Westeros

Back in March of last year, it was announced that Subterranean Press was going to normalize its limited edition of the A Song of Ice and Fire series by going back to the first two novels and publishing them; they had previously skipped those two, having taken over the license from the defunct Meisha Merlin. A few months later, we learned that Ted Nasmith would illustrate the first novel, A Game of Thrones.

And now GRRM has announced the artist for A Clash of Kings: Richard Hescox, a past winner of the Chesley Award, among other honors. It’ll be awhile before we see his work, but in related news, George noted that Marc Fishman had turned in all of his art for the limited edition of A Dance with Dragons... and you can see most of it, or perhaps even all of it, at his Facebook gallery (naturally, spoilers galore!)

HBO’s Game of Thrones may not have had quite enough momentum to land the majority of awards it was nominated for in most of the awards given out these last couple of months… but the Visual Effects Society seems to feel differently. Nominated in three categories, the results are in. “Winter is Coming” won the Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Broadcast Program award, and “The Icewall” scored a win for Outstanding Created Environment in a Broadcast Program or Commercial.

The other category for animated characters in a broadcast program or commercial, where the dragons in “Fire and Blood” were nominated, lost out to this commercial from Canal+. Can’t argue with it, that’s a pretty terrific effect!

We’ve noted this via social media, but forgot to post about it: through February 27, Amazon.com is offering selected HBO programs at special prices, with savings of as muc has 60%. And, yes, Game of Thrones is part of it with 42% and 44% off the DVD and Blu-ray complete first season sets. It must be doing pretty well, because presently the Blu-ray is #3 on Amazon’s Blu-ray bestseller list.

But the other thing we noted at social media, as we were heading out for a day on the town, was that something had arrived: courtesy of HBO, Linda and I now have the Blu-ray set. We couldn’t watch any of it yesterday, but we’ve just started today and it’s as gorgeous and high-end a compilation as you can imagine. The very first thing we looked at? The Complete Guide to Westeros, and specifically the Histories & Lore section which I do believe were written by Bryan Cogman, whom we’ve interviewed previously.

SFX, the U.K.‘s biggest magazine devoted to science fiction and fantasy, runs a yearly award with readers of the magazine nominating among a number of categories. They’ve now announced the results, and they are very nice indeed: A Dance with Dragons took Best Novel (with Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes a well-deserved entry on the short list), and A Game of Thrones landed Best New Show while being shortlisted for Best TV Show (which, I suspect, is perenially won by Doctor Who).

And in a nice touch, SFX managed to get George to accept the award:

Redeye Chicago has a long interview with Natalie Dormer about her roles in The Fades,  Madonna’s W.E., and (of course) HBO’s Game of Thrones, where she plays the role of Margaery Tyrell.

The Game of Thrones questions start on page 3, where Dormer proves to be quite coy about her character and her role in the story. However, she does say this:

Not to say that the thirrd season is a go, but that at least pins down their views as to when Dormer’s likely to be doing the bulk of her work if a third season is commissioned by HBO… and given the numbers it’s starting to feel like less of a question of “if” and more of a question of “when” and “how many”, if there’s the chance that HBO will commit to a two-season order this next go-around.

EW’s Spoiler Room provides some new information regarding season 2 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, thanks to Alfie Allen, who plays Theon GreyjoyTheon Greyjoy. Getting a chance to chat with him at the SAG Awards, this is what he had to say about what he got to do, who he loved working with, and what his favorite episode is. Mild spoilers, if you really don’t want to know anything about the story lines or new characters for season 2!

To quote:

HBO has partnered with social TV app creator Miso for the Game of Thrones Superfan Sideshow Challenge, inviting fans of the TV series to view, vote on, and even create Sideshows, a “second screen” experience which allows fellow fans to watch an episode of the series while viewing the Miso for iPhone app to see interesting facts, notable quotes, and polls that get fans to become more engaged in what they’re watching. The top producers of Sideshows—according to votes through the app or

HBO got in touch with Linda and I, asking us for Westeros.org to help launch the availability of Game of Thrones Sideshows by providing one for episode 2, “The Kingsroad”, which we were all too glad to do. It was an interesting experience, and we hope the fans of the series find some of the details we point out interesting or amusing!

Big news for fans of replica memorabilia has just come down the pipeline: Valyrian Steel, producers of officially licensed weapons based on “A Song of Ice and Fire”, have nowannounced that they have secured the rights to produce weapons and armor based on HBO’s hit Game of Thrones series. The first items they plan to produce?

Best of all, Valyrian Steel means to continue to producing replicas based on the novels at the same time. They have a Night’s Watch Survival Kit in the pipeline, each one featuring a unique, hand-made obsidian dagger, and King Robert’s Warhammer is on the way to join Longclaw, Needle, and Ice. All the weapons made under the “A Song of Ice and Fire” license are done with the direct input of GRRM, unlike the Game of Thrones replicas.

The Huffington Post’s television critic Maureen Ryan runs an annual auction for charity called “Swag for Charity”, with items covering the range of swag she gets from studios and networks in her role as a critic. This year, GRRM contacted Mo and offered to throw in a number of signed books to the cause, so there’s an excellent chance to fans of his work to get their hands on a complete signed hardcover set of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, an amazing collection, the start of a superhero saga that’s lasted decades, and much more (including some Spartacus: Vengeance items).

Bid early, bid often, because all proceeds goes to deserving charities, including Partners in Health! The auction on the George R.R. Martin items ends on Sunday.

A new month, and now a new teaser from Atlus for XBox 360, PS3; PC forthcoming). This one features one of the new locations created for the game, Riverspring, the seat of House Sarwyck. One of the two playable characters from the game, the red priest Alester, hails from there.

The teaser certainly seems to be suggesting that political intrigues and currents are going to be an important part of the game’s narrative. More information about the RPG can be found at the official site, and in our earlier report.

That’s what Kit Harington teased to MTV’s Kara Warner at the SAG red carpet.  You can watch the video (US only) of the discussion below:

A write-up of the interview can be found at MTV’s site, for those who can’t see the video.

Thanks to Cunningham’s hint followed by Jolie Lash’s prompting, we now know what Cunningham was doing yesterday—getting interviewed by Access Hollywood about his role as Ser Davos Seaworth! In fact, there’s an excellent video interview with the actor (who’s awfully charming, if I may say so) as well, which covers the same material

Hopefully no one will seriously take issue with their changing the hand from which Davos’s is lacking a few joints!

(UPDATE:

James Hibberd at EW seems to have been thinking along the same lines, and has learned from a network representative that they’ve never had a piece of online promotional content generate so many hits (now standing at some 3.5 million) in so short a time. Amazing.)

The eager fans of HBO’s hit series who flocked to the “Shadows” teaser is quite amazing. A day and a half since it premiered, and Youtube presently reports that it’s been viewed no less than 2,296,806 times. That’s… well, a lot! The intensity of anticipation among fans of the series is growing as we’re about two hit just two months away from the premiere on April 1st (April 2nd in the UK and Central Europe).

In fact, the numbers suggest that the show has been steadily climbing all around, not just in the perception of the fandom on the internet.

We had an inkling of this awhile back, but now it’s official: an enhanced e-book of A Game of Thrones has come out from the UK’s Harper Collins Voyager, containing some really cool features that add to the experience such as a glossary of characters, a dynamic map tracking characters’ movements from chapter to chapter (note: the web-accessible version seems buggy, but one assumes it’s working just fine in the app), and exclusive audio clips from the audio book read by Roy Dotrice (who received a Guiness Book of World Records entry for most voices by an individual in a single audio book).

The e-book is an iOS exclusive, at least at this time, and is sold only from the UK bookstore.

Here’s the full details:

Although the ensemble cast of Game of Thrones struck out for “Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Dramatic Series”—losing to sibling Boardwalk Empire, who had taken the award last year—it was not all for naught for the show. Earlier in the day, it was announced on the red carpet that the show took the award for “Outstanding Perfomance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series”, which is certainly well-deserved when you consider how many stunts went into the series. Congratulations all around to the stunt team! Full results can be found at the Screen Actors Guild Awards page.

The nice thing about the ensemble being nominated, it must be said, is the fact that so many of the actors—especially the younger actors—turned up at the award ceremony. Here’s a recap of who was there:

• Kit Harrington was there, and was even featured in a red carpet interview.
• Emilia Clarke looked lovely in a Chanel dress from the Fall 2012 collection. There’s even a poll about the look and what fans thought of it.
• Alfie Allen looked relaxed with his open collar.
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau was on hand, too!
• Jason Momoa and wife Lisa Bonet were there as well, and were glimpsed on camera… but it doesn’t look as if they managed a red carpet photo. From what we’ve read from one of HBO’s publicity people, the photo line was quite horrendous and many actors chose to skip it.