The Sopranos: 'Join the Club' (6x02)

SPOILERS: All of the series, including Join the Club and Six Feet Under through Ecotone

Last week's premiere was notable for being a nice return to the world of The Sopranos, with a bunch of interesting stuff going on, and a nice shocker at the end. This week's episode opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for the rest of the show's run, with the sort of complex, reality bending storylines that this show does better than any show since Twin Peaks.

Structurally, the episode reminds me a lot of Six Feet Under's Ecotone, which has the same basic setup, the main character lies between life and death, and while his family and friends worry about him, he drifts into various alternate universes, between life and death. I think the fact that Tony wasn't as likely to die meant that the episode wasn't as viscerally effecting as Ecotone, but as things unfolded, the incredible potential for future storylines became apparent.

At first, I assumed that the Tony Soprano we see at the beginning of the episode was a Tony from an alternate universe, where he hadn't joined the mob and instead taken a legitimate job. It was interesting to hear Tony without his usual accent, and the only hint that something was out of place was the glimpse of a doctor in the spotlight of the helicopter. The image of the helicopter light shining down on him effectively conveyed the feeling of something being awry in this world.

Tony loses his briefcase, and according to him, "my whole life is in that case," so Tony loses his identity, and he's reduced to the core of his self. I loved the crisis of a man who has no identification, and thus no identity. He can call his family, but otherwise, he's gradually slipping into this other identity. He begins to take on Kevin Finnerty's problems, with the Buddhist monks, and when he sees the doctor, it's an odd feeling, is it Kevin Finnerty who has the Alzheimers or is it Tony Soprano? The two are merging into one, and the longer he stays as Kevin Finnerty, the more he loses any sense of actually being anyone.

There's a clear emphasis on religious imagery, a questioning of one's actions. The monks tell 'Kevin' that he messed up their heating system, calling to mind hell. The fires raging on TV further emphasize this. At the end of the dream sequence, Tony sits on the bed, and chooses not to call his family. It's like, stranded in this hotel, he no longer feels worthy of calling them. He hasn't become someone else, he's become no one, and beyond that, he's gradually losing his mind.

I'm guessing that the Alzheimers diagnosis is a forebearer of the brain damage that will afflict real Tony. It would be a brilliant twist to have this powerful guy become dependent, and suffer from the very same problems that afflicted Junior. I would guess that when Tony finally does come back, he'll be incapciatated, and will gradually recede from the role of commander, much like Jackie Sr. back in season one. Tony will become the very thing he's complained about, someone who's completely dependent and powerless to help himself, and he'll have to face the same questions about nursing and assisted living that he'd previously held for the older generation.

The major theme of the series is the conflict between the younger generation and older generation. As Tony said when talking to the black minister back in season two, the older generation's almost gone, so his generation is becoming the elders. If AJ were to kill Uncle Junior, that would end that generation and announce the arrival of a new one. It would make Tony the old man of the family.

As I mentioned earlier, the waiting in the hospital scenes didn't have the emotional impact of the stuff in 'Ecotone,' and in some ways felt like retreading of when Christopher was shot. However, the graphic nature of Tony's wounds was pretty disturbing. Janice's overwrought reaction was great, always bringing the spotlight back to her, and all of the solliloquies directed towards Tony were great.

The rest of the episode sets up some potentially interesting dynamics. Within the mob family, Vito again is making a play for power, even as Silvio has taken over as temporary leader. They're not really facing the potential that Tony might not be able to lead, once they find out for sure what's up with him, we'll get to see the power structure sort itself out.

Crucial to that will be Christopher, who's remained something of an enigma this season. He's there to comfort Carmela, but at the same time he seems more interested in the FBI agents at Satriale's than he is with helping the mob family. Is he going to be there to make a play for power, or is what happened to Tony going to push him away from the family? And there's still the issue of how he's been dealing with Adriana's death.

With Tony's immediate family, the big issue now is what will happen to AJ. Before the season began, I was expecting that he would go through something similar to Jackie Jr.'s arc back in season three, and this episode makes that comparison explicit. If AJ stays out of school, I don't see him holding down a minimum wage job, it's much more likely that he'll get drawn into the mob world. If Tony's incapcitated, the big conflict will be between AJ and Carmela. Rosalie makes it clear that if she just lets him go, he's going to end up in trouble, and go the way of Jackie Jr. If AJ does kill Junior, he'll be crossing a line, and that'll basically put him into the mob world for life. I'm hoping that he does end up killing Junior because that will open up a ton of possibilities.

If Finn does come to Jersey, it will mean that both he and Meadow are in a sort of limbo between college and the working world. The longer they stick around the mob world in that state, the more likely they are to get drawn in. Bringing Finn back would put Vito in an awkward situation, I'm assuming that his homosexuality will eventually come out and cause problems for him.

This episode has me rethinking the entire direction of the series' close. I assumed that it was pretty much either prison or death for Tony, but this episode opens up the possibility of a slow decline. Without Tony, the mob could be thrown into disarray and it's quite possible that the entire crew could be destroyed, broken by their own jealousy and power struggles, or federal intervention.

This is an episode that's great on its own, but really powerful in the new direction that it opens for the rest of the series. The premiere made it clear that this is a great series, but this episode reminds you that this series is functioning at a whole other level than anything else of television.

Elysian Fields at Tonic

I just came back from a fantastic show, a performance by Elysian Fields. I got into Elysian Fields after hearing Jennifer Charles' work on Lovage, an album she did in collaboration with Dan the Automator and Mike Patton.

Anyway, I got to the show a bit early, and when I went to get my ticket, who should come out to the box office but Jennifer Charles, who wanted to get the piano tuned. I wanted to ask her about reports of a second Lovage album, but didn't want to butt into the middle of her conversation, and soon she was gone back in.

So, onto the show itself. Elysian Fields are a really strong band, but they suffer a bit from the fact that there's not that much variation between their songs. They're fantastic for setting a mood, but with some notable exceptions, the individual songs don't stand out that much. I play EF's music a lot when I'm writing, because the songs create a fantastic atmosphere that enhances what I'm putting down. However, I wasn't sure how that would play live.

As it turned out, it works wonderfully, their live show was one of the most intimate and engaging I've ever seen. The venue was small, with rows of chairs set up in front of the stage and standing room in the back. There was no jumping around or yelling during the songs, everyone's attention was focused on Jennifer.

I recognized about half of the songs they played, but it didn't matter because her live presence was captivating. First off, she's incredibly sexy, whether singing, or talking in ethereal whispers. She was talking about masking tape and it sounded hot. Her singing was phenomenal. Because it was such a small room, it wasn't like she was putting on a show for you, it was like you caught her in a private moment, and she was letting you watch. I love a big, up tempo show, but this was a completely different experience, each song spinning you deeper into their world. No one talked, there was just applause after it was clear that the song was done. That was quite different from any other show I've experienced.

The songs themselves were mostly new stuff, with a few early songs thrown in as well. "Tides of the Moon," and "Lions in the Storm" were great, but the highlight of the night was "Lame Lady of the Highways," which saw all kinds of guitar and vocal distortion, creasing a haze of sound. The sound in the venue was fantastic, largely because it didn't have to be amped up to really loud levels, you could hear Oren's acoustic guitar just as clearly without amplification as you could with.

They played against a backdrop of red curtains, with blue lights shining down, like they were in a David Lynch film, and this felt like the Club Silencio performance. My entire identity wasn't broken down or anything, but it was that similar feeling of getting captured in a moment of song. Great stuff, I'll definitely see them again, they seem to be regulars at Tonic. And a side note, I saw that Julee Cruise performed there a few weeks ago, seeing her on that red curtained stage would have been ridiculous, I'll have to be on the lookout for another show with her.

Anyway, I was frustrated that I didn't get a chance to ask about the Lovage album, so as I was leaving, I decided to head back in and see if Jennifer was around to take questions. The advantage of the venue is that there is no "back," so the performers have to leave through the floor like everyone else.

So, I'm looking around and see her over by the hallway that leads to the bathroom. She's talking to some guy, I figure it's a fan, and I'll wait and ask her when he's finished. They're talking for a while, and I figure it's someone she knows. So, I'm standing in this hallway, ostensibly waiting on line for the bathroom, but really just waiting for her to finish talking.

Her and this guy are going on for a long time, and I'm hearing snippets of their conversation. They're talking about "Mike," who I figure must be Mike Patton, and as they're going on, I notice that this guy is Asian, and I was thinking is she talking to Dan the Automator? So, they're going on and eventually he says something along the lines of "And he was like Dan!" And then I knew, she was talking to Dan the Automator, two thirds of the team behind Lovage was standing right in front of me, and what's more, Dan was at work trying to recruit her for the new Lovage album.

Because I was essentially listening in on a private conversation, I don't want to go into too many details, but the essence seems to be that Jennifer and Mike Patton had some issues with each other while doing the first album, and she was a bit reluctant about returning for the new one. Dan said he wanted her to return, but would work with her on other projects if she didn't want to do another Lovage. It's crazy for me to think that I was there as the album's fate was possibly being decided. I was going to ask her if it was happening, and what should I find, but the actual process of deciding in the works. Crazy stuff.

I didn't want to disrupt Automator's pitch and be responsible for preventing the creation of a second Lovage album, so I waited in that hallway for a while, and when they were breaking up, I went up and asked if he was indeed Dan the Automator. I asked him and Jennifer if the second Lovage album was happening, and he said that they had "explosive chemistry," but were working on it. I asked him a bunch of stuff, and found out that he's got a bunch of stuff coming out later this year, mostly rap things. He also said that he didn't do the second Head Automatica album because he had a dispute with the label, and Daryl Palumbo sided with the label over him. It sounded like he has a lot of issues with the labels he works with, and some suits are in the works. He was there with video director Philip Andelman, whose work I wasn't familiar with, but turns out to be quite a prolific director.

It was really interesting to hear Dan and Jennifer talking, and I'm hoping that they can pull things together for the album. And it's great that I got to meet one of my favorite musicians and actually talk with him for a bit.

So, on the whole it was a fantastic show and a cool bonus afterwards. And I'm hoping that whatever the differences are between Mike and Jennifer, they'll work it out and get the second album going.

V For Vendetta (The Film)

Tonight I saw the V For Vendetta film. I've been in the process of rereading the book, and got through two thirds of it before I saw the movie, so I was pretty immersed in Alan Moore's world going in. Unlike Alan himself however, I wasn't going in expecting to see the book on screen. I used to always think that just filming the comic would make a fantastic movie, then I saw Sin City, a film that was basically the comic on screen. The film is fascinating for its utter lack of purpose. It's a good film, but is there any real reason for it to exist? It just takes the book and puts it on film, rather than making a film out of a book.

Now, I'd rather have a Sin City, that's good but pointless, than a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a film that's just awful. So, after seeing Sin City, I decided to try to divorce the adaptation from the original work and just enjoy it or dislike it on its own terms. V the book is a masterpiece, one of the greatest books ever written. V the film is a really strong movie, though one that doesn't quite make it to greatness.

I'll start with what works. Not to be shallow, but the explosion sequences that open and close the film are incredibly satisfying. The combination of visual and music is exhilirating. This is a case where the film does something that a book cannot. I saw this on a huge IMAX screen, and was literally rocked by the sound of the explosions.

The best sequence in the film was the torture sequence with Evey. This sequence worked on a number of levels. My favorite part was the Valerie story, which was wonderfully drawn right from Moore's text. It's a heartbreaking story, and the moment when V shows Evey the "Salt Flats" poster is the emotional peak of the movie. The contrast of the beauty of Valerie's life and the horror of what Evey was going through was very powerful.

In the first few scenes, V seemed goofy, the speaking out of the mask seemed weird and the ridiculous speech of a thousand V words didn't help much. However, as things progressed, you got used to him, and even goofy stuff like V in the apron worked pretty well. The fight scenes, even if they were a bit gratuitous, were very cool and had a unique impact. You could feel the hits the characters took, and the scenes of V cutting up the soldiers effectively showed the attractiveness and brutality of violence.

The acting was quite strong throughout. Natalie Portman went through a big transformation and pulled it off well. Hugo Weaving made V more than just a mask, you could sense the person underneath. My favorite supporting performance was Stephen Fry as Gordon, making a real relationship with Evey in a minimum of screentime.

Comparing it to the book, the biggest improvement was the stuff with Gordon. It never made much sense that Evey is lucky enough to run into the one guy who would take her in and treat her kindly. Having a previous connection makes it less random.

The issue I have with Gordon's transformation is that it takes away the complexity surrounding Evey's father figures. This gets to the core of the problem with the film. By making Evey older, and making her a successful young woman instead of a prostitute, there's less of the sense of getting caught up in the romance of anarchy and then being brought down to Earth upon seeing V's violence.

In the book, Evey sees V as an all purpose father figure, and at one point even asks if he is her father, something that isn't completely out of the realm of possibility. So, in dealing with V, Evey is dealing with the issues surrounding the loss of her father. Then, the episode with Gordon becomes about another father figure, and the issues surrounding getting into a sexual relationship with her father figure.

What the film does that dulls the complexity surrounding V is that V saves Evey from the police when he takes her into his fake prison. In the book, Evey is seeking revenge for Gordon's death, she's not in any danger, but V hauls her back into his world. This makes their relationship more complex, something that's summed up in the scene where she asks him what's wrong with just being happy, and he says that happiness is a prison. It's a much more radical agenda, one that presents a more radical opposition, between fascism and anarchy, rather than between oppression and freedom.

Something that I think didn't work that well in the film was the stuff with Finch and Dominic. It felt like too obvious exposition, and you didn't get the sense of Finch as being a character rather than a plot device. I think part of that is because we've seen detective figures like him in so many films before, it's just not that fresh anymore.

I think the reason that it doesn't work is because so many of the other subplots are cut out. In the book, Finch is designed to show some of the humanity within the system, a contrast to people like Almond and Helen Heyer, who buy into the system. When you've got four or five character arcs layered in the story, the fact that Finch exists primarily for exposition seems less obvious. When he's the only major character in the film outside of V and Evey, it becomes clear that he's there to service the main story rather than to exist on his own.

The thing I miss most from the book is the Rosemary Almond arc, which is powerful enough to be a film in and of itself. Her story showed the effect of this regime on ordinary people more powerfully than just random people watching TV. In the film, you don't get the sense of this society as a whole world, we only see the people as pawns in a political duel between V and the leader.

And the biggest problem with the film is that the relationship with Evey and V is framed as a romantic one, something that doesn't make much sense, since V is meant to be an idea more than an actual man, something that's made explicit in the finale with everyone wearing the masks. So, in the closing voiceover when she says "I remember the man," it seems to completely undermine the point of the film, which is that V is an idea of freedom, who inspires her to reinvent herself, the man himself is irrelevant, it's the mask that matters.

So, after starting this review by saying I was just going to view the film as a film, I've spent most of my time going on about how it differs from the book. That's the basic problem of adaptation, and why I generally don't think it's worth bothering to adapt a book or graphic novel. With a few exceptions, you're not going to match the original because the original is a purer expression of the idea. It's like a second generation video copy. That's why I think when adapting something, it's better to fully embrace what film can do and create an immersive visual experience rather than worrying about the narrative, make something uniquely cinematic. At its best moments, this film does that, but not enough to be a great movie. It's a decidedly good film, one you enjoy, but one that also lacks the complexity of the book.

However, the book is still there, and the film is like a cover of a song. The original might be better, but there's a few spots in the cover where they do something that improves on the original, and that makes it worth hearing at least once.

X-Men: Wrapping it Up

SPOILERS: All of Claremont's X-Men, and Morrison's as well

The time has come to conclude my extensive coverage of Chris Claremont's X-Men run. In 1991, Claremont was bumped off the book, and guidance of the franchise went to fan favorite, Jim Lee, who soon left the books. Considering what happened between the 70s and 1991 with regards to ownership of characters, it's pretty absurd to think of someone devoting his life to a property that he has no control of, like Claremont did for X-Men. Chris created these characters, and if he had even a small share of them, he'd be an incredibly wealthy guy. The franchise that he created has spread out into TV and film, not to mention literally thousands of issues of comic book material. All that is the result of one man's unique blend of superhero action and character based soap opera.

If you compare Claremont's writing here to what was going on in TV in the 70s, it becomes clear how revolutionary Claremont's serial plot and character development were. TV featured standalone episodes with static characters, Claremont's book was constantly evolving, layering new plots on top of each other, and all the while subtly developing characters. Most high end TV shows, from The Sopranos to 24, have more in common structurally with Claremont's run than any TV being done then. Joss Whedon has said that the Paul Smith era basically is Buffy.

The start of the run to Fall of the Mutants functions wonderfully as one big story, culminating in the thematic resolution of the human vs. mutant question, as well as the finale of many character arcs, with Storm still maintaining an inherent good despite her compromised values, and Wolverine stepping up to lead the team. Layered into the plot development is the brilliant character development on Kitty, Scott, Maddy Pryor, Kurt, Wolverine and Storm, who all take really challenging, complex journeys over the course of the run.

Storm's relationship with Forge is the strongest in the book. LifeDeath is a revolutionary issue, and the story at the end of Fall of the Mutants calls back to that, bringing us fine closure. Similarly, Wolverine's journey from wild man to leader of the X-Men is a fantastic arc, and it's great to see a time when he was a character not a caricature.

One of the misconceptions surrounding the book is that the Claremont/Byrne run was the highpoint of the series, and that everything later comes out of that. Reading that chunk of the book, there are some clearly important concepts, but other than Days of Future Past, there's very little material dealing with the question of mutant/human relations, or explicit use of the mutant as minority metaphor. The run the films draw most from is Romita's, the Mutant Massacre period.

There are two highpoints of Claremont's run for me, one is the Paul Smith era. He only drew about ten issues of the book, but they see Claremont at his most nuanced in building character. Storm is reborn, gets a mohawk and cuts loose. Cyclops meets a mysterious lady named Maddy Pryor, Kitty rebels against Xavier, Rogue joins the team and proves herself, and the best final panel of any issue ever, Wolverine shedding a tear as Mariko says she won't marry him. It's Wolverine crying, how bold is that. And Smith's art is the best in the book's entire run.

After Paul Smith, there was a bit of lull until the next highlight, the period from roughly 200 to Fall of the Mutants, featuring the art of John Romita Jr. This is where most of the ideas for the movie came from, the conflict between mutant and human, the world that hates and fears them thing. It's dark, intense stuff and the Mutant Massacre is Marvel's best answer to Dark Knight Returns. Fall of the Mutants brilliantly resolves the thematic question of the series by allowing the world to see the X-Men as heroes.

If the X-Men had stayed dead, it would have been the perfect end to the series. I don't think there was much left to do with the book after that, and after this point, Claremont generally stays away from mutant/human conflict. There's no way that Marvel is going to end X-Men at the height of its popularity, and it's that popularity that ultimately dooms the book.

I mentioned this analogy back in my original reviews, but I think it holds true. If X-Men was a TV show, Fall of the Mutants would be the series finale, and Inferno would be the movie made a few years later. Inferno, for all of its flaws, is the last time that these characters feel like real people, and you have the sense that real change can occur. Inferno was designed to clear the deck, and it did that too well, resolving so many long running plot points, from then on, the books had no direction. Inferno's treatment of Maddy bothers me a lot, but as a story, it's epic and crazy, playing off years of character history to create a really compelling narrative.

It's not like it's all downhill after Inferno, but you increasingly get the sense of these characters as fixed entities. Back in Paul Smith, it felt like anyone was expendable, and that the characters were constantly evolving entities. Storm of issue 165 is dramatically different from Storm of issue 94. However, that basic conundrum emerged, it's the dynmaic character development that made the book so popular, but to mess with the dynamics too radically could mean alienating the audience. I admire Claremont for trying some different stuff post Inferno, but in his attempt to shake things up, he separated the characters and there was no sense of the characters as a family.

After that, everything moved back towards the status quo, culminating in X-Men #1, when all the marketable characters are brought back together, Xavier is back in the wheelchair, Scott's back as leader, and it's easy to sell the concept to other media. And as Claremont found out with the Jean Grey resurection, it became increasingly difficult to make lasting changes to the characters.

Claremont's final statement on the book was strong, and it wasn't until Morrison that anyone really moved beyond what he had done on the book. Morrison's run is brilliant because it's a fusion of Claremont style character development and interaction and Morrison's trademark big ideas.

But everything he did comes out of what Claremont created. Everything in the films is tied back to Claremont, as is the animated series. While he's not known outside of comic book circles, I think it's safe to say that nearly everyone has read or seen something that would not exist without Chris Claremont's run on X-Men.


X-Men 94-138

X-Men 139-161

X-Men 162-176

X-Men 177-194

X-Men 195-213

X-Men 214-221

X-Men 222-229

X-Men 230-239


X-Men: Inferno (240-243)

X-Men 244-254

X-Men 255-265


X-Men: X-Tinction Agenda (266-273)

X-Men 274-280, 1-3

The Sopranos: 'Members Only' (6x01)

SPOILERS: All of The Sopranos, if you have not seen this episode, do not read on



The season premiere is usually the toughest episode of a season to pull off, because it has the difficult task of dropping you into a world you've been gone from for a long time, and also has to fulfill the built up expectations of the time between seasons. And for no show are those expectations built up more than for The Sopranos, which hasn't aired an episode since June 2004. I've been eagerly anticipating this premiere ever since then, and it lived up to expectations as well as anything with that sort of buildup is going to.

The show usually has some kind of montage at the beginning to establish things, but never anything as odd as this. The types discussed in the spoken word piece clearly conform to the roles the characters are going to be playing this season, and it creates a very uneasy feeling, which builds to what happens later in the episode. And at the same time, it sets up the new status quo of the characters, so job well done on this.

Carmela's dream is critical to understanding where she is in the episode. She probably knows that Adrianna is dead, but either can't bring herself to acknowledge it, or is just keeping quiet, hinting around the issue with Tony, who remains noncommittal when it comes to discussing her fate. Seeing her fade out of the house was a brilliant image.

Initially, it looks like things are going well for the crew. Tony and Carmela are on good terms, and as far as we can tell, he's not even cheating on her. He's clearly aged quite a bit, gotten heavier, and generally seems more content with how things are, staying civil with Phil, even when Hesch's son in law gets attacked. I think seeing Johnny arrested has made him realize how easily everything has could be gone, and the experience with Adriana has hardened his belief that he can only trust family.

On the whole, the crew seems much more like a business. There's no sense of fun in what they're doing anymore, it's much more about staying out of jail, and making as much money as possible. Other than the scene with the sunglasses, there's none of the usual antics. Even when Tony's out on his boat, he's alone. I don't think there's been another episode with Tony alone as much.

The stuff with Carmela in this episode was fantastic, showing us everything we need to know about where she is in only a small amount of screentime. She's fully embraced Tony's world again, asking him to use his influence to get things done for her, and loving the car he gets her. The scene where she goes to Ginny's car to show off the house is very cruel, as she flaunts her material gains while Ginny is struggling with creditors.

Carmela has become much more Tony like, both in that scene and the scene with her father, where she yells at him for not performing to her satisfaction. Of course, she gets shut down at the end. She's flaunting the Porsche that Tony gave her when Angie Bompancero says she passed on that car, and instead bought herself a Corvette. She's acheived on her own what Carmela needed Tony to do, and that deflates the sense of superiority that Carmela had for most of the episode.

I loved the episode, my biggest problem was that we didn't get to spend time with all the characters, I guess after waiting two years, I don't want to wait another week to get in depth with Meadow, A.J. and Christopher. From what we've seen, it seems like Christopher has fully committed himself to work, and is clearly positioning himself as the second in command and probable heir to Tony. He's still sober, and there's no evidence that what happened with Adrianna has affected him. Though I would guess next week, when he has to deal with Tony being shot, will bring up some of those old feelings.

The other character on the move is Vito, who's not only thinner, he's positioned himself as the most powerful captain in Tony's crew. The scenes with Vito and Eugene are critical because they show that Vito has the ambition to become head of the family. Of course, we know that his sexual preference may affect that, and I could definitely see Vito getting killed if that comes out. However, for now, I would guess that Tony's injuries are going to set up a power struggle between Vito and Christopher. There's no clear second in command, and the thought that Tony could die is clearly going to create a lot of chaos in the family. Silvio would seem to be the logical person to take over, but he's never expressed a desire to be head of the family. Clearly, the shape of the family post-Tony is going to be a big issue in the next chunk of episodes.

As always, generational conflict is a major element of the show. Tony's generation is getting older, and they all seem to be settling into set routines, Artie's back with Charmaine, Tony's back with Carmela. They're getting older, and aren't prepared to face old age alone. If for no other reason than looking at Junior, it should be clear to Tony why he would want to have someone with him as he gets older. And now that he's been shot, is Carmela going to have to take care of him as he's been taking care of Junior?

The running thread through this episode is Eugene's attempt to retire from mob life and move to Florida. However, this isn't a life you can retire from, I'm sure if it was acceptable, a lot of the best guys would pack it in, but in their world it's not possible. If you have the knowledge that all of them do, it's not possible to move on.

Gene has been in a lot of episodes, but always in the background, so when it became apparent that he was getting his own storyline, I had a bad feeling about him. However, the way they depicted his decline was more powerful than I'd anticipated. This is a guy who's completely lost control of his life, his wife is against him, his boss is against him, and the feds need more from him.

As the series has progressed, the feds have increasingly controlled the way that Tony and his crew do business. This episode sees the loss of the only surviving informer we now about, Ray Curto, and the death of an informer we didn't know about, Gene. The scene where he finally hangs himself is brutal, and a striking finale to his storyline. This episode seems designed to reinforce the idea that there's only two ways out of the life, death or jail.

And that's where the ending comes in. Junior's descent into senility was one of the strongest elements of last season, and as we come in here, he's completely lost it. Tony feels guilty about what he did to his mother, so he's trying to let Junior live out his final days in his own home, and in the process, he hopes to somehow atone for what ultimately happened to his mother. However, his inability to let go of that guilt winds up getting him shot at the end of the episode.

That was a brilliant twist, and even though it's near impossible that Tony will actually end up dead, the event itself completely changes the show's status quo. The way the sequence plays out is great, I love Junior hiding in the closet, and Tony's agonizing crawl to the phone.

Right from the start, the show is messing with everything we've come to expect. I need to see the next new episode and find out how everyone deals with this, particularly how Tony ends up dealing with Junior. It's good to have this show back.

X-Men 274-280, 1-3

SPOILERS: Claremont's whole X-Men run.

Well, after a roughly seven month journey, I have finished Chris Claremont's run on X-Men. Just reading it all felt like a huge accomplishment, so writing it was unquestionably one of the best accomplishments in comics history. If you consider what happened in comics, and the world as a whole, in the fifteen years that Claremont wrote the book, it's surprising that you could maintain a consistently high standard of story and character development.

After a weak path, and the less than perfect X-Tinction Agenda crossover, I'm glad to say that the wrap up of the run is a return to the fun and drama that made Claremont's run so great in the first place. 274 is one of the strongest issues he's done since Inferno. It's a first person narrative, with Magneto pondering his life's work and the morality of his actions.

Under Claremont, Magneto has consistently been one of the most complex and interesting figures in the book, and this is a great storyline for him. He is in conflict with Nick Fury, because he wants to kill Zaladane, who he considers too much of a threat to survive. It's perfectly logical that someone could consider Magneto himself too much of a threat to survive, and that creates an interesting contradiction.

Also, in this issue, we get some great stuff with Magneto and Rogue. Claremont nicely sets up a bond between them, and plays off of that in 275. Magneto has the chance to form a lasting relationship, but he passes it up because of commitment to a political cause that Rogue can't really understand. His basic flaw is that he can't let go of the atrocities in his past and move on. Even when he tried to live Xavier's way, he only ended up causing more death for his people. The story works because you want Magneto to give up the cause and settle down with Rogue, but at the same time, we know that's impossible for him.

Concurrently in 275, we've got another X-Men in space story, usually a sign of a bad storyline, but this first issue at least works well. We've got the X-Men's reunion with Professor X. Just reading Claremont's issue, Xavier doesn't seem like that crucial of a character to the mythos, because he had so many mental traumas early on, it's tough to tell who the real person is. But it's still good to see him again.

The subsequent space storylien seems to exist primarily to have the X-Men fight various incarnations of each other, something that's gotten pretty old. It's a bit convoluted, but there's some good stuff when they have the X-Men team up with Deathbird to battle Lilandra, reversing the usual dynamics of the Shiar stuff. I suppose one last trip up to space was required before Claremont left the book to resolve the issues with the Shiar.

Unfortunately, this big storyline leads into another rather convoluted, nonsensical big action storyline. This one ties into a really old storyline, going back to X-Men 117, and the Shadow King. These psychic war storylines never work that well because there's no concrete rules to the world. They put on "psychic armor" and fight, but there's no sense of what gives a killing blow. At the end of the storyline, they defeat the nexus, and Forge invents a device that will resolve everything.

Forge is something of a problematic character because he presents an easy out for the writer. He's the perfect crutch to overcome any narrative problem, you simply make him invent something and it's all resolved. The best storyline was definitely LifeDeath, where he had to deal with the consequences his invention had for a woman he loved. The other highlight for him was in Fall of the Mutants, when he and Storm experience life in an alternate dimension, and he has to build things out of his leg. That was fantastic stuff because it put him in a challenging situation.

But this is yet another make the X-Men fight each other storyline. In some respects, this probably has to happen just because there's so many characters to manage. You can't bring in any outside villains, the only way to get everyone some screentime is to have them fight each other.

The business with the Shadow King is resolved in X-Factor 70, which acts as a setup for the whole new status quo. This isn't even a Claremont issue, but I read it because it resolves the storyline he started. This is by Peter David, and it's a really strong issue, lot of inventive stuff with the art, and some nice resolution for a lot of storylines. I loved the stuff with Rogue and Mystique, which shows that they're still close despite fighting on opposite sides at times. At this point, it seems like Mystique has crossed over completely to the good side, and I'm not sure how she wound up as a villain later on.

The late 260s represented the most radical period of Claremont's run, with the characters all split up, drifting along, with no status quo whatsoever. There was no base, it was just people moving along. Starting with X-Tinction Agenda and culminating in X-Men 1, we see a return to a status quo that in fact never really existed. The book moves to fit in with the idea of what the X-Men were, putting all the most famous characters under the X-Men label.

I have a lot of issues with the way that the book implies that the experimental period was a failure. I would agree that the 260s go too far, but stuff like the Australian period and certainly Fall of the Mutants had some really strong stories, and any faults they had weren't because they were lacking Xavier. And yet, these issues move everything back to an easy status quo. One of the dumbest choices they made was the decision to put Xavier back in the wheelchair. That was such a conservative reaction, and doesn't make that much sense, considering that Xavier hadn't actually been in the wheelchair for roughly nine years, he hadn't even been in the book for about six years. So, I don't think there was a need to put him back. It smacks of just wanting to return to the past. That's a criticism I'd also have for the end of Morrison's run, though I suspect in both cases, the creative decisions were largely motivated by Marvel editorial edict.

The way I imagine Marvel approaching X-Men 1 is to return things to the status quo of the Byrne era, set up the Magneto/Xavier opposition, The Jean/Scott/Logan love triangle, and the mansion base for the characters. I'd suspect that as they moved into more licensing and products in the early 90s, there was the desire to have a set idea of what the X-Men were. If you're trying to bring the book into the mainstream media, you want people to be able to say "Wolverine, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Storm, Xavier," those are X-Men. You don't want someone to pick up the book and say "Why is it that an Irish guy and an Indian guy who fought in Vietnam are the only characters? Where's Wolverine, and if Magneto's a bad guy, why is he in charge of Xavier's school?"

I can understand this impulse, and I would certainly agree that things got out of control in the 260s, but I just wish it wasn't such a blatant return to conservatism. The book is about evolution, but this is a clear regression. And it's odd that they feel the X-Factor characters are essential to the team, they were barely in Claremont's run. If you want to restore a classic team, you'd need Nightcrawler and Kitty. For me, the prime X-Men team was in the Paul Smith era: Kitty, Kurt, Colossus, Wolverine, Storm and Cyclops. I'd have liked to see one last appearance from Kitty and Kurt here in Claremont's run, but I believe he was writing them in Excalibur at the time, so it's not like he abandoned them completely.

Anyway, despite issues about the decisions that went into the launching of X-Men 1 and the splitting of the teams, this first storyline is the best X-Men material since Inferno, a storyline that finally returns to the core of the book, the way that mutants live in a human world. This storyline was clearly an influence on Morrison's take on Magneto, and you can practically see the exact line that inspires the idea that Magneto is more powerful dead than alive. This issue deals explicitly with this idea, showing someone who just wants to be left alone, but is constantly getting bothered by people.

I'm not sure if it was the intention, but I was really rooting for Magneto this issue. There's so many X-Men by this point, they've been reduced to caricatures, there's no room for the sort of precise development that Claremont was able to do with a small cast. And considering there's so many of them, the X-Men feel more like an army than an oppressed band. This is a problem, the X-Men are inherently gifted, and the only way to make you really feel sympathy for them is to put them in situations where they're fighting against huge odds, as in the Mutant Massacre to Fall of the Mutants period.

Magneto on the other hand is a legitimately oppressed guy. He doesn't want to fight the X-Men, but Cyclops leads an attack on him. Considering they're the aggressors, you can't expect Magneto to just stand there and get hurt. The thing that perplexes me is why Wolverine chooses to attack him, I can see why Cyclops would, but Wolverine would surely be able to see that he's not an aggressor. I'm glad to see that they've kept up the guilt that Magneto has about sinking the sub back in 150, and the scene where he's thrown into the sub amidst the bodies is great.

This makes clear the essential problem for Magneto. He's been such a major player on the global stage that no one believes him when he says he just wants to be left alone. They keep provoking him, and eventually he's going to turn on them. It's the X-Men attacking him that turns him into their enemy and forces him to return to his oppositional stance. The whole time, I wanted one of them to step up and offer to talk with him. It must have been intentionally ambiguous, because the way it's played, Magneto is sympathetic, while the X-Men are mindless aggressors.

I take issue with the revelation about Moira's genetic tampering with Magneto. This is another case where the tendency towards conservatism wins out over logical story development. Rather than exploring the way that a man who tried to reform can be led back, they chose to go with this copout explanation that in some ways negates all the brilliant development that Claremont did on the character over the course of his run.

The end of 3 seems to imply that Moira's conditioning didn't actually change him, it just held back a psychosis that his powers were causing. So, the man we saw in these issues is in fact the real Magneto, and the revelation is just a device used to make it more acceptable for the X-Men to turn on him. It makes him the aggressor instead of them. But I think it's a dumb retcon, and undermines a legitimate debate between his point of view and Xavier's.

However, I think issue 3 redeems Magneto in some respects. The initial bit with the X-Men fighting each other (yet again) doesn't work so well, but the finale of Claremont's run is satisfying. It's not traditional closure, but in some respects, these last few issues are a really satisfying finale, bringing everything full circle. His run has been a time of intense troubles, with the students starting with Xavier's point of view, becoming disillusioned and less morally sure, while at the same time Magneto tries it Xavier's way. Ultimately, the X-Men return to Xavier's dream, seeing in the horrors they've witnessed that violence cannot lead to good. While Magneto sees the violence and decides that the only way to protect his people is to stand against those who would oppress them.

In the final moments, Xavier recounts Magneto's thoughts, a perfectly legitimate view of the conflict, even if Xavier chooses to go his own way, to re-embrace the dream. So, the finale shows both men becoming more sure of what they're doing because they are back in conflict. It's like Xavier needs Magneto to show him the real meaning of his dream, and it's only in observing Xavier's failures that Magneto can find another way.

Knowing that the book would continue, I wasn't expecting closure, but I feel like the vast majority of Claremont's plot threads have been resolved, and I don't need anymore. The ending tells us that the fight will continue, but each side is more sure of what they believe in, and gives the other a grudging respect. Even if Scott is still stuck in the old view, Xavier and Magneto are aware of the moral ambiguity of the world, as well as the need for idealists.

The status quo is restored and the dream lives on no matter what the X-Men have had to face. It's a satisfying conclusion, and even though Claremont may not have left the books voluntarily, this was probably the right time. This issue really felt like the emergence of a new age, new costumes, a new style of art. Claremont showed them the new world, and then left his characters in the hands of others.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go back and do an overview of Claremont's whole run, its successes, failures and overall themes. It's been a massive journey, but one I'm glad I've taken. It's a fifteen year journey through the history of comics, the world as a whole, and one man's evolution as a storyteller.

Entourage (1x01-1x04)

Oh man, lot of content in the past few days. One general note on the site, I'm going to start putting a spoiler warning at the top of every article. I've noticed that I frequently will mention a lot of spoilers for stuff that's not the main subject of a post, and I feel bad if someone got something spoiled from reading one of my posts. I don't think that will actually apply here, but kicking it off...

SPOILERS: ENTOURAGE 1x01-1x04


Entourage is one of a glut of inside Hollywood comedies, most of them on HBO. You've got Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, The Comeback and Entourage. In some respects, making a comedy based on your own life reflects a failure of inspiration, but I find the world of Hollywood very interesting, and watching Entourage, it was refreshing to see a show that didn't treat making movies like a burden, and instead seemed to revel in the improbability of being able to make an absurd amount of money making movies.

The show is a refreshing departure from most of the comedies I've watched lately. I love shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development, but seeing a show where you're actually supposed to like the characters felt pretty good for a change. Similarly, not using a documentary style and comedy based on awkward moments was nice. The show works because you really like these guys and want them to succeed, but the show still has enough drama that it doesn't feel sappy.

The show basically presents a male fantasy life, hanging out with your friends all the time without having to work while at the same time pulling in as many beautiful women as you can handle. In most reviews of films like Old School and Wedding Crashers, the general feeling is the joy of the film comes from watching these guys acting badly, and that when they inevitably end up maturing and entering stable relationships, the joy is gone. This show avoids that maturing stage by keeping them in that sleeping around stage.

However, these characters don't seem to be immature, it's more that they've formed a new kind of family. A lot of shows play on the idea of the family of friends, but by making them all live together, and setting up a clear family feel, with scenes like Drama making them all breakfast, there's no sense that they need to grow up and move on, this is what they want, or at least what they want some of the time.

For Eric, the basic conflict of the series is that he'd rather have a stable relationship than the lifestyle that Vince and the others enjoy. But, does he want his own home just because of societal pressures, or is the entourage family just as valid?

And concurrent with this is the arc of Eric becoming more involved in Vince's career. I think this was a great decision because it makes you root for Vince more. If he's just an arrogant movie star, you might not care whether his films do well, but when it means success for Eric as well, you really want him to end up successful. Similarly, the incident with the Rolls Royce, and the potential financial crisis is critical because it means that the lifestyle they're living is precarious. It's not assured, and if Eric mismanages things, it could end up ending their setup.

Of course, the show is primarily a comedy, and a lot of the pleasure comes from vicariously living the life of a star, running into Jessica Alba at a restaurant, then going to a party at her house. This is such a contrast to a show like Curb Your Enthusiasm, which seems all about deflating the idea of fame. The thing is, even if things go bad for Vince, he's still aware that there's nothing he'd rather be doing.

Kevin Dillon as Drama frequently steals the show, particularly in the Jimmy Kimmel episode, or later where he steals the batteries from the remote at the radio station. The Jimmy Kimmel episode is a great example of a story that could have been sappy, Johnny gets his moment in the spotlight, but instead, you're really happy for him. The show earns the moment.

It's a really sharp, funny show, and I'm psyched to see more.

Battlestar Galactica (1x01-1x04)

Last week, I watched the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, and loved it, one of the best series openers I've ever seen. So, understandably I was excited to see where they go in the series. After seeing the first four episodes, I don't think it's quite as strong as the miniseries was, but it's still great TV.

The first episode of the series effectively continues the harrowed on the run feel of the miniseries, by introducing the threat of cylon ships every 33 minutes. So, we see the crew at their most strung out, reduced to their basest functions, just moving forward. This premise sets up a really interesting conflict, which is basically how long can they go before they lose the will to live.

The episode again sets up an ethical conundrum, when the Olympia reappears, carrying with it the threat of cylons. Already, the president is getting hardened by the job, being a leader requires tough choices, and the need to sacrifice this ship is one of them. She is vindicated later in the episode, but I was glad to see that the moral implications of what they did were dealt with later.

The conversation that Apollo and Laura have in 'Water' is designed to explicitly address the issues surrounding the war on terror, and Bush's admit no mistakes mentality. The show suggests that in a state that's under attack, to admit defeat is to invite second guessing, and even though Laura may not say she's sorry about what she did, she certainly is. I assume this isn't meant to apologize for Bush, it's more about the need for a leader to hide their own emotions and think more of the image that they present to the state.

I'd actually be interested in seeing more of how the regular civilians perceive what's going on. I'd love to see a couple of new characters who are just ordinary people affected by the events. This would give us a new perspective on all that happens, though I suppose it would feel rather disconnected because they wouldn't be able to interact with any of the other major characters.

I think the second episode, 'Water' was the most interesting of the four I've seen so far. I'm always drawn to material that deals with the issue of what is human, and how real humans interact with synthetic humans. It seems like Shannon is quite literally a split personality. At times, the cylons use her to do what they want, without her being aware of it. The scene in the ship at the end of the episode, with the detonator is the most explicit example of this, and notably shows us a cylon who is so deep in her human cover that that personality takes precedence over the cylon programming. It raises the question of whether a cylon sleeper agent can be reprogrammed to stay in her civilian cover.

Concurrent with these issues is the story of Six, someone who remains desperate to interact with Baltar as a human emotional level. I loved the sequence at the end of '33,' where Six makes Baltar repent. The essential paradox of a robot who has a deep faith in God is brilliant, and is the plot thread I want to see explored more.

On the whole, Baltar and Six are easily the most interesting characters. I think it's largely because some of the rough edges on the characters from the miniseries have been smoothed out. It's unfortuante that they've all gotten to that grudging respect stage so quickly because it means there's not that much strong character conflict. I suppose that's a consequence of the need to set up the characters first, before we can really care enough about their problems with each other.

But Baltar and Six remain ambiguous. Baltar is someone who's utterly selfish, always looking out for his own interests. The very fact that he hasn't told anyone about his experience with Six says a lot about how much he values himself over humanity as a whole, and as a viewer, that essential conflict is exciting. I love the way they play Six's discussions with him against his discussions in the outside world.

I'm wondering if Six's mission with Baltar is not part of the general cylon agenda. I'm not sure how the cylons work exactly, is every number Six connected, sharing one large mind, or are there a few "souls," the specific memories of one Six ending up in the body of another when she dies. Considering what happens with Boomer, there's at least some differentiation among the models, because the one on the Galactica has a different agenda from the one on Caprica.

I guess my main frustration with these episodes is that they got bogged down in these standalone stories and haven't done as much to explore these issues with the cylons. Admittedly, if you're planning on doing a bunch of seasons, you don't want to reveal everything right away, but I really want to find out more about the cylon world and how it works.

Along those lines, the storyline with Helo is really interesting. I'm not sure what Cylons would need with him, other than as an experiment in exploring how humans react under extreme circumstances. The fact that Helo survived would seem to indicate that there's at least a few humans left on the planet, and I'm not sure how they'll feel about being left behind.

I could see why they did the "Bastille Day" episode, but I wasn't that big a fan. On an intellectual level, it's interesting, but I feel like it was too much of a classic standalone plot, building up this guy into a huge intellectual hero just to serve the needs of this one episode. Zarek will probably show up again at some point, but in terms of this episode, it felt too much like an X-Files standalone, where our heroes are put in peril, but ultimately nothing that big happens to anyone. There's too much a sense of safety for our characters, which is precisely what the miniseries lacked with its massive destruction.

For example, the bit with Cally seemed to set up a real consequence, rape, but they backed out on it and had her only get shot instead. If she was really hurt, that would raise the emotional intensity and make the decision to spare Zarek at the end more troubling. I can understand the decision to not have a female character get raped, but I feel like here something was needed to raise the drama beyond an intellectual debate about the nature of freedom. It was interesting, but not emotionally involving.

The fourth episode returns to the more adventurous narrative style of the miniseries, cutting together three different timelines. In some respects, I think this was motivated by the desire to use those effects shots of Starbuck going into the planet as much as possible, but it also ends up creating a rather disorienting opening, and then really making you understand Kara better than we have prior to this. Each of the episodes seems designed to focus on one of the major characters and illuminate his/her personality, and of the three, this is the best.

And it also brings some good tension to the characters. In TV, a lot of the time there's a tendency to denigrate soap opera, but at the core of every great TV series, from Twin Peaks to The Sopranos, is an element of soap opera, and by soap opera, I mean a focus on the development of emotional relationships between the characters. The show so far seems to mainly focus on plot, with character stuff in the background, but this episode does a good job of blending character development with narrative. Ultimately, it's usually best to scale back the story and play up the characters' involvement in it. Of course, the ideal stories are the ones that reveal a lot about the characters, and move them forward.

But, on the whole the show is working really well. There's the same great verite style and feeling of realism to everything that happens. While some of the standalone stories aren't great, there's a whole bunch of interesting stuff developing in the background. They're still working out the kinks, but things are looking good for the future. I'll report back once I've seen more.

Pretty Persuasion

I've found that writing up the films I've been watching recently has helped me find some new layers of depth and really understand the director's intention in creating the film. When I do my own films, I really consider the thematic implication of everything that happens, and I'd imagine if you're doing a feature, you're going to think about every decision you make and why things go the way they do in the story. There's social implications to every choice you make, intentional or not they're there, and as a result, every work is something of a social document. That's why I'm planning to do more pieces in the style of my reviews of Visitor Q, and The Doom Generation, reviews that are more about analyzing what ended up on screen than just saying whether or not the movie was good.

So, Pretty Persuasion is one of these. It's not a film that I loved, but I think there's plenty of interesting stuff to discuss within it. If I was pitching this film to a studio, I would describe it as "Mean Girls...on crack!" It fits right into that cliquey high school girl subgenre that's usually great fodder for dark comedy, as in Heathers and the afforementioned Mean Girls.

This movie certainly owes a debt to Heathers, but that film was completely crippled by the ridiculously ugly clothing and production design. It may have been in style at the time, but you've got to wonder what they were thinking. Heathers did some bold stuff, but it's at heart a really simple story of a boy and girl in love, there's the sense that the murders are just an exaggerated version of the sort of pranks that appear in Mean Girls. Both Mean Girls and Heathers had an essentially likable character at the center, and even when we started to sour on her, we always had someone even worse, the queen bee, to look to and see that our heroine isn't really that bad.

This film changes things by focusing on the queen bee, Kimberly, who is expertly portrayed by Evan Rachel Wood. Between this and her performance in Thirteen, it's clear that she's the best teen actress around right now, taking on challenging parts and totally nailing them. The final scene of the film is a really stunning piece of acting, it falls entirely on her to sell the emotional close of the film, and she pulls it off with aplomb. I think she's got really good things ahead of her, and hopefully she'll continue to choose this artsier filmmaking over more stereotypical teen material. I never want to see her at the end of a slasher's knife.

Much like both Visitor Q and The Doom Generation, this is a confrontational film, assaulting the viewer with taboo subject matter, here voiced by teen girls, adding to the inappropriateness of it. If you apply real world rules to the film, it's a bit tough to accept, but if you consider it in light of the heightened reality concept, it makes sense. Basically, every action is pushed beyond what it would be in our world as a way of confronting the viewer with the reality of the behavior.

So, when Kimberly first shows Randa around the school, she goes on a variety of politically incorrect rants, which I thought were really funny. The film works because it puts us in an odd place with respect to our protagonist. We don't like her, if you were to meet her in real life, you'd want to stay far away, but the entertainment of the film comes from watching her flout societal conventions and go on inappropriate, and at times hilarious rants, such as her discussion of her racial preferences.

The film is aware of its position with regards to other films in the genre, and as a result, it has to up the ante. That's why she has to be so extreme in discussing the other kids in school, just being mean isn't enough anymore, she needs the racial slurs, or the discussion about fucking the dog, to make us really understand how messed up she is.

The basic thesis of the film seems to be that society evaluates young women based on their looks, and in the mass of identical blondes seen in the first scene, it's tough to stand out. The fact that all these people are gathered for a casting session shows how these people have molded themselves to fit the Hollywood image, however, as Kimberly makes clear, just fitting that image is not enough, she needs something to set her apart.

This is what leads to her elaborate scheme to shame Anderson and find her own fame. Her friends provide an interesting counterpoint to Kimberly. Kimberly expresses jealousy at Britney's blonde hair and blue eyes, which combined with the constant derogatory talk about Jews would seem to construct American society as fascist, enforcing certain standards in the same way that the Nazis did, though this time the people hurt themselves. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Randa who is totally exempt from traditional notions of beauty because her headdress. If these other girls define themselves by her appearance, Randa is someone who really is about what's on the inside. Yet, she seems relatively empty on the inside, in this film, female sexuality is a critical weapon, and because she doesn't have it, Randa has very little agency.

Kimberly is consciously trying to put herself beyond traditional morality, freely using whatever is at her disposal, most notably her sexuality, as a way of getting what she wants, while at the same time playing up her young age and innocence when it can work to her advantage. This dichotomy is most evident in the scene in the court room, where we cut between the two different presentations of the letter.

While this act works with older people, she winds up in trouble with people her own age. She clearly is jealous of Britney, if for no other reason than that she has Troy. What drove Troy away from her is the deviant sexuality in her past. She can act nonchalant about everything, and it may not matter to her, but she has to deal with others, and Troy is clearly not so accepting of her choices. Troy claims that he was always in love with Britney, and considering her slightly dim demeanor, and blonde hair, it's implied that he's attracted to the innocent front she presents. Kimberly is completely in control of every sexual situation she's in, but someone like Troy needs to be in control himself, he could not handle having a girlfriend who's more sexually experienced than him. So, she's not really lying when she says that she broke up with Troy because he wasn't ready to have sex with her, she changes the axis of causation, but the basic power relationship remains the same.

Over the course of the film, Kimberly schemes to turn Britney into her. This begins with the hair dying, and culminates when she outs Britney as a lying schemer, leading to her breakup with Troy. She knows that Troy is someone with a very traditional sense of morality, and through her plan, Kimberly is able to tarnish Britney with something that she can never get rid of. The film is all about people who made choices that are wrong in some way, and then have to live with the consequences of them.

For Kimberly, it's the anal sex, which dooms her chances with Troy. For Anderson, it's the skirt, indulging in a fantasy version of an illegal act that means his wife leaves him. For Britney and Randa, it's going along with Kimberly's plan, and for the reporter, it's the decision to sleep with Kimberly and engage in the exact crime that she's reporting about with outrage. Doing something bad locks you into a situation you might not want to be in, and forces you to live with the consequences.

Kimberly's utterly selfish view of the world seems to be largely motivated by her parents. Her mother will barely talk to her, and her father is impressing his racist viewpoints into her, his cold, selfishness leading to the same behavior in his daughter. The only time we Kimberly letting down her guard is when legtimately trying to reach out to her parents, and she always winds up rejected. What's so tough about the failure of the case is that in her father's treatment of her, she can see a reflection of how she treated her friends, thinking of them only in terms of how they could serve her.

The film's ending leaves us with some conflicted emotions. Kimberly confesses her utter manipulativeness to Britney and alienates her only remaining friend, and watchhing TV, she begins to break down, recognizing that she's now alone, and her greatest aspiration is to be this dumb female on a TV show. That's what she did it all for, that's what Randa died for, and it seems like the role on the show is as hollow as the life that she's leading. What lends the scene irony is the fact that as she's at her lowest ebb, feeling that she's lost the part, we know that the producers are going to recast, and that in fact her plan did work. So, after the film we could easily see her returning to happiness upon learning she's been cast, but it seems more like she's going to take a serious look at the direction of her life and the way she treats the people around her.

I liked the film, but didn't love it, and there's a lot of issues I have with it. The biggest one is in the revelation that Kimberly did all this because Troy broke up with her. Because Troy is such a cipher, a generic pretty boy, it seems odd that such a powerful girl should act out all to get back at him. She even admits in the movie that it's a cliche, and it leaves you with a conflicted feeling, the idea that the only reason this really empowered female character acted was to get back at her friend for stealing her man. Now, you could argue that the film is in fact commenting on the way that society turns girls into objects, who seek to define themselves through their relationship with men, and that's a valid take on the film, but at the same time, on the surface level, what you see is this incredibly powerful character basically reduced to just a jealous girl at the end.

Another big issue I have with the film is the structure. I think the flashback stuff was unnecessarily convluted, largely because the one month gap happens for no reason, and just strands us in this point in the future, where apparently nothing has changed, except for Britney's hair color. Eventually we figure everything out, and obviously some of the flashback structure is essential to preserve the suspense of the trial, but I think it could have been done in a less clumsy way.

Part of what might have hurt it is that after one month later, the film feels very different. I feel like the film has too much plot. The most fun part of the film is just watching this character move through the school, interacting with Randa was great fun. The film's greatest strength is its main character, and the big problem with the second chunk is that there's so much plot to get through, we can't just enjoy hanging out with her. The whole trial thing takes away from what we really want to see, Kimberly moving through her world.

Obviously, the trial contributes a lot thematically, presenting the key example of Kimberly using her sexuality as a weapon, but it's too long and there's just not enough entertainment within. Also, there's the sense that some of the content is there for shock value, something that's amplified by constantly harping on how the character is only fifteen.

I was happy to see Tina Holmes a.k.a Maggie from Six Feet Under, even if she only had a couple of lines in the whole film. And Stark Sands, the guy who played Troy, was also on Six Feet Under, as the boy Claire meets at Aunt Sarah's in season two.

Ultimately, this is an entertaining film, but one that falls prety to some contradictions within itself. Is it a film about how women can empower themselves through their sexuality, or is it saying that ultimately all the actions that a woman takes are in an attempt to get a man? I like to think that Kimberly is more interested in acting out this scenario, viewing her world as a laboratory in which to test emotional responses, as she struggles to remain above emotion herself, ultimately succumbing to her humanity at the end.

The Doom Generation

Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin was one of the best films of 2005, and it prompted me to go back and check out some of his earlier stuff, starting with The Doom Generation. I went in pretty much blind on this one, except for the knowledge that Araki was a leader of the "New Queer Cinema" movement on the 1990s, and also that it starred James Duval, better known as Frank the Bunny from Donnie Darko. Like Visitor Q yesterday, Doom Generation is a pretty weird film that takes place in a heightened reality, that's slightly askew from our world.

The film's opening is quite strong, starting with the buzzing synth of Nine Inch Nails' "Heresy" and frenetic strobing images of people in a club. A title announces that this is "A Heterosexual Movie from Gregg Araki," which I initially figured was just a joke about his reputation, but turned out to have some more thematic significance to the film as a whole. Araki uses the same font as he did in Mysterious Skin, it's interesting to see certain directors always sticking with the same type, such as Kubrick's preference for Futura.

When the film proper begins, the characters' style of speech is notable. They never sound quite natural, sometimes using bigger words than you'd expect them to, and other times using slightly odd turns of phrase, particularly when insulting people. James Duval as Jordan reminds me of a young Keanu, speaking with a perpetual stoner drawl, always about thirty seconds behind what's going on. Despite all the strange stuff they go through, he remains an innocent until the finale. His most notable cluelessness is in the relationship with X, there's clear homosexual undertones, practically overtones, and yet he doesn't seem to get it at all. Scenes are set up to maximize their tension, most notably in the scene by the bed, where they always seem just a few inches away from kissing.

The thematic significance of this becomes apparent later, for most of the film it's just subtext to the relationship between Amy and Jordan. Amy is someone who's incredibly worldly, always desiring to be in control. She takes on the traditionally masculine role in the relationship, driving the car and usually initiating sex, while Jordan plays the role of the ditzy airhead. Normally if you have the attractive stranger, like X, come into the car it would be the man trying to get him out, while the woman is attracted to him. Here it's flipped, which makes for an interesting dynamic.

For Amy, X represents a sexual and intellectual equal. He takes the initiative in their relationship and she seems almost in awe of him. In the scenes where she has sex with Jordan it's all about closeness and love, whereas when she has sex with X, it's more about the spectacle, the novelty of this man and his skill. This is particularly evident in the cowboy hat scene, where Jordan observes her and sees a sexual enjoyment that's deeper than what she experienced with him. I also really like the aesthetics of that scene, the hat and the way the scene is shot make it seem like she's a rodeo rider, using this guy as her own entertainment device.

So the film sets up a basic conflict between the somewhat naive love she has for Jordan, and the more experimental pure sexuality of X. It's not a straight love triangle (pun intended) because Jordan has an attraction to X. He seems almost unaware of it, but it's evident that there's something more than just friendship between these two. The only time he seems to object to X being with Amy is when he wanders away from the room after they're having sex, an action that could be interpreted as despair prompting him out into the desert to reflect, or simply giving them space for what he's doing, almost like a child who caught his parents having sex.

Getting away from the narrative elements, I loved the aesthetics of the film, most notably in the design of the hotel rooms. The initial red room, with cold blue light was very David Lynch, and the way Amy was lit prefigured what Lynch would do with Patricia Arquette in Lost Highway. In that scene, there was also the funny bit with the bluescreen showing through the news anchors' clothes, a nice visual, even if the overall tone of that newscast was a bit too knowingly ironic. The later black and white checker hotel room was another fun bit of design.

The film is very much a mid 90s indie movie. It's got Parker Posey, a character using speed, absurdly excessive violence and frequent trips to a convienence store. At times, the stylized dialogue and bizarre situations can be a bit distancing. It's a case of seeing through the surface sheen and finding the emotions underneath. If you only look on the surface, this is a pretty soulless, excessive movie, you have to dig through that sensationalist stuff to find the real core.

The end of the film takes things to a stylistic melting point, pushing the violence and imagery over the top. If you look at the top of the film, it says "A Heterosexual Movie," which would imply that the film exists within the code of heterosexual society. So, a threesome is okay, but after Amy leaves we see the homosexual relationship between X and Jordan finally about to happen. At the moment he makes a proposition to him, the gang invades their space and attacks Jordan.

Why do they attack Jordan and not X? I would argue it's because X has proven himself to be the superior partner. If we look at the film as a competition between Jordan and X, it's clear that X is the more in control manly guy, even if he does seem to have a strong bi streak. As the film progresses, we at first see Jordan and Amy exclusively together, except for that one time sleeping with X that didn't mean anything. Then they have sex while Jordan's not around, and ultimately there's an implicit agreement that they will share her. By the end, they're on an equal level, flipping a coin to decide who will sleep with her first. There's a critical moment where she looks at the coin, and could easily lie and choose Jordan over X, but she doesn't, and it's more clear than ever here that X has moved ahead of Jordan in her affections.

He opens her up to new things sexually, that she then uses when she's with Jordan, and ultimately X feels free to move in on the two of them and make it a three. This moment revisits the earlier scene where we see the three of them in bed together, but there it's played as the height of love for Jordan and Amy, alone together, despite the presence of X. Here it's Jordan who gets lost in the shuffle, he's no longer enough for her own his own, he needs the aid of X.

So, Jordan is now irrelevant, he has been replaced. The gang at the end is representative of normalizing society, competition between two men over a woman is okay, but for the two men to be together themselves is unacceptable, one of them has to go, and clearly it's going to be Jordan. He's the boy, while X is a man. Considering this is a film where the characters' primary mode of expression is their sexuality, the moment when Jordan is castrated is equivalent to death, he now has no chance to compete with X, and as a result, he must go.

The sequence itself is harrowing and intense. The use of the American flag, national anthem and swatiska by the same group is meant to equate the restrictions within the country on homosexuality with similar restrictions in nazi Germany. This gang of blonde haired, blue eyed men is out to destroy those who are not compatible with their worldview. The moment when Amy turns their weapon against them is particularly satisfying.

In some respects, I wish the film ended on that dramatically intense note, instead of the just there finale, but that scene is crucial for a couple of reasons. One is to show that X and Amy are now together, and Jordan is left behind. A new relationship is forged between the two adults, the two men, and the child is left behind. The other is to show that even after all this extreme violence, things are still going on the way they were before.

I'm not sure if it was out at the time, but the title may very well be a reference to the videogame, Doom. Araki's statement seems to be that this generation is so used to extreme violence that it is numb to them, and even after all they've done, the only X has to say is "Dorito?" The weak and innocent are left behind, it is the strong cynics who survive.

I really liked the film, I think it's visually inventive and thematically challenging, even if it did drag a little bit at times. That's largely because there is very little narrative, and there's no traditional tension. In theory, we're worried that the police will catch them, but that's not really a pressing concern. It's basically these people living their lives, upended by a burst of ultraviolence in the finale. In that respect, it's not unlike the late 60s youth films, like Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde, that both relied on the romantic myth of the open road and the power of progressive youth to combat outmoded society.

Visitor Q

Takashi Miike is a person who forces everyone to reassess their lives and wonder just how much time they've wasted. Why is this? It's because the man has directed 67 films since 1991, an average of 4.5 films a year. This is unheard of, no one since Fassbinder has produced at this level, and as far as I know, Miike doesn't have the coke habit backing him up. This man is doing so much, it makes the rest of look like slackers.

Most likely because of his ridiculous speed, a lot of his films end up feeling like first drafts. Gozu is a film that could likely have been a masterpiece if he'd spent some more time tinkering and tightening, but I don't think Miike's interested in doing that. Some directors seek perfection, while others are content to just make movies and let them out into their world, the sanctity of their oevure be damned.

Having seen most of Miike's high profile work (Audition, Ichi, Gozu), I ventured into the less charted realm of Visitor Q, a movie that while not his best film, is in many ways his most coherent and comprehensible. The film takes place in an odd world, but the nature of that world remains stable, and though the narrative is dreamlike, it never drifts off into the ambiguous reality bending that has ended the other Miike films I've seen.

That said, Visitor Q is probably the most difficult of Miike's films to take because of its mundane mise en scene and verite shooting style. At its most basic level, the film is about the way a mysterious visitor, "Q," brings a broken family together. That sounds like a pretty heartwarming tale, and in some ways, the film is a satisfying emotional story of familial togetherness, but it is a journey filled with some of the most bizarre, disturbing images you're going to encounter in any film.

The opening title of the film introduces to a sexual encounter between a daughter and her father. It's a sequence that's disturbing because it's played very low key. There's no heightened emotion or moral questioning, it's just the daughter seducing her father by playing on the innate attraction of a male for a female. The scene introduces the video motif, in which the father always seems to videotape events he didn't mean to, creating embarressing consequences.

From here, the film has a title asking the question "Have you ever been hit on the head," and proceeds to show us a little viginette in which the man we just saw is inexplicably hit on the head by a random guy. Another intertitle poses the question "Have you ever hit your mother," and shows us a viginette with an ultrabratty kid whipping his mother.

At this point, I thought the film would be a series of darkly comic viginettes, all responding to these questions. However, there aren't any more questions, and from here the film begins to examine the relationships within this family. For some reason, the father invites the guy who hit him to live at the house, and from there, we experience the odd life of this family.

With a Miike film, there's always the question of the line between shock and art. There's a lot of boundary pushing material here, and you can either choose to embrace the film's world or get hung up on these individual things. By the time the man decides to have sex with a corpse and gets stuck inside, you're either with the film or you're not. Things might not make sense in terms of our world, but the whole film takes place in a heightened reality.

The way I see it, most of the shocking behaviors are just amplified versions of common behavior. So, the spoiled son who orders his mother around is a common thing, but here it's made physical, by having him literally whip her rather than just verbally castigate her. It's a different language that Miike is using to express the character's emotions. The wife's heroin habit is just a heightened version of the prescription drugs that many woman do use to help them get through the day.

One of the central motifs of the film is the father's constant taping of events. He views everything around him as potential fodder for sensationalist news reports, to the point that when an attempt to interview some youth goes awry, and he is sodomized with a microphone, he decides to run the clip, and embarresses himself in front of the nation. He wants people to play characters in his drama, allowing his son to be urinated upon because it will make for good footage. When his female reporter sidekick won't go along with his plan, he kills her, getting out the rage he felt when he got rejected by his daughter. If you read the fact that he came too early when having sex with his daughter as a deficiency of love, his outburst against the reporter is the father letting go of his rage at his failures as a parent.

The visitor means different things to each character. For the father, he's a partner, manning the camera so that he can begin to experience real life more. For the wife, he is a more willing sexual partner, opening her up to new possible pleasure. Again, Miike draws on the lactation motif, and those scenes are pretty graphic. What the visitor does is open up the wife to her own sexual pleasure, rather than use as an object during his prostitution encounters, and as a result, she is able to reconnect with her husband.

At the end of the film, the son says that the visitor came to destroy their family. This is accurate, what the visitor does is force every member of the family to confront their own flaws, and overcome them. So, the wife reclaims her agency, and will no longer be a victim of her son's aggression. For the son, the visitor shows him his own brattiness, and he realizes that he has to grow up. And when he hits the daughter, he makes her realize the danger of being a prostitute, prompting her to return home.

The reconciliation of the family is quite evident in the film's final image, both children at their mother's breast. So, the family has been destroyed and now reconnected. The mother has her children again, and husband and wife bond to defend their son from the bullies. It's a crucial moment when the father stops worrying about what's on the videotape and instead chooses to stand in defense of his son, cutting into the bully's head. It's a simple emotion, but portrayed through this bizarre, extreme act of violence. That's how the whole film works, it plays emotions out through these bizarre images and extreme acts of violence.

For example, the husband is someone who engages with prostitutes, who feign sexual attraction for him, sexual attraction that is actually an act. So, when he has sex with the dead body of the young reporter, he thinks that she's getting wet for him, and he does the wonderful speech about the mysteries of life. However, he soon finds out that what he thought was attraction is in fact, quite literally, shit. The young girls are feeding him this shit to trap him and ensure that they make money. His wife acts to literally detach him from these young girls and bring her back to him, when they cut up the body together.

It's a heightened reality where this sort of thing is possible. You're not meant to ask something like why don't the police come after the kids, that's not the point, it's a film that exists almost entirely on a metaphorical level, to understand it, you have to move past the extreme nature of the images and find the emotion underneath. It's not a perfect film, but it's a rich, experimental work that is both disturbing, and strangely familiar underneath it all. A lot of films, even some of Miike's own, can get lost in weird images and lose sight on narrative and emotion, this film manages to use the images to serve the narrative and ensure that the audience feels what the characters are going through, even if what that is is something very strange.

Seriously, Crash?

Well, I just finished going through the Academy Awards on tape, Stewart was great, 3 Six Mafia was weird, and then things went down hill when it came to the best picture, a completely inexplicable decision. Crash is a film that's so decidedly good, not great, it's a strong misjudge to call it best picture.

Now, I have issues with Crash on two fronts. The first is that it's so clearly melodramatic, in the worst sense of the word. Brokeback is a great example of melodrama done well, allowing the choices that the characters make to seal them in their own cycles of suffering and hurt. Crash seems more like the writers were manipulating a bunch of chess pieces, with each piece representing an ethnic stereotype.

The second is that Crash is such a poor example of the Altmanesque structure, something that's especially apparent when you have a whole sequence giving tribute to Altman just an hour before. Altman's work was structurally similar, but much looser and more real. He would have taken 3 hours to tell the story that Crash tells, and what really hurts Crash is that there's too much for the running time, so that you have no time to relax and know the characters.

And of course giving Crash the best picture when Magnolia didn't even receive a nomination is like calling a classic rock cover band down at your local bar one of the greatest artists of all time. Crash attempts to reach the emotional heights of Magnolia and doesn't even come close.

Awarding Crash and avoiding Magnolia illuminates one of the primary problems with how people view film, and even live their lives. There's this belief that ordinary life isn't interesting enough to be worth watching, everything needs to be packaged in these tight, manipulated narratives, the more realistic drifting of Magnolia or Wong Kar-Wai is seen as insubstantial, even though Magnolia's scope dwarfs Crash. Why can't people see that just because John C. Reilly didn't harass Bill Macy a few days before he helps him at the store, it doesn't mean that it's not of significance?

What's really weird for me is the fact that Crash came back. As I said in my original review of the film, "The crowd I was at with this film didn't really seem to like it, practically everyone was gone before the final shot even ended," and after a few weeks, the film was gone from theaters and it seemed to be over. The reviews when it first came out were alright, of the 3 star variety, but somehow it got annointed as a best picture candidate, and then somehow became best picture. Well played, Lions Gate, you must have run quite the campaign.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter that Crash won the award, it doesn't change the content of the films themselves, but the thing about the Academy Award is that it pretty much ensures a film's place in history. In fifty years, people probably won't remember most of what came out this year, but you'll always have 2005 - Crash down there, and it's sad that such a mediocre film wound up as the one film to go in the historical "time capsule."

And Crash's view of humanity really bothers me. We are all more than just skin deep, and I really hope that people out in the world don't think of each other just by where your parents and grandparents came from. For a film that is supposedly about hope, Crash instead seems to present a vision of people so trapped in the mindset that ethnicity and race determine who a person is, it's incredibly defeatist about the direction of humanity. It's a lot more interesting to watch real developed characters "crash" into each other, than a bunch of stereotypes with a slight twist.

So, if you've seen Crash, and haven't seen Magnolia, go watch it, it's like Crash but with emotional involvement, real characters, and the boldest use of film technique you'll ever see.

The Sopranos: Anticipating Season Six

A week from today, we'll at least see the season premiere of the sixth season of The Sopranos. It's been nearly two years since the last episode aired, and it's been quite a long wait, but if Chase gives us something as strong as last season, the wait will be more than worth it. Judging from The Trailer up on YouTube, it's going to be an intense season, and that's good. There's a lot of long running plot strands that can finally come to a head. Because the show will be ending, Chase is liberated to have more major changes for the characters than he might be inclined to do if he still had a bunch of seasons still to go.

Last season was really interesting for the way it showed us Tony at his best and worst. The series has always played with the dichotomy between Tony the bad gangster and Tony the good family man, but I don't think it's ever been as pronounced as in year five. At times, he seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain on the people around him, something that was really evident in 'Cold Cuts,' in which Janice goes through anger management counseling, and seems to be doing better. Her ability to control her anger seems to undermine Tony's excuse that his anger problems are genetic, and jealous of what she's accomplished, he goads her into a rage, the episode ending with him walking out grinning at what he's accomplished.

At the same time, Tony is never more attractive than in the brilliant "Marco Polo," where we see Tony back in his element, entertaining Carmela's father at his birthday party. When he has sex with Carmela at the end of the episode, you really want them to get back together. The man himself is a contradiction, and by exploring that, you're left in a really tough place emotionally.

What I'm really interested in seeing explored this year is Tony's relationship with his kids, particularly A.J. At the end of season five, we see A.J. saying that he may want to be a party planner, but selling admission to a keg party for 16 year olds may actually be the start of a journey into the world of his father. Tony's whole justification for his involvement in the mafia is that it's for his family, he's sacrificing his own morality so that they can get better. So, how will it make him, and Carmela, feel if A.J. gets involved? Tony will certainly be conflicted, torn between his natural reluctance to see his son engaged in something so dangerous, and a pride that he is man enough to do it.

A major theme of the series is generational transition and the conflict that comes from it. So, exploring those issues with A.J. would be a great opportunity to add another generational layer to what Tony and Junior had back in the first season. At the same time, Meadow will presumably attempt to define herself outside of the mafia life, but if she does get married, the wedding will surely be a mafia spectacle. Finn is already wary about what he's getting into after the incident with Vito in "Unidentified Black Males."

And Meadow's aspirations will also force Carmela to further examine the choices she made. In taking back Tony, is she in essence exonerating him of his philandering and immoral behavior. Seeing Meadow moving further away for the life may make her more aware of the moral compromises she's made in her own life. Her whole character is summed up in the scene in which she goes to a psychiatrist who tells her "You chose what was easy over what was right," and it's that choice that torments her. And will her easy choice end up dooming Meadow's chance of making a life on her own?

I'm really interested to see how much the death of Adrianna has affected Christopher. It's a two year gap, so it's not emotionally raw anymore, but has he tried to start another relationship, or is he playing the field and remaining primarily committed to work. Choosing to kill Adrianna would probably make him an adult in the eyes of Tony, an equal, but will what he did end up morally plauging him? I hear that Christopher gets involved with Hollywood again, his screenwriting arc was one of my favorite things on the show, so I'd love to see that return. That was critical because it was his only out, and if he's getting more entrenched in Tony's world, he may want to start finding an out.

For all of the mob characters, the arrest of Johnny Sack looms over everything they do. This is a guy they knew, with a family, and he's in prison. When Tony flees through the snow at the end of season five, it's like he's trying to outrace what will inevitably come to him, be it in the form of a bullet or jail, he will not get out of the life unscathed.

Even if Tony were to avoid death or prison, I think it would only be possible by sacrificing someone close to him. I feel like Tony dying would be too obvious for Chase, who always seems to subvert audience expectations, while going to prison may not provide enough closure. If Tony was to save himself by sacrificing someone close to him, like Christopher, it would be a fitting end for the show, whose main theme seems to be Tony's inability to form strong relationships due to his own selfishness and insecurity.

Season five was structured much like Angel's fifth season, in that the first chunk was built out of standalone episodes that all tied back to stuff from earlier in the series, focusing primarily on Tony and one other character. So, there was a lot of storytelling going on, plots moved quickly, because most issues were dealt with in one episode, and then the character wouldn't appear for a while. And then at the end everything comes together and the plots come to a head.

I think this worked because at this point the cast is so large it's impossible to have meaningful material for everyone in each episode. Instead we got these really focused substance-filled episodes. After watching each episode I was saying "That's one of the best episodes they've ever done," then the next episode would air and I'd be like "No, that is one of the best they've done." Other than 'In Camelot,' there's not one less than brilliant episode in the whole season.

That said, if they moved back to a more soap operatic style, developing plot threads model I wouldn't object. With Tony and Carmela back together, it'll be easier to deal with more characters at once, and with the loss Adrianna and Tony B, the cast is slightly more managable.

One thing I'd like to see followed up is Artie's role in Tony's dream. The dream seemed to suggest that Tony somehow holds Artie responsible for his involvement in gang life, and I'd be curious to see if that was just something they threw in there, or if it's foreshadowing of a future plot point. Artie is Tony's only friend outside of the mafia, and their relationship is very complex. There's a scene of Artie violently pulling the table cloth out from under someone's meal at his restaurant in the trailer, so we may be seeing some rage from Artie.

One of the incredible things about the show is that there's such a deep bench of interesting characters. When you can do a riveting storyline about Vito and Finn, there's pretty much no limit to what the show can pull off. It's largely because the show has this overlying question of the morality of the mob, so storylines that might be filler on other shows are instead used to explore issues that aren't directly related to Tony. Tony's wealthy and powerful, so it's worth it for him to risk jail for the mob, but if you're a low level gangster, is it worth getting your face bashed in when you're not making much more money than you could in a real job? The fundamental issue is that the mob isn't needed anymore, they were designed to help Italians get ahead, but now Italians have completely assimilated, but the mob remains, a relic of an earlier age.

That's what the whole show is about. Right from the first episode, it's established that Tony feels like he missed out on the best days and is only around for the decline. The meta interest in films like Goodfellas and The Godfather ties in with this, he's presented with images of this idealized mafia, a contrast to the rather mundane life he leads.

The Sopranos is easily the best show on TV right now, and my third favorite of all time. It's so well shot, and thematically deep it makes everyone else look like they're not even trying.