Really isn’t that good. But the subject matter of how right wing brainwashes people is so important.
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I’m trying to instigate the first ever title war. Who will be the first regular user to wield their innate powers and challenge the established hegemony?
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I’ve seen Blue Streak way too many times and it never gets old.
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Finished my rewatch of The Americans. I have no idea why people ignore this show. When it aired, I didn’t know a soul that watched it. I don’t think I’ve gotten anyone other than my dad to watch it on streaming. It’s so elite. The leads are outstanding, the Cold War is under dramatized in TV and compelling, the costumes / wigs / sets are all period piece porn. The use of music is probably my favorite of any show ever (plus 80s music crushes ldo). It also completely stuck the finale when so few dramas are able to in this age.
Now watch this clip with a pre-Ozark Julia Garner and the best song of the 80s that no one knows.
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+1
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I don’t think Gandolfini wanted to do any more. His filming schedule was brutal, he’s in like 80% of scenes.
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That makes sense. He was risking typecasting already by then too I think, or maybe thought he was. He’d already been in a million things before that show but whenever anybody saw his face it was immediately “Tony Soprano” who came to mind.
And hell, I think we covered this on 22, but Chase could have made half a season out of all the dangling threads he left in prior episodes. I always thought a cool (if somewhat fan-servicey) alternative ending would have been tying some or all of those up.
checked to see if this show was included in my Acorn TV amazon subscription, sadly it’s not. Also this was the first result, come on Bezos, you need to do a better job of rank ordering my search results based on my buying history.
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I remember my sister loving Callan when it was originally shown on British TV. I was too young to be allowed to stay up for it the first time round (the same went for Monty Python).
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Gandolfini was such a great actor that I don’t think being typecast would have mattered. You watch five minutes of him playing another character and you’re all OK I’m in. But he was kind of misused in his post-Sopranos film career – the mayor in Pelham 123, CIA director in Zero Dark 30, random general in In the Loop. Bit part authority figure with like ten minutes of screen time. Total waste of his talent. He was fine, but that’s not how he’s best used. Only thing I really liked that I saw was basically the last thing he was in, Enough Said, where he and Julia Louise-Dryfuss were the leads. All those other parts he’s in talky minor roles, in Enough Said he and Julia are acting it up all over the screen. Really great movie, shame that he died only once he started really getting his footing post-Sopranos. Too much coke and rigatoni I guess. One of the few times a celebrity death actually hit me. Most of the time I’m all oh Paul Walker/Kobe/whoever died? That’s a shame Seinfeld.gif. But I was legit sad when Gandolfini died.
I’m glad Chase didn’t tie up all those threads, I never cared about the Chechen Interior Decorator or if that fat guy in Season 1 was actually a rat or anything like that. I liked the uncertainty and sense of dread and impending doom of all the things that could blow back on Tony at any moment. And that makes the ending just that much more rewarding when the Vipers hire the guy in the Members Only jacket to wack Tony as payback for stealing their wine and calling their motorcycle club a girl scout troop.
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I’m watching it on DVD, ludicrous.
If you ever get access to it on US amazon then looks like the two series there are actually the 3rd and 4th. I’m halfway through 3 and it seems the best yet, the first 2 were in B&W and about half of the episodes got wiped from existence by philistines.
You should watch The Drop if you haven’t. Tom Hardy and Gandolfini together is a great thing. I don’t remember how big his roll was but I think he got plenty of screen time
That is weird, because Chase was originally only going to make the show 4 or 5 seasons until HBO famously backed up the dump truck full of money to his house.
I wouldn’t be surprised, especially since Chase insisted Gandolfini get fatter and fatter to play Tony over the course of the series. Might have contributed to his death.
This is an awesome movie where he plays someone nothing like Tony.
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I mean, I know loose ends were never getting tidied up because that’s not how Chase operates and it’s part of his genius. But even still there’s stuff I’d have liked to know about (beyond the most obvious “did the Russian survive?”):
-wtf happened between Finn and Meadow? We got complete closure with all her other boyfriends, including wholly-uninteresting Noah played by possibly the worst actor ever to appear on the show except maybe Lady Gaga who didn’t even get any lines, but Finn was a major character and we were left with Meadow saying, “I don’t want to talk about it” ???
-Furio. What the fuck man? Dead or alive or what? Stupida fucking plotline
-did Vito’s kid survive Jesus Camp or nah?
-anything else at all from Melfi? I don’t see the point of showing us glimpses of her personal life and her sessions with her therapist if nothing mattered outside of her doctor/patient relationship with Tony, but we literally never see her again once she drops him as a patient
-is Adriana’s car still in Long Term Parking?
-is Crazy Horse still the hottest club in North Jersey?
-did Visiting Day ever figure out how to work choruses into their songs?
-okay one thing on Noah, did the C- actually fuck him?
-did Meadow’s crazy roommate pull the rest of her hair out?
-did Tony do more business with Zellman after the beating?
-did he get revenge on Irina? It seems very out of character for him not to
And so on. Plus the stuff hanging at the end like the fates of Silvio, Junior, who runs the Lupertazzi family after Phil, etc.
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Let me tell you a couple of three things.
Junior spends the rest of his life locked up in a state mental hospital. Furio? Alive! Silvio? Yeah OK I’ll give you that one, but it didn’t bother me at the time. Only Lupertazzi person I was invested in was Lil’ Carmine, and he’s out, so I don’t much care who gets that job. Like I don’t think I could name anyone else in their leadership without looking it up. Rusty? Is that a guy?
Tony beating Zellman in front of Irina and ruining their relationship WAS getting revenge on Irina. Her cousin told him that Zellman broke up with her a little bit after that, OK she’s miserable again? I’m all set.
Melfi? I mean we didn’t see her after the last session, but that last session made sense and I understand why she ended their therapy. And that was in The Blue Comet, right? Second to last episode? I’m OK with that although I was always wanting more of Melfi/Tony, but that’s just good writing and storytelling imo.
Other than that all I’m getting is you wanted more of Vito Jr and Noah. Sad!
edit: probably not Rusty
Probably Butch DeConcini.
The guy who sat there and watched Tony curbstomp that dude and got a .38 pointed at his face for his trouble? That scene gives him a lot of motivation to kill Tony actually, he’d have a hard time dealing with Tony on equal footing after that, let alone being the one who should really have more power. Tony would always look at Butchie and remember the time he was basically cowering in fear. Every time they met Tony would have a condescending smirk on his face, remembering that situation.
“Get a mop”
Still think it was probably The Vipers who ordered the hit on Tony but Butchie is a strong contender.
Yeah I think there’s a good chance Butch is behind it-- in particular the location of the hit on Tony suggests revenge for Phil being murdered in front of his family– but I also just think he was the #2 to Phil at the time, so it makes sense he’d move up.
A lot of people had incentive to kill Tony, though, which I think is part of the point of us not knowing for sure.
Finished Bojack last night. Great show. I think it would have been better if he had actually died in the second to last episode
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