Have you calmed down yet? Are you over the orgasmic delight you felt at the way David Chase defied all predictions about the end of his beloved series, The Sopranos? Have you recovered from your rage about ambiguity, a lack of closure, and Journey? Good. Now let’s clear a few things up.
In honor of the final episode of The Sopranos, Culture Snob takes a look at five minutes from The Wire – a show that probably wouldn’t exist were it not for that crime family from Jersey. This brief audio commentary – part of the “Five Minutes” series – looks at one scene from The Wire’s first season. In these five minutes, the only dialogue that passes between Baltimore Police detectives Bunk and McNulty are variations on the word “fuck” and one utterance of “pow,” but the audience pieces together how this particular murder went down through visual storytelling and acting devoid of meaningful words.
This final “half-season” of The Sopranos – only five episodes remain – reminds me of the movie version of Clue, in the sense that series creator David Chase has set up any number of possible endings, none any better than another. Each week brings new foreshadowing – a new suspect if you’re inclined to think that Tony’s going to bite it – but no real sense of a final destination.
We aspire to erudition here at Culture Snob. Not today. Our task: Re-cast The A-Team for a feature film and a new audience.
I just started watching Deadwood this week – late adopter and all – but found this essay compelling. Comparing the show to both Shakespeare and the first two parts of The Godfather, Andrew Dignan offers trenchant insights not only about HBO’s western series but about the Bard and Coppola’s movies.
“Not with a bang … not even a whimper … it was more like a wet fart.” There’s little point in trying to improve on this opening sentence from the House Next Door’s review of the kinda sorta season finale of The Sopranos.
Back in November, I fretted that Lost would suffer from what I dubbed the “endless hit-TV-series death march. “Oh, my prescience!
Matt Zoller Seitz continues to clearly and insightfully break down the new season of The Sopranos. In his post on “Join the Club,” he makes a connection that seems obvious now, but it eluded me when I watched the episode: With Tony’s brain playing out an alternative existence, The Sopranos is paying its respects to Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective.
Odds and ends before we head off to New Orleans for a wedding. The Sopranos, Ebert on Unknown White Male, and the beauty of a short baseball season.
The ever-divisive Lars von Trier is not known as a storyteller, and that’s the main reason his miniseries The Kingdom – which was released on DVD in November – is so surprising.
