The Sopranos: Nobody Knows Anything

"A feeling of pending doom?"

This is indeed a doom-laden episode, as dark as Tony's mood, full of paranoia, depression and unease, and making both us and the characters question things. The FBI are on the warpath, and the ground is shifting beneath everyone's feet.

The main plot thread centres on the presence of a mole, and the possibility- plausible, until the last moment- that likeable old Pussy may be wearing a wire for the Feds. This turns out to be a massive piece of misdirection, but damage has been done- we end with Pussy missing and Tony despondent, looking very much at risk of a further panic attack.

Worse, Tony's pet cop reaches a low after his arrest for using a bordello, and jumps off a bridge. And Livia shows herself to be truly evil, as allegedly poisonous as her namesake. We have an early scene where Carmela visits her, rolling her eyes at the obvious tricks and calling her out on her manipulative ways. But far more gullible is Junior, who she finally manipulates into decoding to kill her son- and it's fascinating to ponder why she hates him so. Tony ends the episode oblivious, but in real danger.

e also have one bit of comic relief around the dinner table- Meadow, interestingly, sides very much with the recently impeached President Clinton whose misdeeds were, yes, not remotely as nefarious as those of the imbecile Trump, but nevertheless a massive abuse of power. 1999, in some respects, was a very long ago, much as it may not feel so.

As ever, a superb piece of telly. Not long now until the season is don...

The Sopranos: Pax Soprana

“If you were a dildo, we wouldn't be fighting".

This episode is fascinating, and a realignment in a couple of contexts as Tony is forced to accept that Dr Melfi is romantically out of bounds, he persuades Junior to act as a benevolent boss, and he and Carmela start to work on their marriage. Of course, it’s all actually much more nuanced than that.

Things come to a proper head with Dr Melfi. Tony not only had erotic dreams about her but can only maintain an erection when thinking of her- even his Ukrainian “goomar” can’t satisfy him. So we have the scene where he slowly, embarrassingly describes his impotence to Dr Melfi, declares his love and kisses her- and she reacts firmly and professionally on stopping him there, explaining that the things he finds attractive about her are just a part of her role. She seems remarkable tolerant of finding out that he had her followed, and stole her car to fix it- but then, she knows what he is agreed to take him as a client, regardless. Dr Melfi, in spite of her role, isn’t quite a blank canvas of a character. It will be fun to find out more about what makes her tick.

Meanwhile Carmela is upset during an awkward anniversary meal and reacts passively aggressively in ways that don’t help Tony’s stress- but she’s right. Tony does see “goomars” despite his protestations. And he has been neglecting her in every way, prioritising everything else. Even worth is that Father Phil, who is supposed to be her friend, is a misogynist arsehole with his advice. He firmly rules out all suggestion of divorce, although it’s clearly immoral to trap people in formal couplings they no longer consent to. And he blames her for tolerating his earlier dalliances, saying that she is “not entirely without sin”. It’s a distressing scene to watch, and leads us to question the foundations of their attempt at reconciliation at the end, where it’s her who persuades him to keep on seeing Dr Melfi.

Also worrying is Junior’s autocratic style as boss, taking and not giving as boss, but it’s Tony who handles this with a little speech about Octavian- I like his penchant for Roman history. But there’s some interesting dialogue in which Tony and other capos admit that Junior is boss because someone has to take the fall if the Feds come calling and it’s better it be an old man without children- and, as we see at the end, the FBI are on to them. Although the board with pinned photos and post-it notes is the most 1999 thing ever...

Superlative as always.

The Sopranos: Meadowlands

"Hear about the Chinese godfather? He made him an offer he couldn't understand..."

The Sopranos is extraordinary, four episodes in. Yes, the first episode grabs you immediately and is a show-offishly and performatively classy piece of television. Subsequent episodes have been more restrained- no flashy direction, realistic rather than knowingly witty dialogue, but a masterclass on how to build a slow-burning and rich serial narrative.

Here we have a number of turning points, all seeming to emerge naturally from plot, certainly, but more importantly from character. We have some flashy direction in the dreamlike beginning as Tony has a surreal dream about Melfi's office in which worlds collide and it becomes clear that he fancies this somehow unattainable woman, who for once appears vulnerable. The bent cop that Tony ends to spy on her ends up beating and traumatising her boyfriend, unwittingly giving her a taste of Tony's violent world- and reminding us, by breaking the barriers separating the two worlds, that Tony is a very bad man, however much we may emphasise with his family problems.

The two worlds collide elsewhere, too, as young Anthony Jr is rudely ripped from his cosy teenage 1999 world of Super Mario Kart and mildly rubbish, forgotten metal bands by the realisation that there's a reason why, as Meadow points out, they can afford such a massive house on the wages of a "waste disposal consultant".

Tony has two families, both with simmering problems. His mother is as passive-aggressive and emotionally cruel as ever. And the death of the sincerely mourned Jackie seems to be leading inexorably to a Soprano vs. Soprano "War of '99", So Tony's creative solution, based on some unlikely advice from Melfi, unexpectedly undercuts this while showing a lot of guts- to let Junior be "acting boss" while being the power behind the throne- or so he thinks.

Incidentally, we learn that Jackie, dead at 44, had only been "acting boss" for two years. And the "boss", not a Soprano, is 74 and doing life. And, despite the power games and constant Godfather quotes, the Government is watching them all. There's a sense that the throne Tony wants is that of a shrinking empire...

This is bloody good stuff. And, just when you think the episode can't get any better, it ends with a bit of Mazzy Star...

Beaches (1988)

"I just want to get rid of us before us gets bad."

Yes, I know; this is a chick flick. I watched it because my lovely wife wanted to show me one of her favourite films and I'm blogging it because it's quite well known. And you know what? I quite enjoyed it. I won't put it any stronger than that; it isn't superlatively brilliant in the way that Pretty Woman is (yes, I did just say that), but it's a good film.

The film follows the lives of two women from childhood to one of them suffering a tragic, early death. CC is poor, Jewish and very much a New Yorker, while Hillary is a rich WASP girl from an established East Coast family. They bond over shared ambitions to go into musical theatre- a world of which I know nothing- but their very different natures later lead to both friction and reconciliation.

Much as CC may struggle in her early days through lack of money, she benefits from being carefree and unrestricted, while Hillary is pressured into becoming a bored housewife to an awful, snobbish husband, and CC's telling it like it is here leads to the big clash between them that drives the structure of the main plot. Their eventual full reconciliation only comes at the price of Hillary's sad decline and death. There is a happy ending, of sorts, as CC adopts Hillary's orphaned daughter.

It's a fairly gripping drama, and Bette Midler is superb. I won't pretend this is my cup of tea but there are many things to enjoy in this film.

Sharknado (2013 TV Movie)

"We can't just wait here for sharks to rain down on us!"

I couldn't resist watching this and, yes, I had to blog it: a TV movie on SyFy with the most gloriously and semi-ironically B movie premise. It's exactly what you expect, really, a movie that knows how silly it is and revolves entirely around some hilarious CGI. 

We open in California, on a bar by the seafront. There are a handful of characters to get to know if you can be bothered; they're all just ciphers and the film is all about the Sharks. There is some hilarious exposition and much equally hilarious dialogue.

It's not long before we see the first attack from some very aggressive sharks, with only short glimpses of actual physical models; the rest is all CGI.

From now on it's all about the set pieces, with an early highlight being sharks attacking the bar, and one being killed with a pool cue. Yes, it looks a bit shit, but it's cool. And I love the Ferris wheel that's sent rolling across the ground.

Inevitably, there's a road trip. The sharks Attack Beverley Hills, and the film takes a glorious pleasure in being cruel to the rich: this is unmistakably a film made post-2008. Probably quite wisely there is no real attempt to explain away the "sharknadoes".

Sharks launch out of manholes. A particularly arrogant character dies horribly. The set pieces just keep on coming. There are CGI waterspouts, chainsaws, and Heath Robinson contraption. But the film really (ahem) jumps the shark when the hero uses a chainsaw to liberate his recently swallowed girlfriend from a dead shark's stomach.

Yes, it really is that good/bad. And there is, I'm afraid, a sequel...