With our annual Horrorthon starting in three days, I thought that this would be an appropriate time to share a creepy scene that I love from The Sopranos.
The Sopranos was well-known for its dream sequences. For me, this dream from the season 4’s Calling All Cars is one of the best and scariest of the series. It’s full of menace and ominous atmosphere, from the minute we see Tony being led to the house by the deceased Ralphie. And then, when that mysterious shadow appears on the staircase — AGCK!
I look forward to inviting you inside the TSL House of Horrors this October.
Today would have been the birthday of the late Tony Sirico. Sirico was a former mob associate who, after serving a term in prison, reinvented himself as an actor. Because of his background, he was often typecast as gangsters but he also proved himself to be an intelligent performer with perfect comedic timing. For a lot of us, he will always be remembered for playing Paulie on The Sopranos.
Today scene that I love comes from The Sopranos and it features excellent work from the entire cast, especially Tony Sirico. In this scene from the 2002 episode “The Strong, Silent Type,” the Sopranos and their associates stage an intervention for Christopher Moltisanti and it goes about as well as you might expect. In just five minutes, this scenes manages to capture everything that The Sopranos was about, as well as giving each member of the cast a chance to shine. Since this is Sirico’s birthday, I’ll just recommend that viewers especially watch Paulie’s facial expressions while Adriana reads her letter to Christopher.
Don’t Stop Believin’ is now probably destined to be forever associated with The Sopranos but the song itself had established itself as a classic long before it was used in the finale of HBO’s famous show about the New Jersey mafia.
In fact, the song means so much to Journey’s Steve Perry that he was hesitant to give HBO permission to use the song until it was explained to him exactly how the song was going to be used and he was assured that it wouldn’t be played over any type of violence. Other than the members of the cast and the production crew, Steve Perry was one of the few people to know, in advance, how The Sopranos was going to end.
While Perry has said that the majority of the lyrics were inspired by his own early struggles to find success in the music industry, keyboardist Jonathan Cain says that the name was inspired by something that his father told him when Cain was thinking about leaving Hollywood and returning to Chicago. Cain’s father told him, ‘No, son. Stay the course. We have a vision. It’s gonna happen. Don’t stop believin’.”
As for the video, it was filmed in Houston and features Journey performing the song as a part of their Escape tour. With the exception of the infamous video for Separate Ways, Journey was known for keeping things simple and straight-forward when it came to their music videos. This one is no exception.
With our annual Horrorthon starting tomorrow, I thought that this would be an appropriate time to share a creepy scene that I love from The Sopranos.
The Sopranos was well-known for its dream sequences. For me, this dream from the season 4’s Calling All Cars is one of the best and scariest of the series. It’s full of menace and ominous atmosphere, from the minute we see Tony being led to the house by the deceased Ralphie. And then, when that mysterious shadow appears on the staircase — AGCK!
On this day, 26 years ago, The Sopranos premiered on HBO and television (not to mention organized crime) would never be the same. Today, it can be easy to forget just how revolutionary that first season of The Sopranos was. What originally sounded like a joke — a gangster goes into therapy (a plot that had already been used in the film Analyze This) — turned out to be a powerful portrait of American society at the crossroads.
Perusing the imdb, I saw that today was the birthday of the late Tony Sirico. Sirico was a former mob associate who, after serving a term in prison, reinvented himself as an actor. Because of his background, he was often typecast as gangsters but he also proved himself to be an intelligent performer with perfect comedic timing. For a lot of us, he will always be remembered for playing Paulie on The Sopranos.
Today scene that I love comes from The Sopranos and it features excellent work from the entire cast, especially Tony Sirico. In this scene from the 2002 episode “The Strong, Silent Type,” the Sopranos and their associates stage an intervention for Christopher Moltisanti and it goes about as well as you might expect. In just five minutes, this scenes manages to capture everything that The Sopranos was about, as well as giving each member of the cast a chance to shine. Since this is Sirico’s birthday, I’ll just recommend that viewers especially watch Paulie’s facial expressions while Adriana reads her letter to Christopher.
Since this weekend is going to see both the release of The Many Saints of Newark and the start of our annual October Horrorthon, I thought that this would be an appropriate time to share a creepy scene that I love from The Sopranos.
The Sopranos was well-known for its dream sequences. For me, this dream from the season 4’s Calling All Cars is one of the best of the series. It’s full of menace and ominous atmosphere, from the minute we see Tony being led to the house by the deceased Ralphie. And then, when that mysterious shadow appears on the staircase — AGCK!
I’ve read online speculation that the woman in the shadows was meant to represent Tony’s mother, who will be played by Vera Farmiga in The Many Saints of Newark. Young Tony Soprano, meanwhile, will be played by Michael Gandolfini, the son of the late (and missed) James Gandolfini.
I look forward to watching (and, hopefully, reviewing) The Many Saints of Newark on October 1st!
The Many Saints of Newark, which is finally going to be released on October 1st after being delayed by the pandemic, is a prequel to The Sopranos. It features Tony Soprano as a teenager, struggling to decide between entering the family business or going to college and — if The Test Dream episode is to be believed — maybe becoming a teacher or a coach. That’s a big decision for anyone to make. Of course, since The Many Saints of Newark is a prequel, we already know that’s going to happen. That’s kind of the problem with prequels. You can drag out the story for as long as you want but, eventually, you’re going to reach the point where everyone originally came in.
As you may have picked up on, I’m not totally sure that this film is really necessary. As I say this as someone who loves TheSopranos and who is planning on rewatchinng the entire series later in July. Thanks to the show’s use of flashbacks and the scenes of Tony talking to Dr. Melfi, it’s not as if we don’t already know about Tony’s childhood. I’m not sure that there’s a lot for the prequel to show us, beyond maybe clearing up who was actually responsible for the death of Dickie Moltisanti. If Tony ends up killing Dickie, it’ll cast his later treatment (and murder) of Christopher into an entirely new light.
Still, I’m definitely going to watch The Many Saints of Newark when it’s released on October 1st. Vera Farmiga as Livia Soprano seems like perfect casting and I’m also interested in seeing how Michael Gandolfini does at playing the young version of the character made famous by his father, the much-missed James Gandolfini. Apparently, Billy Magnussen will be playing the youngish version of Paulie Walnuts. In what world does Billy Magnussen grow up to be Tony Sirico? Ray Liotta also has a role in The Many Saints of Newark, which feels appropriate considering how much The Sopranos owed to the success of Goodfellas.
The trailer for The Many Saints of Newark was released today. And here it is:
