The Goods
Games
109 Super Mario Sunshine
Videos
1 10 Panic Room, Ice Age . .J
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102 Naomi Klein, Umberto Eco
Comics
106 Nentieth Century Eightball
Records
106 Richard Ashcroft
iV BOOKS mooms THE SOPRANOS
ust when you thought you were out, they pull you
back in. Pacino’s mortal words as re-enacted by The
Sopranos’ Silvio Dante have never been more appropriate with series four of New Jersey family/Family drama finally preparing to hit these shores. Last we saw of this mob, Jackie Aprile Jr was joining his father in a gangster grave after a capo’s bullet in the skull was his reward for robbing the wrong card game.
After the funeral, Tony Soprano was left to contemplate the rupturing of his two families: son AJ was intermittently keeling over after the same panic attacks that led Tony to seek therapy, wife Carmela was doubting whether she could remain complicit in her husband’s ‘affairs’ and Meadow looked to be going off the rails. As for the state of his other Family, Junior’s impending trial and the arrests of crew members left Tony with severe agita.
Though not as much as the Sopranos buff who had to face a longer than usual wait for the new season. The networks, still beating themselves up over their failure to nab the scripts when David Chase originally came calling, read into the delay some major crisis down the Bada Bing!. But ill- health and the after-effects of 11 September were the offered reasons for this hold-up.
In the meantime, we’ve had to seek out by-products to keep appetites sated. There are few who will deny that the music in the series has helped to lift it above the norm. The recurring motif in the series three opener, in which ‘Every Breath you Take’ and the ‘Theme from Peter Gunn’ were segued, was a masterstroke and this is included in the latest soundtrack The Sopranos: Peppers & Eggs (Sony 0000 ).
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1 1 1 Pinter, Orgreave
Who wouldn’t want to discover the real reason Junior used a lemon meringue pie to attack his lover?
0.”. Excellent .00. Recommended Good 0. Flawed
0 Poor
Travel
1 12 Greek Wedding
Food
1 14 Sopranos Family Cookbook
5 Shopping
1 1 7 Bellydancing
Some tunes faithfully evoke the show’s finest moments, including Tindersticks’ ‘Tiny Tears’ which recalls Tony’s ultimate meltdown and the failed hit on his life which jerks him out of his stupor and Cake’s ‘Frank Sinatra’ which played during Christopher’s moment in the media sun.
You’ve got to wonder how many dissertations and PhDs on The Sopranos have been written in the US, a country divided between those who (correctly) adore the show, and those who (falsely and stupidly) loathe it for its seeming portrayal of Italian/American stereotypes or its brutal violence. This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos (Wallflower Press £14.99 0000 ), is a fascinating collection of essays that tackle some of those areas, as well as the reactions to the show in Britain and Canada, issues of masculinity and feminism, and, most intriguingly, the meaning of food. If you can get past the layers of media crit hyperbole in some pieces, you will find nuggets of extreme pleasure: who wouldn’t want to discover the real reason Junior used a lemon meringue pie to attack his lover?
Though, for a real tour of Sopranoland, you somehow have to get a hold of the USA’s TV Guide Sopranos Companion (www.tvguide.com .0000). Episode analysis, incredible photo shoots, cast and crew interviews, a map and cut-out dolls, recipes and the toughest quiz imaginable. This is TV supplement heaven. But what of the new series (E4, Thu 24 Oct, 10pm 0000 )? At first the opener seems like a disappointment, but on further examination there are at least three character twists and the skin of future wounds being gently rubbed before being prepared for full-on rupturing. The destructive matriarch may be long in her grave, but this is still a family at war. (Brian Donaldson)
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