Michael "Omar" Kenneth "Little" Williams, Steve Buscemi, and ehhhhh Michael Pitt in Martin Scorsese's BOARDWALK EMPIRE

more excited about Sporanos peeps + the cast than Scorcese's involvement, which I assume will decrease past the pilot.

long tracking shots and slow, exalted pans from ceiling to floor. ... in one scene, a man lies dead in a pool of blood as a Caruso record plays on a blood-splattered gramophone.

i mean... i feel i have seen enough of this shit to last five lifetimes.

stephen graham plays al capone now after playing was it babyface nelson in public enemies?

but some depth would be good

...

this show sounds effing awesome. there's no reason to believe some nyt hack who has binged on screeners. im gonna give it a go at any rate. who knows what depth it will or won't have.

This take from TIME is heartening:

Having helped build up the expectations for the show, I should put one slight caveat on them: I actually didn't love the show after the first episode, the epic, Martin Scorsese-directed pilot. It's really good: but it was really good in pretty much exactly ways that I expected it to be good—it wasn't an out-of-left-field surprise, a rethinking of a genre like The Sopranos was. By three or four episodes in, though, I could see the show developing its own vision and voice, one I hope (and expect) will be with us on TV for quite a while.

Was always way more excited for this than Treme.

when does it start?

Tonight.

9 eastern, but it's on three times in a row, so if you miss it another chance will roll around in an hour and fifteen minutes.

Sooooo...?

A lot of plot. A few off moments but some really enjoyable stuff as well. Over all I thought it was very good for a pilot.

This was fucking awesome. Ok, not the most illuminating review there, but shit. Sunday nights are shaping up! Next week, This, Mad Men, and Eastbound and Down?!?!?!!?! Treats.

I enjoyed this! Aside from the cliche "one mobster gets a shave while another gets blown away as opera plays" climax, I found it pretty enjoyable. Lotta good actors and Michael Pitt makes a pretty good Leo surrogate.

Could see it successfully sating the Deadwood and Sopranos audiences, if not necessarily the entire Wire one

opening credit sequence is soooooo generic HBO though, can't they craft these things to mesh with the shows rather than other credit sequences?

If the Wire was still around I wonder if there's would be McNulty floating slowly over Baltimore set to the Dream Syndicate

Buscemi is an odd choice for a series lead.

Looks gorgeous but cliched. I'm assuming it'll grow into its own at some point, right now it's a more cuddly Untouchables. I guess they couldn't really do something radical with a massive budget, they're playing it safe, they wanted another Sopranos and they're sort of getting it (Sopranos was much more imaginative coming out of the gate though). That said the cast is awesome.

The Ford book seemed so disjointed coming in the middle of what should have been a gripping conversation about how to deal with betrayal. Why they decided to derail that with a weird historical detail is bizarre!

Please hire somebody who knows typefaces for the historical signage ... was going nuts noticing all the historical inaccuracies. When it counted (closeups) they usually got it right though.

I enjoyed it a lot - like people say, not the most original thing ever but very watchable and funny, and I really like that period. The Al Capone reveal was well done.

Loving the dude who is playing Capone too

Totally didn't clock that Rothstein was Shuberg from A Serious Man

Michael Stuhlbarg is in this, eh

xp

Whole lotta Michaels in this thing. I can already tell i'm going to enjoy this a lot more than Treme even if it is slightly generic.

I'm willing to bet it'll become less generic. Also, Scorsese's sort of allowed to be generic, he's Scorsese and he does it very well.

renewed! after better than expected ratings.

hmmm, that's pretty dicey after one episode.

They were huge ratings. Even with the standard drop off it'll be sustainable. And the press has been huge; it already did its job for the network.

They renewed Treme after one episode iirc, and that seems a lot dicier.

"Generic" or not, this blows Treme away.

did scorsese have any involvement in this beyond directing the pilot? not that this would mean much either way.

don't think so.

Dece pilot, amazing supporting cast makes it worth sticking around for.

scorsese's also an executive producer, just like marky mark

Terence Winter on the extent of Scorcese's involvement:

"He just directed the pilot, but he's also one of the executive producers of the show as well, so he is involved. He reads all the scripts, he weighs in on our casting decisions, he watches all the cuts of the show. Up until the time we wrapped a couple of months ago, he and I had a standing Sunday afternoon conversation where we would just review what went on during the week. He'd watch the dailies, he would have comments and suggestions along the way. So he is definitely involved in the show, but he has only directed the pilot, he got us launched and then went off to do another movie."

He also plans to direct more episodes apparently

The Ford book seemed so disjointed coming in the middle of what should have been a gripping conversation about how to deal with betrayal. Why they decided to derail that with a weird historical detail is bizarre!

i really liked touches like this though. you really gotta inject some levity or oddness in there imo or like you mentioned it is gonna be an untouchables retread. which is why i think i really feel ok w/ buscemi as the lead

this was fun! not totally sold on the guy who i really don't want to describe by referencing dicaprio, but can't help it and i'll def give him a chance. buscemi could work this well i think. i'm a sucker for stuff like the ford book and the little person boxing. so is omar gonna be a full-fledged character? it was about as weird seeing him in this as seeing don in "the town"

i also like seeing lots of people dancing in 20s clothes

Apparently Michael K. Williams is featured a lot more prominently in the second and third episodes.

better than treme but i wasnt thrilled by this. then again, it's a pilot, and pilots often kinda suck, what with having to fit in every character and get everything going

felt bad for kelly macdonald and her terrible plotline. snivel, snivel, snivel, *gets beat up*

I have a feeling she is going to be the Peggy Olsen of this show.

Also would anyone from Ireland like to comment on her accent? Sounded weird off to me, but maybe that's what Irish immigrants sounded like at the time. She's generally pretty good at accents.

Accent wasn't great no. The problem with a lot of actor's attempts at Irish is they go for a sort-of generic "Oirish" accent, rather than attempting a specific regional variation which would sound a lot more authentic. She's actually done one before in "Intermission" which was similarly unconvincing. In this case I don't see why they didn't just make the character Scottish.

pretty tiresome tbh. more like boredwalk etc etc

"i bet the board is spelled b-o-r-e-d" -norm m.

it's a pilot, and pilots often kinda suck, what with having to fit in every character and get everything going

yeah, exactly

im blatantly going to keep watching, there's a hell of a lot of promise, but im not sure what the point of using scorsese was, when it was mostly bam-bam-bam check out these amazing sets, meet all these characters

there were some real nice scenes, like pitt's meeting with the feds, but some bits which over-reached. there was no meaningful parallel between the two murders at the end, so why draw one? felt kinda random and there hadn't been enough time to explain the dynamics between the two chicago guys.

buscemi was fine, but physically not quite right for the part.

ending up liking the first one a lot, but man ep 02 was snoooooooze

Really liked the second ep. Putting pieces in place and developing character. Still don't think it has the potential to rank among the greats, but am enjoying it thus far.

also lol at the midget's annoyed look after the joke.

oh, and where the hell did Paz De La Huerta come from and why is she in things?

also, where is omar little?

It has grown for me. It wasn't as tight as a lot of other shows but I think it's ultimately one of my favorites.

I don't remember katherine waterston on it at all

I didn't realize she was in this because I wasn't aware of her at the time.

she’s Harrow’s (straight up merc half-face guy) sister in season four apparently!

ah yes another great character who got nothing of interest to do for multiple seasons iirc

the whole cuba thing i understand storywise/historically but every scene was like whyyyyyyy

I feel like the broad story strokes were sketched out by the producers but they weren’t necessarily where the writers wanted to go, or something they were inspired to write

that feeling is v palpable

williams was so damn good on this show. the attention today has understandably focused on omar, but chalky was nearly as complex, and elevated every scene

otm

he was so good at showing the inner struggle, and the real emotion of Chalky. and he definitely made Chalky’s story as gripping as Nucky’s, he owned the screen at all times

lmao at this

One of my closest friends was a PA on BOARDWALK EMPIRE for a long time and was scared of Michael K. Williams, who he only knew as Omar. The first time he had to call MKW from his trailer, MKW opened the door, stared him down, then tickled him and ran away. RIP

— ★ (@corpseinorbit) September 6, 2021

I mainly knew him as Chalky, some I watched the Wire so long ago. Chalky is one of my favorite characters in modern TV, just endless depth and so many facets. He was utterly believable in this role.

Obv he was great, forgive me for looking askance at the Twitter overload wrt his performance in Lovecraft Country which I never saw anyone mention until today, a show everyone hated. Was it better than consensus was when it was airing?

Lovecraft Country fkn ruled, I loved it start to finish then & now idc what the stupid “consensus” was. And Williams was great in it.

ok cool. it seemed like a lot of people hated it and I just didn't get around to it. will rectify that.

highly recommend!

VG on the money, it was a great show with a few episodes that were absolutely incredible. Williams was just one of the incredible cast members - Jonathan Majors, Wunmi Mosaku and Aunjanue Ellis were all amazing.

yeah i def don’t think everyone hated lovecraft country. it was ambitious and a bit inconsistent but was truly excellent at times. and yeah, mkw’s performance was stunning, same with majors and courtney b vance