1 Film Excess win:
Best Production Design
2 Film Excess nominations:
Best Production Design (won)
Best TV-series (lost to Treme S1)
+ Best Gangster Movie/TV-series of the Year
+ Best Shooting Star Actor of the Year: Michael Pitt
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| Protagonist Enoch 'Nucky' Thompson played by Steve Buscemi heads inland in Terence Winter's Boardwalk Empire |
The 12 episode 1st season of the HBO series starts at the beginning of Prohibition, which seems to mostly evade Atlantic City, where the show takes place, in a sense, (namely that they keep on drinking, now just illegally distilled and distributed liquor.) The city's gangster treasurer, Enoch 'Nucky' Thompson arranges the booze smuggling and profits from it, as well as from other illegal and legal enterprises in the tourist-heavy, coastal spa city.
The following will contain SPOILERS.
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| Wonderful, heightened reality HD character poster for Terence Winter's Boardwalk Empire |
The series starts with strength in the 73 minute long first episode directed by Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)), which became the costliest pilot ever produced at 18 mil. $: Thompson underling Jimmy Darmody (the brilliant Michael Pitt (Rob the Mob (2014))) is tempted by the FBI, while the violent husband of Irish immigrant Margaret Schroeder is killed as a scapegoat for a smuggling operation gone haywire. The pilot is almost over-filled with introductory stuff, stuff happening, - just LOTS of stuff to keep track of. It had to establish the whole series for other directors to follow, so they could emulate Scorsese's style. It succeeds in catching you, and just might confuse you a bit, too. In the following episodes, the pace luckily slows down a bit, as we get to know the characters better and better.
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| Michael Pitt and Steve Buscemi in Terence Winter's Boardwalk Empire |
Nucky's brother is the sheriff of AC, and is bitterly subordinated to his triumphant brother. Darmody, after some stupidities, goes into exile in Chicago, where he joins a bloody partnership with the young Al Capone and sees his lover get her face slashed open as retribution. After getting even with the help of a new acquaintance with a war disability, Darmody returns home to AC, while FBI agent Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon) whips himself and tries to (metaphorically) force a boulder up a mountain with his professional and personal goal: To enforce Prohibition in the city. Thompson's top-distiller, the black Chalky White is also his entrance to the city's big, African-American population, whom he needs at election-time.
The very high quality level of the series is held, as women attain the right to vote, and Darmody unwittingly scares his girlfriend's bisexual friend-couple away at his homecoming, where he also succeeds in ending the slow poisoning of his father, the city's retired 'Commodore'.
Agent Nelson's insanity culminates in his drowning of his subordinate at a Baptist church mass baptism, and he then receives a sign that he has to stay and continue his impossible job in AC, opposing his wife's begging. (The 'sign' being that he has impregnated a whore there, the former lover of Enoch, Lucy Danziger (Paz de la Huerta)).
Shroeder appears to want to stay with Nucky, thus compromising her own ethics and moral.
In the end we get what we are hoping for: A little romance. After all the stiff whiskys; dark, hard and prone to tragedy, as the series is.
Boardwalk Empire is a lavish, tragically swinging 1920's Sopranos (1999-2007) in its best moments. Incredibly well-produced, succulent and brilliantly casted. Michael Stuhlbarg (Men in Black 3 (2012)) and Kelly Macdonald (In the Electric Mist (2009)) as Schroeder are also excellent, and they all have their places well behind the show's seasoned, great lead, played by Steve Buscemi (The Sopranos (2004-06)) in the biggest role of his career.
This is a grand and crazy-good series. - Get it!
It is created by Terence Winter, who also produced many Sopranos episodes, and directed one, Walk Like a Man (2007), and has written a lot; Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2005), 25 (!) Sopranos episodes (2000-07) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) to name some of it. He has now written and will produce an untitled HBO rock 'n roll TV movie that Scorsese is set to direct. The film is cast.
Best episodes:
Episode 5: Nights in Ballygran
The series shows its dark face again around St. Patrick's Day, wherein Schroeder and her Women's Temperance League confront the reality of the city, and an unexpected romance between her and Enoch starts.
Episode 8: Hold Me in Paradise
The highpoint in the series to this point: The sheriff gets shot in the fight against the incoming Italian hoodlums, and the election is determined.
Related posts:
Martin Scorsese: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - A helluva movie! (Written by Terence Winter)
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
The Aviator (2004) - The grand American biopic
The Age of Innocence (1993) or, Stayin' IN the Pants
What do you think of Boardwalk Empire?
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