Jumping the croc. After cringing through every minute of CROCODILE DUNDEE IN LOS ANGELES, I’d like to, uh, not be Australian any more, please. After Steve Irwin redefined the term Crocodile Hunter to mean conservationist and all-round noyce goy, Paul Hogan’s seedy crocodile poacher character became irrelevant. Yet CROCODILE DUNDEE IN LOS ANGELES drags its feet to the billabong once more … Read More
THE SOPRANOS – SEASON 3-38: AMOUR FOU
Women Be Crazy. O god, why hast thou made this gleaming snare Woman, to dog us on the happy earth? — Euripides, Hippolytus 428 BC. Amour Fou – love so intense it drives one to madness. Mad love. Gloria Trillo (Annabella Sciorra, filling the TV screen more than lusciously), the latest in a long line of Tony’s mistresses, who would … Read More
THE SOPRANOS – SEASON 3-32: UNIVERSITY
Bringing True Violence to the Simulated Screen. Once again, THE SOPRANOS explores the nature of True Violence, impacting our atrophied sensibilities with its directness. But how is the beating to death of a stripper so disturbing to our supposedly hardened psyches? Surely what we have seen over the years on our cathode-ray tubes and in darkened theaters has prepared us … Read More
THE SOPRANOS – SEASON 3-30: EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH
The Antisocial Truth behind the Socially-Acceptable Fiction. THE SOPRANOS leans heavily on Freud. And I’m a Freud kinda guy (over a Jung kinda guy – as I am a Nietzsche Kinda Guy over a Kant Kinda Guy – and no, I did not appreciate the shot at Nietzsche in Episode 20 (“D-Girl”), “Nietzsche wound up talkin’ to his horse”). Freud … Read More