Stars: James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Nancy Marchand, Lorraine Bracco, Michael Imperioli, Steven Van Zandt

Summary: Episodes are: 'Boca' and 'A Hit Is A Hit'.

This highly acclaimed HBO series stars James Gandolfini in a career-making performance as Tony Soprano, a Mafia leader who is having trouble dealing with his family and starts to see a shrink. The terrific supporting cast features Edie Falco as Tony's beleaguered wife, Carmela; Lorraine Bracco as Tony's put-upon psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi; Michael Imperioli as loose cannon Christopher Moltisanti; Steven Van Zandt as Silvio, owner of the Bada-Bing; and the incomparable Nancy Marchand, in one of the great television performances, as Livia Soprano, Tony's conniving, controlling mother. The writing, directing, and acting are impeccable, making for one of the most enjoyable viewing events in TV history.
This volume includes "Boca" and "A Hit Is a Hit."

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The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there is the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau richebrood.

The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his mid-level capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.

Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfatherepic, The Sopranossustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.

The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what is not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	1.33 Full Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Trailers, Documentary
Year:	2000
Release Date:	April 16, 2001
Runtime:	116 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	D 025062
Keywords:	General, Series, Tv, Drama, Sopranos, Vol
Genre:	Drama