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The Many Saints of Newark


Dark Wader
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I'm psyched!

I also agree it seems more like a story about Moltisanti, than Tony Soprano, but I think it was smart to cast Michael Gandofini as Tony.  He sells it for me.  Although, if this is supposed to be the 1960s, he seems a little old.  In the final season, Tony was in his late 40s, which would have made him around 10 in the late 1960s.  Is my math wrong?

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Definitely a smart casting choice - you immediately know they made the right decision just based on that sneer in some of the shots, exactly the same as his Father.

I don’t think you have your maths wrong, it looks like it might be set over a few decades. So maybe the scenes with Tony are later on? 

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I didn't watch the show when it was airing (well, that's not strictly true — I saw the one episode everyone always went on and on about, I didn't like it, figured the show wasn't for me) but a couple years ago I sort of half-watched half-eyed most of the show from about the middle up until the end. I liked what I sort of semi-absorbed, I didn't really give it my full attention, I could tell I was missing out on something special though; should probably go back to the beginning and watch it properly.

I think anyone really really excited about the movie, who really really expects it to be good, should watch Not Fade Away (2012) first, David Chase's movie he made after the show was over, and then maybe readjust their expectations. Watching that movie is the other thing that kept me from giving the show a proper try, watching that movie is the reason I felt confident I could just jump in on the show in the middle and just sort of eyeball it while idly playing Settlers of Catan online in the other half of my screen. I was wrong, in the end, sure, but that movie (dull! airless! practically plotless! the music did half the work and for an audience member w/no specific attachment to those particular choices much of the time the music was like the goggles, the music did nothing!) fooled me into thinking I made the right decision on both counts.

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I had no idea about this. Sick! I loved the Sopranos. Last time I watched it the whole way through was when my wife was pregnant. So all the events of the Sopranos are fresh enough in my mind for this to be really relevant.

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Just the corny edit with the texts "legends aren't born. They're made" and the and the ot rock music. It was tonally a bit cringe and not very in keeping with the kind of drama I expect from a sopranos or gangster film. But I get the impression it's just the promo not the film itself that will be like that.

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

Saw it. Thought it was great!

 

Don't really understand the critical or commercial reaction to the film (well, that's not entirely true, of course — I do understand it, fans of anything and everything are always disappointed by the new stuff, that's the same old song, plus the show ended fourteen years ago so it makes a good deal of sense that "Hey, why don't you come on down to a movie theatre during a pandemic and watch our fifty million dollar webisode" wasn't an instant success) because it's a really beautiful piece of work.

 

Haunting, funny, in its own way better at being a movie than the show was at being a show. I'm obviously not saying that the movie is better than the show, the show is great, I watched/rewatched the show over the latter half of the summer, I really liked it, there's a shocker of an opinion for you, I think the great show is great. But my point is that the show has, like, lines being very noticeably ADR'd/foleyed in every which way in nearly every episode — only happens a couple times in the movie, maybe three times at most — and lots of very noticeable product placement — outside of the classic Coca-Cola® sign which shows up during the Newark riots that's entirely absent from the movie — and can sometimes get kinda clunky in its plotting. It's all, like, oh no, who will Tony have to deal with this week!? The movie has the benefit of being a movie, if that makes sense. It can be straightforward, it can kind of stand on its own, as much as that may be impossible when one considers that it's probably borderline incomprehensible unless one has just rewatched the series. I think that explains the negative reaction. Everyone's just gotta get on their stationary bikes and rewatch all six seasons of the show first. I guess that's why I think the movie is a masterpiece and ... people on reddit are literally theorizing that it's bad on purpose!? It's not bad on purpose! Get on your bikes, Reddit! Spend all of August on your bike watching the show!

 

* Everyone's great in it! The guy, the main guy, Alessandro Nivola, he has a nearly impossible task and he absolutely succeeds at it.

 

* The two kids they got to play Younger Tony and Young Tony — one of whom is Gandolfini's kid!!!! — do a great job. Corey Stoll does absolutely uncanny work in imitating Dominic Chianese ("He don't have the makings of a varsity athlete" "I hear he's slow with the talking"), both Vera Farmiga and Jon Bernthal are really good as Tony's parents. The girl they got playing Teen Carmela during that one scene delivers that one line ("Stop it!") absolutely beautifully.

 

* Kind of think Silvio would have made a better narrator (apparently there were cuts where it was Paulie!? Or Carmela!?) considering what he does at the end of the movie and the condition he's in at the end of the series. But, regardless, the narration's good! First inconsistently narrated movie I really really really liked, I think, usually it bugs me if it's not evenly distributed throughout the body of the movie but for this movie it didn't.

 

Just Some Bits I Really Really Liked

·         Tony being honest w/his Ma about the reason he couldn't go w/his father (because he'd pass gas while he was eating lunch) but eliding that particular detail when he later recounts that day to Dr. Melfi!

·         Dickie Moltisanti kicking in the TV; that and the TV sign-off before the start of the brutality in the car shop; excellent!

·         Vera Farmiga breaking out the "Poor you!"

·         the use of the song 'You' by The Aquatones in the scene where Dickie Moltisanti cries his eyes out

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  • 10 months later...

Ah man! I just finished a rewatch of The Sopranos on Sunday which I really enjoyed (first time since it originally aired), and planning on watching the film tonight if all goes well with work and stuff.
Hoping it’s good!

I see Michael Imperioli is in the second series of The White Lotus - might have to give that a watch!

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Yeah, odd one really. Great cast, looked excellent, but the actual story felt more like a collection of the snippets of the history we had heard through the series. Maybe that works with Christopher being the narrator.. 

Didn’t quite do it for me. Good casting as I say - Michael Gandolfini did a great job and was eerie to watch with some of the mannerisms of his old man.

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