Westeros

Thanks to the Kosmopolis International Literature Fest, George R.R. Martin is involved in a Q&A in Barcelona, and it’s being live streamed. Apparently A Dance with Dragons is part of the focus on the conversation,  so there may be spoilers for that novel. Also, bear in mind that Martin’s answers are translated and repeated in Spanish, so it takes a bit longer to get from one question to the next. Once a video archive is available, we’ll link it, just as we have been with others of Martin’s appearances in Spain via the So Spake Martin collection:

It’s been a week since the news that actor Iwan Rheon (best known for his role in the first three series of the BAFTA Award-winning Misfits) looks to have scored a role in Game of Thrones, but it wasn’t officially confirmed… until now, in any case, as HBO indicates the following:

So, there you have it. It’ll be interesting to see him entering the mix on the show, as he’s a very promising young actor.

Via GoldDerby, it looks like our collective head-scratching over the Best Drama submission choices made by HBO for the Emmy Awards must have been echoed somewhere in the offices of the Game of Thrones production… because, in a somewhat unusual step, HBO has revised the episodes it is submitting for consideration in the Best Drama Category:

• Tape A: “What is Dead May Never Die” & “Garden of Bones”
• Tape B: “The Old Gods and the New” & “A Man Without Honor”
• Tape C: “Blackwater” & “Valar Morghulis”

Peter Dinklage has also adjusted his episode of choice to “Blackwater”. All in all, that’s obviously a stronger slate for the Emmy voters to look at. While the show is, realistically, out contention for Best Drama, some would argue that Dinklage’s revised choice improves his chances of repeating his win from last year (although, as we previously noted, no supporting actor has won back-to-back victories in the last 16 years, so the odds are against him repeating.)

One of the things we’ve learned since the Emmy nominations were announced is that the drama series nomination has a particular process (see the last paragraph), namely that three pairs of episodes are selected, and these sets are randomly distributed among the voters. It left us pondering which pairs of episodes HBO had sent out…

This was just announced today: the World Fantasy Convention has announced that this year’s World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievementwill go to George R.R. Martin and (the very excellent) Alan Garner. It’s an award that’s been given to a number of notable writers in the past, including Terry Pratchett, Jane Yolen, Peter Beagle, Urusula K. LeGuin, and more.

More information about the recipients can be found at the World Fantasy Awards site.

Garner is one of the writers Martin has admired, so it’s particularly nice that they are receiving the award in the same year. In fact, Martin has a noble house named after the British author, with the arms referencing his enigmatic, unforgettable novel The Owl Service (Order: Amazon US, Amazon UK).

(Thanks to @olafkeith for noting this to us.)

For those who are fans of Misfits, the British comedy-drama about a group of delinquents who manifest super powers (Michelle Fairley had a role in its first season), a bit of interesting news cropped up over night: actor Iwan Rheon, who played the moody, shy Simon Bellamy (a character who was one of the most complex storylines in the series, and one that ended with series 3—he won’t be returning for the 4th), has an updated CV —updated within the last two weeks, in fact—noting himself as having a role in Game of Thrones.

And what role does the CV reveal for him?

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.