The Sopranos – Review
Friday, August 20th, 2010
There was so much talk about this HBO series that i had to see it sooner or later. Now i guess sooner was the case because i have seen it now. And i must honestly say that it was a weird experience. It definitely is a special series. And when you see how tv series productions went on at the time The Sopranos started, it really redefined a lot of things for future tv productions. Especially in the sense of storytelling and the quality of acting throughout the entire cast.
Storywise i’m sure you guys know that it’s about a mafia family environment. The Sopranos. More about Anthony Soprano who’s taking over the leadership of the organized crime in New Jersey. He’s dealing with a lot of problems in his business and of course family stuff happens too. Due to some health problems he’s consulting a psychiatrist and does that throughout the whole series.
You sort of get thrown into the cold water with this series and the famous ending takes you out of the water as fast as you got in. The best way to conclude this particular series. I’m sure a lot of people were disappointed at the time. And i think i can understand that. But from an artistic viewpoint it was a bold and intelligent choice to end the series that way. What am i talking about? Well i don’t want to spoil anything. Check it out yourself! The series is definitely worth watching from beginning to end.
A weird thing i encountered was that there actually was no character i was able to build a connection with. All of them were pretty violent and all of could have needed a psychiatrist. Not just Tony. Nonetheless the quality of the cast really pays off throughout the series. James Gandolfini is a god here. In a later season we have Steve Buscemi entering the series. His character was the closest i was able to connect with. Buscemi also directed episodes. I love that particular episode. It’s a funny one. Beside him there are quite some familiar faces to see in this series. All of them playing their part. Most of them even played in the Godfather or Goodfellas movies. It’s sort of a perfect cast and you always want to know how it continues. What’s happening next. You don’t want to know what happens to a particular person. But you want to know what happens to the collective of characters when something happens.
If i would have to pick an episode that impressed me the most then i would have to take the second one “Join the Club” from the sixth season. It’s actually a series of episodes where Tony gets shot and is in a coma. While the world around him goes on, he is having some sort of dream that possibly shows him a life he could have had. Far away from all the crimes. In that dream we see how versatile a James Gandolfini can be. The Tony we see there is completely different. He’s lost in this dream and practically fights against dying. When that second episode ends and that Moby song starts to play you could almost cry. The whole thing seeing Tony in that totally different light of what could have been. How lost he may have been living such a life. That he may be destined to live that dangerous, bad and sad life he’s having there in New Jersey. One of the best tv produced pieces of film i have ever seen.
It’s really hard to write a short review about all this since there are so many names to be mentioned, so many stories to analyze and etc etc. – so i will end this review here with just saying that it’s definitely a series worth to watch through.
A 9.0/10 from me.
The Sopranos on IMDb
WordPress can be a b*tch. I tried to update to version 3.0 and of course it didn’t work out as planned. I’m happy i saved all important data to reconstruct the old setup. It’s partly my providers fault too since their running mysql version seems to be from the stone age. However… i’m sure there is a way to update all that. A little investigation is needed. Anyway. The concept art gallery is pretty much done. I still need to add some new stuff though. Most importantly i had to cut the main painting galleries again. Since my database can only handle a limited amount of data per page. It serves me a nice error message when it’s full. So i opened a new gallery for all upcoming personal projects. Stay tuned…! The new gallery gets filled soon enough.
