Westeros

In our latest entry in our video series, I discuss a minor “mystery”. It’s not one that we dealt with in our post-A Dance with Dragons little mysteries video because, well, we didn’t think it’s a mystery. But we’ve had enough people ask about it on the A Song of Ice and Fire forum that Sean T. Collins’ suggestion that we tackle it made sense. For those who already knew the answer, I do discuss some related topics that may be of interest.

It ought to go without saying, but this contains spoilers for A Dance with Dragons:

Now, a couple of notes. Firstly, Linda and I are on a long (working) vacation, and while we could in theory record more videos, our internet connection out here in the far reaches of Scandinavia is shaky enough that it would take issues to get them uploaded (and that’s if it’d be stable enough to allow a long video upload). So, probably no new videos until August. Secondly, some sort of Youtube behind-the-scenes code adjustments have made it that I can’t directly reply to any comments (and there’s been many good ones in the last week), so I’m sorry to say that until that’s resolved, I won’t be able to answer any questions offered in comments. But keep them coming! Once it gets fixed, I’ll try to catch up with everything.

Early this month, we reported that HBO was planning to release a special Game of Thrones Completest 1st Season Collector’s Edition in both Blu-ray and DVD. The Blu-ray edition of the set is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com in the US, for those interested.

Besides a handsome new presentation box, the box set would include a Dragon Egg paperweight (usually priced at $45), and the Blu-ray edition would also include a bonus disk containing the first episode of season 2, “The North Remembers”. On top of that, purchased of this set also gives you the right to a digital copy of the season. Otherwise, it’s pretty similar to the initial set… although one imagines that this will contain the edited version of episode 10, thanks to the uproar over the “George W. Bush” prop head.

Several excellent interviews with George R.R. Martin came out of last weekend’s San Diego Comic Con, but two stood out because of some interesting remarks from Martin thanks to the A Song of Ice and Fire-aware journalists who asked the questions.

First up, here’s Kara Warner talks to GRRM for MTV:

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.

This is amusing: though we had heard that Elijah Wood (currently starring in the very strange, amusing Wilfred, and of course in The Lord of the Rings films) had visited the set in Belfast recently, he actually discusses it a bit with Conan O’Brien:

Some significant further reports have come out from the Northern Ireland press visit the other day.

First up, UTV has video as well as quotes from executive producer Frank Doelger regarding the shoot. He’s quoted as remarking on the difficulty the production has had with weather, not only in Northern Ireland, but in all their shooting locations. He also notes that a part of him hopes that they won’t have to fight other productions to use the location and crew resources they have available right now, but so far it seems like Game of Thrones has fairly free rein.

Game of Thrones filming continues apace in Northern Ireland for the forseeable future. Things have been low key in the run up to and following the big Comic-Con Panel, new cast announcement, and the premiere date being set as March 31, 2013. However, we do have some news about filming from both yesterday and torday. First, it seems that they had set up campe in Ballynure for filming in Straid:

For the many thousands at SDCC who couldn’t get into the jam-packed Hall H to see the panel, and the many millions of fans besides, here’s the video of the Game of Thrones panel that took place yesterday, courtesy of Youtube user magicinthenumbers:

After my video concerning the Kingsguard went up, a common question from commenters at our Youtube channel related to a throw-away comment I made, concerning a theory I have regarding Dawn, the ancient, magical greatsword of the Daynes, wielded by those men found worthy of bearing it and the title of Sword of the Morning. So, to answer those questions, here’s a video I put together pointing out a bit regarding what we know of the Daynes, the Sword of the Morning, and Dawn.

One last tidbit from the Comic-Con panel: the official premiere date for Season 3 is March 31st. This is basically the same Sunday as Season 2’s April 1st premiere, so it’s not really much different… but still, good to have an actual date on hand for the premiere.

With the big reveal at San Diego Comic Con, we thought we’d run through the new cast members one by one, and give a bit more sense as to who they are. See below for our very lengthy look.

San Diego Comic-Con is going strong, and the Game of Thrones panel has just now wrapped—and we have the press release, which is utterly massive. Find out who’s playing the Queen of Thorns, Tormund Giantsbane, Edmure Tully, the Blackfish, Meera and Jojen Reed, Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr, and much, much more!

EW has some amazing coverage of San Diego Comic Con, and today at 12:45PM Pacific Time (3:45PM Eastern, 8:45PM UK) they’ll be talking to Michelle Fairley, Emilia Clarke, and more… oh, and one George R.R. Martin, too. This will be ahead of the Game of Thrones panel in the massive Hall H at 2:45PM Eastern time.

We’ve some coverage coming from the panel, courtesy of HBO and Amy Marie, but be sure to keep an eye on HBO Connect, which will also be live tweeting the event, and before that they have Kristian Nairn tweeting on location from the convention floor.

The intrepid Amy_Marie97, who’ll be providing coverage of San Diego Comic Con for Westeros.org, has had a chat with the folks at Dark Horse regarding their current and future licensed Game of Thrones product releases. Quite a few of their showstopper statues and miniature replicas were on display, and Amy has shared some photos as well as more detailed product descriptions, which you can find below.

Our first look in motion at the new Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms MMO from Bigpoint, which we’ve reported on recently, has come to us by way of the Huffington Post. See the trailer below:

According to HuffPo, the free-to-play, browser-based game’s set for a 2013 release, will eventually include options for varying sizes of player characters (one wonders just how “giant” the “giant” sized characters will be), and will have a seasonal cycle (presumably an unpredictable one) that changes in the course of play.