rip james gandolfini

http://www.tmz.com/2013/06/19/james-gandolfini-dead-dies-italy/

no way!

I am really sad about this!

that is rotten terrible news

kind of a great actor imo.

horrible. he was good in everything i saw him in.

he was a really great actor!!

great at comedy, great at sheer menace, great at drama

absolutely, this is really bumming me out

this is shit

heart attack not all that surprising when all is said and done? or did his role as tony just set me up to fear for his health?

i first saw him in true romance, that scene with arquette is all-time.

I think the first thing I ever noticed him in was Night Falls on Manhattan. He's very good in that one.

amazing actor, should've had a much longer career, rip

Oh right, True Romance!

over the course of the sopranos he got noticeably heavier, you watch season 1 and it's surprising how relatively svelte he is.

gutted by this

fatal heart attack at 51 is fairly surprising even considering

heart attack not all that surprising when all is said and done?

― scott seward

nah. he was looking bad.

RIP big guy

sad; recently v good in 'killing them softly'

yeah...i'm surprised tbh by the fact he must've been only 30 or so when true romance was filmed?

also he was one of the only decent things about 8MM

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/ScreenShot2013-06-19at44808PM_zpsb9a79ccf.png

I thought this was a joke when I saw the news on FB!

Yeah, I just called my dad and was saying the same. I def would have thought he was older than 51.

i first saw him in true romance, that scene with arquette is all-time.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, June 19, 2013 7:43 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YES

Also loved him in Get Shorty as Bear.

he was great last year in Not Fade Away and Killing Them Softly

In 2007, Gandolfini produced the documentary Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq, in which he interviewed 10 injured Iraq War veterans. In 2010, Gandolfini produced another documentary, Wartorn: 1861-2010, in which posttraumatic stress disorder and its impact on soldiers and families is analyzed throughout several wars in American history, from 1861 to 2010.

yeah alf, that 'get shorty' role was pretty great, polar opposite of 'true romance', one of the seminal 'gentle giant' kinda performances.

def read wartorn as warton & was like damn dude

Marcy Gandolfini, 35, is seeking sole custody of their three-year-old son, citing her husband's use of guns. According to the legal documents, an assistant found one that Gandolfini confessed he had bought for protection while visiting Harlem to buy drugs.

His wife, whom he married three years ago, hired private detectives to tail Gandolfini in Los Angeles and New York and submitted evidence from them to the court.

It included claims that two years ago, he was so out of control on cocaine and alcohol on the set of his first major film, The Mexican, co-starring Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, that filming had to be stopped.

The Mexican was his first major film?

omg. will always <3 his Tony Soprano. incredible actor, too many great performers going down this year.

rotten :(

Wartorn is a fantastic doc, highly recommend

He was only born in 1961. Can't believe that

love him sparring with capaldi in 'in the loop' too. RIP

which means he was only like 5-6 years older than I am now when he first shot the Sopranos. wayyyyyyy younger than I thought.

xpost

wow yeah he was like 38 when the sopranos first came on? that is younger than i thought too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5J050upihY

In my mind he was playing someone around 45 onwards, when it started.

his daughter isnt even a year old

oh man :(

yeah that fact is brutal

rough post from h4a there. :(
never watched sopranos and i'm not a movie buff, but i loved him in get shorty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7bN1wtmBL4

so many of my fav tv memories. whacking that poor Bevilacqua boy, screaming at Robert Patrick to "get the fuck back in (his) fucking hole", stapling a parking ticket to Mikey Parmeci's chest. Ultimate badass.

Gutted for his family and his daughter.

wtf

this is devastating. he was at a peak; just excellent in everything he'd been in lately - pretty often smaller parts in zero dark thirty, not fade away, &c&c. he had a movie coming out with steve carell; i wonder if it was finished. huge loss. i walked by him once in new york, he was speaking into a microphone & having to stoop to form himself into the human proportions of the interviewer.

formally rescind my crit of his last shot in not fade away feeling somewhat gratuitously elegiac - i would imagine this is a fairly hard-hitting watch, now

whaaaaaaaattttt this sucks rip james i can't believe it

saw this three places and rolled my eyes - 'he's not dead, c'mon guys this news is obv fake'. still can't believe it tbh, i don't know why. great in many roles obv (tony scott clearly loved him, he pops up in last boy scout also) but man did he lift the sopranos into greatness, his combination of charisma and menace really making the show work. stunned by this.

what I remember most about Gandolfini in "The Sopranos" was how he could turn on the fish-eyed stare of boredom and hate on a dime.

tony more than the role of a lifetime. iconic. legend. etc. don't think anyone has ever been that big on t.v. like, in every way.

i watched most of the sopranos w/my dad, me + him agewise each being within a few years of tony + aj meant that despite the irrelevant mob elements of the show their generational relationship mirrored ours in certain ways, often emotional or embarrassing ways, and the show nailed those kinds of character moments so completely well and of course gandolfini's acting in particular was so amazing and so powerful that there were definitely plenty of unspoken moments where i'm sure we were both thinking about the similar/parallel situation we had gone through together. that show is so real to me. tony was one of the best characters in history. rip

really shit news. he was perfect as tony but i'd watch him in anything, such a mesmerising presence

http://abload.de/img/13716864791691cosk.gif

aw don't

too much!

I still haven't seen the Sopranos but I saw him in God Of Carnage and he was great.

He had a sort of build, physical presence, I don't think I've seen in many other actors. And a way of using that build when acting, obvs

Reading Wolf Hall, his was exclusively the image of Cromwell to me. Ha, to the extent that it seems like I bring it up every time I talk about that book to anyone.

Genuinely upset by this and kinda freaked that he is only four years older than me. Like J.T. Walsh, he made everything he was in better. Kind of a strange career - a "hey, that guy!" character actor, then an American Pantheon-level role of a lifetime, then back to those support actor roles again. Totally mesmerising presence. I can't think of any other actor who has such a vocabulary in grunting.

Billy West made the best observation on how to imitate Gandolfini as Tony - always talk like you're about to cry.

going to check out Wartorn.

As posted by Patton Oswalt saying it's from Holsten's:

http://Instagram.com/p/aw0w0JwaYj/

So my father, who has had a FB for maybe 4 years now, posted his 2nd ever status update tonight.

George B.
sopranos best show ever i will miss tony very deeply

Dad otm.

aw

appearance by young gandolfini here - http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/29/realestate/the-apartment-gypsies-of-manhattan.html

Too young

RIP

There were many, many scenes throughout his career in which his sheer brute physicality was on display. There is one particular scene, and I don't have the time to go and look for it now, but I think it comes from one time in the Sopranos where Tony and Carmella are separated and he's basically living in the home theater. They get into a really nasty yelling match - I think Carm had slept with someone else or, more likely, Tony THOUGHT she had - and out of frustration and anger that is SO FUCKING CLOSE to unleashing total destruction on her but not quite over the edge, he punches two quick holes in the drywall that were the size of his loaf of bread sized fists. SO FUCKING TERRIFYING in a very real sense.

And then he plays these roles like the director of the CIA with lines like "Everybody's smart." And you buy that, too.

Such a great actor, and he seemed like a very real person - both good and bad parts, but still a person, and not a totally detached persona. I feel horrible for his family and his children. Rest in Peace, fellow Scarlet Knight.

yeah that was one of the more intuitive and real domestic anger scenes I've ever seen and he was particularly good in those moments imo. So good in 'in the loop' as well.

Glad he lived to see The Sopranos through to the end. Role of a lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn-U6fVvgEQ

I just found the scene - It was the "Whitecaps" episode, and Furio. Jesus, he and Edie Falco were just amazing.

Fuck, this is really really bumming me out.

Only saw The Sopranos once, but he was REALLY good in Not Fade Away and In the Loop.

A friend said he and his wife were at a party in NYC a few years ago and suddenly heard the loudest Yelling Man of all time in the next room. Guess who?

Tony's Greatest Hits

Look at Season Four, Ep. 13. Man, what a performance by both of them.

I'm curious if Falco is going to issue a statement, and if so, what it might say. To have done so much acting together with so much emotional investment must have been something powerful and unique and so much else.

So everybody can agree that THIS time he actually dies, right?

sorry

this is wrenching

yeah really can't get past this one, i essentially spent so many hours w/this guy

To have done so much acting together with so much emotional investment must have been something powerful and unique and so much else.

― Sleep Deprivation Thriver (B.L.A.M.), Thursday, June 20, 2013 12:00 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

“I’m still in love with Edie,” says James Gandolfini of Edie Falco, the woman who played his television wife, Carmela, for six seasons on The Sopranos. “Of course, I love my wife, but I’m in love with Edie. I don’t know if I’m in love with Carmela or Edie or both. I’m in love with her.” Falco reveals a similar possessiveness over her HBO-wedded husband. “It was weird to sit down at a table read with the actresses playing Tony’s girlfriends. Occasionally I would get a sharp twinge at the back of my neck,” she recalls. “I’d have to kind of keep my bearings and remember, No, no, no, this is your job, and at home you have your life. Even years later, I remember when I saw Jim in God of Carnage on Broadway, and he was Marcia Gay Harden’s husband, and I had this ‘How come I have to be O.K. with this?’ kind of feeling.”

that's awesome, I love hearing that. <3

I was watching the clip of when Tony kills Ralphie - really good example of him using that bottled anger so perfectly, seeing it in lead up when he's moving so slow and deliberate, like a boxer waiting for the first punch...and then WHAM the brute strength

also the yelling about beautiful innocent creatures while he's slamming Ralphie's head into the floor...

It's like he had all those moods on one big dial, and you could see him twist the dial all the way around from doofus to psycho in the space of a few moments, it was so great to watch

nice write up by seitz - http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/james-gandolfini-obit-matt-zoller-seitz.html

fucking hell. a guy I know just had a stroke. apparently healthy, in his mid-forties. just smoked and drank a bit. this is really making me think i need to start taking care of myself better.

sorry if this seems like the wrong thing to say or something - just really what's going through my head - on top of the gut-punch of losing such a great actor. weirdly feel like i know the guy after all those hours of the sopranos.

When I was searching for YouTube clips, I went straight to the clip of Tony entering the house after Janice shoots Ritchie Aprile. Barely any words at all and his expression at seeing dead Ritchie is priceless.

http://youtu.be/3X6AaNbZZfQ?t=4m3s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X6AaNbZZfQ

ugggh otm elvis, so good

ENBB's dad otm

have only begun dipping into clips - feel like I might start rewatching from the beginning tomorrow - but he was a terrific comic actor, too, in weird territory. grabbing the pillow, you know? or re: Richie, assuring Janice that they'd buried him on a hill, under a tree, &c

His physical appearance that (among other qualities) gave him the role of Soprano,also killed him
RIP

interviewed at age 26 in the NYT about being an 'apartment gypsy'

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/29/realestate/the-apartment-gypsies-of-manhattan.html

lol schlump i was just remembering that, wish i could find that clip of him seeing janice off at the bus station. been meaning to for awhile but i think i'm gonna start rewatching from the beginning also.

I watched the first ten minutes earlier, it was terrific

Once the current Mad Men season is over, I think I'll rewatch also

Shitty news to wake up to. Great actor. So, so good in killing them softly playing a sad sweaty wreck. I think that'll be another hard-to-watch one for a while. Luckily the bits without gandolfini ain't great.

oh man wtf, wtf.

RIP

RIP big T

sorry to hear. his "What kind of man are you?" bit in Man Who Wasn't There stands out for me.

shit, I have to start watching this goddamn show now? which are the seasons to skip, again?

First three are essential, all the rest have good bits and draggy stretches.

Gandolfini never puts a foot wrong though.

There were many, many scenes throughout his career in which his sheer brute physicality was on display. There is one particular scene, and I don't have the time to go and look for it now, but I think it comes from one time in the Sopranos where Tony and Carmella are separated and he's basically living in the home theater. They get into a really nasty yelling match - I think Carm had slept with someone else or, more likely, Tony THOUGHT she had - and out of frustration and anger that is SO FUCKING CLOSE to unleashing total destruction on her but not quite over the edge, he punches two quick holes in the drywall that were the size of his loaf of bread sized fists. SO FUCKING TERRIFYING in a very real sense.

"Good Morning, America" showed this scene: Carm admits to having a crush on Furio.

yeah really can't get past this one, i essentially spent so many hours w/this guy

Same. I was a bit late to the Sopranos which gave me the opportunity of digesting box sets over weekends. I remember being ill in sync with Tony (the one where he has food poisoning and hallucinates about going to Cony Island and speaking to Big Pussy The Fish) and being crashed out for two days on the couch with a pile of Sopranos episodes for company.

I don't know how deliberate it was to start with but he really used his breathing brilliantly in those scenes where he's seething and getting ready to shout/cry/kill - a noisy sniff then exhaling like an angry bull.

I imagine he'd be an intimidating man to do those kinds of scenes with.

Glad he lived to see The Sopranos through to the end. Role of a lifetime.

― lols lane (Eazy), Wednesday, June 19, 2013 11:49 PM (

shit, I have to start watching this goddamn show now? which are the seasons to skip, again?

― ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Thursday, June 20, 2013 7:59 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

watch them all

anyone who tells you otherwise doesnt get it

this is horrible

shit, I have to start watching this goddamn show now?
― ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 20 June 2013 11:59

shit you have to?? shit! SHIT! fuck.

the sopranos is the greatest tv show of all time, and it would have been... inconceivable without him.

I am extremely wary of proclamations of this ilk.

It was a damn good show. You'll love the first season best because of Nancy Marchand.

true, the CGI version of her was not nearly as good

if anyone is going to pull out the Sopranos is overrated card, i think it's gonna be Morbs

Didn't realise he was only 51, he seemed to have been around for ever.
It's a shame.

acc to s1ocki, i can pull it if i think it's not as good as The Prisoner.

RIP

dunno if it has been said already, but the number of people I know posting on fb/twitter/etc "RIP Tony Soprano" really irks me

if it has been said already, consider this post an otm to that

Dr. M, If you liked him in other movies and liked Not Fade Away, I bet you'll like this as well. Season 1 feels the most dated to me. I might suggest diving in with the Buscemi season, Season 5, get bearings there (starting off the bat with Robert Loggia, avoiding Joey Pants til later), then doing the rest from there.

If you want a 'try it and see' episode, go with College from S1.

no I would be interested in the mother angle, so Alfred's right there.

My preference for seeing plays or films about characters who are the scum of the earth is that they are over in 3 hours, and usually don't dwell in the NJ county where I grew up.

You're in luck: each episode is 50 minutes long.

I might suggest diving in with the Buscemi season, Season 5, get bearings there (starting off the bat with Robert Loggia, avoiding Joey Pants til later), then doing the rest from there.

― lols lane (Eazy), Thursday, June 20, 2013 10:50 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

is this a joke suggestion

It's got my favorite episode ("Irregular Around The Margins"). It's got Loggia. It's got Buscemi in the perfect white 80s jacket of a guy who has been locked up for 16 years. It's got some great Johnny Sack (though it's missing "The Weight").

You're in luck: each episode is 50 minutes long.

cute, but lifetime is my only unit of measure now.

so sad. james the great.

I think I'll pull out season 1 this weekend too

it's been too long.

i kinda want to watch every season again now too except i think of all the therapy sessions i have to go through...

always my least favorite part of the show. maybe the first couple of times it was fun.

morbz you have my permission to just watch the first season and then stop if you want. there is always good stuff all the way through, but like breaking bad or other shows, you have to want to continue to wade in the muck and mire. it can be pretty brutal.

it's really cinematic for a tv show, though. Or at least in my memory it was one of the first tv shows where I felt more like I was watching a movie than watching a tv show

According to La Stampa he was staying here:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-5LzVXMv_uTk/UNMra6tjBDI/AAAAAABya9Y/qam_h8EAs34/s672-no/Boscolo+Exedra+Roma

Someone on "Good Morning America" said in that airy fact-free TV way that "The Sopranos" put the final nail in the coffin of broadcast TV. True?

there is still t.v., so, no.

yeah that's fuckin dumb

pretty sure she meant broadcast TV's primacy,

My parents got HBO in 2001 just to watch "The Sopranos."

This is quite affecting, esp re his attempt to wriggle out of a pre-premiere interview cuz "Who cares?":

http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/james-gandolfini-obit-matt-zoller-seitz.html

wow that is a great write-up

the Mickey Rourke admiration makes a lot of sense to me, you can sorta see that in him

Man this is awful news.
I was in Rome the other week, imagining what it woulda been like to run into Tony Soprano.

morbs man just watch the show you'll like it. the acting at least is pretty unimpeachable

RIP

dunno if it has been said already, but the number of people I know posting on fb/twitter/etc "RIP Tony Soprano" really irks me

if it has been said already, consider this post an otm to that

― Just Elevate... And Decide In The Air -- Above the Rim (dan m), Thursday, June 20, 2013 10:48 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean, whatever. the guy was an actor. he spent his life pretending to be other people

edie falco alone makes the whole damn thing worth watching.

dunno if it has been said already, but the number of people I know posting on fb/twitter/etc "RIP Tony Soprano" really irks me

everyday people doing it is kinda whatever, but the fact that the NY Post and Daily News both decided to write that in big letters on their front covers is odd to say the least

when someone tells me they haven't seen the sopranos i instantly feel like i'm better than them in at least that one small way

i think it makes sense for the post and daily news to do that! for some reason. they love nicknames.

It was a damn good show. You'll love the first season best because of Nancy Marchand.
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, June 20, 2013 9:35 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

true, the CGI version of her was not nearly as good
― now is not the time for motorboating (dandydonweiner), Thursday, June 20, 2013 9:40 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://images1.cliqueclack.com/flicks/files/2011/09/han-jabba-new-hope.jpg

Gandolfini looked so young back then.

trying to think of what Morbz wouldn't like about the Sopranos and comin up short

other ilxors like it?

i kid, i kid

That Married to the Mob got there first?

i think you mean Analyze This

it is not like that

OK if you thought Analyze This was funny then I don't know you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y-v6T4gUmkw

goddamn it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-v6T4gUmkw

It's got my favorite episode ("Irregular Around The Margins"). It's got Loggia. It's got Buscemi in the perfect white 80s jacket of a guy who has been locked up for 16 years. It's got some great Johnny Sack (though it's missing "The Weight").

― lols lane (Eazy), Thursday, June 20, 2013 11:09 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

start on season 5 because of buscemi's jacket??? this is insane. start with S1 and watch them all.

i was always kinda intrigued by his take on the army prison warden in that robert redford movie. you know the one. he played him weird. not like a big guy. like a pencil-pushing guy.

i remember his character in that had a "SALIERI" record in his office, because all insecure also-rans love salieri

https://mobile.twitter.com/sesamestreet/status/347762849386475520

haha Sotosyn, like I went near a Billy Crystal film in the last 20 years besides Monsters Inc.

I've never seen The Sopranos, either. Hesitated for a long time because, as Eazy will attest, I thought it was just Mafioso cliches. And I'm not much of a Godfather fan. (Too many hard-to-distinguish men, too many hard-to-follow vendettas.) But now I've seen and liked Mad Men and Breaking Bad and The Wire, and I'm finally open to it. Just haven't started yet.

xxpost Scott, yeah I kinda dug him in that. Last Castle is the one you're thinking of right?

i mean, whatever. the guy was an actor. he spent his life pretending to be other people

pretty inhumane outlook on life imo

ok that sesame street video is killing me w/saddo

remnick's obit & sopranos/chase profile,

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/06/david-remnick-remembers-james-gandolfini.html

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/04/02/010402fa_fact_remnick

aw fuck :(

"'The Sopranos'? Why would I want to watch 'The Sopranos'? It's all 'I'm gonna kill that guy.' 'No, fuck you, I'm gonna kill that guy.'"
-Jaymc, at a party, 2005-6

i admire to some degree almost all the prestige tv dramas that have followed in its wake, but The Sopranos towers over them all imo.

No way, Mad Men is better

lol, come on didn't everyone tell you to step the trolling up just a lil tiny bit. you can do it waterface.

lol, sleeping bag, you live your life on the floor

people sleep in you

and pee in you

and then you post on a message board soaked in urine

"'The Sopranos'? Why would I want to watch 'The Sopranos'? It's all 'I'm gonna kill that guy.' 'No, fuck you, I'm gonna kill that guy.'"
-Jaymc, at a party, 2005-6

Yeah, that's pretty much verbatim.

why did we let gabbneb back again?

gabbneb only obnoxious in the political threads

mad men is genuinely great imo and has many of the same qualities as the sopranos esp in the fact that both shows are possibly overlooked for being often hilarious, but i think the sopranos edges it out.

trying to think of another actor like gandolfini who has some of the same qualities but coming up short.

if anything he was underrated, as weird as it is to think that.

I totally agree Gandalfini is an amazing actor, iconic, etc.. totally, I just prefer MadMen

i prefer kara thrace. but gandolfini just so great as tony. no way around it. so hard to make people care about someone that brutal for so long. loveable monster thing ain't easy to pull off. that's why dads love that show so much. total dad rock.

I avoid MM (saw 2 episodes) bcz ad people were basically the Mafia in my life for 8 miserable years.

I get that.

trying to think of another actor like gandolfini who has some of the same qualities but coming up short.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Thursday, June 20, 2013 2:34 PM

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dc/The_Wire_Frank_Sobotka.jpg

^ coulda been a contender

am0n on the mark. Chris Bauer is my pick for the lead in "The Bobby Petrino Story" at any rate.

On the other end of the scale, when the series ended, someone said Gandolfini had the opportunity to the next Gene Hackman, which I could totally have seen happening.

I keep leaving out important parts of my sentences, things like verbs.

one of the things that sopranos had over its (often great) successors was... gandolfini. i like everybody in all those other shows but nobody comes close.

long link roundup, some of which havent come up

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-james-gandolfini-1961-2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-v6T4gUmkw

Always kind of hard to be an actor where your one role makes any other role distracting. Everything else he did post- (and during) the Sopranos was always like watching Tony Soprano try to act in a movie for me.

He was awesome in In the Loop

and not like TS at all

yes he was awesome but he was still Tony. The physicality alone is really hard for me to let go of. And sure, that might be my problem but I suspect I'm not alone.

what about the shield? i thought you guys loved the shield guy.

ive never seen the shield but come on

i dunno i thought you guys loved that guy.

s1ocki, can you see why "i like everybody in all those other shows" sounds like Golden Age of TV Hyperbole?

the thing about tony was if he walked past you on the street you would just think he was a guy. if big pussy or paulie walked by you you would go uh oh those dudes are bad news. tony unleashed his powers like a fucked up superhero. not that he wss mild-mannered, but he looked like a lot of jersey or new york guys. he got bigger and more powerful around his people. he was perfect casting. really couldn't be any more perfect. anyone know who else they wanted for the part? must have been a lot of people who auditioned.

s1ocki, can you see why "i like everybody in all those other shows" sounds like Golden Age of TV Hyperbole?

― ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Thursday, June 20, 2013 3:42 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

it's meant as kind of the opposite of that d00d!

must have been a lot of people who auditioned.

http://thechaselounge.net/showthread.php?t=2093

I haven't looked this back up, but I think they seriously considered Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco as Mr. and Mrs. Soprano at one point.

xp

FWIW, Little Steven was always marginal. The weakest cast member. And he auditioned for Tony?????

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a103592/lapaglia-almost-played-tony-soprano.html

Small wonder this wasn't a raging success:

http://tvmedia.ign.com/tv/image/article/121/1217924/20120103135943enprnprn7-netflix-lilyhammer-1y-1325599183mr_1328305808-000.jpg

i think they used SVZ perfectly and also he was occasionally pretty scary w/his violent scenes (that one particular execution scene, the stabbing in the back room...)

The only thing that would have made him scarier was forcing his victims to hear a rant about the wonders of the Zombies and the Who.

http://i39.tinypic.com/4hbiw9.jpg

FWIW, Little Steven was always marginal. The weakest cast member. And he auditioned for Tony?????

― now is not the time for motorboating (dandydonweiner), Thursday, June 20, 2013 3:58 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

not only auditioned for, but was a finalist for!

haha i've had lilyhammer in my netflix queue for a year or so but can't bring myself to watch it

i loved stevie vz in the sopranos, al otm

i cant imagine lillyhammer being good at all, and it is ~interesting~ that i have never really read a word about it

they really aced every casting decision on this show imo.

i feel like no one speaks abt lillyhammer out of, yknow, "respect"

always had a crush on Jackie, Jr.

Saw the first episode of Lillyhammer. Only reason he wants to go to Norway is because of the 1994 Winter Olympics.

And from there, it just gets even more believable.

I was just watching that clip of the episode yesterday where Ralphie Cifaretto killed his 20-year old stripper girlfriend. It was one of those episodes that tried to establish that Tony, while a monster, was more human and reachable than the rest of the gang. Even when he indirectly blames "disrespecting the Bing" as the reason for punching Ralphie's lights out, that's just a ruse to validate the beating to the rest of the Family, since they considered it out of line.

But you can see the wheels turning in James's face. He's looking at the stripper g/f with the eyes of the father of a young girl, and when he says 'get her out of here', it's not just him trying to hide the attention from the club...it's him trying to look away from something very upsetting to him.

It's a great scene. The way he says "She was just 20 years old" is gutting....as well as his flashback in the next episode.

That episode ("University") is almost unbearable to watch but also one of the best. Great use of The Kinks "Walking on a Thin Line" framing it.

Also The Kinks and one of the great endings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yMEi0I3eNo

yes but what i love is that it complicates way beyond him being just "more human" by having him conflate her identity with his horse and use both as a vessel for his suppressed and confused emotions. it's not that he cares about her. in the end, it's about him.

my takeaway from that episode is less "tony is a good guy" than "tony thinks he's a good guy in spite of everything"

Yeah, I mean, in the end, even despite that reveal, I still felt like Tony is still a monster above all things. How many women does he directly or indirectly widow on that show? Lots. His 'morality' is largely full of shit, but David Simon still made him less reprehensible than most of the other characters - ie, he was one of the few not to beat his wife, although I suspect that was more to give the audience something to identify with him on.

Carmela was very much on the money where she said something like the reason he had panic attacks is that he did terrible things.

should say "leave widowed"

I think the one reason I didn't go back after the first show -- which had good things like Carmela saying how disappointing Godfather III was -- was the 'the killer is a softie, he likes the ducks outside his house' angle.

I'd forgotten his Where the Wild Things Are voice.

it's a lot more complicated than him being a softie or secretly a nice guy.

that's an unfair criticism, you wanted the character to be more one dimensional?

I think the one reason I didn't go back after the first show -- which had good things like Carmela saying how disappointing Godfather III was -- was the 'the killer is a softie, he likes the ducks outside his house' angle.

Well, SPOILERS, but you're in for a treat!

yeah, I'm not saying that's the way it went! It's the way I feared it could go.

I'm aware he wasted tons of ppl, but you know, reading "lovable" in all these pieces today.

actor is not the role, map is not the territory etc

you know that james gandolfini himself didnt kill those ppl right

if you're really afraid of feeling a complicated emotion, you might wanna stay away tho

c'mon dude

When James Cagney was a stylized lovable gangster, you didn't see the brains and viscera. That's easier to take, I think.

but since I have to spell everything out bcz I'm Dr Morbius and I'm fun to poke with a stick, the pieces were calling Tony Spoprano lovable. xxp

i would def use cagney as a precedent here

When James Cagney was a stylized lovable gangster, you didn't see the brains and viscera. That's easier to take, I think.

― ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Thursday, June 20, 2013 5:12 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

you could argue that seeing how horrible violence is is a bit more responsible

I'm surprised you don't think a murderer can be loveable. I mean, lots of people love Obama

you could argue that seeing how horrible violence is is a bit more responsible

of course! but less breezily entertaining.

lol poly

roflz

for me, tony is such a great character because he has these glimmers of self-awareness which he inevitably fails to take any lesson from--but all the while you're rooting for him deeply, you want to think he's reachable and changeable even while taking illicit pleasure in his lifestyle and the "glamour" of it--and SPOILERS>>>>>

--i think that's what makes the ending so devastating, in that you as the audience are still there with him even after Melfi rightly abandons him.

so i think Morbs is right to be suspicious in a sense! Tony's emotional con game extends in a lot of different directions, but even for all that the show allows him some humanity, even if only to throw it in our faces.

the 'emotional con game' isn't just melfi, 'the ducks' etc is the centripetal force of the entire series, there are numerious viewer-avatars who are seduced by mafiosi and then get fucked over (jt dolan is the most explicit and the most hilarious)

two of the best scenes in it don't feature gandolfini -- carmela's visit to the psychoanalyst ('you can never say that you haven't been told') and in miniature, david chase' wordless cameo in the italy episode

, /it/ is

carmela's visit to the psychoanalyst ('you can never say that you haven't been told'

so fucking crucial. one of the only scenes in the series where both characters in a scene are being honest with one another (altho Carmela quickly retreats back into obfuscation)

Melfi is the big audience stand-in, which is why the show begins and ends where it does

but since I have to spell everything out bcz I'm Dr Morbius and I'm fun to poke with a stick, the pieces were calling Tony Spoprano lovable. xxpThe people who wrote those pieces are dumb. Seriously, if you are afraid he will be too lovable, you are gonna love the show more and more as it progresses. Uhm. SPOILER.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zFM00-rOMo

Love it when the Sopranos went all Kubrick/Antonioni

the melfi scenes are so great because they are so explicit in their foregrounding of the compulsion to repeat, the longueurs, the feigned emotional articulacy and schlubby ~fat crook from jersey~ rationalizations: that it should all be shown explicitly and repeatedly and at the invitation of ennui, the certainty that nobody will ever learn, that beyond the deceptions and selfdeceptions there is only the void

the forced curtailment (the scales falling from her eyes in reaction shots to bits of text from a psych paper) is a rare faux pas in the final episodes which generally were among the best of the whole series

nilmar otm x 100

*MAD SPOILERS SPANNING ALL SEASONS*

I like how the show unfurls the full scope of Tony's menace, as well. In Season 1, less scrutinizing viewers might write Tony's evils off as "well at least he's only killing other gangsters" or "the people he's dispatching are scum" (ie, the ep where he almost whacks the coach). He's a dick to (and cheats on) his wife, but she seems more complicit in it. Plus he gets shot, which lends him sympathy. Still the same evil criminal mastermind, but framed in a way that's easier for some folks to rationalize a way (ie "he's a misguided do-gooder", etc).

And then over the next several seasons, they gradually widen the scope of the deeds to where they're a lot harder to defend. You see the emotional toil Tony's infidelities take on Carmela, and he's emotionally abusive to her as well. Her shows her affection, but his feelings for her run hot-and-cold, and when he's focused on his 'other' family, he treats her as if she is invisible, or abuses her. He strikes AJ in that one episode. His lifestyle and actions make Meadow having a normal high school life impossible.

He is emotionally abusive to his comares, drives one of them to commit suicide, and discards them when he has no more use for them, threatens them if they attempt to rat on him to his wife.

And his mob activities can't be framed as "moral actions in an immoral context". He makes up the rules as he goes along, at times. He's always prone to violence. His killings of Ralphie and Christopher weren't justified, and he swept them under the rug. He made Big Pussy's wife a widow, lied and said he went into witness protection, leading to her being cut off from the wives community, and treated her coldly afterwards.

It's not that he wasn't always this awful person, it's just that had they framed it all this way from the get-go, it would have been harder to get audiences engaged unless they revealed it gradually. And through it all, James was brilliant.

I still need to finish Season 6 though. I ordered the DVDs years ago and whomever sold em to me sent me one Disc 1, two Disc 2s and a Disc 4. If it's on Netflix I'll watch it there.

that beyond the deceptions and selfdeceptions there is only the void

otm. and one thing that's really remarkable about the show is that its pessimism isn't simply a hollow cynicism (as if it were a satire of american materialism) but something even more deeply unsettling if/when you share tony's inchoate yearnings for meaning and self-determination. i always founding this aspect of the show deeply felt and bracing. it was hard to shake at times.

and not to make too grandiose a comparison, but i think there's something of King Lear in Tony, not least in his final tragic refusal of something like self-knowledge (or perhaps that such knowledge is in fact impossible for Tony, and to a lesser extent everyone else).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-v6T4gUmkw

we're gettin that one every 40 posts

oops, thought I'd read the full thread, guess it hid under the cut somewhere.

perish the thought that someone would want to share something. how frequently are we allowed posts from Dr Morbious who, seemingly doesn't have anything to add?

Since I've already praised JG's film acting but you seemed to have missed it, I got somethin' for ya, jed; hang on...

if anyone is going to pull out the Sopranos is overrated card, i think it's gonna be Morbs

rrrreally?

http://nypress.com/avoiding-tough-guy-cliches-sexy-beast-shows-up-the-sopranos/

Wonder who could have written that?

shameful

In a sense,
the movies are to blame for The Sopranos. In 1990, the year of The
Godfather, Part III, popular taste preferred Goodfellas

oh, the humanity!

lmao

we've got all this perfectly good New Coke here and all you guys want to drink is Coke, wtf

oh, the humanity!

Armond Wha?

he is, at least aesthetically, a Coppola Catholic.

I had no memory of JG being that hitman in True Romance, but I flushed all of that mess out of my head except for Pitt and his honeybong.

lol

great, great piece: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/ill-always-love-you-tony-soprano

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/06/james-gandolfini-1961-2013.html this is great

well that scene is great (as noted in the thread where the mods won't put the title of the film on it).

I've seen a number of gay blogs where ppl are effusing over him as a bear among bears.

scary bear.

sex scenes on sopranos with him always frightened me a little. like, either he was gonna kill someone or he was gonna die. one or the other.

Remember when Janet and Richie had sex and he was holding a gun to her head!

oh god richie. he was the scariest of them all. so horrible. so happy to see him go. he was too real life for me. i've met guys like that. he's what the real mob dudes are like. not a whole lot of lovable going on. dumb and scary.

I guess I need to watch Not Fade Away.

Haha at 1:07. Gonna miss that guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG-3_3Oo-fg

xxp and of course Janice doing the nasty with Ralphie Cifaretto in a particularly unpleasant way!

Janice, just in general

I don't agree with everything Clive James says in this interesting piece, but he nails Janice (so to speak):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10132678/Clive-James-on-The-Sopranos.html

manson lamps

manson lamps!

haha x-post!

yeah i gotta watch the whole thing again.

fun fact about the guy who played richie:

"In 1977 his voice was heard in the cult animated film WIZARDS, as the robot assassin Necron 99."

i don't remember him from mean streets but i haven't seen mean streets in almost 30 years.

Holsten's restaurant in Bloomfield, New Jersey put a "Reserved" sign on the table where Gandolfini and his on-screen family filmed the final scene of HBO's "The Sopranos," which was both heralded and lambasted for the way it abruptly ended the award-winning drama.

http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/james-gandolfini-holstens-reserved-sopranos-table.jpg

http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2013/06/james-gandolfinis-tribute-at-holstens---reserved-table-from-sopranos-finale.html

on being a large icon

http://gawker.com/the-fatness-of-james-gandolfini-inspiring-iconic-and-519198685

i have a copy of Not Fade AWay to watch this weekend

thanks thread!

fun fact about the guy who played richie:

"In 1977 his voice was heard in the cult animated film WIZARDS, as the robot assassin Necron 99."

― scott seward, Friday, June 21, 2013 9:06 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't remember him from mean streets but i haven't seen mean streets in almost 30 years.

― scott seward, Friday, June 21, 2013 9:07 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know that david proval worked a lot between mean streets and the sopranos but i've still only seen him in those two roles, iirc. he was great in the sopranos, absolutely nailed it.

otm

Watching the first episode. It's cute how Gandolfini's accent isn't perfect yet.

i know that david proval worked a lot between mean streets and the sopranos but i've still only seen him in those two roles, iirc. he was great in the sopranos, absolutely nailed it.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, June 21, 2013 3:47 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

he's insanely good. "i'm old schooooool"

Watching the first episode. It's cute how Gandolfini's accent isn't perfect yet.

yeah there are some funny kinks you can see them feeling their way through in the first few episodes

the voiceover is kind of weird

they also dialed back on the wildly unprofessional stuff Melfi does

Edith Bunker spoke and acted differently in the early AITF episodes too.

NY tabloids really classin' it up re his dinner in Rome: TONY'S LAST BINGE etc.

Technology and trends that became most recently obsolete (laserdiscs, portable CD players, Skeet Ulrich) age worse than really old stuff.

my skeet ulrich works fine

the voiceover is kind of weird

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, June 21, 2013 5:25 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is true, but watching it again sorta conveys the leap into more cinematic storytelling it was making at the time - think this is pronounced as Tony goes over to his mother's. just how much is going on throughout the episode, & the kind of panoramic patience it dedicates to each thread, still feels very exemplary & fresh, i think.

"Just another crazy day in the Sopranos household. Fuhgeddaboutit!"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2013/jun/26/james-gandolfini-sopranos-david-chase/print

Stay classy, Jeffrey Wells

so is David Chase Italian, and is that his real name?

born David DeCesare

why do people pay attention to jeffrey wells

Years ago, I used to read Wells. Then it/he got so unpleasant I totally stopped and in fact forgot he even existed. It took this to remind me he was still alive. What a dick.

haha that wells piece gets really good in the comments section when matt soller zeitz mentions that the funeral was actually open to the public

Ha also the quotes from other non-invitees, fans who just walked in.

I saw the crowd on 110th St. yesterday and asked a cop what was going on. "They're having a funeral for Tony Soprano."

No doubt that shithead wells is sticking to his guns, claiming that if he was not invited then technically he was crashing.

JW's blog is usu a good read if he's being a particularly shitbrained asshole, cuz over half his reg commenters roast him.

it is definitely compelling

last film is now out, a Lehane-based crimer w/ Tom Hardy

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-drop

I hope nothing happens to the dog in that movie.

spoiler alert

the dog survives and is fine the whole time

the movie which i will only refer to as "tom hardy with a puppy" was a reasonably decent way to spend a tuesday night.

saw tom hardy with a puppy on a plane and really enjoyed it. feel like i "get" tom hardy now.

I don't think I'll ever get Tom Hardy.

Lovely memories here.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/06/james-gandolfini-the-sopranos-remembered

so good - that falco story w the icecream is <3

i’m gonna re-restart my sopranos rewatch, i never finished it last time i rewatched