Boardwalk Empire on HBO (pt2)

Ok. Cool! Agree.

 

Yeah, no Randy Poster bashing here, please. The man knows his music and is never anarchnistic - and if he is, it's at the director's insistence. Music supervision can be done extremely well or very poorly. Randall Poster is the go-to guy for this and he did a perfect job - there have been posts here extolling "whoever found that old song" - that was him.

Jeff

 

I saw a vinyl release for the third season in the last email I got from Elusive Disc!

 

Glad I'm not the only one! I didn't mind the imagery - I treated it like it was a recurring dream he had. That music didn't fit at all.

 

Volume 3 of the music is out in 48khz/24bit from HD Tracks this coming week if one doesn't want to wait for til January for the CD.

 

Regarding the music on Boardwalk, I really liked Margot Bingham's singing:

 

I was going to single out "Daughter" for high praise. Her performances were fantastic, and Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks captured the Roaring '20s vibe perfectly. For the most part, though, I preferred the vintage recordings they used, as opposed to some of the newly-produced soundtrack music, which sounds too squeaky-clean and sonically perfected to me.

 

Hard to believe that it's over and there won't be a new episode on this Sunday evening.

 

Well there are two ways they could have gone: record the music using techniques closest to those of the time, or record the music with "modern" technologies like close-miking and multi-channel mixers. Some contemporary artists have chosen to go the former route, recording in mono with one mic strategically placed to capture the whole band plus the vocalist. Examples would include Bryan Ferry's jazz-age orchestra and the Michael Arenella Dreamland Orchestra out of NYC. Giordano and the BE producers obviously chose the latter route, creating a stereo soundstage but remaining true to the orchestrations and stylings of the times.

Remember that "swing" didn't really happen until 1930/31 with Chick Webb and Duke Ellington; the bands of the 1920s were starting to do improvisation but were really still direct descendents of ragtime and New Orleans. The "1" and "3" beats were emphasized (think "Charleston" vs. "Sing Sing Sing") and a tuba supplied the low-end rather than a string bass.

Giordano and his band play at a restaurant called The Iguana in the mid-50s every M/T and Arenella's group does a Jazz Age Lawn Party that draws 10,000 people to Governors Island each June & August. BE authenticists can get their fill of 20s music by patronizing both. In fact right now you can't really throw a rock down a Manhattan avenue without hitting a "hot jazz" musician. In addition to the Giordano and Arenella groups I'd recommend:

- Gordon Au and the Grand Street Stompers
- Baby Soda
- Hot Sardines
- Dandy Wellington and his Band
- Emily Asher's Garden Party
- Bria Skonberg
- Glenn Crytzer and the Pagu All-Stars
- Jason Prover and his Sneak Thievery Orchestra
- Brooklyn Sugar Stompers
- Fleur Seule
- Tamar Korn
- Molly Ryan

 

For us non-HBO subscribers, the DVD/BD of the fifth and final season comes out January 13, 2015. Glad they're not making us wait until the usual August date. No word on a complete series box set yet, though that's fine with me since I have bought all the seasons as they've been released. Of course, HBO is trying to charge the same $80 SRP even though this season was 33% shorter. Jerks.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=15376

 

Black Friday last year I got S1/S2/S3 Blu-Ray for $56 combined including tax and shipping

 

Nice. Amazon has had the last few seasons at about 50% off on release date, so I usually buy from them.

 

Thinking back on the last episode, I never would have guessed, at the end of Season 3, that the only main characters who would still be alive at the end of the series would be Gillian, Eli and Margaret, and that only Margaret would be thriving. I also would not have guessed that when Will, Eli's son, was having his difficulties at Temple University, that he would become the character others lose their empires and die for.

Also, I thought that Mickey Doyle would always survive somehow--as another member stated earlier, like a cockroach--so it surprised me when he was killed off in the final episode.

Also thinking how the show ended, with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky triumphant, and the establishment of the organization of the New York families--instead of Maranzano's Boss of Bosses idea-- it is interesting to me to think about how "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II" continue this story. In "The Godfather", the New York families go to war with each other in the 1940s, and the Meyer Lansky character (Hyman Roth) is a major character in the 1950s in "Part II". Organized crime's business interests in Cuba are also a major part of "Part II". Of course, the real life Meyer Lansky was not murdered.

 

Finished the series tonight , a wild ride !

 

Finally watched season five on BD last week. I really loved this show and feel melancholy about it ending. The final season definitely felt rushed and very obviously not as well-planned. Problems I had with the final season:

• Nucky flashbacks: These took away valuable time from wrapping up various plots. I feel they didn't add a whole lot to the story, other than hammering home things we mostly already knew.
• Narcisse: Apparently they just completely dropped his storyline from the end of season four where he would be a snitch for J. Edgar Hoover. Didn't catch any mention of that. I wonder if they knew when they wrapped up season four that season five would be their last, because it seemed rather pointless to leave Narcisse alive at the end of season four only to give him a tiny handful of scenes (I think it was literally like three scenes) in season five and then kill him off anyways.
• Early TV: Not so much a problem, but what exactly was the significance of the scene with the girl on the boardwalk showing Nucky the early television technology? How plausible would that have been in 1931? It almost seemed like maybe a hallucination on Nucky's part.
• Jillian: As far as I was concerned, her story should have ended in season three with a heroin overdose courtesy of Gyp Rosetti. I was amazed that they chose to drag her into season four, but at the end of that I was certain we'd finally seen the last of her. Giving her a storyline in season five really pushed things to absurd levels. With that said, I think it could have been fleshed out a little better in a normal 12-episode season. Her stay in the nut house felt really underdeveloped.
• Tommy Darmody: I didn't guess who he was, but I did guess that he wasn't being totally honest and was there to kill Nucky. He just happened to be in that exact alley at that exact time when that exact person (Mickey Doyle) came looking for men to hire to work for Nucky. It was just too serendipitous to be believable, in retrospect. It's also upsetting that he clearly threw away the decent life that Richard and his family had worked really hard to give him after everything that happened to him by publicly murdering Nucky like that.

More thoughts later, maybe.

 

I just went and rewatched the last few minutes of season 4 finale. What a wonderful set up for this last season. On reflection this is one show that stayed really good for it's entire run. It went out on top.

 

I'd have to disagree. I feel like it kind of went out with a whimper, partially due to the time jump to 1931 and partially due to the shortened final season.

Don't get me wrong, I still ultimately enjoyed the final season, it just faltered quite a bit.

 

The whole point of the flashbacks, as I see it, was to show how Nucky fell and how he betrayed Jillian. If Nucky had gotten Jillian out of the mental hospital, then in all probability Tommy wouldn't have murdered him.

Chad

 

I think that some of the flashbacks were rather slow paced. However, I think that they were important in showing that the Commodore was a pediophile, that his rape of young Jillian was not an isolated case, and that he was hated by many not simply because he was a tough businessman. Those who knew, were aware that the Commodore was a monster. The loyalty that Leander and others showed to the Commodore later on, took on a more chilling aspect for me.

Also the flashbacks do explain for me the otherwise almost inexplicably close, intertwined relationship of Nucky and Jillian. During the first years of the show, it struck me that it was odd that Nucky would waste his valuable time on someone like Jillian--what was it about her that compelled him to give her so much of his time and attention? The flashbacks explain that very well.

 

I think ultimately the flashbacks would have fit in much better with season two, during the power struggle between Nucky and the Commodore/Jimmy/Jillian.

 

It was an interesting choice by those in charge of the show, to leave the backstory a mystery, and to let small details about it dribble out infrequently, until they were finally revealed in full in the final season.

 

Fair enough, but I think it also could have given much greater weight and context to the Nucky/Commodore power struggle.

 

My wife and I hate this title sequence so much we now always skip over it when watching the DVDs. This definitely makes for a more pleasant viewing experience. I think it's mostly the inappropriate music that derails it most of all, but it's not all that interesting visually either.

 

It's a combination of factors: inappropriate music (which I also personally think is lousy music), visually uninteresting, and way too long. Same exact problem I have with the opening credits of Orange is the New Black, although I guess the music is at least appropriate (but still awful).