Our latest A Song of Ice and Fire-related article is up at Tor.com: “The Brothers Baratheon”. It’s a consideration on the dynamics between the three Baratheon brothers, their separate histories, and their differing attitudes and capacities. For us, the three brothers are nearly as central to the story as the “big three” of Stark, Lannister, and Targaryen, with their roles in the narrative having long-range impact that affects everyone in the narrative.
For more of our articles, you can look here to find them all.
Our latest article from essayist Pearson Moore is online, with a focus on seven diffrent arguments regarding kingship and rule in the Seven Kingdoms. Thoughtful work as always!
After last weeks very small drop in the ratings—which was strange, coming off of episode 5—the ratings for this Memorial Day weekend looked unlikely to sustain growth. And that, we suppose, is true enough: as reported by James Hibberd for EW, the show held steady at 2.4 million viewers, with 3.2 million in total after the repeat that evening. However, as Hibberd notes, this particular Sundy evening was down 21% overall in viewership, so holding steady isn’t bad at all.
Hibberd predicts a rise this Sunday, but we’re not so sure: game 3 of the NBA Finals are taking place at the same time, and that’s bound to draw a few eyeballs, especially if the Mavericks and Heat (Go, Heat! BTW) are 1-1 going into that game.
As we’ve previously reported, Game of Thrones is due to have an official music compilation released on June 28th (not June 14th as previously planned), which can already be pre-ordered.
Film Music Reporter has now gotten a hold of more details, including the full track listing. A sampling of the track titles is below, but for the full details (beware: some of the titles are spoilerish!), visit their site,
SF Bokhandeln—Sweden’s premiere SF/F bookstore chain, with locations in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö;—has announced on Facebook that their main store in Stockholm will open its doors at midnight to allow fans to buy A Dance with Dragons as soon as possible. Once everyone who’s queued has the book, the store will close and reopen at normal hours, but will have some special fantasy-themed events during the day. They also have a special pre-order page, in which all pre-orders will be eligible to win one of a handful of signed copies of the book.
If you’re in the vicinity, definitely drop by!
Know of any other stores, whether in North America, the U.K., Europe, or elsewhere, that will have midnight releases for the book? Feel free to post the details in comments!
The latest episode of Sky Atlantic’s Thronecast, their official post-episode webcast, is now available! Join Geoff Lloyd has he hosts the program, looking at the past episode, exploring some of its details, and more. As usual, Linda and I are there to answer a couple of questions, and there’s also an interview with Gethin Anthony, who plays Lord Renly Baratheon (you can also read our interview with the actor).
Dark Sword Miniatures, official producers of the George R.R. Martin Masterworks series, have some amazing new miniatures (as well as painted miniatures) to show off. George shares some of the images here on “Not a Blog”, but you can see them in more detail at Dark Sword’s site. We’re especially keen on the “greens” for Lord Tywin (looking very Caesar-like) and King Robert, which also gives us a sneak peek at Tom Meier‘s Renly and Stannis.
As usual, after You Win or You Die, HBO has released an inside look at the episode—quite a lengthy one, clocking in at 5 minutes—as well as a preview for next week’s episode, “The Pointy End”, written by one George R.R. Martin.
See the videos below.
Pearson Moore has provided another incisive essay on the latest Game of Thrones episode, “A Golden Crown”. If we’re not mistaken, it’s his longest yet, and as usual spins out some interesting thoughts drawing from history and popular culture (in this case, an episode of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing).
In the course of the article, he also compares the novel to the TV show… and in the case of one very particular scene, he thinks the writers have outdone GRRM. Can’t say I disagree with his reasoning on that very specific point (regarding Theon Greyjoy and his interactions with Robb).
Our latest audio commentary on episode 6, done along with Tom and Daniel of MTV Geek, is now live! Took a bit longer than usual to get out from under everything else, but hopefully we’ll soon be able to return to a more regular schedule on these! You can find it here.
HBO’s put out two sneak peeks at episode 7, “You Win or You Die”. The clips feature Osha (Natalia Tena) and Maester Luwin (Donald Sumpter), and Lord Commander Mormont (James Cosmo) which you can find below:
Oh, the mischief Froggy wreaks!
Turns out that that last post from GRRM is not a casting clue, as confirmed by Amy Joyce Hasting herself. According to her, that cover (created by Poppaea Bicknell) was for a prop for the film The Callback Queen. Morgane Deare played Horatio King, a bestselling fantasy author whose books were the basis of a big production…
And it turns out that he and his film were directly inspired by GRRM and HBO’s Game of Thrones, which is why George shared it. As to the mischeviousness? Froggy the Gremlin is a troublemaker.
Perhaps the most elaborate casting clue yet has cropped up on GRRM’s “Not a Blog”, involving a fake book cover, with a fake title, fake blurbs and quotes, a fake author…
What to make of it? We were left scratching our heads, but a clever fan got a cigar from GRRM by figuring out that the photo is of actor Morgan Deare, who plays a character named Horatio King in the film The Callback Queen. Can’t figure out anything about his role—is he the actor cast? It seems unlikely, because Deare is very much an American, and in fact does voiceover work in which he’s noted for his “authorative American” sound. Not to say he couldn’t do a British accent, but… If he were in it, who would he be? Salladhor Saan? Xaro Xhoan Daxos? Hrm.
However, while digging around, we came up with an interesting fact. Could his role in the film be someone who’s inspired by someone else? Such as the lead actress, Irish-born Amy Joyce Hastings, who was sporting some very red hair for that particular role? Her looks would not be bad for Melisandre…
ETA: We see that others have had the same idea. Lets see what GRRM says as more people bring the possibility up in comments.
UPDATE: It’s definitely Amy Joyce Hastings! Check this post from last year, when we found a video of hers on Vimeo featuring her audition for the role of Doreah. Follow through—the video is now private, but notice the name details? 22:22 Productions!
She “inspired” Horatio King, so I’m going with Melisandre here, but some are thinking Ygritte.
It’s been noted to us that there’s been some movement on international air dates for Game of Thrones, so we’ve updated our air date listing. Moving out of the “approximate date” category is Australia, which has since been set for a July 17 airing. We’ve gotten more detail about approximate air dates in Germany and Austria (both will be on TNT Serie in Winter 2011), while Sky Italia will be bringing the show to Italy in 2011.
Over at his website, John Picacio provides an exclusive sneak peek of the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar from Bantam. The award-winning artist has completed his work on the project, and slowly, slowly indeed Bantam is beginning to lift the veil when it comes to his work. The image featured in his post is a cropped version of the January image, featuring Bran.
In the post, he also allows readers to put forward which character they’d most like to see a sneak peek of next, giving three options: Arya, Melisandre, and the Hound. We know from Twitter comments that there’s also a Tyrion and, we believe, a Jon, on top of whch we know there’s a Ned Stark image which also features on the cover of the calendar.