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Don't Stop Believing...or Binge-Watching The Sopranos

By Spence Blazak

Originally featured in the September 12, 2013 issue of "The Daily Targum."

What is the biggest problem with “The Godfather? Simple. It’s only 3 hours long. 6 hours including the second. But what if it was 87 hours long?  This summer, I discovered the answer in the form of HBO’s “The Sopranos.”

After this June’s passing of Rutgers Alumnus James Gandolfini, who plays main character Tony Soprano on the show, I decided to embark on the Herculean journey of completing “The Sopranos” before the end of the summer.

Unlike all the other shows that I’ve binge watched in my time (that was a dark weekend when I watched “Homeland” Season One in 3 days), there is something about “The Sopranos” that made it more addicting than all the others. What is the secret ingredient that makes it, as the prophet Drake put it, “the best I ever had?”

The New Jersey element definitely helps. The electric feeling I got when Paulie mentioned his summer home in Point Pleasant (the humble burg I call home) was like no other. Even when Jackie Aprile Jr. and Christopher rob a fundraiser at Rutgers, I had never felt prouder about my New Jersey heritage.

This firm NJ base establishes a good place for the show to start, then it builds from there. The most notable part of the show is how it embraces its characters and their faults, then puts moral conflicts through this sieve. I’ll explain. Let’s use the example of racism. As the first few seasons go on, the main characters are all established to be racist towards…well, most minorities. A brilliant episode happens about halfway through the series where the Native Americans in the area boycott the Columbus Day parade since Columbus allegedly murdered their ancestors. The Italian main characters, losing out on their favorite holiday to celebrate their ancestry, start a political war.

The episode features some of the strongest dialogue in the series, where Tony, Silvio, Paulie, and Christopher sit around and discuss the philosophy of racism. The writing treats them like real, flawed people rather than just “some guys who are pure evil because they are racist.” “The Sopranos” is so much more complex than that. Between depictions of racism, depression, hyper masculinity, homosexuality, and the sociology of why they all wound up in the mafia, “The Sopranos” gives a fresh look to many subject matters that are hard to show new perspective on.

 During all the TV dedications that followed the passing of Gandolfini, the character of Tony Soprano was hyped up to be the best flawed hero in TV history. Having seen the likes of Walter White, Dexter Morgan, and Don Draper, I was skeptical of how good he could actually be. Then I began watching. A sociopath as a main character who has redeeming qualities, the idea is brilliant.  Tony Soprano is why “The Sopranos” works so well. He keeps falling into his same horrible patterns, making him feel like a real person and the perfect axel on which the show to run. While Walter White has become hated by many of the show’s fans due to his actions in the last few seasons of “Breaking Bad,” Tony Soprano might be a worse person, but you still can’t help but love him.

At the end of the day, the secret to “The Sopranos” is that it just doesn’t care. About political correctness, about happy endings, about nothing. Now that I’ve finished it, and nothing will ever be the same, if you need me, I’ll be watching “The Wire.”

Are Happy Endings the New Sad Endings?

By Spence Blazak

Tragedy has been the trend of late in movies, television, and storytelling in general. In 2012, patrons of the arts found themselves mourning over everything they loved dying on “Game of Thrones”, they all but lost hope in humanity with Season 5 of “Breaking Bad,” and they saw a seventh consecutive year of romantic misery for Ted Moseby on “How I Met Your Mother.” Sadness and heartbreak (with a pinch of hopelessness) were the hip and current fad until HBO’s masterful mini-series “Parade’s End” premiered last month. “Parade’s End” just might have been the catalyst into a wild new movement: dramas that end….with the characters being happy.

“Parade’s End” consists of 5 episodes, and follows Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch, “Sherlock”) as a heroic British statistician (I say this unironically) during the 1910’s. Tricked into marrying the contemptuous Sylvia (Rebecca Hall, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”), Tietjens suffers through years of marital horrors rather than divorcing her and taking the demerit to his social pride. Marriage, AM I RIGHT? He finds himself falling in love with a young suffragette, but never consummates the affair, because he is just that good of a guy. He winds up in World War I and is shrouded in misery throughout the series. Just from the words “World War I, British, and love triangle,” it seemed like a tragic outcome for poor old Tietjens was soon to be at hand.

When “Parade’s End” had concluded, and all poetic justice had been served in the way of a happy ending, it was absolutely shocking. Seriously. It had “this dude is going to off himself” written all over it. After 3 seasons of tragedy befalling “Downton Abbey,” no happily ever afters on “Boardwalk Empire,” and an adaptation of “Les Miserables” that made….my friend….cry, it seemed like Tietjens had no hope. The catch is that rather than feeling like a cop out (as many happy endings tend to do), “Parade’s End” feels like a breath of fresh air, a well deserved gift to drama watchers. It is the tragedy that doesn’t end in tragedy.

Throughout the history of the fictional story, it seems as though happy endings could never be synonymous with good endings. It also seems that whenever an audience genuinely wanted the two main characters to wind up together, any hope for their happiness became immediately doomed. Rick and Ilsa in “Casablanca” are the Barack and Michele of classic cinema: their chemistry is loved across the board. Sadly, Rick and Ilsa have the misfortune of being adored by an audience, so they, per the rules of drama, don’t wind up together.

This entire case can be juxtaposed to that of “Twilight.” At its pinnacle, it was about as popular as popular could be, for some reason or another (probably the surgeon-like handling of Jasper’s origin story. Ha!) Yet anyone outside of the “fanboy” culture of the films merely saw the campiness of the story and its relationships, specifically that of Edward and Bella. Due to the fact that the relationship was just regular for the average reader or filmgoer, Bella and her vampire boy toy get a dull and predictable happily ever after.

“Parade’s End” might be the new beginning in endings for dramas, where the characters get a shot at happiness, while still having it make sense to the course that the plot took.  While in the past, a character being likable and having a goal which would make them happy if achieved was the proverbial “black spot” on them, nowadays, it might mean that maybe they’ll be, gasp, okay.

The Dark Side of Ang Lee

By Spence Blazak

At this year’s Oscars ceremony, Ang Lee nabbed his second Best Director statue for his work on “Life of Pi.” Unlike many great directors, Lee is viewed by the media as a man who can seemingly do no wrong. No matter how many great films Spielberg has made, “Jurassic Park 2” and “Indiana Jones 4” will always be blips on his permanent record, so how has Lee achieved the feat of a pristine career? The answer is a simple one: all that glitters is not gold. The real question here is just exactly how bad is the seemingly infallible Ang Lee at his worst?

Lee is in an odd place among lauded directors. Since he started out making films in his native Taiwan, the average filmgoer never heard of his work before the martial arts epic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Also, when his films come out, they are only heavily discussed when they are masterpieces. In the case of his flop “Taking Woodstock,” it was released during the summer, and no one seemed to notice it slink in and out of the theater at all. So this means that the first half of Ang Lee’s career is virtually unknown to the general public, and critics tend to leave up their blinders when he releases a dud. Then again, another possibility is that maybe his bad movies aren’t really even that bad at all.

Since he emerged onto the international stage with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” he has released the critically acclaimed hits “Brokeback Mountain,” “Lust, Caution,” and “Life of Pi.” That is a run of four excellent films in a period of twelve years. Peppered in between these hits are the goofs “The Hulk,” his foray into the Hollywood blockbuster, and “Taking Woodstock.” That is a batting average of 4/6, putting him at .666 while he has been in the American spotlight.

“The Hulk” is a very curious case in film lore. Created after the box office success of “X-Men” and “Spiderman,” Ang Lee got the job based on his action direction of “Crouching Tiger,” where he juggles action and still keeps the relationships at the center accessible and honest. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and so was “The Hulk.” Lee didn’t want to waste the character on a silly action flick, so he used a very dark and serious script that focused on the Jekyll-Hyde-esque battle of main character Bruce Banner. While the “darkly-toned superhero movie” formula was later perfected in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Lee’s movie failed in almost every storytelling aspect. The script is just so ridiculously serious that by the time the big green monster comes out; it feels like he came into the wrong movie. Once the action starts, the film fails there too. Watching the Hulk fight mutated dogs at night in the woods can be a cure for insomnia, quickly sending viewers to sleep.

Lee himself admitted to the horrors of “The Hulk,” and almost retired from filmmaking because he was so upset about it. As for “Taking Woodstock,” Lee once again tried something new by crafting a comedy set around the inception of the famous three days of peace, love, and music. The film doesn’t work as a whole, completely ignoring the whole musical aspect of the festival, as well as using characters for cheap laughs rather than actually developing them. Despite that, “Taking Woodstock” is a film that is hard to hate, with brief personal moments throughout that save it from being dubbed a “bad” movie. In the end, its greatest shortcoming might be that it just wasn’t as good as a Lee hit like “Brokeback Mountain.”

A director who focuses on minute moments in stories and details in character progression, Ang Lee is put on a pedestal because even his bad movies might not even be all that horrific. As for his great movies, they are so good that they make people forget about his “Hulk” and focus on his successes instead. The bar is set high for him, and the stats show that he meets it .666 of the time. As far as people forgetting his flops, it looks like Ang Lee deserves it.

"Amour": Haneke's Mastepiece at Age 70

By Spence Blazak

For years, the name Michael Haneke has been synonymous with “unpredictability” and “abstract” in the film world. His latest film, “Amour” has scored an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, a place on many best of the year lists, and is nothing like any of his previous films. The once inaccessible director has ditched his more outlandish experimental film techniques, and in return has crafted what just might be his masterpiece.

His 1997 film “Funny Games,” follows a unassuming family who lets two well groomed strangers into their house for a cold drink, but are then tortured by  competing in a series of titular “funny games” to fight for their lives. The film pushed the limits of onscreen torture, and is as hard to watch as it gets. Kneecaps are broken with golfclubs, pets are killed at the drop of a hat. At one point, one of the intruder’s lets his guard down, causing his partner's death at a tense point in the film. The man reacts by scrambling through the seat cushions of a couch, finding a television remote, and using it to rewind the last five minutes of the events on screen. Haneke then created a shot-for-shot American remake of the film ten years later. This sums up the director and his style to a tee. At his core, Haneke is unapologetically art house.

Another major Haneke work is 2005’s “Cache.” A man finds a videotape on his doorstep, containing surveillance footage of his front door and house. The film opens with the audience watching five minutes of the video, confused and disturbed about what is going on. The mystery unravels, and while accomplishing a disturbing level of paranoia that comes with feeling watched, "Cache" still leaves so much ambiguity in its ending that viewers are still debating what it actually meant. The film doesn’t particularly flesh out what it wants to say, and its take-it-or-leave-it style makes it very ostracizing to the average filmgoer.

With “Amour,” Haneke strikes a balance between his distinct visual style and a riveting story, rather than going over board with one or the other as he has often done in the past. “Amour” is a story of unconditional love filled with a purity and tenderness that rivals that of the opening montage of “Up”. It follows elderly couple Georges and Anne who try to cope when the Anne has a stroke. As Georges begins to see the handwriting on the wall, he at first ignores it, but as the story goes on, the inevitable begins to consume him.

The title just means “Love.” This beautiful simplicity permeates through Haneke’s film, and is a far cry from his in-your-face style of the past. The two lead characters are just everyday people who happen to be very much in love. The background stories on them are simple yet telling; they were both music teachers who, though retired, still follow the successes of their old pupils. At one point, Anne says to Georges, “Over the years, we’ve been through everything,” and that fills up the rest of the exposition.

 As Anne gets sicker and sicker, Georges’ optimism gets dimmer and dimmer. He looks for a confidant in his daughter, but she doesn’t seem to pick up on the emotional toll that the situation is taking on both of her parents. He tries to fight off his greatest fear: loneliness and seclusion. This all leads up to the climax that will make you remember how sad a movie can really be.

“Amour” is an example of a film that doesn’t need to be overcrowded to tell a touching story, and it seems that Haneke’s whole career until this point has been a learning experience through his failings in that aspect. With this film he has thrown aside all of his unnecessarily edgy material and his shots that are confusing for the sake of confusion, instead deciding to focus on the relationship at the center of the story. The film takes place almost exclusively in the couple’s apartment. Minimalist, yet larger-than-life in content, Haneke uses his latest, and arguably his greatest work, to show that a little can go a very long way.

Pedro Almodovar And Getting Into Art House Joints

By Spence Blazak

Subtitled films have been striking fear into the hearts of filmgoers since before Michael Corleone got into the family business. That yellow lettered beast of distraction on the bottom eighth of the screen haunts the viewer from start to finish and has kept people from some of the best films of all time. Don’t make the mistake of your ancestors who passed up the likes of Fellini, Truffaut, and Bergman because “they weren’t in the mood to read.” A man who can make a case for best working filmmaker is still in his prime: the Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar.

Almodovar is a man who directs his films with intrinsic accessibility-his art house movies for film snobs can also be enjoyed by the Average Jose. The term “art house” implies an exclusive, elitist club that looks down upon those who can’t spout off the complete works of Satyajit Ray (which this writer could not do for all the almonds in Catalonia). Almodovar embraces the term, and all the prejudices that come with it, when creating his works of art.

His films create a feel that is truly one of a kind: stunningly beautiful and filled with an expansive color palette akin to that of the old Microsoft Paint pigment chart, fluid camera work is slow yet deliberate while imbued with meaning, and a dialogue written with the verve of a Tarantino that cuts out the zippy one-liner shock value. Almodovar raises his arms in greeting to those that want to experience the classy beauty of film.

“The Skin I Live In” is Almodovar’s most recent work, and displays his knack for one of the greatest attributes a director can have: diversity in content. As Kubrick could go from the space opera “2001” to the scathing political satire “Dr. Strangelove,” Almodovar does the same throughout his career. An almost sci-fi thriller, “The Skin I Live In” follows Antonio Banderas as a Spanish dermatologist creating the perfect skin. He practices his craft on a woman that lives in a locked room of his home. A film that starts off creepily unravels into a tale of retribution that soon begins to spiral into one of the most traumatizing film endings in recent memory. Even more so than “Oldboy,” and that superlative is not given lightly.

An Almodovar classic on the other end of the dramatic spectrum is his tragic love tale “Talk to Her.” The Oscar winning masterpiece follows two intersecting stories: one of a man in love with a female matador, and one of an effeminate male nurse who might be falling in love with his patient, even though she has been in a coma for all the years he has taken care of her. A twist in the plot comes every several minutes, leading up to a beautifully heartbreaking ending and resulting in a film that might end up earning a spot on the list of your all time favorites.

Almodovar’s other gems include “Bad Education,” “All About My Mother,” and “Volver”. His maturity in portraying feminism in a way that feels neither preachy nor heavy handed is another one of the Spanish wizard’s flourishes. His films give an experience that is hard to come by in today’s film world: one that is personal yet addresses the human condition, with all the uplifting and tragic details that come along with the territory. Next time you find yourself flipping through your Netflix Instant Queue for the thousandth time, stop in your tracks, remember this article and remember Pedro Almodovar. At the very least, you can impress with your classiness at your next cocktail party!