Archive for: June 2007

Does this happen to everyone else?

I will be reading a blog post that discusses a video. The blog post will have lots of links, but it will not be clear which link is for the video.

Text links are usually clearly marked with color and/or underline. I think audio / video links should have a clear designation.

HONC stands for hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon

Life depends mainly on molecules formed from four types of atoms: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon.

Honc if you live.

1) It started out as the War with Iraq.  We won that war.  We defeated the Iraq army and toppled the government.

2) The Iraqis elected a new government.  We are allied with the new Irag government.   The Iraqis are now our allies.  It is no long a war with Iraq.  It is the war in Iraq.

3) If the Iraqis are our allies, who are we fighting.  There are various groups in Iraq.  Each one wants to control Iraq.  They are fighting each other for the right to control Iraq.  It is called sectarian violence.

4) Controlling civil unrest is not a war.  It is a police action or a military action.  We are using our soldiers to control civil violence.  I do not think that should be called a war.

Others thought it was brilliant:

“In our popular culture, we’ve come to expect things to get tied up neatly,” said Jerry Herron, a professor at Wayne State University in Michigan, who found the ending brilliant. “The claim that Chase is making as an artist here is, real life doesn’t have neat endings.

“You want Tony blown away? You want him in jail? Chase is saying, ‘Fine, you write that script,’” Herron said. “He’s saying that life goes on, and art goes on, and he’s just going to end it right here.”

Brilliant wasn’t a good enough word for screenwriting professor Richard Walter, of the UCLA Film School, to describe Sunday night’s finale. “That’s too tame,” he said. “This was genius!”

Article is here.

Note to David Chase of the Sopranos. Fade to Black is a dramatic technique used in both theater and film. It can signify various things: live goes on, that is all there is, things are never resolved, the end, etc.

However, our cable providers often go black for short periods of time for no discernible reason, so using it on a TV program is problematic. Perhaps another technique – fade to white might work better. Maybe fade to black now means is it real? is it fiction? or is it cable?

I am glad that Tony Soprano did not find climatic redemption or punishment. It would have been a cliche.

In the end it was a tale of two bosses.

New York Phil Leotardo went over the top. He got too emotional and he made some bad business decisions. He went too far, his underlings turned against him, and he got whacked and squished.

New Jersey Tony Soprano tended to business. He cut a deal with the New York underlings, whacked the New York boss, and went out to dinner with his family. Fade to black

Brilliant.

The HBO Television show The Sopranos ends tonight.  Over the last two days, I have watched or re-watched all the shows from this season.  I am ready for the final show.

I have read some of the speculation about what the final show might contain.  For Tony Soprano, the speculation varies between getting punished or redeemed, between getting killed or making peace, between hell and heaven.

I do not know what will happen, but I will speculate that it will be somewhere between the two.  It will be cathartic but ambivalent.  Tomorrow we will all declare we saw what was coming.