Plan B Forum

I just finished watching The Sopranos again - my second time through. Saw it first in ‘99 when the first season was running, an exBF introduced me as he was wild about the show. I saw an episode about halfway through that season and I was really turned off by the misogyny and violence, so I didn’t bother with the show again for years - I didn’t have a TV in those days anyway. Finally watched the series in 2014, but watching it again just 7 years later impacted me differently - I find it fascinating how our lens changes with age and experience and alters our perception of art and literature and film.

Anyway I’m writing this post as I wait for midnight to see if HBOMAX is releasing The Many Saints of Newark as soon as the bell tolls October 1, or not until Friday night.

Watched a couple of trailers to kill time. Although trailers are a notoriously difficult way to judge the quality of a film, I have to say the trailer for the soon to be released remake of Dune looks pretty fantastic - on visuals alone it looks far superior to the 80s version. Critics seem to agree, as the old one has a 47% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes, while the new one currently has a 91% certified fresh rating thus far. I’m a big fan of other work of Director Denis Villeneuve (he did a brilliant film called Polytechnique on the misogyny-driven massacre of female engineering students at the polytechnic university in Montreal that I think I’ve mentioned here before), and here he both writes and directs. The cast looks really terrific too.

As I was watching the trailer I thought about reading the book in my early teens and how I remember just devouring it and loving it intensely - and that I was pretty let down by the film which I had eagerly anticipated, as it was one of my first experiences of envisioning a world in my mind’s eye from a literary text and seeing someone else’s minds eye vision be so disappointingly different from mine.

The other thing I thought about was how little I remember of that novel now - really just fragments of memory that were triggered by watching the trailer. I find that kind of thing really unsettling and sometimes wonder is this normal memory loss or something more? Honestly there are so many books I’ve read over the years that now I don’t recall much about - but surely that’s only because so many other books were packed in after them and my brain just can’t hold onto them all in detail? (My brain has little trouble recalling in pretty significant detail many of the moments of my life from decades ago, so go figure? The brain is a funny thing I guess.)

So, do I reread Dune before I watch this critically acclaimed reboot, or better not so I don’t run the risk of being disappointed all over again? (And of course, I won’t see the book the same way I did at 13/14, anyway. What if I’m unimpressed? Then I’ll ruin a perfectly good childhood memory of reading.)

Anyway . . . the other trailer that looked fantastic was for Matrix: Resurrections. I’ll have to revisit the first three films before this new one releases, and I look forward to that as well. Can’t recall #3 much at all (maybe I didn’t see it?), but I recall really liking the first two.

Late night musings . . . time to check on TMSON.

Never having read Dune or seen the movie (I tell myself I don't like 'science fiction' but I have to admit that I usually enjoy what I do, despite my reservations, see or read) I don't have an opinion one way or the other on your question.

But you do raise an interesting point: movies based on books to me fall into four categories:

1). The book and the movie are from entirely different perspective and they each stand alone. Example 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' - the important information about Chief Bromden is page 1 in the book but about halfway through the movie.

2). Wonderful book, awful movie. Examples - another Ken Kesey effort 'Sometimes a Great Notion' (for some reason the movie was called 'Never Give an Inch') and Catch-22. Most 'Jane Eyre' adaptations but they probably all fall into the trap of over-squeezing a 300 page book into two hours of film.

3). Lousy book, great movie. 'No Country for Old Men' springs to mind but there are probably many better examples.

4) Both the movie and the book were great but I couldn't make sense of the book until I had seen the movie. 'The English Patient.'

YMMV.

best book to movie adaptation was probably "The Hellbound Heart" to "Hellraiser" it even spawned a decent sequel that expanded the lore. Rapidly went downhill from there... the irony is this decent ultimately fulfills the original parable of drug use going from pleasure to pain and loss of control to becoming increasingly pathetic and hard for anyone to watch.

I never read the book Dune before I saw the movie, but I liked it so much (I guess i am one of the 47%, but then I generally love David Lunch films) that I read the book and enjoyed it as well. They are different, but related; I guess they fall into the first category of Andy's list. Indeed, for the me best example of this category is Kubrick's The Shining (adapted from Steven King's book of the same name), but The Natural is also in this league. I generally do not like movie adaptations of books I like, so the original Dune is a rare occurrence.

Personally, I would avoid rereading the book, or seeing the older movie, before seeing the new adaptation because I am usually disappointed.

The Many Saints of Newark was really good. On its own it wouldn’t be considered a remarkable film, but as a Sopranos prequel it is very very good. Well worth the time to watch if you’re a Sopranos fan. Or if you want to get started on being one.

I got choked up watching Michael Gandolfini play his father's younger self. His resemblance to his dad is uncanny, and he did a wonderful job adopting the mannerisms and speech patterns of his father’s portrayal of Tony Soprano.

Is anybody else here a serious fan of The Sopranos?

I enjoyed Many Saints. My wife got bored and left the room (streamed on HBO Max here). I liked the nuances and particularly enjoyed that they brought in Michael Imperioli to narrate. The overt explanation for Dickie's fate was interesting as well, considering how it was addressed in The Sopranos. Looking at that episode through the lens of Multi Saints gives additional insight into just how dark the Soprano family was (Tony using Christopher in that way by ginning up his emotions over his father).

I hadn't considered the movie name's meaning until it was pointed out that the Moltisanti name literally means "Many Saints" in Italian.

I'm hoping they give Michael Gandolfini additional chances to play the younger Tony in future "Sopranos Stories". There are lots of opportunities to flesh out past events alluded to in the series ("the card game", the relationship with Jackie, the onset of Tony's panic attacks - when Tony B. got arrested and Tony S. didn't).

BoSoxGal wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 02, 2021 3:07 am

Is anybody else here a serious fan of The Sopranos?

Don't know if I'm a "serious" fan but I have seen it through a couple of times, and consider it the first of what is often called "prestige" series (tv shows where the story, acting, directing, etc. are at A movie quality). I consider it to be one of the top tv series of all time, but it can be hard to watch sometimes. The episode that sticks in my head as the most Soprano like is when Tony takes Meadow on a trip to look at New England colleges and spots an old "friend". Looking forward to seeing the prequel.

There’s a book out (2019) called The Sopranos Sessions which is kind of a literary analysis of all the episodes, and includes interviews with David Chase.

Definitely The Sopranos launched prestige TV, and was brilliant just from the perspective of the excellent writing and performances and high production quality.

I think the most powerful thing about the Sopranos is how well it reflects what American society has devolved into in recent decades. Celebration of a violent sociopathic monster by showing him as a regular ‘nice’ family guy, leading straight to Breaking Bad celebrating a regular nice family guy who morphs into a violent monster - who needs the sociopath? We’re all capable of it! Money money me me money me and mine.

Yes there are plenty of hardworking honest folks left, but we end up being rubes to the toxically selfish individualists. We can only hope that in the end they get the same fate as Tony - lights out over an onion ring in a greasy spoon.

The Sopranos is America today. The virus has revealed us in our full monster glory.

I think we have always had a tendency to celebrate the outsider/individualists; the man (usually always a man) who lived his own way and wouldn't take any shit. In the 40s, it was the gangster movies that showed how these guys had to put up with the crooked cops (they all were crooked) and just wanted to go their own way. In the 50s and 60s it was usually motorcyclists (think Marlon Brando in The wild One), and, even better, motor cycle gangs--in the 60s (at least until after Altamont), I recall Hell's Angels being pop culture heroes, in the 70s it was guys like Charles Bronson in Death wish and Eastwood in Dirty Harry, and it continued. On TV, we had professional wrestling, where people were lauded for hitting people with chairs, pipes, or anything handy (and don't even suggest to them that it was faked). Even in safer shows people were celebrated by their flouting of the rules--Captain Kirk violated the Prime Directive on almost a weekly basis and was a highly popular character. It doesn't surprise me that people gravitated toward Tony Soprano or the guy in the Shield.

The Sopranos Columbus Day episode was widely panned, but it had its moments.