Game of Thrones and other tv news items
Jun. 7th, 2014 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. EW announced that two interesting female actors have been added to the Star Wars cast. The actress who portrays Brienne on Game of Thrones, and the actress who recently won the best-supporting Oscar for 12 Years a Slave. This movie is beginning to intrigue me - based solely on its cast.
2. A handful new tv series, which were spot-lighted in EW, caught my interest:
* Scean Bean as a CIA agent, who has taken on so many roles, he no longer knows who he is and what he is, in LEGENDS. He plays three roles in it. Watching Scean Bean get a chewy role is intriguing in of itself. Bean last played Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, also known for the Sharpe films.
* The Strain - by Guillermo Del Toro ( the guy who did Pan's Labrynthe and various other horror flicks), and Carlton Cuse (one of the ex-Lost producers) - this is about vampirism as a parasitic viral outbreak in NYC, with a band of scientists fighting against it. Reminds me more of I AM LEGEND than Dracula, which is nice change of pace.
* Extant (Steven Spielberge produced) - Halle Barry plays a 47 year old astronaut who discovers she's pregnant after returning from a solo mission in space. She has a robot son.
* Tyrant - the new F/X series about man who returns with his family to a fictional and strife-ridden middle eastern country for his brother's wedding. Except it's run by his father, and ruled by his half crazed brother.
* The Left-Overs - 2% of the population disappeared three years ago, how has a small suburban area coped with these events?
* Welcome to Sweden - a semi-autobiographical tale about a man who moves with his wife to her home country, Sweden. By Greg Poehler, Amy Poehler's younger brother. Stars Lena Olin and Patrick Duffy, Greg Poehler and Illena Douglas, along with Swedish actors, Claes Mansson, Josephine Bornebusch. And the first season just finished airing in Sweden.
* Satisfaction - weirdly, USA network has decided to do a series about male prostitution. After discovering his wife of 18 years having sex with a male escort, suburban dad and investment banker, Neil, decides to try his hand at the world's oldest profession. Ie - he decides to become male escort. Talk about marital issues. It's described as a love story.
3. Finally caught up on Game of Thrones - which if you've read up to the mid-way point of Dance of Dragons...isn't really that suspenseful. They are actually following the books fairly closely in some respects. At least the major plot-points.
* They did, however, chose to bring Theon Greyjoy and Ramsey Snow's entire story from Feast of Crows and Dance of Dragon's forward for some reason or other. Guessing they didn't want the actor portraying Theon to take off on them before they could get around to airing it? OR maybe they were worried they wouldn't get around to airing it? (If the latter's the case - again, I wonder about these writers. I personally could have done without that particular story-thread, despised it in the books. It was amongst the reasons I stopped reading. I know some folks found the arc funny, I just found it to be tedious and depressing.)
* Best bits were by far Tyrion's scenes with Jamie, which weren't as prominent in the books, since Jamie didn't arrive until after the fight between the Mountain and the Viper. Speaking of? That was well-filmed and far more upsetting than it was in the books. Granted by that point, I'd gotten used to people being slaughtered. A lot of people die one after another in Book 3.
Here...I just like the Red Viper, Oberyn better. It's all in the casting, I suspect. And his sword dance was beautiful. The fight however was foreshadowed in the discussions between Ayra and The Hound. You pretty much know both men are dead by the end of it - if you paid attention to those discussions - regarding how a heavy sword is more powerful than a slight blade and how you have to go for the heart, but poison is quite effective by its own right. Also keep in mind, they don't call Oberyn the Viper for nothing.
The scene did however flash me back a bit to The Princess Bride. I am....You killed my sister, prepare to die. You killed my family, prepare to die.
* Loved, loved, loved the beetle monologue. And how it metaphorically describes the meaninglessness of war. At the end of the day, GRRM is a pacifist. His books are anti-war, depicting quite clearly how wars solve nothing and are endless power plays.
This is an anti-violence series, which I find somewhat fascinating and ironic. Since I'm not clear a lot of people get that.
* Also loved the interactions between the Hound and Ayra (another favorite bit from the books). Although I don't remember them actually making it as far as the Vale. Could be wrong about that. That is a hilarious bit though - where they are told that Lady Lyssa is dead, and the Hound looks crushed while Ayra bursts out laughing. I can't blame her - of course Lyssa is dead, the Hound can't win - he keeps taking her to family members only to discover they've been killed before she even arrives. Actually, at that point in the books, I was laughing. Every time a character went out on a quest to go find someone, I'd think, seriously, don't bother - by the time you find them, they'll either be dead or you will be.
* Lyssa's death was even better here than in the books. I remember that being a highlight in Storm of Swords, which did have a lot of deaths in it for a book about weddings. (Hence GRRM's joke about wanting to be a wedding planner.) She almost kills Sansa, only to have Little Finger push her through the moon door - which was karmic considering. The actress did a good job of making Lyssa dislikable, although...I wish she hadn't gone to that extreme. That's the problem with the books - some of the characters are a wee bit too one-dimensional. Kudos to Lena Headley for making Cersei three-dimensional in the series and half-way likable, in the books I found her impossible to like and one-sided.
Also kudos to Aiden Gillian for making Lord Baelish interesting, and three dimensional. He's creepy but fascinating. And that scene where Sansa tells "the truth" and he's not quite sure what she'll do, and knows full well that she has his life in her hands as she tells her tale - is brilliant. Both actors, Sansa and Baelish pull it off. It was the point in the books that I became interested in Sansa and enjoyed her story. She's figured out Baelish - he wants power like everyone else she's had to deal with. And see's her as a means towards it. As long as it keeps her alive and hopefully unharmed, she's willing to play along. She's not as dumb as she appears, or as innocent. He underestimated her. And that's why that scene is so brilliant, he realizes that he underestimated her during it.
There's more deaths to come, but no one I care about, okay that's not exactly true - there is one person that I liked who dies in the next two episodes...
* Jorah's spying on Dany, finally catches up to him. Although to be fair he'd stopped doing it ages ago, plus Robert Barratheon's pardon is sort of irrelevant now. As was the spying. But Dany still sees it as a betrayal and refuses to acknowledge that he'd changed and if he really had it in for her - she'd have been dead ages ago. I found this easier to deal with in the books - mainly because Jorah was less likabale in the books and somewhat creepy at times, with all his jealous leering and lusting after Dany.
Here? It's depressing, and I'm missing him already. Although I think he does still do a few major things for her and doesn't disappear completely from the story.
I didn't make it far enough into Dance of Dragons to know for certain what happened after this plot-point.
Season 5 is going to be Dance of Dragons and Feast of Crows. And if GRRM doesn't get that next book published...they may have to skirt further off books than they currently have.
2. A handful new tv series, which were spot-lighted in EW, caught my interest:
* Scean Bean as a CIA agent, who has taken on so many roles, he no longer knows who he is and what he is, in LEGENDS. He plays three roles in it. Watching Scean Bean get a chewy role is intriguing in of itself. Bean last played Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, also known for the Sharpe films.
* The Strain - by Guillermo Del Toro ( the guy who did Pan's Labrynthe and various other horror flicks), and Carlton Cuse (one of the ex-Lost producers) - this is about vampirism as a parasitic viral outbreak in NYC, with a band of scientists fighting against it. Reminds me more of I AM LEGEND than Dracula, which is nice change of pace.
* Extant (Steven Spielberge produced) - Halle Barry plays a 47 year old astronaut who discovers she's pregnant after returning from a solo mission in space. She has a robot son.
* Tyrant - the new F/X series about man who returns with his family to a fictional and strife-ridden middle eastern country for his brother's wedding. Except it's run by his father, and ruled by his half crazed brother.
* The Left-Overs - 2% of the population disappeared three years ago, how has a small suburban area coped with these events?
* Welcome to Sweden - a semi-autobiographical tale about a man who moves with his wife to her home country, Sweden. By Greg Poehler, Amy Poehler's younger brother. Stars Lena Olin and Patrick Duffy, Greg Poehler and Illena Douglas, along with Swedish actors, Claes Mansson, Josephine Bornebusch. And the first season just finished airing in Sweden.
* Satisfaction - weirdly, USA network has decided to do a series about male prostitution. After discovering his wife of 18 years having sex with a male escort, suburban dad and investment banker, Neil, decides to try his hand at the world's oldest profession. Ie - he decides to become male escort. Talk about marital issues. It's described as a love story.
3. Finally caught up on Game of Thrones - which if you've read up to the mid-way point of Dance of Dragons...isn't really that suspenseful. They are actually following the books fairly closely in some respects. At least the major plot-points.
* They did, however, chose to bring Theon Greyjoy and Ramsey Snow's entire story from Feast of Crows and Dance of Dragon's forward for some reason or other. Guessing they didn't want the actor portraying Theon to take off on them before they could get around to airing it? OR maybe they were worried they wouldn't get around to airing it? (If the latter's the case - again, I wonder about these writers. I personally could have done without that particular story-thread, despised it in the books. It was amongst the reasons I stopped reading. I know some folks found the arc funny, I just found it to be tedious and depressing.)
* Best bits were by far Tyrion's scenes with Jamie, which weren't as prominent in the books, since Jamie didn't arrive until after the fight between the Mountain and the Viper. Speaking of? That was well-filmed and far more upsetting than it was in the books. Granted by that point, I'd gotten used to people being slaughtered. A lot of people die one after another in Book 3.
Here...I just like the Red Viper, Oberyn better. It's all in the casting, I suspect. And his sword dance was beautiful. The fight however was foreshadowed in the discussions between Ayra and The Hound. You pretty much know both men are dead by the end of it - if you paid attention to those discussions - regarding how a heavy sword is more powerful than a slight blade and how you have to go for the heart, but poison is quite effective by its own right. Also keep in mind, they don't call Oberyn the Viper for nothing.
The scene did however flash me back a bit to The Princess Bride. I am....You killed my sister, prepare to die. You killed my family, prepare to die.
* Loved, loved, loved the beetle monologue. And how it metaphorically describes the meaninglessness of war. At the end of the day, GRRM is a pacifist. His books are anti-war, depicting quite clearly how wars solve nothing and are endless power plays.
This is an anti-violence series, which I find somewhat fascinating and ironic. Since I'm not clear a lot of people get that.
* Also loved the interactions between the Hound and Ayra (another favorite bit from the books). Although I don't remember them actually making it as far as the Vale. Could be wrong about that. That is a hilarious bit though - where they are told that Lady Lyssa is dead, and the Hound looks crushed while Ayra bursts out laughing. I can't blame her - of course Lyssa is dead, the Hound can't win - he keeps taking her to family members only to discover they've been killed before she even arrives. Actually, at that point in the books, I was laughing. Every time a character went out on a quest to go find someone, I'd think, seriously, don't bother - by the time you find them, they'll either be dead or you will be.
* Lyssa's death was even better here than in the books. I remember that being a highlight in Storm of Swords, which did have a lot of deaths in it for a book about weddings. (Hence GRRM's joke about wanting to be a wedding planner.) She almost kills Sansa, only to have Little Finger push her through the moon door - which was karmic considering. The actress did a good job of making Lyssa dislikable, although...I wish she hadn't gone to that extreme. That's the problem with the books - some of the characters are a wee bit too one-dimensional. Kudos to Lena Headley for making Cersei three-dimensional in the series and half-way likable, in the books I found her impossible to like and one-sided.
Also kudos to Aiden Gillian for making Lord Baelish interesting, and three dimensional. He's creepy but fascinating. And that scene where Sansa tells "the truth" and he's not quite sure what she'll do, and knows full well that she has his life in her hands as she tells her tale - is brilliant. Both actors, Sansa and Baelish pull it off. It was the point in the books that I became interested in Sansa and enjoyed her story. She's figured out Baelish - he wants power like everyone else she's had to deal with. And see's her as a means towards it. As long as it keeps her alive and hopefully unharmed, she's willing to play along. She's not as dumb as she appears, or as innocent. He underestimated her. And that's why that scene is so brilliant, he realizes that he underestimated her during it.
There's more deaths to come, but no one I care about, okay that's not exactly true - there is one person that I liked who dies in the next two episodes...
* Jorah's spying on Dany, finally catches up to him. Although to be fair he'd stopped doing it ages ago, plus Robert Barratheon's pardon is sort of irrelevant now. As was the spying. But Dany still sees it as a betrayal and refuses to acknowledge that he'd changed and if he really had it in for her - she'd have been dead ages ago. I found this easier to deal with in the books - mainly because Jorah was less likabale in the books and somewhat creepy at times, with all his jealous leering and lusting after Dany.
Here? It's depressing, and I'm missing him already. Although I think he does still do a few major things for her and doesn't disappear completely from the story.
I didn't make it far enough into Dance of Dragons to know for certain what happened after this plot-point.
Season 5 is going to be Dance of Dragons and Feast of Crows. And if GRRM doesn't get that next book published...they may have to skirt further off books than they currently have.
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no subject
Date: 2014-06-08 11:25 pm (UTC)Good on Jorah, I love the character and actor.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-08 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-08 11:58 pm (UTC)They've aged the kids more in the series than the books - sort of out of necessity. Sansa was 14 in the books, Jon about 16. Dany around 14 or 15.
Which is why the books have been critiqued as a bizzare coming of age story. The leads or protagonists are kids.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-09 12:02 am (UTC)