That list of award nominations? May be getting to be two arms long, rather than just one, now that the Directors Guild has announced its nominations for achievement in television direction. And… you guessed it, HBO’s Game of Thrones makes that list too.
In this case, it’s veteran director Tim van Patten getting acknowledged for his excellent work in directing the first episode of the series, “Winter is Coming”. Here’s the write-up the DGA nomination provides for the director:
“This is Mr. Van Patten’s eighth DGA Award nomination. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series for his Sex and the City episodes “Boy Interrupted” (2003) and for “An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux” (2004). He was previously nominated in the Movies for Television and Mini-Series category in 2010 for The Pacific, “Okinawa”. He is also a four-time nominee in the Dramatic Series category for his work on The Sopranos with “Whoever Did This” (2002), “Long Term Parking” (2004), “Members Only” (2006) and “Sopranos Home Movies” (2007).”
His competition? Michael Cuesta for the pilot of Homeland, Vince Gilligan for Breaking Bad‘s “Face Off”, Patty Jenkins for the pilot of The Killing (which, despite all the problems that developed as the show barreled to the end, was a beautifully directed episode, in my opinion), and Michael Waxman for Friday Night Lights‘s “Always”.
Van Patten’s extensive prior record with the DGA, while all the others are first-time nominees, may make it seem like he’d be the favorite. And, who knows, maybe he is. But all the other directors are absolutely worthy, so it seems to us that the award could be anyone’s this season. Still, we’ll be partisan and cheer on Van Patten and Game of Thrones.
Thanks to @olafkeith, we were pointed to the fact that some end-of-year information had come out for the publishing industry… and as it happens, “A Song of Ice and Fire” left its mark on the lists on both sides of the Atlantic.
First up, Publisher’s Weekly recaps 2011 in the US market. When discussing how long paperbacks stayed on their bestseller list, this is what they had to say:
According to Ireland’s RTE, the Irish Film & Television Awards nominees have been announced, and HBO’s Game of Thrones—predominantly shot in Northern Ireland last year—has scored five nominations. The awards are given to Irish-born, Irish citizens, or full-time Irish residents. Here’s the list:
The awards will be presented on February 12 in Dublin.
After our reporting on the Visual Effects Society nominations for Game of Thrones, we were reminded of the fact that BlueBolt were not going to be lead VFX vendors for the show this season, per our interview with Lucy Ainsworth-Taylor. So, who had stepped up to do the job?
Some Googling reveals that the information has been out there, but it seems none of the fan sites noticed: Pixomondo, “an international visual effects company with a global network of studios in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Los Angeles, London, Shanghai, Beijing and most recently Toronto,” has landed the job.
The list of awards shows that have placed HBO’s Game of Thrones on their short list is as long as my arm at this point. But here’s one more: the Visual Effects Society announced the nominees for their awards, and in the broadcast categories the show did quite well, pulling in three nominations; the leading show was sibling Boardwalk Empire, with four.
Here’s the categories in which it’s nominated:
UPDATE: HBO has confirmed the breakdown of directors below.
This one’s for those who are interested in some of the minutia of the production. We’ve previously tried to piece together which directors were directing each episode, and we had about half of them figured out after some speculation. The last pieces of the puzzle seem likely to have fallen into place, if this CV from an actor on the show - Darren Killeen, credited as “Baratheon Guard”—is anything to go by.
In it, he lists his experience on the show as covering episodes 3 and 5, and Alik Sakharov (first season cinematographer) and David Petrarca as the directors. Assuming that they’re listed in the correct order (and we believe they are, because we know for a fact that Petrarca directed episode 4, and it’s common for directors to get continguous episode blocks to work on), here’s who we think are directing the ten episodes of the second season of Game of Thrones:
Pearson Moore, who provided this site a number of well-received essays in the course of the season, has let us know that his collected essays (including additional ones never before published on this or any site) are now available as part of the Amazon Prime book borrowing program, free of charge for those who are Amazon Prime subscribers. It’s a great opportunity for Amazon Prime subscribers to take advantage of that offer, and for fans in general to read a number of excellent essays and articles considering Game of Thrones as a series and the world of “A Song of Ice and Fire”. You can get to the books—either to borrow through the program, or purchase outright—at the following links:
This is a bit late, but neat. Via our forum, we learned that Furthur—a band founded by former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Phil Lash—held a concert on December 31st… and their “midnight moment”? Daenerys riding a dragon, to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up”, followed by “Sugar Magnolia” after midnight. Quite cool! Besides “Dany”, a “Jorah Mormont” is also present for the 8-minute spectacular.
As noted on the forum, the audio of the concert was recorded and is now available at Archive.org.
Below is an embed of the “midnight moment”, and some discussion of how the Grateful Dead were almost involved in a film adaptation of one of Martin’s novels.
Just as with the early look at Loras Tyrell’s armor last season, this video has to be one of my favorite’s so far, focusing as it does on Simon Brindle’s armor design for HBO’s Game of Thrones. Here’s the video:
And Game of Thrones scores yet another nomination in a guild award, this time from the Art Directors Guild. The award is handed out to production designers for their work on a single episode, and in this case production designer Gemma Jackson and episode 6, “A Golden Crown”, are featured.
HBO’s show joins sibling show Boardwalk Empire, as well as Pan Am, American Horror Story, and The Playboy Club. The awards ceremony will be held in Bevery Hills on February 4th. Congratulations to Ms. Jackson and the production team, and good luck!
Back in December, we shared the fact that HBO’s Game of Thrones was up in a number of categories for TV.com’s Best of 2011 awards, which are voted on by the public. The results are now in—and the show did quite well, capturing Best New Series and Best Drama series, reaching the #2 spot in three other categories (Best Dramatic Actor, Best Kid Character, and Biggest Badass). Another feather in the cap for the show and its cast!
Some time after midnight, and still quite awake, Linda had the idea that perhaps we should get around to recording a new Westeros.org video... and what better topic to discuss than the chapter from The Winds of Winter that George released as a holiday gift for his readers.
It’s sparked quite a lot of discussion on the forum, and in our 15 minutes of video we just touch on several of the more discussed topics. Hope you like it! And apologies for the quick sign off—we only just discovered afterwards that Youtube had graciously allowed us to record videos longer than 15 minutes. Which means we can be more expansive in the future.
Suffice it to say, there will be spoilers!
Ted Nasmith, one of the “Big Three” Tolkien artists (along with John Howe and Alan Lee), turned his hand to depicting castles of the Seven Kingdoms for the World of Ice and Fire worldbook, which ended up being published in the 2011 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar. But that was, we knew, not the last work of his we would be seeing for the world book… not least when it was announced that he had been hired to produce the art for the new limited edition of A Game of Thrones.
So it was with some pleasure that it was pointed out by Finnish fan raijap that there was a new entry in his gallery of George R.R. Martin. It is, I think, now one of my very favorite depictions of the Wall, right up there with his Castle Black painting. I believe this piece is also intended for the World of Ice and Fire.
Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin revealed that he had a holiday gift up on his site for fans: the first sample chapter from The Winds of Winter, the sixth novel in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series! A very pleasant surprise, to say the least, and it has some juicy details that hint towards some of the upcoming events Martin has hinted at.
Although this is the first sample chapter he’s posted at his official website, he has read one chapter at a convention, a detailed report and discussion of which can be found at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum.
It goes without saying that there are spoilers. For extensive discussion and speculation, see this thread over at Westeros.org’s A Song of Ice and Fire forum.
Today, two columnists for the UK’s The Guardian newspaper have named HBO’s A Game of Thrones among 2011’s best dramas (as well they should)... but it was a third article referencing A Game of Thrones that caught our attention.
Irish correspondent Henry McDonald writes that the Northern Irish film industry is “booming”, and that it’s fuelled predominantly by HBO’s series choosing to film there. It’s an interesting look at the industry side of things, and some impressive numbers are thrown around.
And then, at the end, this: