Tag Archives: boardwalk empire

Locked Up

Netflix original prison comedy Orange Is The New Black drops its fifth season this Friday.

#OITNB season 6 has not officially been greenlit.

rottentomatoes: 95%

metacritic: 79

imdb: 8.6

emmys: 4 wins

***SPOILERS AHEAD***



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Cattleman’s Cosmos

HBO sci-fi thriller series #Westworld premieres its eighth-episode tonight.

Westworld season 2 has been confirmed.

Rottentomatoes: 89%

Metacritic: 74

IMDb: 9.1

emmys: 5 wins

***SPOILERS AHEAD***



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Immortal Affection

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Victorian horror series Penny Dreadful premieres its 3rd season two weeks from tonight and will feature a fresh rendition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic mad-scientist manifesto The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Penny dreadfuls” were a 19th-century London publishing phenomenon that featured a mass influx of cheap, illustration-heavy horror-based drama pieces.


Honorable mention : Rory Kinnear : John Clare : Penny Dreadful

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Penny Dreadful is an elegant and clever amalgam of 17th century horror classics most notably : Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein,  Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, among others.

The show focuses mainly on ***madness*** or : the tragic existence of a kindhearted Vanessa Ives who unwillingly serves as a conduit for the abstract notion of the apocalypse or “end of days”.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

***Showtime is now available exclusively online for a thirty day free trial on Hulu.  Check it out here.***

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Saturation Dynasty

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Batman vs. Superman filmed it’s first scene in East L.A. this weekend featuring fictional football teams Gotham City University vs. Metropolis State University:

Seventeen-time Emmy award winning HBO series Boardwalk Empire airs S4 E7 tonight and it seems it is still time to continue riding the “good TV show” bandwagon.  The critically acclaimed bootlegging drama picked up five primetime statues this year alone including Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series.

Continue reading Saturation Dynasty

Directive Diplomacy

Awards Season 2012 is rolling full force ahead as the 18th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards kicked off this past sunday unbeknownst to many.  The SAG Awards are in fact a special occasion for actors and actresses however, as the awards are chosen by the actors themselves.  Big winners in the feature film department included The Help and The Artist, while TV’s big winners include Modern Family and Boardwalk Empire.  Mary Tyler Moore was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Bridesmaids trio (Melissa Mccarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Maya Rudolph) lightened the mood by inventing a SAG awards drinking game in which ‘you have to drink every time you hear the word Scorsese’.  Actor Steve Buscemi (after winning Best Actor in a Drama Series) capitalized on such a joke by mentioning the iconic filmmakers’ name in his acceptance speech, as Scorsese was an executive producer for Boardwalk Empire.  Although his film Hugo didn’t take home any SAG Awards, he and his film are very much in the Oscar race so let’s take a look at the man himself, legendary director Martin Scorsese.

Martin Charles Scorsese (born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian.  Scorsese was raised in New York City by two devout Catholic Sicilian actors.  Martin had asthma, and as a result wasn’t able to play sports and engage in outdoor activities like many of the other children.  Marty found other interests however, as his passion for cinema developed at a very early age.  Enamored with the stories that the films of his time were telling, Scorsese went to NYU film school, and after graduating started making films of his own.  After becoming friends with the ‘movie brats’ of the 1970sFrancis Ford CoppolaBrian De PalmaGeorge Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, Marty was ready to make his mark on Hollywood.  He went on to make such films as Mean StreetsTaxi DriverRaging Bull, and Goodfellas– all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro.  He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won OscarsEmmysGolden GlobesBAFTAs, and DGA Awards.  Scorsese’s body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemptionmachismo, modern crime and violence.  Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential American filmmakers of all time, and is known for his uncanny ability to create a warm, positive, and encouraging environment on-set.  Indeed Marty values “harmonious relations” and “can handle people with charm and concern”.  Sweet-hearted, charismatic, highly nurturing, very expressive, and a natural leader of groups Martin Scorsese is undoubtedly a Teacher Idealist.  Certainly Marty is arguably the best director of his generation, and has an incredible ability to put himself in the shoes of the people he is making a movie about:

Teachers have a highly developed ability to empathize by introjection, that is, taking into themselves the characteristics, emotions, and beliefs of others—even to the point of unconsciously mimicking others.  But this unusual ability to relate to other with empathy can also pose a danger for them, because they can easily over-identify with others and pick up their burdens as if they were their own, actually putting at risk their own identity.

Please Understand Me II, p. 151

Quote1.png Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.Quote2.png

Martin Scorsese