Michael Imperioli remembers the intensity that went into filming certain scenes of violence for The Sopranos.

The Sopranos saw a number of brutal and intense moments throughout its run, with some particularly graphic and shocking murders throughout its six-season run. Now, more than 16 years after Tony took his family out for onion rings and left the world wondering what happened when the screen went black, star Michael Imperioli – who played Christopher Moltisanti – is reflecting on The Sopranos scenes that gave him the toughest time.

While Michael Imperioli didn’t cite one specific scene from The Sopranos, he did point to his more intense moments – and there were a lot of them – with Drea de Matteo, who played Christopher’s girlfriend, Adriana. “The most brutal, difficult stuff for me is when Christopher had to be physically abusive with Adriana, for obvious reasons. On a technical level, you’re trying to be really careful so you don’t hurt the person. But having to get to that point of violence towards a woman, you have to go to some nasty places to get there…It’s one thing to choreograph and rehearse it, then when you act it full-tilt with all the emotion, it’s easy to not have as much control as in the rehearsal. So you really have to be quite careful.” He also said that he found it much easier “shooting a mobster or shooting heroin” than dealing with physical violence against his female co-star, who was whacked in the woods in season five.

As for his own murder – which is still one of the most shocking moments on The Sopranos, occurring in  – Michael Imperioli found that moment with James Gandolfini to be another cinch. “That wasn’t really brutal at all, I’ll be honest with you. When we shot it, it wasn’t my last day either because we shot out of sequence.” While Christopher would be suffocated by his uncle Tony in one of The Sopranos’ final episodes (“Kennedy and Heidi”), Michael Imperioli would reprise Christopher by narrating 2021’s prequel The Many Saints of Newark, a surprising treat for fans. The character even briefly appeared as a baby.

What do you think was the most brutal scene on The Sopranos? Give us your pick below.

The Criterion Collections is prepping a massive box set of Jackie Chan’s early movies, but the selection may puzzle die hard fans.

Jackie Chan is about to get a major new collection from Criterion, with the prestige label announcing a new set called Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar. The set will contain a few of Chan’s early classics, including Fearless Hyena (and its sequel) and The Young Master, as well as a later film, My Lucky Stars, and a pair of his earliest vehicles, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu and Spiritual Kung Fu. Fans of Chan’s may be scratching their heads at a few of the titles, as outside of Young Master and Fearless Hyena, none of the films included in the set are considered his best work.

It seems like rights issues are keeping legit early classics like Drunken Master off the set, with the most puzzling choice being to include Fearless Hyena 2, which is really little more than a curiosity for fans. Chan notoriously quit the film halfway through production after leaving his contract with producer Lo Wei, leaving the film to be finished with doubles.

That said, the set is set to be jam-packed with extras, including commentary tracks, interviews, alternate audio tracks (including a mix of vintage English dubbed tracks and newly created ones) and even, in the case of The Young Master, a Cannes Promo Reel that has some deleted footage.

Criterion previously released Police Story I & 2 as a well-received double set, and hopefully, this sells well enough that some of his legitimate classics get the Criterion treatment. Dragons Forever, Wheels on Meals, and some of his other Golden Harvest era movies, especially Drunken Master 2, deserve the Criterion treatment more than most of the movies in this set. Project A and Project A Part 2 are crying out for a new re-release in North America. Still, an issue used to be that The Weinstein Company had the rights to many Hong Kong classics, including most John Woo movies, explaining why none of those have ever gotten the prestige releases they deserve. It would be nice to see the much more deserving Hong Kong classics from Chan and his contemporaries get their day in the sun, as there are a lot of great movies out there that are out of circulation.

With The Toxic Avenger remake set to premiere at Fantastic Fest, the first image and some teaser art have arrived online

Two years have passed since filming wrapped on writer/director Macon Blair’s remake of the Troma cult classic The Toxic Avenger (watch it HERE), and now the movie is finally about to make its way out into the world! We still don’t have a release date, but we do know The Toxic Avenger is going to have its world premiere at Fantastic Fest next month – and along with the news of that screening comes the unveiling of the first image of Peter Dinklage as the title character, and a bit of teaser art! You can check them out at the bottom of this article.

Sure, Dinklage’s Toxie is shrouded in shadow in the image, but it’s still more than we’ve seen of him up to this point. The teaser art comes courtesy of our friends at Bloody Disgusting.

Blair’s version of The Toxic Avenger stars Dinklage as Winston Gooze, a stereotypical weakling who works as a janitor at Garb-X health club and is diagnosed with a terminal illness that can only be cured by an expensive treatment that his greedy, power hungry employer refuses to pay for. After deciding to take matters into his own hands and rob his company, Winston falls into a pit of toxic waste and is transformed into a deformed monster that sets out to do good and get back at all the people who have wronged him.

Dinklage is joined in the cast by Jacob Tremblay (presumably as Winston’s son), Taylour Paige as the “female lead” (we haven’t heard any details on her character), Julia Davis and Elijah Wood as unspecified characters, Jonny Coyne as a “shadowy criminal figure”, Sarah Niles as a “corrupt city official”, and Kevin Bacon as the primary villain, a role Wood had originally been rumored for. Blair is also in the cast as a guy named Dennis.

According to The Illuminerdi, the main villain is rumored to be Bob Garbinger – Leonine hair and eerie plastic surgery. Evil head of the shady company Garb X. He has no regard for the well being of anyone but himself and embarks on a murderous spree to become as powerful as Toxie. His ego is bolstered by his standing amongst the towns official but in reality he lives in fear of the underworld gang he’s indebted to.

The Toxic Avenger remake was filmed in Bulgaria. Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz produced with Legendary Entertainment. The film has received an R rating for “strong violence and gore, language throughout, sexual references and brief graphic nudity“ – and the gore includes a moment that has been referred to as “the butt guts scene“.

Are you looking forward to The Toxic Avenger remake? Let us know by leaving a comment below… and while you’re scrolling down, take a look at the first image and the teaser art.

Netflix’s Heart of Stone topped the global and U.S top 10 this week as the surprise hit Jackie Chan movie, Hidden Strike, fell off the U.S chart.

It looks like the obscure and long-shelved Jackie Chan/ John Cena vehicle Hidden Strike’s reign at the top of the Netflix charts is over, with Gal Gadot’s spy thriller Heart of Stone topping the global charts. Curiously, Hidden Strike, while still coming in at number 2 on the international charts, completely fell out of the top 10 on the U.S. chart, which seems strange considering how well it did last week (read our review of the underwhelming film here).

Gal Gadot’s mostly well-reviewed Heart of Stone raked in 33.1 Million views and 69.6 hours viewed. While promising, that puts the movie well behind a pair of Netflix’s most recent action flicks, Extraction 2, which raked in 88.4 hours viewed in its first week, and The Mother, which was watched for 83.7 hours. In fact, the latter film, which stars Jennifer Lopez, has turned into Netflix’s biggest hit of the year, currently sitting at number 7 on their all-time Most Popular Films chart. No other 2023 movie has managed to duplicate that feat, including the much-hyped Extraction 2.

Meanwhile, on the T.V. side, Peter Berg’s opioid limited series Painkiller has proven to be a hit, with it topping the charts despite its grim subject matter. Based on the Sackler family’s development of OxyContin, the series earned 7.2 million views. That’s pretty good for such a heavy show, and it looks like the Uzo Aduba, Taylor Kitsch, and Matthew Broderick-led series is a solid hit. Hopefully, its success will encourage Netflix to make more limited series like these. There’s plenty of room for fun and fantasy, but sometimes harder-hitting stuff should be on the menu too.

Sadly, it looks like Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone never made much of a dent on the charts, with it falling out of the global and U.S. top 10 this week. Perhaps it was too off-kilter for the mainstream Netflix audience but good on them for taking a chance on riskier material.

Did you watch Heart of Stone or Painkiller this weekend? Let us know what you think in the comments!