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Post by JesusLooksLikeMe on May 16, 2004 6:00:49 GMT -5
For Master Simpson, poet and troubador...
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Post by riley on May 16, 2004 7:12:18 GMT -5
It's just about starting to feel like home around here.
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Post by Weeping_Guitar on May 16, 2004 8:38:35 GMT -5
When are the tea and crumpets served for the re-opening?
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Post by mellie on May 16, 2004 9:43:14 GMT -5
I prefer scones with jam and cream myself.
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Post by Meursault on May 16, 2004 11:43:00 GMT -5
Hi.
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Post by riley on May 16, 2004 11:44:57 GMT -5
Hey Chico. What's the word? ;D
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Post by Meursault on May 16, 2004 11:54:17 GMT -5
Oh not much, i want to go see GZA at St.Antonios in the city. Don't know where to get tickets though.
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Post by riley on May 16, 2004 12:02:52 GMT -5
What's GZA? Sorry I'm like 60 years old and don't understand all the hip terms you kids are using these days  |
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Post by Meursault on May 16, 2004 12:09:32 GMT -5
He's like cited a lot as the best rapper from Wu Tang Clan.
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Post by riley on May 16, 2004 12:12:17 GMT -5
I thought that dirty bastard fucker with the bad teeth was supposed to be their best?
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Post by Meursault on May 16, 2004 12:28:11 GMT -5
Haha perhaps in the crazy entertainment way yes.
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Post by luke on May 16, 2004 17:27:02 GMT -5
I was just about to tear into that Shirley Manson stuff, Jesus, and then they stole it all from me.
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Post by Mary on May 16, 2004 18:43:31 GMT -5
OK, I got caught up on the sopranos once again last night, and I guess this is probably the best place to post my thoughts.... needless to say, if you haven't seen last week's episode, there will be spoilers included...
I'm really starting to see what ekul means about how they've obviously stretched out the finale into two seasons, at the cost of sacrificing some continuity and tightness. The Sopranos has always lacked continuity, and it's always been one of its strongest points, but I'm not sure if a season has ever before opened up so many loose ends and subplots and then just left them dangling for episodes on end. At this point, we've got all of the following issues, unresolved, all potentially hurtling toward catastrophe:
adriana blabbing to the feds
tony and carm's impending divorce
vito is gay (and how fucking great was that very brief, wordless scene last night when vito's in the bada bing staring somewhat uncomfortably at the stripper??)
meadow and finn's engagement
bad blood between new york and new jersey, and johnny sack's increasing bitterness and recklessness
christopher's resentment against just about everybody, especially the two tonys
...and really, that's only some of the shit that's going down. There's gotta be some kind of insane resolution coming with the new york/new jersey stuff, but I'm still desperate to know what happens with the adriana subplot, and that's been played waaaaay down, barely even acknowledged, ever since the car crash episode. I understand the art of builidng up tension, but on the other hand, I can see how this could become frustrating if the show ties itself up in so many subplots, and then leaves over half of them unresolved, or just drops shit like it's never happened at all. There's something to be said for fucking around with the pat, unrealistic narratives of typical tv shows, but on the other hand, there's also something to be said for actually having a narrative arc of some discernible sort!
All that said, as a stand-alone piece of directing and writing, last night's episode was a fucking masterpiece. The style was markedly different from other sopranos episodes - the directing in particular was quite experimental and played around with a lot of stylistic techniques. The most noticeable thing was how the camera played on the idea of space between people, as a metaphor for pscyhological distance - you almost never got a scene in which two people were both on camera at the same time just facing each other. Instead, you either got a single face, like tony's or whoever, or people communicating with each other through strange refractions or distortions - like Janice talking to Bobby in the mirror, or Carmela constantly off in the side of the camera doing something else while Tony rages about the emptied pool, or the truly bizarre Melfi/Tony session where the camera jumps rapid-fire from one face to another, often in weird, distorted frames. if this makes any sense at all,the directing felt kind of european - intensely psychological, abstract. All about solitude and isolation. It felt like someone invited Ingmar Bergman to direct a Sopranos episode! It was really beautiful to watch, we were so struck by the direction that we immediately rewound and watched it a second time.
The writing was also great - so many classic one-liners, and James Gandolfini's best acting performance of the season by far. The fact that you actually felt sorry for janice - JANICE of all people - when Tony just started ripping into her at dinner, shit that was brilliant. Christopher's hilarious assertion that he'd be successful as a male model, but just wouldn't wanna hang around that sort of people. Tony's mangled proverb - "revenge is like serving cold cuts". The dude in anger management who said in that perfect deadpan "this is fucking priceless" when Janice goes nuts about the civil rights movement. They should give that guy a permanent role on the show. I want him to get an Emmy just for the way he delivered that line! And the show was fully of classic literary allusions, just the way we like it.... Christopher staring at the skull a la "alas, poor yorick", melfi quoting yeats and tony just saying "what the fuck are you talking about?"... it was everything I loved about the show in one episode... except for the nagging irritation at the overall arc of the season lacking any kind of resolution.
Holy shit. Is is really obvious, between this post and my blabbering on and on about chinatown earlier today, that I have an absolute shitload of work I ought to be doing??
Cheers,
M
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Post by luke on May 16, 2004 20:07:46 GMT -5
About to watch the next episode in a mere ten minutes...ooh yeah.
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Post by Ryosuke on May 17, 2004 1:56:58 GMT -5
Sorry to interrupt, but have any of you folks ever been molested on a train? Well, it happens pretty often in Japan, I'm afraid (the Japanese people are sick pervs), but I always thought that it was something that men do to women, not the other way around! Because some woman fucking molested me on my way to work last Friday! I first noticed that her hands were touching my legs, but since I'm a guy, and as a guy, I don't usually see myself as a victim of molestation, I figured that her hand just happened to be there because the train was crowded (we're talking about an 8 AM weekday train in Tokyo here). And then her hands started crawling up my legs, to which I went "whoa", and then she started caressing my crotch. And then she kind of scooted away from me kind of hurriedly (maybe she was afraid that I'd catch her or something), and got off at Mitaka station and that was that. I couldn't get a good look at her face, so I don't know what she looked like, but fucking freaked me out, it did.
PS Yes, I did develop a hard-on from being groped. Yeah, I know, shut up.
PPS No, I've never molested anyone, male or female, before. I swear.
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