Links for the Day (June 11th, 2007)

1. Some Sopranos wrap-ups:

• Edward Copeland: "We'll always have Jersey"
• Alan Sepinwall: "Sopranos Rewind: Made in America"
• Jim Emerson: "The Sopranos: Eighty-Sixed"
• Matthew Gilbert: "To the end, 'Sopranos' has its way with viewers' psyches"
• Tom Shales: "A Bang-Up Finale For 'The Sopranos'"
• Frazier Moore: "No Easy Ending for 'The Sopranos'"
• Television Without Pity: "The 'Made in America' Thread"
  

["It may have been the greatest double-take -- by the audience -- in the history of American television."]

***
2. "Fassbinder's legacy @ 25": From GreenCine Daily.

[""Why are you journalists always claiming Rainer was gay? He was never gay, and I would know." It doesn't matter whether Juliane Lorenz, head of the Fassbinder Foundation meant, when she blurted this utterance to critic and documentarian Hans Günther Pflaum in 1992, that Rainer Werner Fassbinder was not gay in the strictest sense or that behind all that famously polysexual activity lurked some closeted heterosexual. The comment, quoted in Christiane Peitz's longish piece on the battle over RWF's legacy for Tuesday's Tagesspiegel, suggests either a skewed sense of reality, a reluctance to face that reality or a full-blown attempt to replace it with a self-serving myth; it's, plain and simple, a nutty remark. Pflaum himself asserts that Lorenz was trying to eradicate a good chunk of RWF's identity. Producer Michael Fengler recalls that Lorenz upped the ante at a gathering marking the 10th anniversary of RWF's death that same year. Not only was he not gay, she insisted, he rarely dabbled in drugs. And yet it was Lorenz herself who found Fassbinder dead on a bed littered with notes for his next film 25 years ago today. The combination of a hefty dose of sleeping pills and cocaine would have been too much for the most robust of hearts."]

***
3. "Powell urges US to close Guantanamo": From Al Jazeera.

["Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, has called for the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba to be shut down immediately, saying it has become a liability."]

***
4. "‘Spring Awakening’ and ‘Coast of Utopia’ Rack Up Tony Awards": From The New York Times.

["The 61st annual Tony Awards last night were dominated by two shows drawn from the 19th century: “Spring Awakening,” about sexually frustrated German teenagers in that era, won best musical and most of the other musical awards, while “The Coast of Utopia,” Tom Stoppard’s epic period trilogy about Russian intellectuals, set a record for the most awards won by a play in Tony history."]

***
5. "Daisy Kenyon (1947, Otto Preminger)": Mike D'Angelo discovers one for the ages.

["First of all, since somebody asked: Yes, this is the highest rating I've given since I switched to the 100-point scale in the summer of 2002. Which is not to say that Daisy Kenyon is now my favorite film of all time or anything—Only Angels Have Wings, The Lady Eve, Brief Encounter, A Star Is Born ('54), The Night of the Hunter, North by Northwest, Yojimbo, Woman in the Dunes, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Manhattan, Exotica, and (yes) Memento will all likely get the magic 100 if/when I watch them again. But it's been a long, long while since I've encountered a "new" (that is, previously unseen by me) old-Hollywood masterpiece. Give those zany auteurists credit for carrying the banner on this one. I'm sorry I doubted you, guys."]

***
Clip of the Day: We are all Christopher Moltisanti

_____________________________________________________
"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.