Westeros

The holidays have eaten a lot of our spare time, and are set to eat a bit more for a couple of days yet, but I’ve sat down to get the latest Artisans video screencapped. There’s a focus on the armor, of course, but we do pick out one or two new pieces of heraldry among the banners on display on the Hand’s tourney, plus some thoughts on this and that.

The first screencap begins here, while you can get the gallery view of the Behind the Scenes gallery here.

The Malmö branch of SF Bokhandeln—Sweden’s (and perhaps Scandinavia’s) best SF/F bookstore—has a web poll up wondering what genre shows their visitors are most looking forward to. It’s just started, but HBO’s Game of Thrones has a comfortable lead… and for some reason we expect that lead to grow over time. ;)

While Canal+ in Sweden has not yet set a firm date for airing, we’ve heard that Canal+ in Finland has stated that they’re aiming for August 2011, and we wouldn’t be surprised in Canal+ Sweden ended up settling on the same date.

As we approach the New Year, quite a few TV-focused sites are releasing lists, either looking back at the year that was or the year that will be. Here’s three who make special mention of Game of Thrones:

TV.com looks back to the highpoints of 2010. In their 100 item list, their announcement of Game of Thrones rates #42, and they promise that they’ve, “already reserved a Top 5 spot for it on next year’s Top 100 list.”

Over at TV Squad, we have TV critic and ASoIaF-fan Maureen Ryan places Game of Thrones as the first item on the staff’s list of next year’s anticipated TV programs.

Via WiCnet, IMDB‘s editors also list the series as one of the things they’re excited for in 2011.

James Poniewozik, TV critic for TIME, joins fellow critic Ryan in listing Game of Thrones as his most anticipated show of 2011.

The Guardian chimes in, mentioning the show as one example of 2011’s “unmissable” television programs and noting the positive vibe from U.S. critics.

Alan Sepinwall and Daniel Feinberg included the show on Hitfix.com’s 2011 Gallery, while Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker lists the show as his most anticipated new show of 2011.

Spotted any other top lists for 2010 or 2011 that feature HBO’s Game of Thrones? Feel free to note it in a comment!

Via Bleeding Cool, we’ve learned of a video interview with Natalia Tena (who plays Osha) which covers a range of topics related to her acting, with a particular focus on the Harry Potter films. However, she is asked about HBO’s Game of Thrones, which she speaks of in very enthusiastic terms. In fact, she indicates that she loved working on it so much that she’s been reading the first book. She mentions that after the mini-wrap party on the 11th, she was due to film a brand new scene written for her which seems to be her last scene for the production. The Game of Thrones discussion starts at the 5:10 mark:

The first part of the interview, and some details about it, can be found at Bleeding Cool. In discussing her plans for the coming year, she mentions that Game of Thrones would resume filming in the spring, so far as she knows; presumably she means, in spring if the show is given the greenlight. So an April or May start date seems quite possible.

Cyanide Studios, creators of the officially licensed Game of Thrones: Genesis strategy game and an as-yet-untitled-RPG, have a little Christmas post featuring some familiar words, and what may be some concept art for the frozen lands beyond the Wall.

Merry Christmas, Cyanide!

Updated: We’ve mailed George for a comment, and he confirmed that they are indeed going forward with episode titles, Excellent news! Responding to my question about the episode titles, Bryan Cogman replies that HBO has not officially approved the titles as of yet, so we’ll have to wait on their being revealed, but he believes we’ll be liking them.

Thanks to the gentleman at Television Zombies, we have a new interview with George. Some good stuff there, raging over a number of topics, but something George mentions at the end is of particular interest for those keeping track of developments on HBO’s Game of Thrones. He notes again that he’s written episode 8… and gives its title: “The Pointy End”.

This was the title he originally intended when he sent in the draft, but since then we were informed that the producers were leaning to simply numbering episodes, a fact we’ve seen in various Making Game of Thrones posts. But this interview, from less than a week ago, brings up the title again and we’re guessing (tentatively) that the producers have at last started putting proper titles on the episodes.

When we ran a poll at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum, something north of 90% of those polled disliked the idea of simply having numerals for episodes, so this is a great decision if true. We’re looking forward to a full list of episode titles in the future.

As George has mentioned, he’ll be in California to promote HBO’s Game of Thrones. We’ve been informed that the details of the bookstore signing he noted was in the planning have now been finalized, and have now added it to our calendar. It will take place on January 9th at 5 PM Pacific Time, at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena.

Also as noted in George’s post, at some point that day—not sure if it’ll be before or after the signing yet—he’ll be joining fans for a little mini-meet sort of event, just to hang out with them. If you want more details, check out this thread at the Brotherhood without Banners section of the A Song of Ice and Fire forum.

The Atlantic’s Alyssa Rosenberg has previously covered George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series for the magazine’s website, and this time she’s back with a thoughtful piece concerning HBO‘s Game of Thrones TV series. Comparing and contrasting the series to other HBO and cable programs, with particular attention to difference in degree between accepting the reality of The Sopranos and The Wire versus that of a full-on, secondary-world fantasy such as Game of Thrones. Rosenberg finishes with the following:

Here’s hoping!

After having won this year’s Suvudu 2010 Villains’ Cage Match, the Mountain that Rides faces his last obstacle to claiming complete domination: last year’s winner, Rand al’Thor from Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time series. If you’ll recall, last years cage match led to a frenzy of voting with the lead changing back and forth as fans argued the merits of George R.R. Martins’ and Brandon Sanderson’s write-ups for how they thought the match should go.

In the end, the Dragon defeated the Kingslayer… but will al’Thor bite off more than he can chew with Ser Gregor Clegane? You decide with your votes! The poll runs through January 2nd, but don’t delay in voting!

Over at Not a Blog, GRRM posts a reminder that the 2011 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar is available, and can be bought just in time for the holidays. This beautiful calendar features art by the renowned Ted Nasmith, best known for his place as one of the “Big Three” Tolkien artists (along with John Howe and Alan Lee; like them, he was invited to help design Peter Jackson’s LotR films, but wasn’t able to do it). The calendar includes twelve full-sized depictions of famous castles and cities of the Seven Kingdoms, plus a thirteenth, double-sized bonus image. You can get a preview of some of his art here.

And to add on to the festive mood, he features a mock-up cover for next year’s 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, using one of the gorgeously-rendered art of award-winning painter John Picacio. Featuring Eddard Stark with Ice before the heart tree of Winterfell, it’s an amazing piece of work, though George notes it may not be the final cover. John later tweeted that he was working on the calendar right at that moment ... at 4:48AM. That’s dedication to his art! The calendar is due to ship in July, and is already available for preorder.

Although filming wrapped last week on HBO’s Game of Thrones, details still come out on occasion concerning the production’s doings. Via DocFourFour, we’ve learned that the Belfast Telegraph-owned Sunday Life newspaper includes a report on the production having filmed at Inch Abbey in Downpatrick. Their report indicates that the site was used for a “renegade camp”, featuring a “Medieval fort” with tents around it, and that there was fake blood at the site.

This is the site where filming took place over at least a couple of days, I believe, around the 10th or 11th. Don’t hold me to it, but I think I recall seeing at the production offices during my set visit in October that Inch Abbey was being used as the site of Moat Cailin in the series. Certainly, I saw Moat Cailin listed, but I’m not 100% positive that Inch Abbey was the real world location associated with it; however, some of the photos of the ruins with tussocks of grass around it strike me as doing reasonably well to indicate the marshy, ruined old citadel of the First Men. If it is Moat Cailin, however, I’m not sure how to reconcile that with the fake blood. Unless different angles or areas of Inch Abbey were used to represent a battle site or something like? Hard to say.

Oh, I’ve been waiting for this one. Simon Brindle, the supervisor of the costume armor department, speaks in some detail about the costume armor for HBO’s Game of Thrones. I had the pleasure of meeting Simon when I visited the Paint Hall facilities, and had a chance to discuss some of the sources and inspirations for the various suits of armor. There’s some truly amazing work being turned out from his shop!

The So Spake Martin section of our site—an archive of correspondence, chats, interviews, and signing and convention reports—has been updated with a link to a podcast interview with GRRM conducted by Bear Swarm!. This is about a month old, recorded at the time of the Days of Ice and Fire event.

Thanks to Conan Stevens, we’ve learned details on where HBO’s Game of Thrones will be airing in Australia. Conan writes that he’s learned the plan at present is for a possible July air date on Showcase, a premium channel which can be found on the Foxtel, Optus, and Austar television platforms.

Another update from GRRM, one of the Angelenos. He’ll be over in Los Angeles in early January (remember, he’s due to attend the TCA Winter Press Tour panel on January 7th) and he’ll be seeing about arranging some public events, such as a signing (probably in the San Fernando Valley area) or a mini-moot. The latter seems almost a certainty, as he adds that David McCaman—a fixture and long-time organizer of the Brotherhood without Banners fan club—will be organizing event on that same day, January 9th.

Keep an eye out here and on the this thread for more details in the days to come.

George adds a tantalizing final note: he may have something exciting to announce ... and maybe two exciting things, “but don’t quote me on that”.

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin provides two brief updates. As previously reported, he confirmed that filming had wrapped on the first season of Game of Thrones. Our congratulations to all the cast and crew!

But before that update, he had a small update concerning A Dance with Dragons. He noted that he had recently finished a chapter, and had revised (and then re-revised) another, and was presently writing material concerning Jon Snow and the “krakens” (referring to the Greyjoys and the ironborn they rule).

As we’ve reported in the past, George had five chapters left to write as of November. So is it four left? Hard to say. As GRRM cautioned, sometimes a chapter needs to be broken up and expanded into two or even three chapters before he’s happy with it. Still, though it’s a “slog” as he calls it, progress continues.

The Northern Ireland government has pledged £5 million to build new studios in support of the film industry there. As the Telegraph reports, efforts will focus on expanding the Paint Hall facilities, which HBO’s Game of Thrones has fully occupied but will be relinquishing this week now that filming is about wrapped.

This article is yet another that vaguely implies that the 2nd season is a certainty, with the only question being where it might film. However, many of these articles build on one another. As we’ve said elsewhere, the production will certainly be laying the groundwork for a second season now… but the greenlight will only come after the April premiere at the earliest, once ratings are in.

Over at the Making Game of Thrones site, David J. Peterson—creator of the Dothraki language for the production—has a lengthy post titled, “Dothraki 101”, which provides just what you’d think: an introductory lesson in the grammar and vocabulary of Dothraki.

David promises to provide more lessons in future posts. The Language Creation Society’s official Dothraki website can be found at their website, while we’d also recommend taking a look at Dothraki.org, an unofficial fan site created to catalog all the details released (and published) so far concerning the Dothraki language.

The Daily Express has a brief interview with Rory McCann, cast in the role of Sandor Clegane. Rather amazing tale there, and it sounds like this role came to him at the best possible time. The one note about the article? Some of the facts and figures are inaccurate—it’s a bit more expensive than £25 million, and it is not an HBO-BBC co-production.

Back in September, fans stumbled across the blog of photographer Wolf Sunkmanitu, where he stated he had stumbled across a set on Malta for HBO’s Game of Thrones. Now, on the verge of the first season filming wrapping, he’s posted an extensive gallery of his photography from Malta ... including quite a few pictures from the Street of Steel set in Mdina which we caught glimpses of in the “Inside Game of Thrones” preview starting here.

At Sunmanitu’s gallery, the first of the Street of Steel photos—available for purchase as prints, as with the rest of his galler—can be found starting here. The amount of set dressing and the great number of quite mundane props—bellows, anvils metalworking tools, and more—has certainly transformed what’s nomrally a thoroughfare through modern Mdina into a bazaar-like street in King’s Landing. I do believe this room is the same as Tobho Mott’s forge, seen
here.

Valyrian Steel has written up a new post with some photos of Ice, their officially licensed replica of the ancestral Stark sword. These photos are interesting because they’re setting the weapon besides the two previous weapons they’ve made, Longclaw and Needle. The current plan is for a special premium limited edition of Ice to be made out of Damascus steel, for those who wish to have something so exclusive, while Valyrian Steel starts work on designing the next weapon in the line: King Robert’s famous warhammer.

Sometime on Wednesday afternoon or evening, the last, “Cut”, will be called, and the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones will have seen filming completed. The wrap party already took place this past weekend, as much of the foreign crew will be gone by this coming weekend, departed back to home. What’s left now is weeks more of post-production, such as introducing scoring, visual effects, and so on. We already know the writing and production team will be doing preparatory work in case the show gets greenlit for a second season, so we expect at least a couple of scripts and a good deal of location work (including word that Iceland and/or Morocco are under consideration as shooting locations for the East and the lands beyond the Wall) will be done in the intervening months.

We know that on January 7th, the critics of the Television Critics Association will be getting a glimpse of the production through a long panel schedule to feature the executive producers, GRRM, and actors Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, and Emilia Clarke. Word has it they’ll be getting an exclusive look at the show proper, as well—except a lot of Twitter and blog activity on the night.

And after that? The march towards the April premiere date—we suspect that the actual day will be announced at the TCA Winter Press Tour—with gradually increasing promotion and marketing efforts. The official t-shirts are, to say the least, just a start…

George R.R. Martin will be joining six other “Wild Cards” authors at Page One Books in Albuquerque tomorrow, at 3:30PM, for a book signing event after Tor reissued the first Wild Cards novel, Wild Cards I. The reissue contains three brand-new stories by Carrie Vaughn, Michael Cassutt, and David Levine, and a brand-new cover by Michael Komarck.

Another post from Bryan Cogman has gone live at Making Game of Thrones, and this time we’re at Manikata in Malta where the Lhazreen village scenes were filmed a number of weeks ago.

In the post, Cogman discusses a scene being filmed there, where the Dothraki are looting. Most notably, the scene is “almost entirely” spoken in Dothraki, a language created for the show based on what George R.R. Martin has written. The scene features Drogo admonishing an insubordinate warrior in no uncertain terms. Bryan signs off with the following lengthy example of Dothraki: “Eyél várthasoe she ilekaán ríkhoya arrekaán vékha vósi yeroón vósma tolórro!” We’re guessing the last word is the same as in Vaes Tolorro, where Tolorro means bones.

As part of the fifth anniversary of their site, the Tower of the Hand has polled its community of users to determine a list of the top 30 favorite characters, and each day features a profile for one of these characters as they count their way down to the most popular character of them all. Today, they’ve presented the #8 character in their poll, Davos Seaworth, with a profile written by yours truly.

I was quite honored to be invited to participate in this. Congratulations to Johnny, Alex, and the rest of the Tower of the Hand crew!

For three hours on January 7th, HBO will be presenting its programming to critics at the Television Critics’ Association Winter Press Tour. Past TCA events have produced a bounty of information concerning Game of Thrones—from remarks on why HBO greenlit it to the Spring 2011 scheduling—and with the premiere of the show coming before the next TCA press tour (in the Summer), this seems like it’s going to be the point in time when HBO will really focus on the production.

A number of the critics present will certainly be live-blogging and live-tweeting the event, and we’ll be staying up to collate all the major news. The event will be running from 3:15 to 6:15 PM, and we won’t be surprised if a good twenty or thirty minutes of that is exclusively about the production. Maybe even longer, if it so happens that the critics are screened the first episode, which we know has gone through final edit, Presentation participants are tentatively set (but subject to change), as well: executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, actors Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, and Emilia Clarke, and a certain George R.R. Martin.

Many thanks to Jace Lacob of Televisionary for providing the date and time information of the TCA panel.

Real life and hardware problems made it take longer than I wanted, but we’ve now fully commented the 142 images we’ve captured from the full version of HBO’s “Inside Game of Thrones” promo. Additional scenes not shown on the web include Tyrion and Jon conversing about why the Imp reads so much, the discovery of the dead direwolf and her pups, and some dialogue between Dany and Jorah Mormont.

To visit the gallery, go to the Previews section of Gallery, or you can start moving sequentially from the images beginning with this.

As I said on Twitter, cue Queen’s “We Are the Champions”:

HBO surprised us when they tweeted that the official store had, for a limited time only, official Game of Thrones t-shirts available on sale. Quite the surprise—pretty sure it’s not common for them to release merchandise for a show that hasn’t yet aired! Currently, only men’s shirts are available.

Another pleasant surprise is the fact that they’ve copies of all four of GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels available as well. Very cool.

Myles McNutt of Cultural Learnings, a commentator on the media and television critic, shares a thoughtful analysis of how HBO is marketing itself and Game of Thrones in light of last night’s Inside Game of Thrones explosion of fan joy.

It’s a thought provoking piece, providing a perspective that few regular viewers are likely to think about.

(And yes, we’re still screencapping. Not even half way through!)

I’ll have to call it a (very brief) day and leave off screencapping—I’ve now gone 24 hours without sleep! However, I’m about a quarter of the way done through the images we’ve collected, and they’re all commented. If you’d like to see them (and add your own comments), please go here, starting with this image.

Still over a hundred images to annotate. Amazing amounts of visual detail, and some things which I think I can now talk about from my Belfast visit because they’ve been revealed here.

Here’s the streamable video, provided by HBO over at Making Game of Thrones:

Much as we suspected, this 10 minute piece featured both some new footage and a lot of what would be considered recap for dyed-in-the-wool fans. However, this gave us plenty of opportunity to hear from the producers and actors (including some we haven’t yet glimpsed with the production, such as Joe Dempsie, who plays Gendry), and to see copius amounts of new footage. It’s hard to believe that we’re now looking at the wrap of filming in two weeks, and the first airing little more than four or so months away!

We’ll be posting our screen caps and commentary as soon as we can, though we doubt we’ll be able to finish it tonight (remember, we’re in Europe!) That said, we should soon have a few pieces up in the Previews section of Westeros’s Game of Thrones Gallery.

HBO‘s “Inside Game of Thrones” program will be airing tonight, starting at 8:45PM EST, just before the season finale of Boardwalk Empire. The 15-minute period will feature a few minutes of general promotion for HBO’s programming, apparently, but around 10 minutes are specifically a feature focused on Game of Thrones. What can we expect to see? We’re not sure, but our guess is that this will be an introduction to the story and the characters for the wider subscriber audience, with the intention of intriguing them. Our understanding is that any clips from the show will come from the first five episodes (running right through the Hand’s tourney), but there’s plenty of scenes we’ve yet to get a glimpse at. There’s also a hope we’ll be introduced to and get a better look at some of the actors who’ve not yet been very featured: Rory McCann as the Hound, Michelle Fairley as Catelyn Stark, Aidan Gillen as Littlefinger, and so on.

HBO has promised that the video clip will go on-line right after it airs, on the production website Making Game of Thrones. Naturally, we’ll have it linked over at Westeros as soon as the video is available, and then we’ll indulge in watching it and commenting it. Whether we’ll be able to screencap it thoroughly or not…. we’re not sure. Possibly not, given that a 10 minute program is likely to add a hundred or more images to our already extensive Gallery, and as we’re in Europe it’ll be quite late before we can even get started.

Noted humorist and actor John Hodgman—perhaps best known for his role as the “PC in Apple’s famous “Get a Mac” series of commercials—is interviewed on a wide range of topics by Ken Plume. A wide range of topics are discussed, but notably among them is Hodgman taking time out (approximately 15 minutes of the total interview) to discuss the series and his views on the topic of creative endeavors. Hodgman has previously praised the series—of which he’s read the first three—and George has reciprocated the kudos.

We suggested to Mr. Plume that he should invite GRRM to his interview series once he’s read A Game of Thrones (which Hodgman’s praise has led him to pick up), but I think it’d be entertaining to have GRRM and Hodgman both on at the same time, sharing their experiences as writers, creative media talents, and creators in general. With maybe a dash of football on the side, as Hodgman—like George—is a professed fan of the NY Jets. It’d be an entertaining, insightful hour, we suspect.

Make sure to poke around Fred, Plume’s site, for his many other interviews, as he’s very skilled in getting a conversation going.

... or the actress playing her, in any case. Kate Dickie is profiled in the Guardian. There’s quite a lot of information about her life, how she came to become an actress, and some suggestions about the sort of roles she’s best known for, such as her Scottish BAFTA winning role in Red Road. At the very end, HBO’s Game of Thrones is mentioned:

HBO’s Making Game of Thrones official site has been updated with a brand new post, written up by writer and script editor Bryan Cogman after torrential rains caused a bit of trouble while filming was taking place at the San Anton Palace, the official residence of the President of Malta, which Bryan describes a being used because,“the courtyards, colonnades, and gardens of this 15th century palace,” are being used for the Red Keep. There’s a terrific anecdote about Maisie Williams, who plays Arya, which I heard from Bryan when I had visited the production offices.

At the end of his post, Bryan signs off with, “Righteous in Wrath.” That’s one of the many house mottoes George has created for the noble families of A Song of Ice and Fire, many of which he provided to Westeros.org for our Heraldry project. Those words belong to House Hornwood. Want to see all the mottoes? Visit the mottoes section of the Citadel’s Heraldry section!

This one takes the cake.

Who’d have thought that Syrio Forel himself would show up in one of Joe Campo’s videos as part of his quest to land a part in Game of Thrones? Not only is it funny, it may give us just a little taste of how Syrio may sound in HBO’s TV series!

Good luck to Joe, and many thanks to Miltos for being such a good sport!

Now, can we get the Mountain into this?