Sopranos was by all accounts the last standing leg for TV programming. It's the only product that enables the wise viewer to forgive the loads and loads of garbage that gets produced year after year.
James Gandolfini is not appreciated like he should be. He was in my opinion the best ever male actor. In fact, the role he played as Tony, had a lot more Gandolfini in it than Tony Soprano's originally written character. What an epic success.
You know, big names get praise for performances in feature films as if it's the end of all art forms. No actor I can recall, not even giants like Redford, Freeman, Pacino, De Niro or Brando could've maintained and improved the Tony Soprano character like Gandolfini did for 9 years. Season after season this guy put his heart and life into a single role that subjected him to some of the most unusual, fucked up scenes and dialogues an actor could be tasked with.
I'll finish by saying that Gandolfini's brilliance was contagious. He made everyone on that show look brilliant. There could only be one Tony Soprano and it was James Gandolfini.
Thank you, Thank you and Thank you again.
I am glad to see someone who saw the genius in the Sopranos, not many do, let me begin by saying that Terence Winter is an absolute genius of a director, my favourite out of all of them working on the show.
I always believed that the performances of James Gandolfini throughout the series were more powerful then the likes of Al Pacino throughout the Godfather, or Robert De Niro in his various Mafia movies.
For me Gandolfini was like the best of Al Pacino, De Niro & even Pesci all put into one, he was literally breathtaking. I mean after the 1st time i finished watching the show, i went 2 weeks and i dragged myself back and watched the whole show over again. And did it again 6-7 months later. Even during my 3rd time watching it i felt like i was realising new things that i felt slipped past me during the previous 2 times i had seen that exact episode.
Michael Imperioli was unbelievable throughout the show also, and the scene where Tony and him get into the accident and Tony kills him is by
FAR my favourite scene. Sad, but such an amazing scene. Also, what people don't understand regarding the Sopranos is that it adds such psychoanalytic perspective not seen in any show or movie ever, at least i have not come across it yet.
Another reason why you get so easily emotionally attached to the TV show, i know there is a lot of shows out there we get emotionally attached to, but this was a different kind of attached, i cannot explain it. I have spoken to a lot of people who claim the therapy session scenes in the movie are
boring and useless, that's how i know they still do not appreciate the true beauty of the show. Everything about this show is amazing in my opinion, easily one of the greatest directed TV shows in my opinion, the complexities of the various relationships in this TV show, words cannot describe how well directed they were. And like you said, James Gandolfini has been immensely underrated, people need to seriously watch the Sopranos to see the genius that was Tony Soprano.
