SUBURRA: BLOOD OF ROME aka sex, drugs, violence and ZONING (and the wickedest of these is zoning, my son)

i'm one ep into this netflix drama abt gangsters, politicians and the vatican, set in present-day rome

so far in this ep, someone has been beaten possibly to death, there's been a big fat troubled roma wedding (the groom is gay), and a vatican high-up -- responsible for directing the sale of a key patch of land in lido di ostia towards this or that or the other crimeboss -- has had a heart attack at a coke-stoked orgy feat.dozens of hookers, staged to help him relax and decide by (though cut-outs) the mayor's daughter

(or possibly wife: we'll soon know)

it is very engrossing and i will now watch e2 while i c/p some of the commentary so far from the netflix non-english thriller series thread

xpost So just another day, then.

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN, just warning you (the o/p is providing a taster only) (also this quoted material actually includes some minor editing)

mark s: a massive on-brand roman orgy hurrah involving the mayor -- UPDATE: NOT ACTUALLY THE MAYOR, i misunderstood the relevance on the news over the radio as this character sets off for the orgy

mark s: it is a riot of unlikely youth-gangster haircuts so far

mark s: (apparently suburra means slums rather than suburbs)

mark s: (replay ftb not paying attention ftb posting in this thread allows me to notice, as i didn't before, that the backdrop to the orgy is a rather amazing film of or possibly aquarium full of undulating jellyfish, good work there a.n. designer)

mark s: love that so many euro corruption thrillers -- esp.southern europe but not exclusivly -- are abt (a) drugs and (b) ZONING (ie where the real money is -- in this SUBURRA overlaps with MARSEILLE)

ian: I am only one ep deep into Suburra but I'm liking it. I read the book a few weeks ago so I'm still trying to sort out who is who/what has been changed or removed or altered. But I like it. The haircuts are terrible but maybe that's what roman club kids looked like in 2008. On the Italian tip, highly recommend Romanzo Criminale, though it's on Filmstruck and not Netflix. Set in the seventies-into-the-eighties, also in Rome. It tells the story of the Magliana gang, who at that time scrapped their way up from armed robbery to the major drug/sex traffickers in Rome. I would like to watch Gommorah; I liked the film and I'm on a bit of an Italian crime kick it seems.

mark s: i totally covet the fabulous tentacular octopus-pattern jumper worn by giacomo ferrara as alberto: no pix on the internet yet which is a sorry state of affairs

also a digest of my livetweeting, for completeness' sake

euro-corruption thrillers are always abt (a) drugs and (b) zoning — uk thrillers or cop shows never abt zoning

i'd forgotten that "tangentopoli" meant "kickback city" -- my italian is non-existent -- and that much of it was abt public works contracts

nice little italian touch: non-wealthy pol clocking how rich kingpin crim is by comparing their shoe-condition

courtesy the architecture, SUBURRA feels like it takes the rot back 2770 years, to the very founding of rome, rome being hundreds of years older than eg marseille or london AS YOU KNOW (yes i know all of the architecture postdates aeneas and romulus and their horse remus, some of it by millennia)

also v unsure who the actual lead characters are

no cops seem to have featured yet (10 mins from end of e1): guessing they will be all over e2 tho

plus end credit music: "7 vizi capitale" ("7 capital sins") by piotta feat.muro del canto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKHYXng1KqA

e2: ok the pre-credit sequences are worth not missing :D

"this place hasn't changed in 2000 years: patricians, plebians, politicans and criminals, whores and priests -- rome"

good short scenes, a LOT of characters complete with complex active families, all classes tangled together: nice rich dense stuff

ok the wedding hasn't happened yet, e1 was a roma pre-wedding ceremony

aurelio (alessandro borghi) perhaps a bit too manic: acting too often with goggle-eyes -- the character's driven *and* coked-up

the main rome crime boss, known as samurai (francesco acquaroli), looks unnervingly like michael howerd

Amusing segment of dialogue from ep 1: [Who's coming to (see) the Pope today?] [The Swedish Royals] [It will be long then]

haha it's full of good lttle details

e3: i don't know if this show will be *good* on race but it's definitely going to address it

How does the series compare to the original movie? I've been a fan of Stefano Sollima since Romanzo Criminale and Gomorrah - still haven't gotten around to this yet.

(oops never mind, just noticed Sollima isn't directing this)

I'm just glad someone else likes Gomorrah.

haven't seen the movie so no help on this

love Gomorrah!

is this anything like Spartacus?

Elvis, did you watch the Romanzo Criminale series? I fucking loved it. Also really lke Gomorrah the film but haven't watched the series. So many things to watch..

Still need to watch the 2nd ep of this. My wife hates gangster/mafia stuff and graphic violence so I only watch it when I am alone.
Zoning is so tense tho.

as I mentioned on the other thread there are a few things I'm having trouble with, probably because I read the book first. Some roles seem to have been combined and some relationships have been changed, which seems like a very good thing actually. The book is awfully complicated with lots of characters; it might be a little too much to put into tv episodes.

(one example of this, which probably would have taken too long to show on screen, is that the original set up for blackmailing the priest was that the hooker was killed and had to be disposed of.)

ye, i like the lick this moves along at and its structure (climax of an ep shown at the start, then the ep illuminates how we got there) but i can imagine this is a bit over-symmetrical for the pace of a book

the TV version has as many or more "maib"{ characters than i remember in much else (which is good, but more might be unwieldly)

"maib"{ s/b "main" sorry -- frank herbert seems to have invaded my head

sexytiems for the nobs

(this^^^ is the start of the film)

e4: the way the central three young uns have quasi-bonded is a bit of a stretch tbh, even if it's the motor of the story

nice 60s-movie moment between spadino and his maybe-wife-to-be, larking about and giggling and outraging the squares in a fancy eatery

Ep 3: That scene with the dog in the park almost killed me.

i guess the three main characters are the three lads thrown into unlikely collaboration: aureliano, spadino and lele

they're all a bit of a chore to spend time with -- aureliano coked up, manic, goggled-eyed; spadino being a larky dick (he reminds me a bit of johnny boy in mean streets); and lele recessive, cautious, worried, a middleclass boy way out of his element

that's said they're all entirely plausible as characters in the milieu, and it's not as if the show is heaving with likeable alternatives -- everyone is basically p awful once they take an active role

i'm enjoying it a lot: it kicks along and you have to keep paying attention -- also blimey, italians like to act with their hands don't they :)

all of the characters are pretty awful, yes. i think spadino's granny is the most human so far, she just told him to gtfo and be gay elsewhere.

i liked* the way spadino's gf/wife-to-be casually dispelled the sympathy you'd built up for her in the past few eps -- ie she dislikes when spadino is a dick to her (and fair enough) but she's fine with (and enjoys)
when he's being a dick to others (yes posh ppl who probably deserve it given the moral universe we're seeing sketched, but also by impication wait-staff)**

*(i guess i mean disliked but the way it happens is part of what this series is about)
**this was the scene that reminded me of 60s films abt young lovers razzing the squares, and the misbehaviour being framed as mere charming rebel quirkiness (which tbf it wasn't here)

is this a one off or something there'll be more seasons of?

-- the restaurant scene isn't what made dispelled sympathy for her (to me) ... that came later.

Elvis, did you watch the Romanzo Criminale series? I fucking loved it

Absolutely loved the series - even more than the movie. Recommend it to everyone who's reading this thread.

predicted the police wd be all over this by now (i'm rewatching e4, i was very tired on monday night)

but they're not at all, except for lele's affectionate but somewhat blocked-off relationship w/his cop dad

The protagonist of the novel is a cop so it'll be interesting to see how they handle this. Still haven't watched past ep 3 tho.

once you notice during the closing credits mura del canto singing end their verses with "ROMA doodah doodah doodah" you can't unhear it*

*ok probably doesn't apply to people who understand a word of italian

^^^lol my english there

the incorruptible guy is also insufferable

OMG THE BRIDAL SUITE IS LIKE A SET FROM GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

samurai's amusement when the good boys go bad, then hurry ahead of themselves to be worse

everyone goes bad

(i've never seen schnitzler's la ronde but one of the features of this show is that a *lot* of it is one-on-one encounters -- mostly not sexual -- and whenever a new pair meet up, the plot clicks into a new cycle, changing everything else for everyone else)

i love the head crim's wry smile, it says something like "welcome to the world of crime, nothing is fine"

more italian shoes chat :)

"this time i won't lie"
*immediately tells a massive lie*

competition for worst dad

(my two thousand lira: il papa)

done: everyone died that i expected to :(

watching the film now: samurai is a different actor, aureliano the same tho (alessandro borghi) -- not sure if it shares any other characters

(the series is apparently a prequel)

ok spadolini's also in it, same actor (plus his brother and his vast family)

DOES INSPECTOR MALATESTA EVER SHOW UP?

rome seems to be entirely unpoliced, apart from lele's dad

will resist spoilers for the film: unsurprisingly it's a lot more "filmy" than the TV prequel (esp.in the lighting and the mobster behaviour depts), and as a result i think less good, tho it has some good set-pieces and i like how much it rains in this version of rome -- you saw much more of and got more of a sense of rome in the TV, bcz it had a bit more time and used it time very well indeed

rome seems to be entirely unpoliced, apart from lele's dad

― mark s, Friday, 20 October 2017 18:56 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just finished watching and came here to post - least competent police force on any show? only cop who tries to do something gets shot and nobody seems to bother trying to solve it either

I like how everyone spends their day turning up at people's homes

Still haven't seen movie, but I will say that I liked the series a lot, even though it misses a lot of the subplots and compexities of the novel.

S2 starts here! everyone is back on their roman bullshit!

even better than S1 iirc

looking forward to it! still have to finish S1 though.

it was a very wise decision to change the character of Samurai for the film and the series. in the novel he is patently ridiculous.

so is s2 still prequel to the film or what?

(i have p much forgotten how everything fitted together in s1 *or* the film so it doesn't matter exactly)

yes, S2 follows directly from S1 and I think takes events up to the point of the film

a lot of the backstory elaborated in the TV series isn't touched on at all in the film, so S1 and S2 are more tightly linked to each other than the TV series is to the movie

Hold on, is this on netflix? I need to watch this? Yes. I shld.

two episodes in, it's good to be back, but the first episode was super-confusing in a "isn't that person dead? and that person?" way, only partly because I couldn't remember what happened in the film and what happened in S1

i prefer Samurai in the series over Samurai in the film tbqf.

TV samurai looks the part more

https://s2.r29static.com//bin/entry/30e/x,80/1861124/image.jpg

film samurai seems just a little too weary to be properly intimidating

https://cc-media-foxit.fichub.com/image/fox-it-mondofox/7a50f741-21a9-4cac-b4b0-fd25b1f4034a/claudio-amendola-e-samurai-maxw-1280.jpg

insufficient time dedicated to ZONING matters imo

still re-watching season 1 but stoked to get into this.

i've been on an italian crime fiction kick for the last few years; if anyone is interested in recommendations hit me up.

(the book the TV show is based on is very good tbh and a lot of stuff in the book is not, at least as far as i've seen, not gotten into in the series or film.)

I binged over three days so possibly I just watched it wrong, but this felt less satisfying: plot was sloppier, characters looser, none of the new elements were particularly engaging. Always have time to watch Spadino, Aureliano, Samurai, Romolo but idk whether much happened to them character-wise since S1. Cinaglia is not a character, he's just a noun phrase with no apparent interior life. Sports guy who cares (though his framed copies of Roma Futurista were a nice touch).

Can't wait for S3 obv.

best moment was when they eat pasta

the main rome crime boss, known as samurai (francesco acquaroli), looks unnervingly like michael howerd

― mark s, Sunday, October 15, 2017 10:55 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^still true and weird

Started watching this cause of this thread. It's fantastic. So on which book is it based?

https://www.amazon.com/Suburra-Carlo-Bonini/dp/1609454073/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=suburra&qid=1551901232&s=gateway&sr=8-2

the book formed the direct basis for the Suburra film. the series is a prequel, not sure if i'd recommend watching the film at this point while you're watching it.

Thanks! Will read the book :-)

i've been on an italian crime fiction kick for the last few years; if anyone is interested in recommendations hit me up.

I am -- maybe post some on Crime Fiction, S/D?

best moment was when they eat pasta

^^^^^^^ otm for sure. Binged S2 and am somewhat dissatisfied. The police side of the story has always been weak for me and Cristiana's turn at the end seems totally forced. Can't wait for S3 of course.

S3 is on netflix UK and everything's already kicked off and more

it's on US Netflix too

best moment was when they eat pasta

― seandalai, Wednesday, 6 March 2019 13:17 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

solid pasta scene in S3E2, anyone catch what it was that Aureliano added from the jar? Tuna?

rewatching from the start of s1: will log and assess all pasta consumption

(may not in fact log and assess all pasta consumption)

my initial critique of s3 btw: NOT enough ZONING

"tutta roma, zona mia" sez samurai in the first head-to-head with manfredi (s1e1, 15 mins in)

Didn't realise until S3E6 that there were only six episodes in the season. Maybe not surprising that the ending felt rushed - could definitely have done with an aftermath episode devoted to pasta eating, parking cars and staring at the sea.

I guess S3 was a somewhat satisfying coda to the series? The ending felt inevitable and vaguely dissatisfying but I'm willing to attribute some of that to not eating pasta while I was watching.