‘Boardwalk Empire‘, the much anticipated new drama series starring STEVE BUSCEMI, premiered on HBO last night (19th September 2010). The show follows ‘Nucky Thompson’ (played by Buscemi), a corrupt treasurer of the city who deals in illegal alcohol, and gambling. The character is based on a real life person named Enoch Johnson, who was the boss of the republican organisation that ran the city, before he was jailed in 1941.
Early reviews of the pilot episode … have generally been positive. The New York Daily News gave the episode five stars out of five, saying that those who tune into the series will be “rewarded with the best new show on television this fall.”
Read more at Contactmusic News.
Steve Buscemi does not bear much physical resemblance to Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, the tall, broad-shouldered political boss whose 30-year rule of Atlantic City inspired HBO’s new Prohibition-era drama “Boardwalk Empire.”
But that ended up working in his favor when executive producers Martin Scorsese and Terence Winter were looking to cast the role of Nucky Thompson, the series’ fictionalized version of the powerful town treasurer. “We decided not to pigeonhole ourselves to think that way, of a strapping guy with a big booming voice,” Winter said. “[Buscemi's] just got so many colors to him, an unbelievable range from comedy to drama. I don’t think people have seen him do anything like this.”
Read more at Baltimoresun.com.
Late in the pilot of “Boardwalk Empire,” Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) peers into a fortune teller’s shop, watching her read someone’s palm. The camera frames him through the glass front door, the writing on the door standing out in front of his face, asking if he knows what his future holds. The question, of course, is directed at much at the audience as it is at Nucky himself (who barely even notices it). We in the audience, however, have just met this guy and are hopefully asking ourselves that very question. (Nucky is loosely based on historical figure Nucky Johnson, but his name’s been changed to give showrunners greater latitude to play around with the actual figure’s history and prevent stray Googlers from spoiling themselves.)
Read more at Show Tracker in the Los Angeles Times.
If you tuned into HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” last night, you got a glancing, fictionalized swipe at American history, including such vivid characters as Enoch “Nucky” Thompson and Arnold Rothstein. The show, (adapted from Nelson Johnson’s book) of the same name, stars Steve Buscemi as Thompson — based on the real-life Nucky Johnson, the Atlantic City political boss who engineered the resort’s rise to wickedness and financial riches during Prohibition.
Read more at Read Street: - Baltimoresun.com.
A big, enjoyably nasty piece of work, Boardwalk Empire zooms in on Atlantic City in the 1920s. Prohibition has just gone into effect, and the city’s corrupt treasurer — Steve Buscemi’s oily, funny, nihilistic, knobbykneed Nucky Thompson — is handing out favors and calling in markers right and left. [Entertainment Weekly]
Before joining the writing staff of “The Sopranos,” Terence Winter had worked on such illustrious classics as “The New Adventures of Flipper,” “Sister, Sister” and “The Cosby Mysteries.” As soon as Winter joined “The Sopranos” in its second season, however, he proved to be one of the best writers other than creator David Chase at capturing the malaise-ridden mob world of that series. [LA Times]
A friend mentioned at dinner not long ago that she didn’t want to take vacations to places anymore; she wanted to take vacations in time. Fantastic idea. Rather than look at last-minute hotel choices on Expedia.com, why not take five days off to revisit the wondrous banality of 1983, 1962, 1950? [The Washington Post]
HBO’s ‘Boardwalk Empire’ debuts Sunday and the show’s stars and other celebs showed up at the New York premiere Wednesday night. [Huffington Post]
