HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

It's funny how Tobias Menzies is never gonna not be Brutus

Hmmn I guess they skip the Reek part in Winterfell. Meh.

yeah benjen is somewhat interesting, mainly ppl were interested in cold hands, who is mysterious and awesome and has been around awhile so if he does pop up here in some similar scene in the books definitely not deus ex machina. martin has said that benjen isn't cold hands though so who knows what's going on, they've definitely gone that route in the show. they gave some of strong belwas' stuff to daario (sadly) and daario doesn't look remotely like how anyone pictured him so god knows there's precedent.

btw, and i say this as someone who had little interest in fantasy prior and has little interest in reading fantasy now tbh, but i really do recommend the books. super fun and as quick to read as any popular fiction (i'd say you can read a book covering a season or two seasons in less time than it would take you to watch it). ppl rag martin's prose but it's at least as well written as say harry potter ie it's not stendhal but it's good enough. if you're looking for some beach books to read i'd highly recommend the first three, the third one in particular is one of the most entertaining books i've ever read. the last two are fine, alot of the hate they get is due to structural issues and the relatively long delay in getting them out. they don't move the plot forward as much as you might want, very much cleaning up what went before and setting up what's ahead, but if at that point you're enjoying it enough to nerd out on the wider world etc you'll enjoy them i think.

Jaime said Bronn's name in the last ep so I assume we're gonna see him soon. I miss the Bronn and Tyrion hijinx, but I'll take what I can get.

idg what martin's plan for benjen was/is if he isn't helping out bran.

who do u think will have the best post-got career?

Iwan Rheon is either going to be in everything or he'll never work again

sophie turner is very pretty and she's jean grey now which means she'll get enough steady blockbuster work to do other things, could see her in keira knightly type roles in a few years or taking roles emma watson passes on. if she can sing i could see her being ariel whenever disney gets around to making a live action version of little mermaid. kit harington had a shot w/ some kind of swords and sandals pic a couple of years back and it tanked. i can see jaime lannister (i'm not trying to spell that dude's name from memory) doing more romcom type stuff, popping up as a villain in some other movies. varys would be my go to for any sydney greenstreet type roles in the future.

varys was in that "salmon fishing in the yemen" movie (or whatever it was called) and it took me half the movie to recognize him.

ppl rag martin's prose but it's at least as well written as say harry potter

No way dude. I'm no Potter 4 Life fan, but I have read all those books, and wanted to read all those books (along with my kid), and those things are models of creativity, clarity and concision, even when she goes long (and especially compared to most kid-lit). The most indulgent it gets is the last book, but there she's on a clear mission to wrap things up at least. I'd put Martin somewhere on par with Stephen King: not incompetent, per se, but badly in need of editing, imo, and more indulgent. He's so tied up in the details of world building (which is cool), but he also keeps expanding said world when he should be working more on characters that go deeper than cartoons. Then again, when you keep killing people off it's hard to develop your characters. And when you keep bringing people back from the dead it's sort of tricky, too.

kit harington had a shot w/ some kind of swords and sandals pic a couple of years back and it tanked.

That was the Pompeii movie, right? He seems like a bigger deal now than when that came out.

He was in that funny tennis riff with Andy Samberg.

http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2015522/rs_560x415-150622112142-1024-7-days-in-hells.jpg

o man i forgot that, yeah i loved 7 days in hell and he was pretty great in that. i can never gage who's gonna have the careers after these things anyway, i thought for sure sawyer from lost was on his way to big time stardom of some sort.

last thing i saw sawyer in was in MI:4 and he lasted about two minutes. i guess he's on that new show 'colony' with what's her face from walking dead/prison break. it's weird who ends up as a star from tv shows, true. who have been the biggest stars to have been primarily known for TV and then completely turn into A-list movie actors in the past couple decades? clooney probably #1....woody harrelson #2? i'm sure i'm forgetting someone.

i want to put my money on walton goggins for being the new warren oates, he's even got the teeth for it. some wise director will give him an 'alfredo garcia' type role one of these days.

Chris Pratt.

yeah Goggins has a future I think

Rowling's prose is terrible imo, what I've seen of GRRM's is quite different but still bad.

You really think her prose is terrible? I think it's strong, especially for a book aimed for kids. (And god knows GRRM lacks that excuse).

slogging through book number 4 at the moment it's very clearly not at all a problem for my daughter, who loves it, so I am happy to indulge her. but from my grumpy adult POV yeah her adherence to a very very strict structure for everything - from the uniform plotting of every single book in the exact same way right down to the sentence structure - drives me fucking insane. "It is *so repetitive*", said this poster as he [insert action] while [insert other action]. There's very little interiority to the characters, her descriptive powers are workmanlike, her world populated with stock tropes and unexamined politics, I really don't like it.

GRRM's excuse is that he's writing for nerds with no taste.

thought it was that he's hungry

Dinner is coming.

It's funny how Tobias Menzies is never gonna not be Brutus

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, June 1, 2016 8:08 AM (1 hour ago)

ehnh, I only saw Rome after I saw him play a virtuous yet embattled government minister in MI-5

I love Walton Goggins ...

if they do a True Detective Season 3, I would very much like W Goggins to star in it

who have been the biggest stars to have been primarily known for TV and then completely turn into A-list movie actors in the past couple decades? clooney probably #1....woody harrelson #2? i'm sure i'm forgetting someone.

― nomar, Wednesday, June 1, 2016

http://www.flickfilosopher.com/wptest/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/brucewillis2.gif

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-cxKRcIgAAwvV6.jpg

that's al bundy in the first pic but who's that in the second? val kilmer?

also i didn't know the guy who played al bundy had a big career outside of playing al bundy!

Goggins is very great in American Ultra, reminded me of a young Bill Paxton.

If we're going to nitpick "last couple of decades," their TV shows went off the air 27 and 25 years ago, respectively.

But anyway the real answer is "Will Smith." Or more recently Ryan Gosling.

i started reading a game of thrones. when cersei is introduced, it says she's accompanied by "her younger children" because you had to know she didn't have children older than herself.

everything after season 1 has felt like the second part in a trilogy -- still reacting to the events of season 1, with no resolution in sight.

I'm with Shakey here on Rowling's prose style. The first few books everyone speaks like this: "it's the blah blah blah, isn't it?" Drove me fucking insane. The 4th book is the worst, bloated, needed serious editing. She dials it down and gets better after that and the last few books, like the last few movies, are the best of the bunch.

everything after season 1 has felt like the second part in a trilogy -- still reacting to the events of season 1, with no resolution in sight.

This is a good point and pretty defensible I think. Ned's execution is the end of Act One. I think Jon's assassination was the end of Act Two, though.

The first few books everyone speaks like this: "it's the blah blah blah, isn't it?"

omg yes. and so much expository wizardsplaining dialogue. like just in case you missed something that happened, don't worry, a few paragraphs later some character will recapitulate it.

there are no second acts in Westerosi lives

Believe it or not, Iwan Rheon is playing a young Hitler and he said he's worried about typecasting.

There's probably a good 20 actors I'd like to see more of. Like Oberyn and The Hound.

I thought Jon Hamm would be in more big stuff but looks like he enjoys doing comedy more than anything.

Hamm should've been cast as superman 10 years ago (he's kinda too old now but man he would've been perfect)

I feel that we've come full circle to "I hardly feel the need to be talked down to when I'm watching this boarding school whodunnit tits and dragons epic fantasy".

i started reading a game of thrones. when cersei is introduced, it says she's accompanied by "her younger children" because you had to know she didn't have children older than herself.

Some people just can't be talked down to, though.

Idris Elba's a good shout, too.

Half the cast of Freaks & Geeks as well.

Melissa McCarthy.

I'm with Shakey here on Rowling's prose style. The first few books everyone speaks like this: "it's the blah blah blah, isn't it?"

I agree and disagree. One of the more inspired aspects of the Harry Potter stuff, iirc, is that Rowling designed each book to be more or less to match Harry's age (and the age of the respective reader). So the themes and prose I want to say get a little more sophisticated (and also mopier) for the last few books. But again, it's also intended for kids, regardless, which GoT is not. Either way, I think she is a muuuuuuch better storyteller and writer of characters that you care about than GRRM (the better world-builder), not least because:

no resolution in sight.

Which I guess is my biggest problem with the GoT series. At least Rowling, with each book, has her characters in essence solving a self-contained mystery while building on and up to the broader mythology. GoT on the other hand is almost maddeningly without resolution, a trait made more frustrating by the repeated killing off (and bringing back) of major characters. Which would be hilariously subversive if the story were not in fact building to (what we presume to be) a clear resolution. Instead we get moored in details and detours while the story doesn't really move forward.

I think the resolution is quite close. Once the Starks are back in Winterfell, Kings Landing is under siege, Dany and Arya are back and the Walkers have got through the wall (all of which is a season off at most, you'd think), we're basically through to the big climactic events. Which will hopefully be really fucking big.

Unless they decide to overpuff the whole story with a load of Dorne/Iron Islands shit, or send Arya off to some other ridiculous far flung kingdom. Which I'd probably do to pad the story out if I had a franchise that was virtually guaranteed to make me $$$$$.

I can see why someone might see most of this show as part 2 of a trilogy. After the first season it's been a scramble of characters and locations, with a slow, slow, slow shift toward getting them back together for a common goal.

feel like the show's watershed moment was the red wedding

the big moment for me was the Viper vs the Mountain, in that it was one of the few things i didnt spoil for myself and it was incredibly tense viewing. every other shocking horrific moment i knew was coming.

Hodor moment?

Hodor moment did not nothing for me, tbh. Didn't help that he had nothing to do, and was basically stuck in that dead-end permanent nap-time of a location. Time travel paradox stuff does nothing to help the situation. (If he did not later die for Bran, he would never have become Hodor to begin with!)