots or background of the series. Thus it made great contrast and juxtaposition of these conflicting elements. 

The Sopranos also made infamous its penultimate episodes, establishing the trend of series putting their most climactic, explosive moments in their second to last episodes, and focusing on quieter finales that tied up loose ends. It’s largely a considerably better form of telling television that entails more satisfying, holistic narratives. 

The series told its stories with such confidence, and never held our hand through it. There’s no breather post-pilot; we’re immediately thrown into the deep end and left to figure out who’s who and what’s what on our own. 

The series also had a penchant for anticlimaxes; Chase wanted the show to feel true to real life, and so conflicts rarely ever boiled over, but instead fizzled out. It would often wrap up a story quickly than let it drag on like some shows might (this is apparent when Tony and Junior resolve their beef in the third episode. It’s a story that looks to be the driving force of the season and it ends in anticlimax). 

On a smaller scale, little details were noteworthy, such as exposition causally taking place in locations such as a strip club or on the side of the road, or people getting beat on or whacked for seemingly no reason (and often). 

But perhaps most important was the show’s sense of continuity, of the accumulation of past actions and events that weighed on the future. The series nailed down its characters and then never deviated from what we knew about them, and it used what we knew about the characters to bear on the plot and give it a richness of detail.  

As Todd VanDerwerf so accurately put it, the show isn’t exactly a series one adores, but one holds with a level of almost reverence. People really go out of their way to get people to see series such as Breaking Bad and The Wire (both excellent series on par in quality with The Sopranos), but The Sopranos is almost put on a pedestal where we don’t necessarily watch it to enjoy it but just to appreciate everything it’s choosing to be. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an entertaining series (with a dark, absurd sense of humor) but people tend to discuss the series as an out of body experience as if the show exists outside of itself, only mattering for how it came to bear on the whole of television. 

This short shrifts the series though. Chase built up a great world worth inhabiting and filled with interesting, fully realized characters. And he used both to tell some thematically rich and complex stories. 

It’s right there from the get-go. Just look at that theme. Has a theme ever so perfectly captured the essence of what a show was all about before? The visuals combined with Alabama 3’s “Woke Up This Morning” playing over it provide our first entry point into the dark, twisted world we’re about to enter and it does it with steely panache. It’s utterly cool and stylish, but it’s dark and gritty; almost world weary. 

Now the series is really good in its Pilot, and its Pilot is rather confident and telling of the direction the series would head (there’s an overwhelming sense of dread and decay hanging over the episode that would continue throughout the first season), but it wasn’t until “College” that The Sopranos definitively became the series we know it to be today, and that it proved itself to be significantly different from television that came before it. While Tony is visiting colleges with his daughter Meadow, he sees a former mob member turned witness protection. The whole time you can’t imagine Tony killing this guy. This guy is a nobody; he’s done nothing to warrant being killed. And yet Tony does. The Sopranos wasn’t going to play by televisions rules. HBO was against the murder, but Chase stood steadfast arguing that viewers would respect Tony even less if he didn’t go through with it. It’s not just this moment that makes the episode so fantastic (there are some great scenes between Tony and Meadow where she asks him about the “family business”, and the scenes between Carmella and Father Intintola are equally interesting), but it’s this moment in particular where the series started to truly come into its own; to take risks that other series would shy away from.   

Those people who argue that we were or weren’t supposed to like Tony Soprano miss the point entirely. The show purposefully makes the relationship we invest with Tony to be incredibly complicated to the point where it becomes hard to decide whether we find him to be a monster or a man doing what’s necessary to provide for his family, or perhaps even a bit of both. There’s even the more interesting question of whether Tony’s therapy sessions actually helped make him better at his job. Does that in turn implicate Dr. Melfi as being responsible on some level for the many crimes Tony Soprano committed? 

I’m not going to belabor the point. There's plenty more to say (I haven't even gotten around to mentioning how awesome the show was at depicting interngerational conflicts, which remains to be my favorite aspect of it). Many and more have written about the series and what made it so groundbreaking, and they’ve done it much better than I have or could. Needless to say, to understand American television as it currently stands, you can’t get around having at least a basic knowledge of The Sopranos.

"The Conformist" - Film Review

Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is one of cinema’s most unremorseful, broken sociopaths.

He wants people to like him. He wants his mom to love him (even though she’s distracted and sleeping with the chauffer); he’s got major mommy issues. He wants to be in control, especially of the women in his life; he takes more than a little pleasure in a few rape fantasies. He’ll get people to like him any way he can; he’s conniving and deceptive to everyone, especially himself. 

He’s obsessed with appearances. He wants the outside world to believe he’s perfect. He’s a fascist, or at least he wants to Italian government to think this in order to advance his career. Thus he joins the Fascist party without a second thought. He’s suppressing some hidden homosexuality, and he chooses to marry a woman Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli) because it’s the normal, good looking thing to do. At 34, he needs to marry or people will start asking questions, and he just couldn’t let that happen.

Above all else, Marcello is, as the title claims, a conformist. He could care less about his wife; he could care less about fascism; he could care less about cheating on his wife; he could care less about religion but he’ll still pretend to practice it. He mustn’t look bad. His outward appearance must conform to people’s expectations. 

Bernardo Bertolucci shoots the film with a calculated stillness; a rigid uniformity; a blue-hazed, hermetic, sanitized, dull facade. The world Marcello exists in is as empty as his cold black heart. 

Part of the secret police, Marcello is sent to kill a radical professor (Enzo Tarascio) in exile in France. There he seduces the professor’s wife Anna (Dominique Sanda), partly to take more pleasure when he kills her and partly because he’s attracted to her ability to cut through “conforming”, constricting social standards. The film is charged with noticeable sexual currents growing out of Marcello’s fractured sexual identity, his obsessive desire for perverted sexual experiences, and his interior state clashing with his disillusionment of the outside world.

This morbid, fascinating character study is delightfully twisted. The film works as both an examination of the effects of fascism and conformity more generally. Its sumptuous, absorbing visuals are equally matched by a penetrating look into the mind of its protagonist.

Grade: B+

"Yojimbo" - Film Review

Yojimbo is almost pulpy in its execution. From the 60’s blaring pop to the over-the-top (sometimes shoddy) fight sequences to its central plot about a lone warrior dead-set on stirring up trouble, it’s one part sensational to every part topnotch craftsmanship.

Of course in the hands of the always competent and ingenious writer-director Akira Kurosawa, this material is elevated to the point where it rises above some of its more lurid and junk qualities.

Though the plots thin, the story is too fun and energetic not to win you over. Stylistically the film heavily borrows from noir, gangster, and Westerns genres to become its own unique vision.  At times it feels more American than Japanese, like a good old American gangster showdown than a kung fu good versus evil matchup. Indeed, the former samurai (Toshiro Mifune) plays two evil rival factions vying for supremacy off eachother to rid the town of their ill designs. In the process he deceives, kills, and generally does bad things in the name of the greater good.  

The film is notable for its massive influence on the Western. Sergio Leone re-made the movie in A Fistful of Dollars, and Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name was heavily influenced by Mifune’s character. 

Kurosawa turned time and again to tails of samurai; he took the period trappings of Tokugawa and Post-Tokugawa Japan and plumbed the simple tales of samurai warriors to tell whatever story that pleased him. Here Kurosawa mines the simple narrative for all its worth and molds it into an immensely, purely fun film that’s highly cinematic and incredibly exciting.   

Grade: A-

"My Neighbor Totoro" - Film Review

My Neighbor Totoro looks like a lovely painting. There’s a watercolor, impressionistic quality to the film that lend it a richness that is missing in many other animated films. And what the film often lacks in the way of plot, it makes up for with gorgeous, naturalistic animation that’s color palette is warm, soft, and inviting, and whose imagery is often impressively intricate and detailed. The film is filled with depictions of wildlife and nature that have painstaking anatomical accuracy.

Totoro is also great for being a film about kids that doesn’t feel childish or pandering. There are no talking, anthropomorphic animals and a lot of the darker elements never get fully resolved. 

This isn’t to say the film is completely dark; in fact, the film is carried by a childlike whimsy and a sense of wonder. However, it’s a commendable how the film slips in subtle, darker elements into the film, notably an ailing mother with (what appears to be) a terminal disease. 

Part of the film’s charm comes from grounding the more imaginative, marvelous facets amongst a world that feels incredibly realistic. It’s like finding the wondrous amongst the mundane. Indeed, the film‘s plot centers around a father and his two daughters moving to an old house out in the countryside; a story that in of itself holds nothing special until the story peels back layers to reveal forest spirits and soot sprites hiding in the rafters. 

Much of the film early on has little interest with establishing a plot (surprising for a film that clocks in at under a hour and a half). Rather it meanders and builds up a world worth exploring and draws us in through its beautiful imagery. The film seems more concerned with creating a particular tone, and allowing us to appreciate the artistry at hand.

Outstanding animation and a fantastic visions all its own make My Neighbor Totoro a great animated film and one of the best from writer-director Hayao Miyazaki.

Grade: B+

The Vampire Diaries - "Stand by Me" - Review

The Vampire Diaries has proven itself capable of handling death very well. When Jenna and Alaric died, "The Sun Also Rises" and "Do Not Go Gentle" provided incredibly well the emotional heft these particular moments deserved. For both these episodes, the series set aside large amounts of time just to have people mourn for the loss of the people they loved and cared about.

“Stand by Me”, however, is an episode about a dead person that doesn’t feel like it’s about that death, and that’s a bit disconcerting at times. 

Part of the problem is that other plot wheels keep turning in the background, such as the rise of Silas and Damon’s search for Bonnie. Other problems arise from how Elena deals with this situation. So though it’s an episode about the death of Jeremy, it becomes an episode primarily about Elena. 

This isn’t entirely unreasonable. She did just lose her brother and in turn her last human connection. Some of her reaction in theory is interesting and plausible, but the writers keep driving it further and further to a point where it feels overstated.

Not only that, but I’m not sure this is a direction that the show necessarily wants to take the character in. We end with Damon using the sirebond to shut off her humanity and Elena burning down her house to cover up Jeremy’s death. 

Now I liked the idea of Elena becoming a vampire; it felt bold and decisive and suggested exciting potential directions for the future of the series. Indeed, the season three finale is one of the show’s brightest moments, and yet nothing has ever been as well-realized as that momentous plot decision seemed to point towards. 

To an extent it’s brought out interesting aspects of her character that I really like, but it’s largely been poorly handled. First with the sirebond misstep, and then with the cure, both of which undermined the very premises of the series at large and the plots advanced up to that point.

But Elena as a vampire and Elena with no humanity are two polar opposite character decisions. Her becoming a vampire almost feels inevitable now, but her losing her humanity feels wrong even as it remains shocking and unexpected. Elena has always been defined by her humanity; her need to help and care for others is a defining trait; what happens now that that’s gone? 

Don’t get me wrong; perhaps it’ll end up being an absolutely ingenious decision. But for now I’m not sure the show can surefootedly deal with such a huge changeup (It really hasn’t seriously been capable of such a major shakeup since the third season). 

Mourning elsewhere isn’t entirely off. Matt gets some great moments where he confronts Jeremy’s death. Bonnie’s reaction to the news is also nice and believable, even though it’s undermined by how batshit crazy Bonnie is starting to become. 

But everywhere else it’s nonexistent. Damon and Rebekah are off in their own stories, too busy to consider or care about the matter. Stefan makes one passing comment about feeling sad but never really shows any outward emotions towards the death. Caroline is still too concerned about Tyler to even really notice the death.  

And thus the death passes without the weight it deserves. Elena would be the one to react the most and the hardest to this, but it’s played up to the point where I stopped buying it.  

May be this comes down to intention versus execution. I can understand what the writers intended (in fact, I find what they intended to do to be brilliant), but in execution, it just doesn't work as gracefully as it feels like it could. 

Stray Observations:

-Don't get me wrong, this is a very good episode that moves forward with clarity and efficiency, but I couldn't stop shaking how forced it felt in places. 

-Silas can take up the appearance of other people (in this case Shane) and is manipulating Bonnie to do his bidding.

-Caroline is uncertain about what to do and suggests “make a casserole” amongst her list of how to help.

-“That’s Damon Logic: you’re mean to the ones you love.”

-The use of the music to drown out everything else while Bonnie talks and the camera closes in on Elena is wonderful. It’s very atypical music for this series. I got a very Breaking Bad vibe. 

Grade: B+

Community - "Conventions of Space and Time" - Review

There are two major aspects to shows and movies that make them what they are: form and content. Form is structure; it’s the types of shots and lighting and editing that frame everything we see. Then there’s content; content boils down to plots and characters. It’s who we’re watching, and what they’re doing.

Form wise Community is much, much less snappier. Its pacing is slower, and the cuts are a bit more lackadaisical. 

Content wise the show is ostensibly the same … and yet it’s not.

The whole idea of an Inspector Spacetime Convention doesn’t actually sound all that interesting in the first place. This was a one-off joke that became overused and grating. It worked as background piece of set dressing but beyond that we didn’t need any more elaboration on how it fit into the show’s universe. 

So the initial idea for the content of this episode doesn’t hold water. Fine. There’s been plenty of Community ideas I can say the same thing for, and they still worked better than I’d expect… This, however, is not one of them. 

The problems begin to crop up with the fact that the writers don’t seem to have any clue what to do with the characters beyond Abed and Troy. None of them, besides Britta who is now Troy’s paramour, would ever have any reasonable interest in the convention. The reasons the show then proceeds to contrive to get the rest of the cast in the picture utilize them poorly or implausibly, or both (not to mention there’s no Dean and no Chang – Although I could do without Chang so that’s fine by me).   

The most obvious here is Alison Brie’s Annie. Not only do I not believe Annie would fake being married to Jeff and then have the rest of the hotel staff play along with it, but, more importantly, it begs the question what is the point of this? It’s a storyline that detracts from the nuance we’ve seen built up in this character. She’s no longer that doe-eyed naïve girl we knew way back in season one and this is a step back for her character. Brie does the best with the material but it’s simply not very funny and doesn’t add up with what we know about the character. She’s off by herself for far too long for no foreseeable reason. 

Britta’s also largely poorly utilized. The fact is that the show hasn’t elaborated enough on the Troy-Britta relationship to justify it or even to define what it is. But Britta exists as nothing more than a roadblock in this episode whose sole purpose is to keep Troy from Abed while Abed deals with the cuckoo #1 Inspector Spacetime Fan.   

Shirley and Pierce’s storyline isn’t half-bad actually (and nicely humorously meta), and it’s practically the only real reason that makes sense for their appearance whatsoever. But they’re disconnected from the rest of the plot for too long, and it all feels massively, massively contrived.  

This wasn’t very funny, and altogether very formless. It was even a little heartless, like a succubus masquerading as Community and ripping out what remained of its heart entirely. 

Grade: C+

"The Conversation" - Film Review

For more than two-thirds of its existence, film has been a medium of sounds. Yes, films are a visual medium and part of their artistry and impact comes through the visual design. But it also largely comes from a film’s sound design. Films create visual landscapes, but they also form “soundscapes”, whole worlds of sound that describe the particular world the film is set in and cue us in on what’s taking place.

The Conversation is a film about wiretapping and surveillance, and in that vein it’s a film whose sound design is carefully calculated and matched or disassociated with the images we’re witnessing. Take the opening scene for example. We have super wide shot of a public plaza, but the sound we are hearing doesn’t match with what we’re seeing. We’ll soon discover it’s part of a recording for a surveillance operation. But before that, we’re not entirely sure where we’re supposed to be looking at in this crowded space. 

The film is also a story of voyeurism. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is an introvert who’s barely socially functional; he can barely hold conversations not on his work in everyday life. So it’s fitting that his personality should lead him into a line of work where he doesn’t have to interact with people; he can just observe other people without having to get involved. 

Harry is also massively paranoid. He’s jittery about even using his own home phone, using a payphone or outside line to make calls. His paranoia in turn leads to obsession. He’s obsessed with his most recent job, a recording of a conversation between a man and woman. He’s certain he has the scenario figured out, and the more he begins analyzing the tapes, the more positive he becomes that the two individuals might get murdered. 

Harry wants to give the tapes to the company that hired him, be done with the job, and clean his hands of the whole mess, but his fragile moral compass keeps leading him to what he believes is true north. He’s obsessing over the case, and increasingly becoming fearful for his own life. Apparently he did a case out in New York years ago that led to the killing of three people, and he still feels guilty and haunted by it. It’s the reason he moved out to San Francisco in the first place. 

Despite knowing he ought to get out while he can and throw his blinders on, he finds himself unable to stop getting involved and interfering. The more he pushes back, the shakier the ground he walks on becomes. The light, jazzy piano score starts to ramp up into more industrial and electronic as the stakes get higher, the cuts of shuts become quicker, and Harry’s paranoid state more frequently starts to seep through the screen. 

Writer-Director Francis Ford Coppola is primarily remembered for making The Godfather films, which are absolute masterpieces. But while Godfather Part I and II and Apocalypse Now are recognized as unequivocally brilliant works, The Conversation often get short shrifted. This is a shame because it’s a masterful, surefooted, engrossing thriller. The film features much of what made Coppola’s other movies great: impeccable writing and technical craft, unparalleled character work, and a hard to peg down feeling of texture and richness.   

Grade: A-