Tag: Game of Thrones

April 1, 2013

Game of Thrones – Valar Dohaeris

I don’t speak the formal, latin-like language of Westeros, I can barely follow the common banter but a quick google of the phrase that gave this episode its title revealed its meaning and more. No, thankfully I wasn’t spoiled on anything but i did find out quite quickly that there are a large number of people around who seemingly do speak the language of this world, that they know this phrase well enough to have it embroidered on shirts, marked on mugs and needle-inked into their own skin alongside its twin ‘Valar Morghulis’; the phrase used as the title of the second season’s finale, the episode preceding this one.

It took me a bit of research to notice the clever little connection that the show’s creators had crafted here, research that most viewers won’t indulge in but for those tattooed fans whom the nod was surely aimed at this kind of attention to detail is what makes Game of Thrones such a demanding and demanded adaptation. Honestly this morning I could have taken or left it, still not sold on the show by the end of the second season, but this return to the world of Westeros was a much relished event for many and I may be starting to see why, though my skin will not serve similarly unless the show addresses the strong structural issues that have stuck with it over the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

13 comments
March 5, 2013

Vikings – Pilot

Vikings begins with a time-stamp, setting the scene as somewhere in the Eastern Baltic, 793 A.D. It is then a show set in the deep past but more specifically it is set in our actual past. This fact is fitting given that it is the first scripted drama produced by the History Channel – yet another network making a name for themselves in the fictional side of the industry; how many can there be? – but strangely enough it is also what sets it apart from most of the other period shows out there. Game of Thrones is the obvious go to comparison given the swords and stratagems content of both shows but for both better and worse Westeros isn’t our world; Spartacus too is based on a figure from a famous legend, one set within our world yes, but a fiction nonetheless.

Vikings though appears on the surface to be built on a foundation of facts, recreating a part of our real world in the same way as one of the network’s documentaries might, just within the structure of a story. It is education through entertainment, but don’t let that first E-word offend you; Vikings never lets you feel like you’re learning, it imparts information too covertly for that, hiding it in sweeping vistas, swordfights and sex-scenes. To my mind stories are some of the best teachers around – I know that I have learnt more from fictional books than text books – and so this is an approach that I wholeheartedly endorse, especially since the subject is such a fascinating one.

Read the rest of this entry »

9 comments
June 5, 2012

Game of Thrones – Valar Morghulis (Filthsposition)

Another year, another Game of Thrones finale. Forgive this one being WAYYYYY too long, it is the finale after all. Try to cut me some slack and read/discuss.

I’ll start with the worst of it-

Read the rest of this entry »

7 comments
June 4, 2012

Game of Thrones – Valar Morghulis

(Apologies if this review seems as if written in tounges. Winter has come and I am high on a head cold / medication combo. You have been warned.)

OK, so I may not have loved this second season of the show but I am very much looking forward to the third after the reveals of that final minute. The problem though is that Thrones is much better at forming these promises than it is at delivering on them; so it may well be that we won’t see anything as awesome as that, or even these exact plots themselves, again until the next season finale. Now, on that note it has become something of a trend that I write these reviews by discussing the title, though I might have to give that approach a miss this week because…well…what I don’t know what the hell this title actually means. So instead I will try and view the abundance of arcs through the prism of another obvious first impression, the fact that this is the shows season finale.

All year I have been saying that this show is so strangely structured that I never had any real idea of what to expect from the coming weeks ep: what the storyline would be, which characters it would feature and to what lengths they would take them. With this being a finale the mystery was multiplied: would it attempt to build up from the battle scenes of last week (a seemingly impossible task to set oneself) and offer an action packed  instalment, would it be a traditional HBO show style quiet denouement that warms us down after a daring penultimate episode or follow in the footsteps it itself set in the snow last season and stand predominantly as a prologue for the stories still to come?

Read the rest of this entry »

3 comments
May 28, 2012

Game of Thrones – Blackwater (Filthsposition)

This was a pretty good episode. Not my favorite of the season (that still remains Ep 6- “The Old Gods and the New), but I was by no means disappointed. I personally felt that it generated an impressive amount of spectacle, suspense and emotional investment. As such, the hour felt vital and compelling for me in the moment. For that reason, I would hesitate to call the episode ‘pointless’ the way Deer did. That said, I can understand why he described it as such. I figure that it is because the status quo was more or less restored by the episode’s end, instead of the whole show being fundamentally altered the way it was in Season 1′s penultimate episode ‘Baelor’. While ‘Baelor’ was indeed a better episode from a better season, I thought there was still a lot to love in Thrones tonight. The lack of game-changing consequences for anyone in King’s Landing may have taken the wind from the sails of ‘Blackwater’ a bit, but I still think the hour delivered big-time as a self-contained, super-focused roller-coaster ride.

Read the rest of this entry »

4 comments
May 28, 2012

Game of Thrones – Blackwater

Over the past few weeks I have made a big deal out of the admittedly ambiguous – to the point that some would say they’re meaningless – titles given to the episodes of Game of Thrones second season; discussing their potency as phrases, the way at they cast certain characters and the hint at the hidden themes inside that which they are used to name. I’ve discussed them even though none of those titles, hell not all of those titles combined are as big and as powerful and as utterly empty as this one, Blackwater. All season this has been the episode to look forward to, and not just because it was written by Game’s original author George R. R. Martin and directed by feature talent Neil Marshall but because the tale those two would be telling was to be a series defining one.

When the show was first picked up we all heard via osmosis – I did then and still do avoid all series spoilers, but that doesn’t stop information from flowing through – that there were two big moments in the first two books that would either sell you on the series or soil it for you; the death of Ned was one and Blackwater the other. The first of these came to me as a complete shock and succeeded most strongly in solidifying a show that I was already enjoying as something truly special; Blackwater comes at a time when I am questioning that belief and the quality of the show as a whole. For everyone watching this was a massively hyped moment, but for me it was also make or break: did the episode live up to those expectations? Did it redeem all of the wistful wheel spinning of the season to date? Could it ever?

Read the rest of this entry »

11 comments
May 21, 2012

Game of Thrones – The Prince of Winterfell (Filthsposition)

I was the odd one out on this site in being largely dissatisfied with last’s week’s installment of Game of Thrones. Now I am the odd one out again. While some found this week’s episode weak, I for one thought it was F*CKING FANTASTIC. Sure, nothing big happened, but I felt that this episode was pretty much as good as any episode with nothing big happening should be (I cannot say the same for some of the other similarly-natured episodes this season).

For starters, I felt the economy of screen-time here was fantastic. We touched base with almost every character, but as far as I’m concerned none of the scenes felt rushed or insignificant. Some scenes which seemed insignificant on the surface were actually very much the opposite. An example of this would be Robb’s sex scene, which Deer understandably confused for another scene of pointless nudity, but which should actually directly lead to some of the most awesome moments in Season 3. Every minute was well utilized to more clearly define either the stakes and/or the direction of almost every character’s situations. It’s finally a set-up episode that ACTUALLY sets stuff up (in ways both obvious and subtle). While some could make a strong argument that the season should have done all the set-up (and done it well) by the halfway mark of the season, my response would still have to be ‘better late than never’.

Read the rest of this entry »

11 comments
May 21, 2012

Game of Thrones – The Prince of Winterfell

And so we are given another title that applies wonderfully to many of the shows characters and not at all to the episode in question. The title of Prince could apply to the lost little lost leader Bran who is assumed by the people of Winterfell to now be a burnt corpse ( and in the most stretched out twist revelation ever we are expected to go along with them until the final seconds of this weeks episode, screw SPOILERS that turn was obvious a week ago), it could also stand for Theon, the lost son who has taken the city in question off of one father figure on the behest of another betraying a brother or a few in the process, ensuring that this inter-familial spite stays strong in the blood of the next generation; finally we have Jon Snow who has in the past bestowed the title upon himself in an effort to regain respect and keep his head and has that call echoed this week, but each time that he does so the sounds slip right off him, that surname of his confounding any and all of his efforts to excel, as Arya’s gender do hers. So who then was phone prince?

Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment
May 15, 2012

Game of Thrones – A Man Without Honor (Filthsposition)

Deer’s fantastic summary of the themes of the episode were terrific. Unfortunately I enjoyed his write-up much more than the actual episode itself. While the themes of the episode were more cohesive and well-handled than any other installment of the season, somewhat paradoxically this was also my least favourite episode of the season. It just wasn’t cinematic enough nor vital enough, considering how late in the season we are. Last week’s installment seemed to be a major step in the right direction, but this week has taken two steps backward.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments
May 14, 2012

Game of Thrones – A Man Without Honor

What’s in a name? Given how important names are in the world of this show, how much having this one or the other affects your stance, position and fate as well as your family ( and how much the fans revolt over the changing of them), it’s funny how the names given to episodes are almost always irrelevant, or rather imprecise. Ghost of Harrenhal for example would apply more to this one than the last: there was that thrilling talk of the halls history had by Arya and her replacement patriarch – one that evoked the exposition of the shows early days – and the frenzied search for the missing man behind the mysterious murder that both tie into it, whereas the actual episode didn’t connect at all. All of that to say that these titles are usually disposable, though this weeks was different; not only was it relevant but it really tied the room together.

Read the rest of this entry »

16 comments
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 197 other followers