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The first entirely New Jersey-themed pinball machine has the makings of a hit.
Make that a mob hit.
“The Sopranos” pinball machine, a spinoff of the popular HBO drama, will be available next month, and already pre-orders are pouring in to pinball dealers and distributors.
“I got an order from a guy in Germany who never heard of ‘The Sopranos’ but played the game at a trade show there and loved it,” said Jack Guarnieri, owner of Lakewood-based pinballsales.com.
“We’ve had interest from customers in Croatia,” said Gary Stern, owner of Melrose Park, Ill.-based Stern Pinball, the game’s manufacturer. “They’re going to put the machines in bars and restaurants over there.”
The game, like the show, is colorful, comical, crazed and a little risqué. The back and side panels show off the cast — Tony, Carmela, Paulie Walnuts, Silvio, Uncle Junior, Chris and others. The playing surface features signs for the Meadowlands, a replica Pulaski Skyway, two miniature go-go dancers from the Bada Bing, a talking fish (a detail from a Season Two episode involving Big Pussy), and a tractor-trailer marked CHASE (a reference to show creator David Chase). Rack up points, advance up the family ladder — associate, soldier, acting capo, capo, consigliere, underboss. There’s also a space labeled “RIP.” Landing on that can’t be a good thing.
Barry Sonnenfeld has sworn off making sequels, but he doesn’t mind revisiting his films on DVD.
Get Shorty, his 1995 crime comedy about a mob man (John Travolta) breaking into the movie biz, gets a two-disc DVD this week. Unlike its initial bare-bones DVD, this one has commentary, making-of material and deleted scenes.
One such scene was the film’s funniest, he said, but it slowed the pace by not advancing the plot. In it, Ben Stiller plays a film school grad staging pretentious shots for horror hack producer Gene Hackman, who puts him in his place.
Sonnenfeld put his own foot down when asked to direct Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty, opening March 4. Though it’s set in the music world and again features Travolta’s Chili Palmer, “I just didn’t want to do any more sequels,” he said.
“You get really bored as a director on the set. You’ve worked with these characters before and play it a bit safe. It gets tedious, and you don’t do your best work.” Read the rest of this entry »
‘The Sopranos’ star Edie Falco has signed up to star in an adaptation of Richard Price’s novel ‘Freedomland’, to be directed by Joe Roth.
Falco will star opposite Julianne Moore and Samuel L Jackson in the film, which is set to begin shooting in New York at the end of March.
‘Freedomland’ is the story of a white woman who claims that her child has been abducted by a black man. The search for the child causes racial tension in the area.
Falco will play the mother of the child, while Jackson will play the local detective and Moore takes on the role of a newspaper reporter looking into the abduction.
February 23, 2005 — HBO officials will clean up “Deadwood,” a show featuring the most swear words ever dropped in a television program, so that repeats can be sold to another network or to TV stations around the world.
“They want me to dub it,” “Deadwood” star Ian McShane told “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno this week. “They want to make it like how ‘The Sopranos’ has been sold in syndication, but I mean it would be a series of bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep.”
McShane won the Golden Globe this year for his portrayal of Al Swearengen, a dark-hearted saloon owner who dabbles in murder and mayhem on the popular Western, in which swear words are used in almost every sentence uttered by the characters. Read the rest of this entry »
Headlining “Celebrating Our Bodies Week,” Jamie Lynn DiScala, star of television’s The Sopranos, discussed in Page Auditorium last night her battle with an eating disorder and emphasized the importance of creating a positive body image from within.
An animated speaker, DiScala combined humor with seriousness to explain how she skyrocketed to fame but almost lost it just as quickly.
“I have a story to tell,” she said.
Despite DiScala’s success at being cast as Meadow Soprano in the HBO series, her self-image was far from positive. She pointed to an unexpected break up with her first serious boyfriend, combined with the stress of beginning her junior year of high school, as triggers that led her to question her body image. Read the rest of this entry »
A new season of “The Sopranos” isn’t due until next year, but HBO may have something to keep fans busy — the company is bumping up the release date of the fifth-season DVD set.
“Frankly, it seems to make sense to us to not let the distance between the release of season four and season five get too great,” said Caroline Rhea, senior vice president of marketing for HBO Video, noting season four came out in October 2003.
In the past, HBO has released the most recent season of a show on DVD near the launch date for the next season, as a way to boost interest in the returning show. For example, on Feb. 8 HBO put out the first season of “Deadwood,” which returns for its second outing next month.
But, because “The Sopranos” is coming back with what’s being billed as the final season in 2006, HBO has stepped up the release of the new DVD set to June 7, in time for Father’s Day.
HBO is moving up the release date of the fifth-season DVD for The Sopranos. In the past, HBO has released the most recent season of a show on DVD near the launch date for the next season, as a way to boost interest in the returning show. But because The Sopranos won’t be coming back with its sixth — and final — season until 2006, HBO has stepped up the release of the new DVD to June 7. The HBO airdates for The Sopranos are dictated by creator David Chase, who works on his own timetable.
By ADAM BUCKMAN
February 14, 2005 — HE was once best known as “that guy from ‘The Sopranos,’ ” but now Louis Lombardi is getting identified by another name — Edgar Stiles.
OK, so his own name is not exactly a household word — except maybe on Stadium Avenue in the Bronx, in the enclave known as Country Club, where Lombardi grew up.
But fans of “24″ are talking about Edgar, the watchful, introverted techno-wiz Lombardi plays on the Fox suspense series.
“I figure he’s just a person who’s been alone all his life, focused on his work and his computer and his mother,” says Lombardi, 37, about Edgar, on the phone from California.
Last week, Edgar put his computer know-how to work to corner a Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU) spy, the scheming Marianne Taylor (Aisha Tyler).
And tonight (9 p.m. on Fox/5), Edgar’s at the forefront again when he learns that his mother’s life is in danger from the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown at a power plant near her home.
On “24,” Lombardi is one of the show’s principal cast members this season. On “The Sopranos,” he had the minor but memorable role of Skip Lipari, the FBI agent who was put in charge of a high-profile mob informant, Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero.
He was seen briefly on nine episodes of “The Sopranos,” the last one in March 2001, and yet, rabid fans still recognize him everywhere.
“Let me tell you something,” Lombardi says, “if you ever came out with me and you walked around, you would think I was James Gandolfini. You have to see the audience reaction. It’s insane.
“With ‘The Sopranos,’ people say, ‘You’re the guy who busted Pussy. You’re the cop, right?’
“Now with ‘24,’ everywhere I go, it’s not, ‘You’re the guy from “24,” ‘ now it’s ‘Edgar Stiles.’ People are going crazy. They love Edgar.”
Showtime’s “Brotherhood,” a series loosely based on the saga of brothers Billy and Whitey Bulger, isn’t scheduled to air until sometime next year, but the pilot, filmed last year in Providence, R.I., screams an Irish-flavored version of “The Sopranos.”
Jason Isaacs (”Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”) portrays Michael Caffee, a violent gangster whose brother Tommy (Jason Clarke) is a steely local politician, according to production insiders.
Michael comes home to a fictional Providence neighborhood called “The Hill” after seven years on the run. His return sets up a power struggle with local mob boss Freddie Cork, portrayed by one-time Boston film commissioner Kevin Chapman.
A federal task force has Cork and his crew under surveillance, and Caffee’s return shakes things up.
The “legit” Caffee brother, meanwhile, has a finger on everything going on the city, legal or not. He even may be paying off a woman who knows about a murder his brother may have committed.
In one memorable scene, Tommy Caffee concludes some questionable backroom deals, is then introduced as a speaker at a chi-chi function and proudly announces that the era of the backroom deal is over.
Meanwhile, the pol’s wife, portayed by Annabeth Gish (”X-Files,” “The West Wing”), is having an affair with an old flame, one of the pol’s aides is a closeted, troubled gay man, and there’s a running gag about Cork’s 14-inch endowment . . .
That should be enough to keep Boston audiences - and Whitey, wherever he is - riveted to the screen when “Brotherhood” debuts on the premium channel in 2006.
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: February 11, 2005
ohn Patterson, a television director whose frequent work on crime shows included every season finale of “The Sopranos” on HBO, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 64.
The cause was prostate cancer, HBO announced.
Mr. Patterson was long drawn to cop programs, murder mysteries and courtroom dramas. He directed episodes of “CHiPs” and “Knots Landing” in the 1970’s, “Hill Street Blues” and “Magnum, P.I.” in the 1980’s, “The Practice” and “Providence” in the 1990’s and “CSI” and “Six Feet Under” in the current decade. Read the rest of this entry »