The Curse of the Corpse Sopranos

All right, all right, it really is time for some actual content. How about the ever-popular "what I've been watching on DVD lately" post?

I have now finished season 3 of The Sopranos, a show I've been intermittently binging on an entire season at a time. And I seem to keep having more or less the same reaction each time: I'll start out interested but perhaps slightly more critical than involved, thinking things like, "Aren't there a lot of dangling story threads here? Is there really any point to this plot development? Man, that character's annoying..." But by about mid-season, I'm completely sucked in and have become absorbed by even the most trivial details of these characters' lives. Season three was particularly interesting in that respect, because I started out feeling that it was perhaps the weakest of what I'd seen so far, and came out of it feeling that it might be the strongest. Certainly there were some extremely well-written individual episodes. My personal favorite was the one in which Christopher and Paulie get lost in the Pine Barrens, which contained some black comedy of the finest order. Best line:

PAULIE: How can we be lost? We're in fucking New Jersey.
CHRISTOPHER: South Jersey.

OK, possibly that's only funny if you're actually from South Jersey, but it had me giggling hysterically.

Then, having finished the current batch of Sopranos, I watched The Corpse Bride last night. Which delighted me right from the very beginning, although, for no reason I can quite put my finger, on the delight faded to mere enjoyment as the movie went on. I still definitely recommend it, though, if you have any taste at all for the stylishly macabre.

Next up: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.