Westeros

Pearson Moore, noted essayist of Winterfell Keep and our own Features section, has compiled a terrific collection of his essays concerning the show and the setting, including some exclusive pieces not previously published (including essays whose topics were selected by fans!) Read more about it and its contents below.

These are essays unlike any you have read before.  Pearson Moore digs deep into the heart and soul of Game of Thrones, immersing readers in the world of Westeros, bringing unparalleled enjoyment, complexity, and appreciation to the most fascinating fantasy television program ever brought to television.  After reading Game of Thrones Season One Essays, you’ll want to see the episodes again and again; Moore’s compelling prose and captivating ideas will enrich your viewing experience with a depth of insight available nowhere else.  The Season One Essays include the compelling 7000-word essay on Moore’s favorite character, Bran Stark, as well as the 11,000-word overview of the history of Westeros.  You will find no dry lists of names and dates in this history.  Moore challenges on every page, connecting characters, events, and chronologies with thesis and themes, creating the novel ideas that are the hallmark of Moore’s commentary on television drama.

This first volume of Game of Thrones essays contains twenty-one long (3000- to 11,000-word) articles, 88,000 words total, with chapters on each of the ten episodes, five of the major characters (Bran Stark, Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, Ned Stark, and Daenerys Targaryen), and several of the important themes.  Two full chapters are given to the analysis of the direwolves scene from Episode One, which Moore considers to the be the central scene of Season One.

You will find no more complete, challenging, and stimulating collection of essays on Game of Thrones.  Tens of thousands of readers worldwide consider Pearson Moore must-read for any episode of LOST, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones.  Now you can read all of his Season One essays in one volume.  The direwolves await!

Chris Pope of the Beyond the Wall podcast is conducting a live-streamed interview with actor Finn Jones, who plays Loras Tyrell. A cool idea, to say the least—tune in here.

For more information about Finn, check out our own interview from back in March.

A fresh clue!

The reference to Elmo makes me think this may be teasing the role ofthe torturer called the Tickler in the novels. Creepy. Looking at the clues, fans have quickly surmised that they’re referring to Anthony Morris, an Irish actor who’s played someone known as Drubber Dockery, someone else called Zippy (hence ‘not a pinhead’, referring to the Zippy the Pinhead comic strip), had a part in an episode of Killinaskully titled “The Horse Whisperer”, and was in a film named Rough Diamond. That seems pretty solid to us, especially given his agency page noting, “Anthony will be seen in season two of HBO’s masterpiece ‘Game of Thrones’.”

After leading fans on a brief but merry chase through the internet regarding the identity of Biter, George R.R. Martin has now confirmed both actors. As previously reported, Andy Beckwith is indeed Rorge… but Biter is, I admit, a bit of a surprise to me just in terms of appearance. Cast in the role is Gerard Jordan, who (among other things) met former President Bill Clinton when he was younger (hence Martin’s remark at the end that it was good that the “big dog”—refererring to Clinton’s nickname—was not bitten).

Scratch that. WICnet pointed out that, as hard as it may be to believe, there’s more than one actor from Ireland named Gerard Jordan. Who’d have thought it? This is the best photo found of the actor in question. He certainly looks a bit tougher than the other actor we noted, and should transform into the hideous Biter without too much difficulty.

French Factor News’s exclusive interview with Cyanide’s Thomas Veauclin, project manager on the Game of Thrones roleplaying game that Cyanide Studio has been developing, has a pretty remarkable revelation: Cyanide has secured the rights to certain HBO Game of Thrones assets and are implementing as much of them as they can. This includes the appearances of actors, recorded dialog, the music, certain designs (such as the Iron Throne), and the like.

Alyssa Rosenberg strikes again—first writing for Think Progress, this time writing in The Atlantic regarding the success of Game of Thrones in comparison to HBO’s big summer show, True Blood. The focus of the article is very much on how the two series have approached the process of adaptation and the impact their choices have had on the more fantastic aspects of the series, and why Rosenberg thinks that Game of Thrones is the better of the two shows because of the choices the executive producers made.

It’s true, as commentators warn (and Rosenberg acknowledges),that the real test for Game of Thrones will be how it adapts the second novel to the second season—True Blood was relatively close to the first Sookie Stackhouse novel, apparently, in its first season as well.

It’s now live—the Podcast of Ice and Fire has its 63rd episode up, and it’s another “Guy’s Night Out”, featuring Amin and Dan of Podcast of Ice and Fire, Alex of Tower of the Hand, and FaBio/Tobias of Winter is Coming... oh, and me.

We discuss A Dance with Dragons, and spend a great deal of time arguing about various topics related to it, so beware spoilers (and off-color language, too)!

Listen to it here.

Via George R.R. Martin’s “Not a Blog” come fresh casting clues, and we can say it’s pretty clear that these deal with the casting of the roles of Rorge and Biter. Glimpsed briefly in Arya’s final appearance in the finale, at the time the two characters were played by extras, but it seems actors have been found to fill the role this second season. One half of the pairs we already suspect refer to actor Andy Beckwith, who has been rumored (thanks to his agency CV) to be in the role of Rorge this past week. We can eliminate some of the clues as dealing with him because of this—Pirate (Pirates of the Caribbean), Nark (The Sins), Corporal (Corporal Carter in Dinotopia), Barman (Terry the Barman in Tabloid TV).

This leaves Bully, Dead Man, Potato, and Gash for the other actor. Hrm…

There’s an excellent article in the Onion’s A.V. Club, written by Noel Murray, which sets the ground for a discussion of the television series Beauty and the Beast through the lens of a specific episode, “Ozymandias”... and through looking at that episode’s writer, none other than George R.R. Martin. It covers some very important views GRRM has on writing (“It’s all furniture”) that’s very much well worth looking at.

The show’s romantic side is something that I’d like to emphasize in particular—in all the popular media attention to the darkness, realism, and “grittiness” of the TV series, the fact is that at heart Martin identifies himself as something of a Romantic (as in art movement of the 18th and 19th centuries)  in his approach to writing and how characters express themselves. To a certain degree, the sacrifice pared some of this way as a lot of the more explicitly Romanticist aspects of the narrative lie in the past of the setting, but bits and piece still shine through. There’s no great shock that the epiode reviewed is titled after Shelley’s famed poem.

David J. Peterson, creator of the Dothraki language for HBO’s Game of Thrones, has been adding words to the Dothraki lexicon and this time around he decided to immortalize those who attended his Worldcon presentation (which you can download the notes and materials for!) by turning their names into Dothraki words. Some interesting details appear along the way (including the fact that Peterson has a notion of what ‘old Dothraki’ sounds like and how sounds shifted to ‘modern Dothraki’!)

Via Twitter, Peterson’s has also noted that he’ll be making an appearance at the Dothraki.org IRC chat on Sunday at the “usual times” (afraid I’m not quite sure what time that is) where he will make “announcement, of sorts”. Mysterious!

Alyssa Rosenberg has been doing a bang-up job over the past few months of discussing A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones from a critical perspective, so it’s no surprise when she responds at length (NOTE: there may be some ADwD spoilers) to a very criticil piece from Sady Doyle at Tiger Beatdown. It’s definitely worth reading if you’ve an interest in media criticism, and feminist criticism, at that.

I recall reading Doyle’s post and thinking that many of the characterizations of the text were things I’ve seen before written in a much more dialog-encouraging way (no surprise there, since I’ve read them on the forum). Are there reasonable points buried in that quagmire of an outlandishly exaggerated axe-grinding exercise? I’m sure there are, otherwise Rosenberg wouldn’t have taken the time to give it enough serious consideration as to set about demolishing it.

In any case, if nothing else, Rosenberg’s response is worth reading in and of itself. Go and give it a look.

The long road to Emmy night has led to looks at various nominated shows and interviews with nominated people, and the same holds true for Game of Thrones. Deadline Hollywood has already interviewed Emmy-nominated lead hair stylist Kevin Alexander (who shared some interesting details about his job on the production—who else realized they had given Isaac Hempstead-Wright red highlights for his role as Bran?) and now they’re talking to executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Nothing too detailed, but they do touch on the matter of budget.

Also, this quote’s a bit mysterious:

A bit scary, that.

This is fascinating article interviewing foley artist Caoimhe Doyle—part of the Emmy-nominated foley team for Game of Thrones—which discusses in some detail the process of providing all the various sounds in both background and foreground that really cement the action in the minds of viewers. From galloping horses to splashing mud and on to a detailed discussion of Tywin Lannister skinning the deer, this one’s a great article from the Irish Film & Television Network. Well worth reading!

Two more casting notes have come in today, and I think these are quite fun. First off, despite our own thinking that the Iron Islands casting had pretty much wrapped up, it appears that the old master-at-arms of Pyke, Dagmer Cleftjaw, has been cast according to Winter is Coming. British actor Ralph Ineson apparently has the role—quite a change from the character as described, at least age-wise, as Cleftjaw’s said to have a snow-white beard and seems to sound as if he’s in his late 50’s or early 60’s. I’m going to guess that the wound that gives Cleftjaw his name is not going to even be attempted by the show, as that’d be rather extreme make-up! Ineson is among the new cast members who can be found on Twitter.

And just now, EW has the scoop on the casting of Salladhor Saan, a Lyseni pirate king who hires his sails out to Stannis Baratheon, and is an old friend of Davos Seaworth. According to EW, British-born stage and actor Lucian Msamati—who I remember very fondly from HBO’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency as JLB Matekoni—has been cast in the role.

Given our previous casting exclusive regarding Pyat Pree (which also discusses the casting of Balon Greyjoy and Podrick Payne), I think there’s a topic I need to revisit…

HBO’s slowly doling out a few new casting notes, which is always exciting! This time around, we’ve got a look at another Qartheen character to join Nonso Anozi in that part of Daenerys’s story on the continent of Essos: actor Ian Hanmore will play Pyat Pree (HBO writes Pyatt, which may be the official spelling for the series, but we’ll go with his book spelling). Pyat Pree is one of the warlocks of Qarth, who legend claims wield great powers thanks to a sorcerous potion they drink called the shade of the evening. Holding their colloquies in the House of the Undying, the warlocks join the Pureborn and the merchants in determining the fate of the ancient, proud city… and the fate of those who enter it.

In other significant news, Winter is Coming has the scoop that veteran English actor Patrick Malahide has been cast as Balon Greyjoy, Lord of the Iron Islands and father to Theon Greyjoy. Having launched a failed rebellion years ago in which his eldest sons were killed and his youngest son was taken away by Ned Stark as a hostage and ward, Lord Balon has brooded these last years only to see a war spread across the Seven Kingdoms, a war that offers opportunities. Malahide has many credits to his name (including the 1994 BBC production of Middlemarch, and before that the ground-breaking The Singing Detective [widely hailed as one of the greatest television productions ever aired]). He can be seen below in an interview presiding British Equity: