baby monkey riding pig (accepting gift)
♫ Baby monkeyyy, baby monkeyyy, ridin’ on a pig, baby monkeyyy. The world has gone insane. ♩♪♫♬
R.I.P. JAMES GANDOLFINI (1961 - 2013)
“How could guys like us worry about a tiny thing like the sun?”
If any actor could have rested comfortably on his laurels early on, it was James Gandolfini, who passed away in Italy today at the age of 51. His work on “The Sopranos” came to define the otherwise minor character actor so quickly and wholly that he seemed destined to live out the remainder of his career being typecast—he slid so comfortably into the role of Tony Soprano, embodying the New Jersey gangster in the popular imagination, that it was hard to imagine him breaking free from that filmography-eclipsing preconception. He offered us a recognizable, relatable narrative: an actor struggles for years to make it big in Hollywood only to be embraced by television when success never pans out. It didn’t make sense for the script to change.
But much as David Chase refused a tidy ending with the series finale of “The Sopranos”, so too did Gandolfini rewrite the ending of his illustrious career in television: instead of receding into gangland obscurity, become just another second-rate Pacino primed for mafia pictures on a budget, he continued to challenge both himself and our perception of him, taking on increasingly difficult roles with fervor and audacity. Perhaps we should have anticipated it: his performance in the Coens’ wildly underrated “The Man Who Wasn’t There”, which finds him playing a sleazy businessman and enemy to Billy Bob Thorton’s hapless barber protagonist, seems in retrospect like a concerted attempt to reconfigure his public image as his TV epic was reaching the peak of its popularity. Even when it made the most sense for him to stick to what he knew, Gandolfini wanted risks. It was a tendency he would return to again and again.
dont ever invite me over to ‘watch movies with you’ if that’s not what you actually mean because i like movies a whole lot more than i like human contact and i will just watch that movie
history meme: 02/10 moments | Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” Radio Broadcast
On the night of October 30, 1938, families everywhere were gathered around their radios for another episode of CBS’s Mercury Theater On The Air. The evening’s episode was a radio adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic War Of The Worlds, in which the Earth is invaded from outer space and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, The story was familiar to many, but was about to be presented in a way that had never been heard before. Instead of simply telling the story, the broadcast presented it as a series of newscasts that interrupted “regular programming” to describe a martian invasion that started in a small town in New Jersey.
While the live news format had been used in radio drama before, it had never been done as realistically or for as long without commercial interruption. The episode prompted many listeners to flee their homes and call friends and family for verification, suggesting to many that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. While somewhat primitive by today’s standards, the broadcast was far ahead of its time and was an early demonstration of the power of radio for both news and entertainment. [more]
