Westeros

Ahead of the finale, HBO wanted to show their appreciation for the fans at Westeros.org for their support of the show… and so they’ve let us know a day early that they’re bringing back to their 20% off sale at the HBO Store!

They’ve added quite a few new items in the last days, including the very cool Hodor shirt you see on the right, a Khal Drogo portrait shirt, and a “Daenerys, SPOILER of SPOILERS” shirt that maybe could have waited one day… but, hey, with the special sale and all, why not?

Get your shopping done before the finale,with a nice discount on top. To get the discount, just put GOT20 into the promotion code box at checkout. We’re told the sale will last through the 26th, so no rush… unless that Hodor shirt sells out before you can buy it. Why wait?

You can also visit our own Store page, which includes much of the same catalog of items, plus some Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk alternatives (without that 20% off applicable, of course) when available.

A few interviews trickling in before the finale that we thought we’d highlight:

• Emilia Clarke at TV Guide: Some remarks about riding horses, working with Jason Momoa, her wig, and what the toughest scenes where.
• Emilia Clarke at the Vulture: Besides similar information on horses, Clarke discusses the nude scenes as well as the prop horse’s heart she had to eat which turned out to be quite awful.
• Gethin Anthony with Shadowlocked: Discussing his role as Renly (see our own interview with the actor for more insights) as well as the Minister of Chance audio drama he’s involved in.
• Many Actors with TV Guide: Mark Addy, Jason Momoa, Emilia Clarke, Harry Lloyd, Kit Harrington, Sean Bean, Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, and George R.R. Martin are asked what their sigil would be, if they could choose, and what their first proclamation would be if they became rulers. Fun one.

Last but not least, as we mentioned the Vulture, here’s a funny video they’ve edited together, giving a buddy comedy spin to the relationship between Bronn and Tyrion Lannister:

It looks like Dynamite Entertainment has decided to run with A Game of Thrones as the title of their new, comic book adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s bestselling “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, according to Bleeding Cool, who also feature one of the covers for the first issue. According to Rich Johnston, covers for the issue will be provided by the very famed Alex Ross and fan-favorite Mike S. Miller (who drew the much-praised The Hedge Knight and The Hedge Knight II: Sworn Sword graphic novels.

We’ve previously reported on the adaptation, including an interview with Daniel Abraham, the SF/F author who’ll be handling the scripting chores. Look for an upcoming interview (and maybe some new art!) with artist Tommy Patterson (@TommyFPatterson) next week.

It looks like HBO has just sent out details of the official Game of Thrones panel at Comic Con. Here’s the scoop, via Jace Lacob (@televisionary) and Maureen Ryan (@moryan):

Day: Thursday, July 21st
Moderator: George R.R. Martin(!)
Participations: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Jason Momoa, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau… and more panelists to be announced, it seems.

That’ll be exciting, to say the least!

Pearson Moore of Winterfell Keep continues his thought-provoking series of essays on Game of Thrones. This time, his latest essay looks at all manner of swords—literal and figurative—in the narrative of episode 9, “Baelor”, and in the wider scope of Game of Thrones. And as to popular culture references? Pearson has a knack for them, and this time there’s a bit of The Matrix action going on.

You’ll also notice that at the bottom of the page (both this one and the feature page) is a new comment system, replacing our old one. Using Facebook Comments, anyone with an FB account (or, if you don’t want to use that, a Yahoo! or Hotmail account) will be able to comment directly and easily. We’re slowly getting comments into the rest of the site, but you’ll find them available on the Gallery as well as other sections of the site such as All Sorts of Weird Stuff.

A bit of a foregone conclusion: HBO has finally admitted that, yes, Belfast will again be the headquarters for the second season of Game of Thrones. No real surprise here, as various members of the cast and crew have indicated that they are or will be in Belfast for filming, but it’s good to know. Of note? A confirmation of Monday, July 25th as the planned start of shooting.

As Maureen Ryan notes, that happens to be the day after San Diego Comic Con—no surprise there, either, with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau recently noting he’ll be there to promote the show,as have executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss. Series creator, co-executive producer, and writer of episode 8 George R.R. Martin will also be there, and we’re quite sure other members of the cast and crew will be in attendance.

The full press release can be found below.

There’s many neat fan sites out there for the books, but one of the new ones that absolutely knocked our socks off when we first came across them is the Inn at the Crossroads. The bloggers who run it have wowwed everyone (including GRRM) with their recipes, most of them drawn directly from the books and using medieval and Renaissance cooking techniques and recipes. With lovely photographs to go along with them, the Inn at the Crossroads—which already holds over 70 recipes, with more to come—is a great, engaging site for fans of the series.

And the hosts? They’re pretty engaging too! We’ve had the opportunity to interview them for Suvudu, with a bit of a focus on feasts and how to get a Seven Kingdoms-style to your meals. You can read the interview, “Like a Trencherman: Feasts and Feasting in the Seven Kingdoms”, at Suvudu!

Executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss sat down with Joy Press of the L.A. Times Showtracker to discuss the second season. Some interesting hints and details, including GRRM’s role in writing his script and figuring out its scope, women’s fashion in Essos, and more. Some highlights below (including some spoilers!):

Linda and I have cooked up our latest article for Tor.com, this one dealing with masterminds—characters that fans generally love to hate, or in some cases fawn over and admire! It’s definitely spoiler material, so avoid it if you’ve not read the books. There’s also a few notes comparing the “masterminds” to their representation in HBO’s Game of Thrones, because the show has taken a different tack with some of them, at least in regards to certain aspects of their scheming.

We’ve been invited by the Daily Beast to take part in a post-Finale roundtable! Jace Lacob, Maureen Ryan, Myles McNutt, Phil of Winter is Coming, and (I’m told) others will take part in the chat starting at 11AM PDT / 2 PM EDT on Monday June 20.

We’re embedding the chat below, and will be promoting this post on occasion so that you don’t forget—should be fun!

Our recorded discussion with Tom & Daniel of MTV Geek is now available! In it, we discuss episode 9’s scoring, the expansiveness of the show versus the novels (with some hints about the next season’s challenges in that area), the introduction of Shae and Tyrion’s revelation of his tragic marriage, and more.

Enjoy!

The sneak peeks continue, as artist John Picacio adds a new glimpse at the forthcoming 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, joining his earlier Bran and Sandor Clegane glimpses. This time, we get an awesome look at Arya Stark. As with all the previous calendar images, these are quite cropped, so it’ll be interesting to see the full-sized images.

John (and GRRM, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and probably a lot of other interesting people connected to the TV show and novels) will be present at San Diego Comic Con, so if you’re out there, keep an eye out.

The big delay in our episode 8 write-up was due to a lot of things, and those things made covering the post-episode coverage quite difficult. Then the massive flood of visitors post-episode 9 left us scrambling to keep the servers (yes, servers, plural) from melting down, with traffic spiking as high as 200% of normal—crazy! So, this list of links to what some of the top-flight critics have to say on the web is a bit belated… but better late than never, we say.

Originally, Ramin Djawadi’s soundtrack for Game of Thrones was scheduled to be released today, only to be pushed back to the 28th. We’re not sure of the whys or wherefors….

.... but HBO has gone ahead and given the soundtrack an early release on iTunes! Hear previews of all 29 tracks, which can be purchased at $0.99 apiece, or $9.99 for the whole collection. The iTunes digital album download appears to include a special “digital booklet” as an iTunes exclusive. Will be interesting to see if it includes never-before-seen stills.

Episode 9, Baelor, just had its ratings in for both the U.S. and U.K. In the U.S. the show held steady at 2.7 million viewers with only a small drop for the additional screening to a total of 3.4 million. This, despite the most-viewed NBA final in 16 years! That sounds good to us, and we’ll take it. It’ll be very interesting to what sort of draw next week’s season finale will have.

In the U.K., the picture is a little less rosy, but we’ve found that the U.K. viewership figures show remarkable amounts of variability: 507,000 viewers, down from 523,000 last week. The numbers for Episode 7’s total viewing are also a bit down on the previous episode, episode 6, with a total of 1.556 million viewers. Thanks to WyvernWood for those figures!