Boardwalk Empire

And comparisons to Sopranos have always irritated me. Sopranos is a classic, a modern cultural phenom. A masterpiece, even. It was enough having people say "The Wire is way better than Sopranos." But the Wire was a great show, and in retrospect that's OK. Boardwalk though, I don't think it's even a fair comparison for Boardwalk. Boardwalk has more in common with Deadwood, second rate but it has a higher budget and overall better direction.

IDK, comparisons to Sopranos are just bullshit. It's like comparing Tom Waits to the Beatles.

  On 11/17/2011 at 11:02 PM, vamos scorcho said:

. It's like comparing Tom Waits to the Beatles.

oh no, you didn't go there.

It's like comparing Modest Mouse to the Beatles.

  On 11/17/2011 at 9:08 PM, Awepittance said:

the show feels too generic mobster for me, especially compared to the other prohibition era mobster things i've seen. Even the Untouchables feels far more visceral than this show, and of course Millers Crossing absolutely obliterates it.

Yeah it's weird how when you attempt to portray real life, it doesn't match up to Hollywood movies.

  On 11/17/2011 at 11:13 PM, vamos scorcho said:

It's like comparing Modest Mouse to the Beatles.

Oh so you prefer the beatles. Cool, sorry.

;-]

fucking tom waits and his overrated bS.

holy shit.

also, awkward.

let me paraphrase data:

"holy fucking shit"

"fucking awkward"

Gretchen Mol is fucking gorgeous

  On 11/18/2011 at 12:15 AM, chenGOD said:

  On 11/17/2011 at 9:08 PM, Awepittance said:

the show feels too generic mobster for me, especially compared to the other prohibition era mobster things i've seen. Even the Untouchables feels far more visceral than this show, and of course Millers Crossing absolutely obliterates it.

 

Yeah it's weird how when you attempt to portray real life, it doesn't match up to Hollywood movies.

how are they attempting to portray real-life anymore than those hollywood movies i just listed? if you are claiming that somehow Boardwalk empire is historically accurate i must vehemently disagree. At least those movies didn't have tokenistic anachronistic black characters in it, unless im forgetting Untouchables

one thing i do have trouble with is this show seems more detatched than when it was in the first season...im not quite sure i know where all of this is going...unless the idea is that s2 is the "soul-searching, really figure out my shit" season to build up on a spectacular s3.

  On 12/6/2011 at 8:30 PM, Awepittance said:

  On 11/18/2011 at 12:15 AM, chenGOD said:

  On 11/17/2011 at 9:08 PM, Awepittance said:

the show feels too generic mobster for me, especially compared to the other prohibition era mobster things i've seen. Even the Untouchables feels far more visceral than this show, and of course Millers Crossing absolutely obliterates it.

 

Yeah it's weird how when you attempt to portray real life, it doesn't match up to Hollywood movies.

 

how are they attempting to portray real-life anymore than those hollywood movies i just listed? if you are claiming that somehow Boardwalk empire is historically accurate i must vehemently disagree. At least those movies didn't have tokenistic anachronistic black characters in it, unless im forgetting Untouchables

Because real life is not a bunch of shoot it up gangster scenes. Politicking is boring. Violence is short and sharp, not drawn out epic gun battles. That's how this is more closely resembling real life.

Also Boardwalk Empire is certainly more historically accurate than The Untouchables or Miller's Crossing (which was a pure fiction to begin with). It takes liberties of course, but there is a lot of authenticity to the show as well. I don't know why you would call the black characters anachronistic.

Chalky, while I like him, his accent seems very out of place.

Show is set in 1920s yes? Chalk looks to be about 30 years old. Probably came up to AC from the south with his parents to escape shitty (well, shittier) conditions. It's not that long after the civil war...

no, i mean that his accent is almost exactly like Omar's.

Oh. I don't really see that....

maybe it was the producer's intention for him to be that way, in either case its a minor quibble

the scene in the kitchen with the black folks also seemed kind of Spielbergian anachronistic, i mean i understand what they are showing but to me it's the same kind of subtle anachronism that was displayed in the John Adams HBO miniseries where seemingly the founding fathers all thought slavery was morally reprehensible but kept slaves anyways.

I don't get what kind of anachronism you think is taking place in the scene in the kitchen?

yeah i got a bit of this vibe off it

this weird white guilt thing where you cant portray a historical inequality accurately in case people think you're OKAY WITH IT or some shit

Are you trying to say that black people didn't organize themselves in labour strikes? You'd be wrong.

  On 12/6/2011 at 11:47 PM, Awepittance said:

the scene in the kitchen with the black folks also seemed kind of Spielbergian anachronistic, i mean i understand what they are showing but to me it's the same kind of subtle anachronism that was displayed in the John Adams HBO miniseries where seemingly the founding fathers all thought slavery was morally reprehensible but kept slaves anyways.

lol dont get me started on the Adams miniseries.

depends on what founding father you speak of in particular...Jefferson was quite strange/hard to pin-down...he certainly thought blacks were naturally inferior to whites, but that slavery was a necessary evil to relegate the black "inclination to self-harm".....though his opinion starts to slowly change up towards his death...very interesting guy.

  On 12/7/2011 at 1:06 AM, analogue wings said:

yeah i got a bit of this vibe off it

 

 

this weird white guilt thing where you cant portray a historical inequality accurately in case people think you're OKAY WITH IT or some shit

again, i get what you are saying, but part of me after having studied this shit for so long sees it as a "white confusion" rather than white guilt. It really isn't as clear-cut as people might think regarding the legality/moral right of slavery, even when it was a huge practice....one of the first American abolitionists was a former slave owner from South Carolina!

  On 12/7/2011 at 1:07 AM, chenGOD said:

Are you trying to say that black people didn't organize themselves in labour strikes? You'd be wrong.

Im sure that was happening in the US at that time, but was it happening often enough to wander past our little fixed window onto one particular town? Also who tf are those characters?

Chalky is believable though - Nucky is a boss, and his two facedness with Chalky seems totally in line with what I've read on bossism

Uh yeah - Atlantic City isn't some hick town in the middle of nowhere. The number of blacks working in hotels/service industry in AC was huge.

http://slic.njstatelib.org/slic_files/imported/NJ_Information/Digital_Collections/Afro-Americans/AFAMG.pdf

http://www.thenorthsidebook.com/read-plantation-by-the-sea/ (by the same historian who wrote Boardwalk Empire)

Interesting finale....a little anti-climactic though.

  On 9/17/2012 at 1:03 AM, Eggs said:

season 3 starts tonight.

fuckin A!