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Last week in the Boardwalk Empire premiere we saw Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) raising his glass as the clocked ticked down to midnight:
As you know, in less than 2 hours, liquor will be declared illegal by decree of the distinguished members of our nation’s congress. To those ignorant bastards!
We got to see Nucky hustling the well-intentioned ladies of the Women’s Temperance League, telling tales of woe about a Dickensian childhood he never had. He easily manipulates their understandable desire to be freed from the social ills inflicted by alcoholic fathers and spouses — an objective that would soon be better served when women were granted the right to vote.
Nobody thinks the public demand for alcohol is going to disappear with the advent of prohibition — in fact, they’re counting on it. Young Al Capone and Lucky Luciano are already circling Atlantic City, looking to make their fortunes as an enormous legal revenue stream is suddenly transferred to the black market.
It’s always hard to shoot a pilot. The style of the show isn’t set, the characters haven’t worked out their relationships and everyone is still trying to find the rhythm of the show. The glamour of the sets and the cast weren’t quite matched by last week’s storyline, and everything felt a little wooden and two dimensional (and I’m not sure Scorcese’s professorial devotion to period music did them any favors).
Comparisons to the Sopranos are inevitable, but it’s not really fair to measure a series that had eight years to develop its style to the new kind on the block. I’m liking it so far (especially the Magritte-inspired opening credits), but it has some growing to do.
See you in the comments for the watch party. Sponsored by Just Say Now.
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Hasn’t quite escaped from “hardboiled gangsters and vulnerable women” yet.
We are in safe hands now that the hack Scorsese is gone and Tim Van Patten is at the helm.
lol!
Jane – pssst, did you catch the thing at the debate about the folks making their own State Chartered Bank for dispensaries yesterday?
The lack of gangster impulse control when it comes to violence is only matched by their lack of impulse control in buying extravagant gifts for their wives.
Since I don’t have HBO, I have to wait til they arrive on DVD.
But I am listening to The Nice’s rendition of the Intermezzo from Jean Sibelius’s Karelia Suite off their Ars Longa Vita Brevis album/CD.
I always liked Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America. That was a brilliant film about Prohibition and many other things.
I did! And I was jealous. I was talking to Jeralyn Meritt on Friday about the fact that the dispensaries in Colorado are operating on cash because all banks but Wells Fargo were turning away their business. And I’m like, “that’s an opening for someone.”
Sounds like the the state is wisely making the same decision North Dakota did with grain elevators & banks during the progressive era. One of the few states that aren’t in a budget crisis to this day.
There are advantages to not having cable. One being not contributing to the fascist propaganda network known as Fox News.
Having a showgirl for a Mom can mess a man up.
There’s a 45 min Boardwalk Empire documentary that looks interesting. Didn’t get a chance to see the whole thing, but I want to:
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/blogs/boardwalk_empire/
There are two versions of the film. The director’s cut and another one that was watered down for the “delicate sensibilities” of the U.S. public.
Just caught the first last night since I’m on the road and last week’s hotel had no HBO – tonight I get to see it at this hotel but not for a few hours.
Had the same reaction Jane – promising but not yet enthralled … still the period fun can keep me interested until the characters become more known – and I love Buscemi’s voice.
Fascinating to watch as we Just Say Now!
a little ironic, someone laundered all that coke money in Aspen and Boulder in the late 70′s, early 80′s – and none of them want to touch legal dispensary cash ??
wth ?
I’ve only seen Leone’s cut, the 227 minute version. I never saw the butchered 139 minute version.
Wells Fargo’s Wire Transfer unit is in Golden CO. You know, just up the hill from Boulder, and down the hill aways from Aspen.
Just saying.
That’s it?
Phew…invested way too much time in characters who don’t appear to add much to the story line so far. Sure hope they pan out soon.
What coke money in Aspen and Boulder? sniff
I’ve seen both a number of times. Quite the difference.
I like the live versions that feature Emerson tossing his Hammond around and playing the feedback.
As for cable TV shows: A couple of days and you can find any of them online somewhere.
This series has real potential, but I’m not terribly enamored with the gratuitous sex and nudity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for sex and nudity when it is a part of the story. It’s just that there hasn’t been even one second of it in the first two episodes that is in any way necessary to the storyline. It appears they are just including the sex and nudity because it’s cable so they can do that. It seems inappropriate in the context of the story. I also find the graphic violence unnecessary and frankly that cinematic focus is getting old IMHO. You can show a guy being assassinated without having the blood spattered right in your face when he gets shot and we all know mobsters use violence so it really isn’t necessary to demonstrate it by showing an unconvincing young Al Capone smacking a guy upside his head with a booze bottle and then kicking the crap out of him. Some of the aspects of the production really capture the period well and the Atlantic City political crooks are interesting. I actually think the story and the series suffers by mixing it up with the New York and Chicago mobs and some of the famous characters that were a part of those mobs. The nuts and bolts of how Buscemi’s character operates his rackets and his political machine are more interesting than yet another Scorsese style mob story.
Just caught the west coast broadcast in the east. I think the series is going to be at least very good. A few things:
* Homes were quieter then, though all that was about to change of course. There’s a nice sequence of several of the characters in their respective places, alone with their thoughts.
* Without a broad and deep mass mediasphere that was readily accessible, how would a young woman brought up in a segmented society know of things her little social group did not discuss?
* Really liked three of the scenes with Mrs. Schroeder, who so far seems to be our “Maria” icon: 1) Mr. Thompson comes to call at the hospital; 2) Mrs. Schroeder hints at one answer to the question I just posed in the last paragraph —she might learn of them through service in a home with a broader outlook; if she were lucky it would be from the books there (one suspects that in that day, naive gentility was one of the first privileges acquired on rising into the middle class); 3) Mrs. Schroeder returns home from the hospital, surveys the house untouched from the incident which had put her there, picks up one chair, then another, from where they had been knocked over, removes her late husband’s place setting from the table, …
* How about our son of the city and his razor-sharp Princeton smarts, eh? Seems vaguely dopey if that call for help is any indication, but
that’s probably the intention. (Wonder what he was really doing when everyone thought he was up the road at college, and why he really joined the army? I forebore on him last week, but am about ready to drop that.)