Westeros

A very long, very interesting interview with GRRM has just been published over at Marvel.com, the official website of Marvel Comics. It’s very comics-centric, reaching back to his fan letters in the 60’s, his visits to Comic-Con, his views on the recent Marvel movies, and more. And, yes, some A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones talk.

Check it out!

An article concerning the question of why British accents dominate fantasy takes a cool little detour to the A Song of Ice and Fire forum, where the journalist writing the article—Brian Wheeler—started a thread to query fans on the board on the topic. Rather neat, and an interesting question that ties into the general notion that the “past” sounds English, for whatever reason.

Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont in HBO’s Game of Thrones, also touched on the topic in our interview with him late last month.

HBO has declared that this Sunday will be #GoTDay on Twitter—they want that tag trending, and if the rabid fans can bring Twitter to its knees, all the better! Leading up the much-anticipated premiere of the first episode, “The North Remembers”, HBO will be running a marathon featuring all ten episodes of the first season on HBO2, starting from 10:30AM Eastern, 7:30 AM Pacific.

And just to make sure Twitter starts buckling, they’ve announced that HBO Connect’s social platform is going to be put to work, featuring live tweeting commentaries and Q&As with fan favorites like Kristian Nairn and Finn Jones, with writer Bryan Cogman... and with fan sites like Winter is Coming and… err, well, Westeros.org!

And to kick it off? That’d be us! Tune in to HBO2 (or, if you don’t have it, start up your Bluray or DVD—that’s what we’ll be doing!) at 10:30 Eastern (7:30 Pacific—I know, who wakes up that early on a Sunday except masochists and fanatics?) on Sunday, hop on over to our snazzy, official HBO Connect page, and join the conversation as we all watch and discuss episode 1 of season 1, “Winter is Coming”

And another interesting cross promotion effort for Game of Thrones, this time via the official Facebook page: fifty people will get one of five house sigils tattooed on their arms by tattoo artists at NY Ink, including Ami James.

Here’s the details:

Time: March 30th (TODAY) from 12PM to 8PM
Place: Wooster Street Social Club, 43 Wooster Street between Grand & Broome, SOHO, NYC
What: First come, first serve from 12-8, maximum of 50 people.

If you’re interested, I suspect it may make sense to get to that line early. And if you get one? Make sure to share a picture or two!

These two essays are terrific reads, and they come from the the venerable Foreign Affairs magazine no less! The first from Charli Carpenter is a response to arguments that the series embodies political realism, noting that some of its features belong more in the realm of human security than realpolitik. Very interesting reading, and some trenchant remarks from Professor Carpenter regarding the subject of gender depiction in the novels (make sure to check out this amusing post on the topic of Drogo’s war speech that she wrote last year).

And the other… well, that one just had me amazed. Historian Kelly DeVries (whose Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century is a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in medieval society and warfare) looks at the series through a historical lens, noting that Martin has eschewed the general boring facets of medieval life (really, life in pretty much any time period is generally boring when looked at as a whole—the moments of terror tend to be few and far between for most people at most times) to dramatize things in a way that DeVries approves.

The Wall Street Journal’s John Jurgenson has a very interesting article concerning the production of the second season. Here’s a few useful statistics:

• Average of 9.3. million viewers, vs. 10.7 million for Boardwalk and a peak of 13 million for True Blood in its third season.
• First season budget of roughly $60 million (which we’ve reported before), now up roughly 15% (so $69 million, give or take—with hints that a large part of it was due to episode 9, “Blackwater”, written by GRRM.)
• 106 shooting days, 3/4ths spent with two units (“Dragon” and “Wolf”) filming simultaneously.
• For the Battle of the Blackwater, David and Dan initially wanted to build 9 ship sets. They got 1.

Also of interest? Season 3 location scouting is already going on, though there’s been no official greenlight. Expect it on Monday or Tuesday at the latest—we’re 100% confident that season 3 is a no-brainer, at this stage. The only real question is if they’ll announce they’re ordering season 4 as well (beware rumors that they’ll film two seasons back to back, however—deeply unlikely).

Gods, do I love baseball, and the MLB & HBO for teaming up to cross-promote the April 1st premiere of Game of Thrones and April 4th opening day of the season with this beautifully edited video:

Amazing. No real new clips, though I do believe the fellow on fire is glimpsed slightly earlier than before. And of course, the last word is Tyrion’s.

Something must be in the air, because as spring comes around, thoughts clearly turn towards traveling for some. And in this case, they seem to have informed two quite different (and quite good!) interviews from two travel sites. George R.R Martin is certainly no stranger to travel, and in fact is presently in the UK ahead of Eastercon and his appearance at the Bloomsbury Theatre.

First up, Josh Roberts conducts an excellent interview with George for Smarter Travel. As noted at the top of the interview, it has some major spoilers for all five novels in the series, but it’s noted when they’re crossing into the spoiler section. Here’s a favorite part from it:

Some last bits of promotional material sneaking out from HBO. This time, we’ve two new videos featuring a look at new characters and new destinations that we’ll be seeing this season. Good stuff, and an excellent chance to hear from some of the newest cast members:

EW continues its exclusive series of interviews leading up to the premiere of Game of Thrones, as James Hibberd shares his interview with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Ser Jaime Lannister) and Lena Headey (Queen Cersei Lannister). Some interesting comments in there from both actors. Including Coster-Waldau’s dislike of the fact that Jaime’s imprisoned, but he had to admit that it was important for the character’s journey for him to be out of the action. It must gnaw at Jaime, when you think about it, to be locked up when deeds are being done and the Lannister family needs defending.

You can find more of EW’s excellent coverage of the series at this link.

That’s right, folks: the last day of Week 3 in Hulu’s “Best in Show” tournament, and Game of Thrones is pitted against Sons of Anarchy. Worse yet, SoA is leading by a very narrow margin: 51% to 49%

A margin so very narrow that I suspect that if every single person who read this post voted, and voted now, we’d turn the tables.

If you folks vote and Game of Thrones takes the prize, I’ll let you all select which interview we’ll run next—do you want to hear from Kit Harrington, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, or Emilia Clarke? Vote, leave your answer in comments, and help the show carry the day in the third week of the tourney!

The fourth in our series of interviews from the international press junket Westeros.org attended last month (see our latest interview for links to all three earlier interviews), this time we’re touching on a brand new character to the series: Ser Davos Seaworth, the “Onion Knight” who faithfully serves Stannis Baratheon.

Irish actor Liam Cunningham plays the role, and plays it well from what we’ve seen of the first four episodes, conveying Davos’s conviction in his loyalty to Stannis despite the odds against the eldest surviving Baratheon. In the interview below, Cunningham discussed his role, the contents of the pouch at his neck, who he’d love to see dub him in Brazil, and shows his true colors as a fan of the series with an insatiable appetite for more. If you’ve seen earlier interviews with Cunningham, you know he’s amusing, and he was very charming as he chatted with us!

Read the interview!

Courtesy of HBO, here are six brand new clips from the first episode of the new season, “The North Remembers”! Focused primarily on Tyrion and Jon—with four of the six clips devoted to their part of the story—you’ll also get a glimpse of King Robb and Alton Lannister, as well as a nice look at Daenerys Targaryen and Drogon.

And as an added treat, if you’re in the UK or Ireland, you can get access to Sky’s interview special! I was there when they filmed some of these interviews, during the press junket in London, and it sounded like they got some great material. More about that junket shortly…

The third in our series of interview from the international press round table interview junket (see our previous two interviews: Charles Dance and Michelle Fairley), this time we’ll cross the narrow sea, through the tall grass of the Dothraki sea, and into the red waste and beyond to talk with Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont, Daenerys’s guardian, advisor, companion…. and perhaps a bit more. A Scottish actor gifted with a charm and a voice that apparently gets not a few hearts racing, Glen has done a bit of everything on stage and screen, including roles in blockbusters like Kingdom of Heaven and smash hits like Downton Abbey and, of course, HBO’s Game of Thrones.

In the interview, Glen discusses a range of topics: Jorah’s relationship to Daenerys, what we might expect over the next season, how it was to work in Dubrovnik, and more.

Read the interview!

Having had the opportunity (courtesy of HBO) to see the first four episodes of this coming season (premiering April 1st in the US and Latin America, April 2nd in the UK and—I believe—a deal of Eastern Europe), Linda and I share some very general thoughts on what to expect from those episodes, and what the dangers might be for the rest of the season. All in all, the first four episodes play pretty well, but for our part the first two episodes start on the back foot somewhat—they’re not as strong as we might have liked, and we try and give some sense of why.

As always, we’re die-hard fans of the novels and everything, inevitably, is touched by that perspective… but sometimes, reasonable and even necessary decisions for the sake of adaptation don’t necessarily lead to the very best storytelling. It’s a difficult beast, adapting a mammoth series such as A Song of Ice and Fire, and it can’t fire on all cylinder all the time. But most of the time? It gets there, for the most part, and there are some sections of the story which should please even the most hardcore purists. Other areas… perhaps not so much, especially as sometimes the changes seem gratuitous, change for the sake of change.

To read our thoughts in full, go here!