Blondie
~*~*~*~<br><font color=blue>This TF always enjoys
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- Aug 18, 1999
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Looks like it'll be an intense season!
Can't wait for 9PM tonight!
Will you be watching?
'The Sopranos' Returns: Got a Problem with That?
By Jacqueline Cutler
Zap2it.com
The brilliance of "The Sopranos" is that it portrays mobsters as real men. Sure, it shows them as the thieving thugs they are, smashing in heads over a slight or riddling bodies with bullets for more severe transgressions.
But the HBO hit also reveals them as worried and loving fathers and cheating and unforgiving husbands. The brilliance extends to the writing and acting, and can be seen in the costumes, the sets and the backdrop locations.
There is never a false note on this show, and what would be considered terrific on any other program is simply business as usual here.
It seems like hyperbole to crown a show the best, but something has to be, and nothing else comes close. Granted, it features violence and sex, and it offends some Italian-Americans. But the mobsters it portrays are not supposed to be heroes, and no one has ever touted this gritty production as family hour.
One indication of how these characters have seeped into the audience's consciousness is that in the 15 months since the fourth season ended, viewers continue to talk about what will happen. On Sunday, March 7, "The Sopranos" returns with 13 new episodes.
Will crime boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and his long-suffering wife, Carmela (Edie Falco), remain separated? Is he in control of himself, his inner demons and the mob? Can his confidante Christopher (Michael Imperioli) stay off heroin? Will the mob find out that Christopher's fiancee, Adriana (Drea de Matteo), is cooperating with the FBI? And will the FBI finally nab the big guy?
Two of the stars and the first four episodes of the fifth season give some insight. Without being a spoiler, it is fair to say that at least for the first part of the new season, Tony and Carmela are separated, and the huge house in West Caldwell, N.J., is more a shell than a home.
"They have all undergone all kinds of stuff during the course of shooting this thing," Falco says. "It's very organic. The story lines are about people changing according to their internal lives and external lives."
As for Carmela's changes, Falco says, "I guess she has, maybe like everybody else living in this time, gotten a little less confident about all the things that she thought were forever - the stability of her country, walking in the streets, family."
Falco is a lot more pared down than her character. "I have no long nails, no flashy jewelry," she says. "I'm quite different physically, which I absolutely love. It makes me feel like a different person when I'm playing Carmela."
It takes Falco about two hours to transform into a bourgeois Jersey housewife. The teasing of the hair alone takes a while, she says, and once those talons are pasted on, Falco can't even put on the jewelry.
Among the changes Carmela copes with this season is the dissolution of her family. Meadow (Jamie-Lynn (Sigler) DiScala), Tony and Carmela's daughter, is doing well. A student at Columbia University, she shares an apartment, has a boyfriend, and volunteers at a law center in the South Bronx.
Their son, A.J. (Robert Iler), however, is troubled. He resents his mother and is fighting with her. Tony tries plying him with expensive gifts to ease the separation. A.J. is failing school, and the principal (David Strathairn) calls in the parents. This new character seems a likely romantic interest for Carmela now that the object of her fantasies from past seasons, Furio (Federico Castelluccio), is back in Italy and Tony has put out a hit on him.
So the family life is in tatters and the mob life isn't much better.
Culling from stories he read in The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., series creator David Chase introduces mobsters who are freed after 20 years in prison. And they want action.
Robert Loggia, more often seen playing avuncular guys, turns in a bone-chilling performance as Feech La Manna. Steve Buscemi, a director of some past "Sopranos" episodes, steps before the camera to play another sprung jailbird, Tony, a Soprano cousin who wants to go straight.
Tony, the don, can still rely on Christopher -- who is actually Carmela's cousin, but Tony refers to him as a nephew and trusts him like a son.
"We pick up where we left off," Imperioli says. "He's been to rehab, and he's back to Adriana, and back to work, and he's sober. He's dealing with challenges without his crutch of substances."
Imperioli explains that as real as it looked when Christopher was shooting up, he was actually using a needle that retracted into itself. "That would gross me out, putting it in," he says, sounding rather squeamish for someone who plays a character who bashes in brains.
For those who need to see the drama unfold, stop reading. For those who want to know about the beginning of the season, here's a synopsis:
In Sunday's "The Two Tonys," the old mobsters return. Tony's sister, Janice (Aida Turturro), now married to Bobby (Steven R. Schirripa), resents having to make Sunday dinner. Tony tries to date his therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco).
"Rat Pack" on March 14 introduces the new Tony. In a quietly amusing moment, he wears the suit he had before prison, proving that the "Miami Vice" look is best remembered, not revived. The next week, "Where's Johnny?" proves tough guys share about as well as toddlers, and more blood is shed as they try to divide up business. Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico) shows he has never lost his taste for dirty street fighting. And in "All Happy Families," Feech drives the younger guys crazy with his war stories while Carmela and Tony try to deal with A.J.'s problems.
After this year, there is one season remaining. Imperioli, who has written five episodes, knows how he wants to see the finale: "Dark and ugly," he says. "Why not?"
Can't wait for 9PM tonight!
Will you be watching?
'The Sopranos' Returns: Got a Problem with That?
By Jacqueline Cutler
Zap2it.com
The brilliance of "The Sopranos" is that it portrays mobsters as real men. Sure, it shows them as the thieving thugs they are, smashing in heads over a slight or riddling bodies with bullets for more severe transgressions.
But the HBO hit also reveals them as worried and loving fathers and cheating and unforgiving husbands. The brilliance extends to the writing and acting, and can be seen in the costumes, the sets and the backdrop locations.
There is never a false note on this show, and what would be considered terrific on any other program is simply business as usual here.
It seems like hyperbole to crown a show the best, but something has to be, and nothing else comes close. Granted, it features violence and sex, and it offends some Italian-Americans. But the mobsters it portrays are not supposed to be heroes, and no one has ever touted this gritty production as family hour.
One indication of how these characters have seeped into the audience's consciousness is that in the 15 months since the fourth season ended, viewers continue to talk about what will happen. On Sunday, March 7, "The Sopranos" returns with 13 new episodes.
Will crime boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and his long-suffering wife, Carmela (Edie Falco), remain separated? Is he in control of himself, his inner demons and the mob? Can his confidante Christopher (Michael Imperioli) stay off heroin? Will the mob find out that Christopher's fiancee, Adriana (Drea de Matteo), is cooperating with the FBI? And will the FBI finally nab the big guy?
Two of the stars and the first four episodes of the fifth season give some insight. Without being a spoiler, it is fair to say that at least for the first part of the new season, Tony and Carmela are separated, and the huge house in West Caldwell, N.J., is more a shell than a home.
"They have all undergone all kinds of stuff during the course of shooting this thing," Falco says. "It's very organic. The story lines are about people changing according to their internal lives and external lives."
As for Carmela's changes, Falco says, "I guess she has, maybe like everybody else living in this time, gotten a little less confident about all the things that she thought were forever - the stability of her country, walking in the streets, family."
Falco is a lot more pared down than her character. "I have no long nails, no flashy jewelry," she says. "I'm quite different physically, which I absolutely love. It makes me feel like a different person when I'm playing Carmela."
It takes Falco about two hours to transform into a bourgeois Jersey housewife. The teasing of the hair alone takes a while, she says, and once those talons are pasted on, Falco can't even put on the jewelry.
Among the changes Carmela copes with this season is the dissolution of her family. Meadow (Jamie-Lynn (Sigler) DiScala), Tony and Carmela's daughter, is doing well. A student at Columbia University, she shares an apartment, has a boyfriend, and volunteers at a law center in the South Bronx.
Their son, A.J. (Robert Iler), however, is troubled. He resents his mother and is fighting with her. Tony tries plying him with expensive gifts to ease the separation. A.J. is failing school, and the principal (David Strathairn) calls in the parents. This new character seems a likely romantic interest for Carmela now that the object of her fantasies from past seasons, Furio (Federico Castelluccio), is back in Italy and Tony has put out a hit on him.
So the family life is in tatters and the mob life isn't much better.
Culling from stories he read in The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., series creator David Chase introduces mobsters who are freed after 20 years in prison. And they want action.
Robert Loggia, more often seen playing avuncular guys, turns in a bone-chilling performance as Feech La Manna. Steve Buscemi, a director of some past "Sopranos" episodes, steps before the camera to play another sprung jailbird, Tony, a Soprano cousin who wants to go straight.
Tony, the don, can still rely on Christopher -- who is actually Carmela's cousin, but Tony refers to him as a nephew and trusts him like a son.
"We pick up where we left off," Imperioli says. "He's been to rehab, and he's back to Adriana, and back to work, and he's sober. He's dealing with challenges without his crutch of substances."
Imperioli explains that as real as it looked when Christopher was shooting up, he was actually using a needle that retracted into itself. "That would gross me out, putting it in," he says, sounding rather squeamish for someone who plays a character who bashes in brains.
For those who need to see the drama unfold, stop reading. For those who want to know about the beginning of the season, here's a synopsis:
In Sunday's "The Two Tonys," the old mobsters return. Tony's sister, Janice (Aida Turturro), now married to Bobby (Steven R. Schirripa), resents having to make Sunday dinner. Tony tries to date his therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco).
"Rat Pack" on March 14 introduces the new Tony. In a quietly amusing moment, he wears the suit he had before prison, proving that the "Miami Vice" look is best remembered, not revived. The next week, "Where's Johnny?" proves tough guys share about as well as toddlers, and more blood is shed as they try to divide up business. Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico) shows he has never lost his taste for dirty street fighting. And in "All Happy Families," Feech drives the younger guys crazy with his war stories while Carmela and Tony try to deal with A.J.'s problems.
After this year, there is one season remaining. Imperioli, who has written five episodes, knows how he wants to see the finale: "Dark and ugly," he says. "Why not?"
