Rewatching the Sopranos

Since about 1996, movies have been on a steady decline. The early 1990s were probably the richest era of American filmmaking since the 1970s symbolized by the achievements of Tarantino, the Coen brothers, and early Miramax. Even the studios benefitted from the competition from the American independent movement, churning out great pictures like Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, and Heat. This was also an era when we saw the rising excitement of another national cinema as we had seen with German, French, and Hong Kong, cinema in the past. This time it was a group of Danish filmmakers who started the Dogme movement and seemed momentarily successful with early Dogme films, the Celebration and the Idiots.

But since 1996 or so, after Fargo, it seems movies have been on a steady decline. Of course, there have been occassional stand out successes in films like the Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Sideways, but on the whole, it's been clear to pretty much everyone, everywhere, movies have been going downhill.

People talk about increased competition from video games and dvd, which is used to explain the downturn in box office...however, it doesn't satisfactorily explain the low-quality of films. If films as good as Wonder Boys were being released each month and no was going to them, the competition argument might prove true. However, we are not seeing such quality going unnoticed, rather, it is the opposite, we are noticing the poor quality, as evidenced by the undue critical celebration given to such crap as American Beauty, Syriana, and the Aviator.

On the other hand, there has been a shining star in this dearth of quality movies, and that is HBO. The flagship show of this renewed Golden era of (this time cable) television is the Sopranos. I am rewatching season five and all I can say is, fucking-a, this is a good show. It's amazing to see the achievement of a guy like David Chase, someone with essentially no "creator" credits prior to the Sopranos make such a juggernaut, despite working his whole life in the industry.

Perhaps my favorite character in the show is Johnny Sack. I love it when he's on screen. I'd never heard of Vincent Curatola, before, and still don't know where the fuck he came from as an actor. He's a badass, though. A worthy adversary.

One of my favorite Johnny Sack moments from an episode I just watched is when Tony suggests a power-sharing argeement between Johnny Sack, Little Carmine, and a retired old boss after Big Carmine dies. Johnny Sack gets pissed off and yells at Tony:

"What is this, the fucking UN!"

You know I'd love that.