A Blog of Ice and Fire
We’ve gone and updated our episode guide for “Hardhome” with our book-to-screen breakdown—the analysis and video review, as well as the recap, will take a day or two more to get out. We’ve also added HBO’s videos (just two, this time around; usually it’s been four videos) for the episode in the Extras section.
Also, HBO’s released the trailer for episode 9, “The Dance of Dragons”. It’s worth watching, to say the least!
HBO has been sitting tight on releasing information on the finale of season 5, but it has now sent out a press release. See the details below, including the brief logline regarding the events of the episode:
Episode #50: “Mother’s Mercy” (season finale)
Debut: SUNDAY, JUNE 14 (9:00-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: June 14 (11:30 p.m., 2:00 a.m.), 15 (10:30 p.m.), 16 (9:00 p.m., 1:50 a.m.), 17 (2:25 a.m.), 18 (10:00 p.m.), 19 (9:00 p.m.), 20 (10:30 p.m.) and 26 (8:00 p.m.)
HBO2 playdates: June 15 (9:00 p.m.), 19 (2:30 a.m.), 20 (2:45 p.m.) and 21 (8:00 p.m.)
Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss; directed by David Nutter.
Following the airing of “The Gift”, we managed to get up the book-to-screen breakdown in our episode guide.
Since then, we’ve released two other parts of the guide. First up is our video review, which you can see below:
Last night, we also provided our written analysis of the episode, which touches some points that we didn’t cover in the video. You can find that here. The primary thing left is now our complete recap, which we’ll definitely do, but that particular part of our regular episode guide raises a question.
read on >>>Just a few days ago, we posted about the trailer being released for the fourth entry in Telltales Games’ Game of Thrones adventure, titled “Sons of Winter”. Now that episode’s available on Steam. We’ll be playing through it and giving it a review—as well as a brief look back at episode 3, which we weren’t able to review due to time constraints—in the coming days.
Another episode done, just three to go to wrap up the fifth season of Game of Thrones. We’ve now updated our episode guide for “The Gift” with our book-to-screen breakdown of the episode, as well as HBO’s post-episode videos which include an appearance from GRRM discussing the poisoner’s art as depicted by Oberyn Martell and his bastard daughter Tyene Sand.
Our video, written analysis, and detailed recap of the episode will follow in the next few days; we currently hope to get the video out first, this time around.
HBO has also released the preview for the next episode, “Hardhome”, which you can see below:
read on >>>We posted about the Coldplay/Game of Thrones Red Nose Day special “mockumentary” that aired last night, and now today Coldplay’s official Youtube channel as released the full piece. Filled with actors from the show and quite a bit of humor (some quite broad, some razor-sharp), it’s a fine way to spend slightly less than a quarter of an hour:
Highlights include Emilia Clarke going all out on a reggae piece, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau crooning the first romantic ballad concerning incest in Coldplay’s career, a creepy trio in Ewan Rheon, Charlotte Hope, and Alfie Allen, and of course Liam Neeson (yes, him) providing narration. Definitely a must-see!
Telltale Games has released a teaser trailer for the fourth episode in their Game of Thrones
Looks like it’ll be fun!
Today sees the airing of Red Nose Day, NBC’s charity event that will run from 8PM to 11PM eastern time. Packed with celebrities, the reason it has some special relevance to fans of Game of Thrones is the fact that a dozen members of the show’s cast will be on hand to take part in Game of Thrones: The Musical, a mockumentary-style spoof in collaboration with Coldplay. The internet near exploded with humor when Peter Dinklage first appeared in a teaser singing about all those who’ve died and the few who’ve survived, as seen below:
This was promptly followed by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau performing “Closer to Home”, Jaime’s ode to Cersei, which you can see below:
read on >>>
The closing event of “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” has stirred huge amounts of controversy among the viewership, as a lead character is subjected to a chilling, horrifying act of sexual violence.
For my part, this led to about 3 hours worth of discussion on Twitter with fellow fans of the novels who responded much more negatively than I did. It was AngryGOTFan who suggested we each do short videos discussing our respective views. And so Linda and I have a short video, not so much praising and defending the scene, because we had and still have issues with how it actually came about, but rather responding to some particular critiques which we took issue with.
Rather than linking the videos here, I’d recommend fans go visit AngryGOTFan’s website and watch both of the videos.
For those who want more in-depth, written discussions of the topic that share something of our view on the issue, see Amanda Marcotte’s piece at Raw Story, and Laura Bradley’s article at Slate.
And for those who missed it, we have posted our video review of the episode, which you’ll find in the episode guide, but we’ll embed it below at the point where we discuss the final segment of the episode:
read on >>>After much tiring work at a late hour, the book-to-screen breakdown—as well as HBO’s video extras for the episode—are now live on the “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” episode guide. The rest—the written analysis and the video review, will come out in the next day or two.
We’ve also included the short preview for episode 7, “The Gift”, courtesy of HBO.
While we’re traveling in Spain, it doesn’t stop us from trying to start off our episode guide!
To begin with the “Kill the Boy” guide features our book-to-screen breakdown, going into detail of some of the differences between the show and the novels (differences which are, it goes without saying, increasingly major; this show features a few very significant deviations or compressions). We also have HBO’s post-episode videos included in the Extras section.
Hopefully we’ll have the episode review up some time Monday, and the recap some time after. The video review, alas, will have to wait until later in the week, but until then, enjoy!
While Linda and I have been touring Barcelona and now the town of Osuna courtesy of the Spanish publisher of The World of Ice and Fire, Gigamesh, news concerning the title of the 9th episode—the penultimate episode of the season, in fact—came out thanks to HBO’s online schedule.
According to that schedule, the episode will be titled “The Dance of Dragons”. A very portentous title, that, and especially after the equally ominous “Hardhome”.
As it happens, because of our current state of travel, we’re uncertain how much review material we’ll be able to publish following the episode. We may just manage the Book-to-Screen breakdown on Monday, with the written review having to wait until Wednesday, and the video review after that. Our apologies!
One of the more divergent episodes of the season has concluded, and Westeros.org’s episode guide for “The Sons of the Harpy” is now live! Our usual detailed recap, book-to-screen breakdown, and analysis—plus extras from HBO —are all now available for your reading pleasure. We also just managed to get our review video up on Youtube, which means it’s still processing the higher definition options. For those who can’t wait, you’ll find the video below:
