Westeros

This is the fifth post in the series, and possibly the penultimate one (we do have one prophecy left to discuss from the previous entry), at least for this week as we’re still on vacation and recording isn’t too appealing just now. Want more? Leave some suggestions in comments regarding plot-related matters and we’ll consider them!

In any case, in this entry, we discuss “little mysteries”—various little puzzles or things that weren’t necessarily clear to readers on their initial read, or even on re-read. Hope you enjoy it!

For more videos in our A Dance with Dragons discussion series, visit our Youtube page.

UPDATED: HBO has since confirmed to us that the deal’s done, contracts signed, and Ms. Murray is on board. Exciting!

Thanks to a tip via our forum, it looks likely that the role of Gilly—daughter of the brutish wildling warrior named Craster—has been cast, with British actress Hannah Murray in the role.

Murray starred in the first two seasons of the acclaimed, controversial British series Skins (alongside Joe Dempsie, aka Gendry) before leaving the show to study at Cambridge.

While we seek confirmation from HBO, here’s an interview with Murray which also features a handful of clips from Skins (which is NSFW at one point, unless you’re wearing headphones or are quick with the mute button):

We know a lot of fans who’ll be pleased by this news. Following last night’s clue, George R.R. Martin has confirmed the widely-accepted guess that Roy Dotrice is to play Wisdom Hallyne, a senior member of the Guild of Alchemists, known as the pyromancers for their most renowned work, which involves fire (and, specifically, the alchemical “substance” popularly called wildfire).

As we reported last night, Dotrice was originally cast in the role of Grand Maester Pycelle, but for health reasons had to depart before filming began.

Below are a few clips of the actor, both in the past on Beauty and the Beast and more recently, including a sample of his audio reading work:

The Television Critics Association had their award ceremony last night, and we’re pleased to report that HBO’s Game of Thrones has won the “Outstanding New Program” category, beating out such early favorites such as the popular The Walking Dead and even HBO’s much-lauded Boardwalk Empire.

The show was nominated in three other categories, “Outstanding Acheivement in Drama”, “Program o the Year”, and “Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Drama” for Peter Dinklage, awards which were won by Mad Men, Friday Night Lights for its final season, and Jon Hamm of Mad Men (very deservedly, if we may say so—brilliant work from him last season).

This, we presume, is a hint for the role of Wisdom Hallyne, chief of the Guild of Alchemists of King’s Landing; they’re also known as pyromancers, and are best known for producing “the substance”, called wildfire, which (we hope!) will be on vivid display next season!

So, something to do with Australia—an Australian actor presumably.

UPDATE: Thanks to speculation over at Winter is Coming, we think we know who this is: none other than fan-favorite audio book reader (and veteran actor) Roy Dotrice, who was originally cast in the role of Grand Maester Pycelle until health issues intervened. We’ve heard he recovered well, and certainly well enough to continue his tour de force audio book readings after much demand for his return.

How do the clues fit? We thought “down under” meant Australia…. but when someone mentioned his name in connection to “voice of everyone” (he’s set a world record with the number of characters he’s voiced in the unabridged audio books), it clicked. In Beauty and the Beast, he played Father—“the voice of wisdom”—for the people who lived “down under” New York City in maze of tunnels.

Now fingers crossed that this is, indeed, the case!

We’ve got another great interview to share, this time with Ed Bruce of Screen Scene, a Dublin-based post production company that offers a wide range of services, many of which HBO’s Game of Thrones availed themselves of. Among them? Their visual effects department, which produced just over half of the effects shots for the first season. Some truly eye-popping images in their visual breakdown. Ed discusses a range of topics revolving around Screen Scene’s participation in the first season. Some interesting—and sometimes surprising (they removed Bran’s torso!)—details, and some frank discussion of what was and was not possible to do within the constraints they had.

A great interview, and we hope we’ll see more of Screen Scene’s work in the second season!

Read the interview!

One of the cool things that has developed pretty much from the get-go with the fandom at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum and its predecessors on EESite and EzBoard is a very robust Literature sub-forum, where others works of literature (both in and out of genre) are discussed by passionate readers and fans.

The forum’s won some recognition in this regard, both from fellow fans (Patrick St. Denis of the popular Fantasy Hotlist review site has repeatedly named it his favorite discussion forum on the web) and from authors (a number of whom have joined the forum over the years, either for a few brief words or for a longer period of enagement, such as Richard K. Morgan, R. Scott Bakker, Joe Abercrombie, Jon Sprunk, Daniel Abraham, Brandon Sanderson, Scott Lynch, and ... well, more; not GRRM, though, we should add!)

Now, we’re adding one more author to the list: Patrick Rothfuss, the author of the very popular “Kingkiler Chronicles”, starting with his award-winning The Name of the Wind and this year’s NY Times #1 Bestseller The Wise Man’s Fear. Rothfuss is, suffice it to say, quite a well-regarded author on our forum, and in the general community, and with good reason: a talented writer with a knack with prose, a complicated lead character, and a richly-realized setting, Rothfuss is among a “new” crop of fantasy authors who are pushing fantasy into the mainstream.

Rothfuss will be visiting the forum for our first ever author chat, on August 6 at 4 PM Eastern (that’s 1 PM Pacific, 3 PM Central, 9 PM UK, 10 PM CET), at the forum. The thread where questions can be posted and Patrick will give his responses can be found here, and will open up a few minutes early so as to allow fans to get in a few initial questions for Patrick to work with. The only ground rule for the discussion is that Patrick would prefer not to have spoilers from his series (or GRRM’s, actually!) in the thread, so bear that in mind when posting questions.

Joining the forum is easy, and it supports Facebook and Twitter logins, so please, feel welcome! and start thinking up questions for the chat!

Meant to post our fourth in a series of discussions concerning George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons yesterday, but RL got in the way. So, here it is! This time around, we tackle some of the prophecies—both old and new—and how events in the novel may (or may not) have fulfilled some of their conditions.

(This turns out, inadvertently, to be part 1 of 2—it seems someone [*coughcough*Elio*cough*] forgot to upload the second part and has since deleted it from his computer, so we’ll record a discussion of that last prophecy we wanted to discuss at a later date!)

College Humor envisions how a retro computer RPG inspired by HBO’s Game of Thrones might look… I would totally play this game, lets just say that.

Also: someone show this link to Dan Weiss!

And the casting news keeps coming: Winter is Coming gets the scoop on Jaqen H’ghar, the mysterious Lorathi prisoner that’s among Yoren’s recruits for the Night’s Watch. He was (sort of) glimpsed last season, as a shrouded and hooded figure sitting silently in a cage.

According to WiC, Jaqen will be played by German actor Tom Wlaschiha, who’s made a number of appearances in German film and television, and has since branched out into international productions, including films such as Valkyrie (with the show’s Melisandre, Carice van Houten!) and Munich. He’s had a brush with fantasy in German film Krabat, as well, so this won’t be entirely new to him. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

See below for a short film featuring Wlaschiha, and a link to a long showreel showcasing some of his work in series such as The Deep (with Minnie Driver) and Brideshead Revisted.

Last week we shared VFX breakdowns from the first season of Game of Thrones, produced by the lead VFX vendor during the filming, BlueBolt.

Now we’ve a second breakdown video, this time from another VFX vendor who was involved in the process, Irish post-production and VFX house Screen Scene. By the looks of this show-reel, they handled a few quite memorable sequences, including Bran’s climb, the sprawling Lannister encampment, and various bits of CGI-enhanced violence that are really quite amazing when you look at how they were done.

Screen Scene has some details of their work on the project at their site—it looks like they’re a very full-featured post facility indeed, having not only worked on VFX, but also color timing, editing, sound production, and more.

Ed Bruce, Screen Scene’s VFX supervisor, notes that Screen Scene produced 350 of the circa 686 effects shots across the season, working in collaboration with the series VFX supervisor Adam McInnes.  We hope to get in a short interview with Mr. Bruce about Screen Scene’s work on the show, to release in a few day, but until then, feast your eyes on the videos below, the first being the specific breakdown, the next being a more general showreel (featuring a lot of Game of Thrones footage) set to Johnny Cash’s “When the Man Comes Around”:

HBO’s opening the floodgates (well, cracking them open a wee bit, in any case!) with casting news. Hot on the heels of EW getting the confirmation on Asha Greyjoy (renamed “Yara” for the show), HBO’s given us wee scoop: the indentity of Qartheen merchant-prince Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who will provide Daenerys shelter and support in the ancient, decadent city of Qarth…

For a price.

Cast in the role is British actor Nonso Anozie (Facebook page), a noted theatre actor who set a record for the youngest actor to play the part of “King Lear” in a professional production (at the age of 22 or 23), and won the Ian Charleson Award in 2005 for his performance in the titular role in the Cheek by Jowl production of “Othello”. The first Charleson award winner? Jennifer Ehle, who played the part of Catelyn Stark in the pilot. Fine company! And for that matter, we see over at IMDB that Anozie has also appeared in the forthcoming Conan the Barbarian 3D film with Jason Momoa, aka Khal Drogo. I wonder if he had a chance to talk with Momoa about the show?

Below, see Anozie in a trailer for the film Cass, in which he plays the title role, and an interview with the actor:

British actress Gemma Whelan was first reported to have been cast in the role of Theon Greyjoy’s older sister back in July, but that has not been officially confirmed…

Until now, that is, thanks to James Hibberd and EW. They also confirm a choice that is bound to be controversial among some fans: Asha’s name has been changed to what somewhat less mellifluous “Yara”, out of concern that her name otherwise sounds too much like “Osha”. As some have noted, “Yara” might be readily confused with “Arya” by some, so it doesn’t seem a great choice in that regard. Also, notably, Osha’s name seems to have never been properly used in the TV series—it’s only mentioned outside of the show, in extra material or casting notes—so, all considered, we might have preferred it if they re-dubbed Osha and let Asha keep her name.

Still, in the grand scheme of things, it probably doesn’t matter too much. Though we would have loved it if they named her Disa or Katla…

Below’s a showreel showing Ms. Whelan in several roles:

Continuing our discussion series of videos concerning A Dance with Dragons, this time around Linda and I turn our attention to the topic of… Ashara Dayne. A favorite topic, actually, because we do love Dorne and the Daynes have always held a special mystique from the very first book. This new novel has potentially exploded some long-held beliefs of many fans, and we try and provide some insight into why that may be.

Please feel free to comment, but beware, spoilers! For more discussion about the series (and pretty much every topic under the sun), give the A Song of Ice and Fire forum a try!

The So Spake Martin  collection of interview links, correspondence, and more has been growing by leaps and bounds of late. Today, we’ve added two new entries: a link to an excellent interview at the Sydney Morning Herald, and a transcript of a Q&A with Martin at the Redwood City signing, led by Tad Williams. The transcript comes by way of his Twitter account and his wife, Deborah Beale.