Westeros

Three interesting sets of articles about George R.R. Martin have surfaced in the last couple of days. We’ve added them to the So Spake Martin collection, of course, but for convenience here’s the direct links to the three pieces:

• Rolling Stone profiles GRRM at MisCon.
• The Financial Times has lunch with GRRM, discusses the books, sexposition in Game of Thrones, and more.
• Sports Illustrated talks football with George. Ser Bonifer the Good = Tim Tebow!

Just two more days until “Valar Morghulis” brings the season to an end, and HBO has released five stills from the final episode. You can see them at the bottom of the episode page... but in honor of the fact that I interviewed Alfie Allen a bit earlier today, here’s an image of him in Winterfell looking crazily fierce… or perhaps fiercely crazy might be more accurate:

Empire Magazine has a great interview with director Nial Marshall, who directed the fantastic “Blackwater”. Lots of juicy details about directing the episode and crafting some of its moments. And at least one bit that, I suspect, will be controversial in some quarters of the fandom regarding instructions he says he received from an unnamed executive producer…

In his introduction to A Feast of Ice and Fire (Order Now: US, US Kindle, Amazon UK), George R.R. Martin writes that he has been accused of writing “food porn” with his lengthy, detailed descriptions of what his characters eat. Fortunately, it is this very habit of his that inspired the mouthwatering exploration of the food of A Song of Ice and Fire that this book represents.

The two women behind it all, Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, started their foray into the food of Westeros—and Essos!—by way of a blog, Inn at the Crossroads, around the time of the first season of Game of Thrones. Their attempts to recreate favourite dishes from the books eventually caught the attention of George R.R. Martin and this led to the book that now has been released, just in time for your Game of Thrones season finale parties.

With all the work we’ve had the last couple of days, I forgot to mention that our video looking at Blackwater” is now on-line! We’ve included it in the episode guide’s extras section, along with the penultimate episode of Sky Atlantic’s Thronecast. Good stuff in there, including a nice Skype chat with Kristian Nairn (aka Hodor).

Besides that, we also have the “Valar Morghulis” final trailer, showing some nice hints of what’s to come in the final episode of the season.

Last but certainly not least, I had promised fans on Twitter a special video if SerIanMC—that’d be Ian McElhinney, who played Ser Barristan Selmy last season—passed 1,000 followers after recently joining Twitter for the first time (here’s a photo he shared to prove it really is him!). Well, that happened right after I tweeted. And so a video was made, being a fairly detailed (if not quite complete—and yes, I had to make some corrections after the fact since I didn’t want to spend even more time re-recording and editing!). You can find it, and many more, at our channel, but I’ll embed it here (NOTE: This is really for non-book readers; if you’ve read the books, you’ve seen pretty much everything I have to say!):

If you like it, and you’re on Twitter, do follow Ian!

It’s common practice for cable companies alike to skip airing their headline programs on a big holiday like the Memorial Day Weekend, and we saw that with Starz skipping Magic City and Showtime The Borgias. But HBO decided to go ahead and keep serving up Game of Thrones once a week. I know we’re all glad to have seen “Blackwater” when we did, but it did have one negative impact: ratings, which dipped a bit.

According to TV by the Numbers, while the episode did win the second place spot in the cable rankings (behind yet more NBA playoffs), it dropped to a 1.6 share (from 2.0) in the 18-49 demographic and 3.384 million viewers for the first airing, with a second airing later in the evening adding an additional 863,000 for a total of 4.244 million viewers. It’s genuinely a holiday thing, so no worries, and the finale may well get the uptick some are hoping to see to put it over the 4 million initial and 5 million total viewership some have hoped for.

On the other hand, James Hibbred at EW notes that last year, the seventh episode also aired on Memorial Day weekend and scored 2.4 million… so you can see that the series is way up overall from where it was this time last year. On top of that, Hibberd adds another important piece of information, perhaps the information HBO considers the most important of all: total average viewership per episode has climbed to 10.3 million viewers when factoring in HBO Go, repeat viewings, and On Demand. That secures its place as the third most-watched series on HBO, and if it continues to climb it may well displace True Blood as #2. #1 is, of course, The Sopranos.

Perhaps to help that along, starting on June 2nd at 6PM the HBO Zone channel will be running not one, not two, but three back-to-back marathons of all nine S2 episodes, back to back, with the final airing of Blackwater timed to just before the premiere of “Valar Morghulis”.

James Hibberd over at EW has a nice scoop on some of the new characters that will be introduced in season 3. Some of these we’ve reported about already—Lady Catelyn’s brother Ser Edmure and her uncle Ser Brynden, called the Blackfish, as well as the sellsword Daario Naharis—and others are quite new. You’ll have to check out EW for the whole list, but here’s a couple more fans should be very happy to hear about:

This is not an exhaustive list, as James notes, but rather a sampling of some of the key characters in play for this season. Little birds have told us that Ramsay Snow, Lord Bolton’s bastard, is also being cast, and a leaked audition revealed that the sellsword Vargo Hoat was also casting. We’ve ever heard whispers of some other characters in the East that Daenerys shall be meeting, besides Daario Naharis.

HBO’s placed the trailer for the final episode, “Valar Morghulis”, up at Youtube in HD. Looks interesting, and I can spot a scene or two that comes straight from the books… and one or two that are definitely brand new. Hrm!

Our full coverage of “Blackwater”, written by George R.R. Martin and directed by Neil Marshall, is now live! It’s quite lengthy, so the short version: amazing.

Our usual video will be available some time tomorrow. Until then, enjoy the episode guide! And if you want to see what fellow fans are saying, and perhaps even join the discussion, visit the forum!

This innocuous post from Northern Ireland Screen, calling for trainees to join it’s Skills Development Scheme. But thanks to this tweet from Cat Taylor, it looks like most (if not all) the trainees will end up working on season 3 of Game of Thrones. If you met the application criteria, it’s a great opportunity to have a hand in the show!

A huge, amazing episode deserves a huge, amazing response, and “Blackwater” seems to have gotten it. The title went on to Twitter’s trend list, and tweets were fast and furious. Writer George R.R. Martin and director Neil Marshal have, based on early responses, turned in the single most well-regarded episode of the series to date. A lot of it has to do with the spectacle, no doubt…. but a good deal has to do with the skillful, cinematic direction and the writing that brought some of the characters to life in a way no one else seems to quite be able to manage.

Our full coverage of the episode will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon or early evening (that’s US hours), but until then make sure to visit the forum, read the responses from fellow fans and, hey, even sign up for the forum and wade into the discussion youself!

A competition! 

In support for a brand new webseries, The Clandestine, that’s currently getting funded through Kickstarter (there’s another familiar name involved, for those fans who followed the show from the start), the mighty Conan Stevens—the actor who brought to life Ser Gregor Clegane in the first season, and who’s currently set to have a role as a big, bad orc in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit—is running a giveaway contest.

The prize, Game of Thrones fans?

A bit belated on our part, as personal stuff has kept us busy these last couple of weeks, but GRRM has a number of updates at “Not a Blog” which we thought we’d make note of, with comments. See them below:

We’ve updated the So Spake Martin collection—our archive of correspondence, interviews, and more with George R.R. Martin—with the latest interview we’ve seen from GRRM, with Mark Lawson for the BBC’s Frontrow program.

UPDATE: It looks like the soundtrack is already available for download at iTunes (if you’ve an account with the US store, in any case).

Thanks to Film Music Reporter, we’ve the full track listing for the Game of Thrones Season 2 soundtrack (Preorder at Amazon: US, UK), which has been pushed back to a June 19th release date.

Here’s the full list… and there’s some vague spoilers in here, so beware:

• 1. Main Title (1:46)
• 2. The Throne Is Mine (3:15)
• 3. What Is Dead May Never Die (2:06)
• 4. Warrior Of Light (3:03)
• 5. Valar Morghulis (2:59)
• 6. Winterfell (2:42)
• 7. Qarth (2:11)
• 8. Wildfire (3:39)
• 9. I Am Hers, She Is Mine (2:17)
• 10. Pyat Pree (2:12)
• 11. Don’t Die With A Clean Sword (3:22)
• 12. We Are The Watchers On The Wall (2:37)
• 13. Pay The Iron Price (2:32)
• 14. One More Drink Before The War (2:05)
• 15. House Of The Undying (5:02)
• 16. Stand And Fight (2:04)
• 17. The Old Gods And The New (2:38)
• 18. Mother Of Dragons (2:34)
• 19. I Will Keep You Safe (2:17)
• 20. The Rains Of Castomere† Performed by The National (2:23)
• 21. Three Blasts (2:40)

Yes, “The Rains of Castamere” is misspelled, and yes, we’ve seen to it that HBO has been notified just in case that can be fixed. Most notable about it is the fact that it seems we’ll be getting a rendition of the song by the indie rock band The National. We’re guessing that if it appears on the show, it’ll be an end credits thing rather than somehow shoe-horning them into an actual episode!