Westeros

The nominees for the Emmy Awards have been announced, and there’s a bit of Game of Thrones news to be had:

• Game of Thrones again scores a Best Drama Series nod, though the competition—Breaking Bad and Mad Men especially—pretty much insure that it won’t be scoring a win.
• Once again, Peter Dinklage’s portrayal of Tyrion Lannister earns him a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Although HBO could easily have placed him in the Best Actor category, they appear to have decided that as the show is such an ensemble, that it made most sense to keep all the nominations in the supporting categories.
• Gemma Jackson has been nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction.
• Nina Gold and Robert Sterne once again earn a nomination for Outstanding Casting in a Drama Series.
• As does Michele Clapton, Alexander Fordham, and Chloe Aubry for Oustanding Costume Design for the episode “The Prince of Winterfell.
• Kevin Alexander and team win a nomination for Outstanding Hairstyling.
• Paul Engelen and team win a nomination for Outstanding Makeup.
• Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup nomination for the episode “Valar Morghulis”.
• As I had hoped, a nomination for Outstanding Sound Editing for “Blackwater, thanks to Peter Brown and team.
• Also Outstanding Sound Mixing, for the same episode.
• Pixomondo’s work earned nomination for Oustanding Visual Effects for the episode “Valar Morghulis”. Somehow had expected that “Blackwater” and its wildfire would have been the nod.
• Plus what I think is a new one, Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media for the Season 2 Enhanced Digital Experience available via HBO Go.

All in all, a good tally; the show maintained its acting and drama nominations (though it did fail to get Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Direction nominations this year), and seems to have largely expanded its technical category nominations. The one difference is that it was not nominated for Main Title Design, but as it won that one last year and the design was only changed incrementally, that’s fair enough. The most notable absence for us? Yet again no nod to Ramin Djawadi for his main title theme, and personally Neil Marshall well-deserved a nomination for his work on Blackwater.

Here’s last year’s nominations for comparison purposes.

The full nominee list can be found via the official Emmys Site.