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Boardwalk Empire

Discussion in 'TV Shows' started by dubyu tee eff, Sep 17, 2010.

  1. dubyu tee eff

    dubyu tee eff
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    Thinks he has a chance with Christina Hendricks...

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    Anyone else planning on checking this show out? The trailers look pretty interesting and they've got heavyweight Martin Scorcese at the helm. Also, Just about everything Steve Buscemi is in is awesome. First episode is this Sunday I believe.
     
  2. Misanthropic

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    I'm looking forward to it also. They worked with a massive budget on this one (supposedly the replica boardwalk cost $20 million), and early reviews say this show is fantastic.
     
  3. E. Tuffmen

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    Already have the DVR set and ready to go. Been a fan of Steve for ages. I loved his part in the Sopranos. The reviews I've read actually say the pilot Marty did was the weakest of the shows, if you can believe that. I think it should be awesome. Except now I have to keep Showtime for Dexter and HBO for this.
     
  4. KIMaster

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    It's easy to believe, considering the pilot is where they have to introduce the bulk of the characters, leaving little room for story development.

    Anyways, there have literally been hundreds of American films made about the Prohibition era, so I'm curious if they have anything original to bring to the table here. I like Buscemi a lot, but if it's going to be a bunch of actors putting on their best Cagney or Bogart impressions, it will be middling entertainment. The previews were non-descriptive in that sense; the show could just as easily suck as be great.

    Still, I will check it out, if only because I enjoy the whole look they adopted for the series.
     
  5. Crown Royal

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    Just call me Topher

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    Like Breaking Bad, it's very cinematic looking. That worked extraordinarily good previously.
    Believe me, they do not hold back on the violence on this show. I think we're in for a treat.
     
  6. Mike Ness

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    I thought it was excellent especially considering it was the pilot episode. I thought it was funny how the opening sequence had Buschemi in front of a sea filled with liquor bottles, they want to make sure you know this show is all about Prohibition.

    I actually didn't hate the character playing Capone like I thought I would (he annoyed me as baby faced Nelson in the film Public Enemies) I really enjoyed the characters they introduced so far as well as the storylines. The only thing I can't stand is that old-timey music, I know it's necessary and part of the setting but it's god awful.
     
  7. Juice

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    The music was definitely over done a bit. After about half an hour, there was one sequence that came on where I wanted to jam a screwdriver in my ear.

    Aside from that, I thought it was pretty good. The first half was slow and didnt really pick up any speed until Capone was introduced, which I was not expecting at all. It will definitely be interesting to see Capone's and Luciano's rise to the top.
    One thing I must have missed was,

    Who was the guy who got shot in the restaurant at the end? I know he was at the dinner with the mobsters, but why was he killed?
     
  8. Rutabaga

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    One cool thing about this show is that you can go to Wikipedia and look some of the actual people up. He was James Colosimo.

    I didn’t get it at the time either, but I believe his driver was Al Capone, and in the scene with Jimmy where they are waiting outside for their bosses to have dinner, Capone mentions that Colosimo wasn’t planning on getting into bootlegging / Alcohol. Colosimo was only there along with the other Chicago guy to setup a meeting between New York guys Luciano and Rothstein and Atlantic City guy Nucky. Obviously Capone had other ideas of what the Chicago mob wanted to do.

    I thought the first episode was great. They seemed to try to cram a whole movie’s worth into one hour, but every pilot except The Wire did that, and it left the door open to a potentially awesome series.
     
  9. El Tee

    El Tee
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    Yep. The last time I had to research what was happening in real-time like this was during "Deadwood". And I'm not entirely sure where the line between fiction and history sits on this show, either.

    The other guy you're talking about is John Torrio, and I think at this point he's the one calling the shots in Chicago, not Capone. Although, I'm still al little confused why Jimmy came up with the plan to steal the booze shipment; it was pretty obvious he tipped off the IRS agents to bust the basement operation as a way to get back at the asshole that fed him formaldehyde. My initial thought was that Nucky put him up to it in order to double up on his profits from Rothstein by reselling it to another gang, but then we found out that Jimmy didn't have permission to do it. I definitely need to rewatch the pilot again, just to get the whole story straight.
     
  10. Rutabaga

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    I think you are right that Torrio is now the boss after replacing Colisimo. Capone definitely made a giant leap from driver to golden boy with that move though. He was probably Torrio’s driver, come to think of it.

    It seemed like Nucky is more of a political boss than necessarily a mob guy. He also ran a casino, but was it legal in AC at that time too? Obviously he sees the potential in bootlegging, but I don’t think he was as ambivalent about killing people as much as they are making Jimmy out to be, with the Irish guy being more an anger thing than a business thing. Jimmy now wants to be a straight up mobster as far as I can tell. He wouldn’t have robbed those guys if it had been Nucky’s guys carrying the alcohol, but he is crazy jealous, and found a fellow doughboy in Capone who was probably in the similar situation of having been passed up because of serving. Jimmy might now be the mob boss in AC because there wasn't any real mob there before, and Nucky has his back to a pretty good extent (like Pesci in Casino).

    The set up seems to be Nucky as the public figure / boss of importing and Jimmy as the mobster starting fires all over the place with New York that Nucky needs to put out. It is hard to tell who the principal cast actually is. So much potential for conflict, and all the obvious corruption makes it a little easier to tolerate sort of ridiculous things like the framing of the Irish guy.
     
  11. Juice

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    I think Jimmys last line to Nucky set the stage, "You cant be half a gangster." I think hes going to the walk the line between the two until he eventually just becomes a mobster.

    Favorite quote from the pilot, "Enough of the cowboy shit"
     
  12. Dmix3

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    My understanding was that Jimmy's tipped off the feds so he would essentially know that no cop in the world would show up when he and Capone took down the shipment. Capone then took his load to Chicago where presumably he is a hero and subsequently promoted once the Clam guy was popped. Then they killed and framed the abusive drunk preggo beater upper as the thief to throw suspicion off both Nucky and Jimmy.

    I was more partial to "wet as a mermaid's twat"
     
  13. El Tee

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    How about "You're going to name your kid Enoch? Why would you be so cruel?"
     
  14. Crown Royal

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    You could really see Scorsese's directorial flourishes throughout the pilot, but I really liked it all the same. We need a good organized crime series, and this one has started off really well. It has good subplots and Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt and Michael Shannon are excellent choices for their roles. They have the right actor's touch for a period piece such as this.

    Dante Ferretti is the best set designer in show business. He did the astonishing art direction for Gangs Of New York and The Aviator, and his production design on the Boardwalk here is possibly the best I've ever seen on a television show. I've never seen such admirable period detail as this. They really don't miss anything.

    Yes, the "Olde Timey" music is a bit much, but when you think about it it's kind of necessary to help really put the viewer there.

    That scene when Buscemi is looking at the premature babies was marvelous. He showed real depth to his character by just using his eyes to show a truly sad state of mind. I guess it hits with me, because my daughter was premature too (but she was half the size of the kid in the window).
     
  15. KIMaster

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    Of all the things to criticize or praise in that episode, you guys take issue with the music not being anachronistic? Personally, I'm fine with my 1920's gangster drama devoid of rap or electronica. The 20's era music was perfectly fine, since it didn't overpower the scenes, and worked well as the background.

    Overall, I thought the episode was very good. The sets were phenomenal, and the glitzy look and flavor of the setting didn't disappoint. I loved a lot of the small details, from the Women's Temperance League to the Fatty Arbuckle shorts Jimmy watched with his family. The story and dialogue were both solid, although I have a hard time believing Rothstein will let matters stand as they look now. Hans Schroeder was an obvious cover-up, and the shipment Capone brought to Chicago will be easy to track. We will see if they pursue this further in future episodes.

    In terms of acting, Buscemi was a pro, but most of the other performances were fairly average. The lone exception was the actor playing Jimmy, Michael Pitt, who injected some understated, subtle touches into a character that could easily have been a cardboard cliche. However, listening to him speak was jarring as hell, since he is supposed to be a Princeton student with a decent upbringing, and instead sounds like a low-class 20's street urchin. On the other hand, the actress playing Margaret Schroeder was simply awful. (Strange, since I liked her in "No Country for Old Men") I am already dreading her inevitable character arc.

    A very promising start to the series, though; I am looking forward to the next few episodes.
     
  16. redbullgreygoose

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    Wow. Renewed for a second season after only one pilot.

    I linked to the crappy gossip website below because variety wanted me to register with them to see theirs. But I changed to basic page style in firefox to bypass the pop up. I'll copy and paste the original in spoiler tags.

    http://justjared.buzznet.com/2010/09/22/hbos-boardwalk-empire-renewed-for-second-season/


    I thought it was very good. But I'm going to watch the pilot again to pick up on some things I probably missed before I comment.
     
  17. DannyMac

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    Watched it yesterday On Demand and I really enjoyed the pilot. Like El tee mentioned, I will be curious to see how historically accurate the show stays. Deadwood moved pretty far off from known history to my understanding. Rome definitely moved off of history very quickly during it's run.

    I too want to watch it again to better understand what happened before I comment.
     
  18. StrangeBrew

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    I don't understand why they threw all this paying attention to detail out the window by using this Paz de la Huerta chick as Nucky's girl. She certainly looks like she's had a bit of work done.
     
  19. KIMaster

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    There were a lot of other things that broke the 20's immersion far more heavily than an actress having large breasts and a relatively unusual face. Probably the most significant was the black businessman/gangster who yelled "Tell Nucky I don't got all day!" with an accent/intonation that no black man living in the US had prior to the 1980s (or at least what I have seen from movies/documentaries). I don't blame the actor one bit, either; it's extraordinarily difficult to completely alter one's style of speech, especially since the historically accurate speech would be very unorthodox and unusual.

    On a more general note, I doubt as all hell that people talked the way Nucky and his compatriots did in the pilot. Their words and sentences are the ones cool gangsters use in modern-day films, not the ones people actually used in the early 20s. (Again, from what I have read in books, watched in movies) Again, I don't blame the writer, since it's better to just write good fucking dialogue instead of agonizing over the precise diction of a long-gone era. (And probably failing, anyways)

    My point is that the creators only need to create a veneer of the 20s, which they have certainly done with the awesome sets, costumes, little historical details, etc. and try not to present anything that disrupts it too much. If you look very closely, you can notice all the dozens of cracks, but that's true of every historically set film or television series. It would be virtually impossible as well as counterproductive to cover them all.
     
  20. toejam

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    I was too busy yelling YO OMAR COMIN' to listen to his speech. Nucky doesn't know who he's dealing with. "You come at the king, you best not miss!"

    On topic - I liked the episode but they were setting up too many plots at once to decide whether this show is going to be great or not. That's to be expected from a pilot. I'll be watching this series for sure.

    I agree with you on the soundtrack. The 20s music is easy to tune out anyway.