en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/1149670 Comments by vacuouswastrel http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-blackfish-not-in-first-season/#IDComment88210451 I hope they don't just make Bronn win everything because "he's badass". Because a) the fact that Bronn won not through being badass but by being smarter and more cunning is one of the things that helps elevate the books above cliche and into realism, b) the fact that Bronn only took the fight because he'd out-thought his opponant makes it make sense that he doesn't take the duel in the third book - whereas if we knew 'Oh, Bronn's an incredible badass with a sword', we'd be wondering 'well why doesn't he try taking on [spoiler]?'; and c) if you DO make Bronn an incredible badass with a sword, you're eating into the badassery of other characters. There can only be so many incredible fighters, after all, and every passing mercenary should not be in that category. Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:43:13 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-blackfish-not-in-first-season/#IDComment88210451 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87957381 Please, please, please, for the love of all gods please, please not MORE American faux-Celtic music. I would be liable to punch the TV. There's nothing in the word 'fantasy' (nor in the words 'whistful', 'sad', 'moving' or 'historical', while we're at it) that mandates soft Irish piping. Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:15:29 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87957381 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87956901 Hey, Band of Brothers had a composer, but that didn't stop them using Purcell's "When I am laid in earth" for the concentration camp scene. And by 'using' I mean 'shamelessly stealing without giving any credit'. But yes, I think Purcell would be a great sound for the series. Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:12:11 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87956901 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87724268 It worked well on The Wire... but The Wire DID have a score. Every car that went by, half the houses... there was lots of music around. And even when there wasn't music, there was LOTS of noise. I don't think idea would work as well in the dark ages. The riders don't have ghettoblasters, and a lot of the time there'll be no background sound at all other than the sound of people walking/riding. [King's Landing scenes excepted, obviously]. But I agree that there doesn't have to be swelling strings every second. They can use long stretches of silence. Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:47:45 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87724268 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87664448 Er... well, if you're going to include film composers as well as TV people then Williams and Morricone are still alive and would take some beating! Other candidates would have to include Lalo Schifrin, David Shire, and John Barry, though all of them are better known for work a long time ago. Of modern people, you'd have to mention Thomas Newman, George Fenton, and James Newton Howard. And then of course there's Philip Glass himself - maybe not a 'soundtrack composer', but he does write soundtracks! Regarding the slow movements in BSG: ok, those three pieces aren't BAD. The first is bland and cliche (with that faux-celticness). The third is an ok kind-of-cliche film theme which I think works well in context as a cue, but isn't great music in its own right (and after you've heard the melody, you may as well stop listening). The second is the best of the three - in fact, I think it's good, but it's not really what I was talking about (too agitated). I think by far the best piece of music on the show was Glass' Metamorphosis One (which apparently they didn't even credit). Followed by the Watchtower orchestration/variation, and Gaeta's medieval solo. And then a whole load of really excellent filler and background music. Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:52:38 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87664448 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87574110 I don't know - but I'd have thought it would depend on the composer. The role of 'composers' in general seems to be very variable. Some are just minions - the guys in charge will shoot it all, and say what musical effects they want where, and maybe specify some tracks to be used. Others are massively important to the entire process. Famously, Morricone's scores were written before Leone's films were shot, and were even played on set to choreograph the movements and give the actors the right sense of tone. So I guess it might vary? Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:17:43 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87574110 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87571433 Oh, I'm sure lots of thought went into it. I'm not accusing him of being lazy - just of not being very good. Yes, he throws in some leitmotifs, but that's not much remission from the tedium. You can't go three minutes without thinking 'this is the LotR soundtrack', whichever three minutes you pick. In some ways it's like Schubert: he just can't bear to not make every second be a tune. Difference is, Schubert could use a different tune each time. [Also, most of those themes he uses are pretty similar to each other, at least in mood, and often in melody] Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:00:20 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87571433 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87567846 If you're going to resurrect someone, resurrect John Williams. I know he's still alive, but only in undead form, musically. Resurrect the John Williams of the early 1990s, when he wrote Schindler's List. Or Ennio Morricone? Seriously speaking, what I would want is something that goes with medieval ideas without being gregorian chants. Sparse monophonies, modal melodies. I'd combine it with something modernist, like the film music from the sixties, Schifrinesque, though obviously updated - heavy on percussion and texture, unsettling (and that's the part which McCreary might be OK for). I think the two strands can go together because of the rhythmic complexity of renaissance music - we don't think of it being so because they didn't use much percussion, at least in their surviving sacred music, but the melodies are very rhythmically complicated, and that could mesh well with a more modernist background score. Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:30:09 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87567846 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87565753 I agree. It's a bad piece of work. The theme is a nice tune, for a minute or two, but there's no subtlety, no variation, no development. Barring a little alteration in volume, it's like having the same three one-minute tracks repeated again and again. By the end of the third three-hour film, I would gladly have stabbed Howard Shore. It really hurt the films, I think. It's not even particularly epic - it's a hamfisted attempt to sound epic, but it doesn't approximate the work of the great composers. [I was brought up on Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovitch - so I may have different standards for epic music than others do.] Even Gladiator/Pirates of the Caribbean had more epic, more sophisticated scores - and even they weren't too subtle. And interchangeable, which is a big flaw of modern composers - half of them just reuse the same obsessions time and time again. There's quite a dearth of really good composers around, it seems. McCreary's work on Battlestar was mixed. There's no doubt there were really good parts - anything with the drums, and most of the 'dramatic' music, including the Watchtower quotation. On the other hand, as with most modern composers, the quiet bits let him down (faaar too mawkishly sweet for the 'Adama' squishy moments, faaar too cliche, too) and sometimes the cuts from one piece of music to the next were too strained. That's no surprise - the loud, fast, dramatic bits are relatively easy to accomplish. Trawl through the nineteenth century, and there's a hundred composers who could write five minuts of heart-thumping excitement, and a hundred who could write a little light-hearted dancing - but very few who could put together a truly moving slow movement. The only big, original score that I can remember as really brilliant from the last ten years was "Road to Perdition". Happily, it was written by someone who's worked with HBO - he wrote the theme for Six Feet Under, and set the musical tone by scoring the first episode. Unfortunately, the music for that was VERY similar to that for Road to Perdition, and not the style to go with GoT. Doesn't matter too much, though. Chances are, the score won't be great, but it shouldn't need to be. I'd prefer something that can just fade into the background most of the time, if they can't get a top composer. To be honest, I can't really remember the music from series like The West Wing, 24, The Sopranos, or even Six Feet Under, all barring the main title themes, of course. Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:11:00 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/grrm-on-composers/#IDComment87565753 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/breaking-down-the-new-cast-members/#IDComment87097439 Has anyone even heard of Robson and Jerome outside Britain? Even within Britain, half the audience will be too young to remember him - I remember Robson and Jerome as names, and I could recognise Robson because of his acting career, but no way could I see a guy now and think 'hey, that must be the guy who was a pop star of sorts about fifteen years ago but who then disappeared from public gaze!'. I did't even realise it was THAT Jerome until people here mentioned it. [Rather weirder will be seeing Grouty as Aemon. Ironically, I think he'd have made a fantastic Pycelle...] Sat, 17 Jul 2010 11:03:28 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/breaking-down-the-new-cast-members/#IDComment87097439 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/more-casting-clues/#IDComment86852413 Apparently these are harder clues than they seem. Two of them at least should be easy. "Merry man" must surely be a Robin Hood reference? (Unless there's some film called 'merry men' or something). And the god of war... well, could literally be a voice actor from the God of War games (were there any? never played them), but it sounds like Ares or Mars, the latter being rather more likely. Supervillains seem like an easy place to start, though. Assume he means it literally. How many people have played supervillains? There can't be all that many. But then again, that sounds suspiciously like 'hollyoaks' in the other part of the clue, and it's hard to imagine anyone in hollyoaks have had... well, an acting job at some point. Actually, that's beginning to worry me. Sure, they can find one talented actor who's somehow ended up on that dungheap... but two??? I know this one isn't a major role, most likely, but it would still be good if this series were above the hollyoaks level. Then again, the "once ambled" suggests past tense, maybe even very past tense. So it could be an alumnus who's gone on to better things. It's been going 15 years now. So.... I guess that has to be a supervillain from the last ten years, probably - I'm guessing hollyoaks then supervillain.... oh dear gods, there have been a lot of superhero films. Plus we might have to include Bond films. And then there's things like Smallville, too. Maybe Robin Hood would be an easier clue, actually? But, supervillains... I'm presuming a smaller film. Colin Farrell or Michael Clarke Duncan? No. So not Daredevil. Not Ghost Rider. Not Catwoman. Can't see anyone in Wolverine... oh, this is hopeless! And of course there's smallville, with ten million supervillains in it. ... yeah, can't find anyone from Robin Hood either. (Though a few robin hood people who have been supervillains, frustratingly). Best I can summon up is John R Walker, who was in three episodes of Hollyoaks. WALKER, get it? AMBLED? Yeah, I know, weak. Though that does make me think: maybe 'once ambled' is literal? OK, so the ambled = walker bit is probably wrong, but maybe it's ONCE? And that's why he MAY have come across the golden rose? But... that's of no use, as there have been millions of people with one-episode appearances on Hollyoaks, I'm sure. Oh, I don't know why I'm still typing this... Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:14:56 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/07/more-casting-clues/#IDComment86852413 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/engendering-gendry/#IDComment83155026 I think it's a different product from those two. Treme (I assume, knowing little about it) is critic-fodder. It's so that HBO can say 'we show things by David Simon, writer of the Best Thing Ever! Look, critics love us, we're important, you should subscribe so that you can watch this Serious Cinerature". (No criticism there - I loved the Wire - but it wasn't massive). And also because if it's good it'll get them money from foreign rights and from DVD sets way, way into the future (the Wire wasn't big at the time, but its DVDs are stunningly reliable - they cost the same as when new, and are apparently being bought in the same quantities every year). It's a relatively cheap project that won't make them much but is probably pretty safe and that will really help their image overall. True Blood is mass-marketed pop-trash. Sure, it's HBO, so it's less trashy than it might be, but the idea is basically for something pretty light that the general audience can all sign up to. Yes, it's officially genre, but by now vampire romance is pretty mainstream. You don't need any buzz in advance for that. GoT is different. I think the idea will be to make it solidly successfully niche, as a baseline, and then hope that popularity and critical attention start bringing in crossovers. Its success depends, I think, ogiven its scale and probable expense, on bringing in people from the general audience, but I don't think that the general audience is going to be inherently interested. Yes, the historical soap opera element might bring some in, but it's a lot less accessible than something like The Tuders or Robin Hood. So to succeed, it's going to need a lot of buzz, to hit the ground running. ------------ And it's not going to be their flagship back to dominance. There's this little behemoth in the room called Boardwalk Empire. Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:38:44 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/engendering-gendry/#IDComment83155026 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/engendering-gendry/#IDComment83153609 I think this is the crux: children often act as 'cuteness relief' in films, much like comedic secondary characters (and often they ARE comedic; other times, only cute). What's more, even when they have real roles, they are very rarely real characters - by which I mean that usually the role of the child is to be an adjunct or accessory to the adults - a troublesome weight around their necks, or something that has to be protected at all costs, for instance. They're very rarely actual agents with minds and personalities and objectives of their own. So at the very best, they're dead weight in the story, and good productions don't dwell on them; at worst, they're aggravating assaults on continuity of tone, particularly in darker works. However: children don't have to be like that. If you put the children as lead characters, and make their stories be the stories you're telling, they can be just as engaging, if not more so, as/than adult characters. The fourth season of The Wire is a classic example: we care about the kids BECAUSE the series does. An example from cinema is Natalie Portman in Leon. It's an action film, but the main character, the main viewpoint, is the little girl. She doesn't make us detach from the film - she makes what would otherwise be a slick popcorn action film into a masterpiece by making us care. They do this by making Portman's character the viewpoint (not strictly, in that we see other scenes as well, but she's the main entrance point for the viewer), and by making her a 3D and believable character. So: I think that if the children are minimised it'll be disasterous. They'll be seen as annoying distractions from the serious business going on. But if they keep the children as POVs, I think it could be very powerful. A lot of the intrigue and violence will seem MORE intimidating when seen from the flawed perspective of a child. I don't think it should be followed 100% - the camera shouldn't be stuck on their shoulder - but I think, and hope, that there will be a lot of scenes linked by following children from one room to the next, lots of children discovering things, lots of focus on how the children react to things. Because it's only by making them central that they can make them work. Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:25:16 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/engendering-gendry/#IDComment83153609 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/roy-dotrice-is-grand-maester-pycelle/#IDComment82016525 The frustrating thing is, it seems GRRM, despite otherwise being excellent, is incompetant at transcribing names. Several of them seem to be 'meant' to be pronounced in an entirely different way to the way they are spelled. [Not always his false - I gather that the weird pronounciation of 'Jaime' is due to some Anglicised pronunciations of a Spanish name that we English are unlikely to have heard of but that Americans may know*] "Catelyn" is particularly amazing, since IT'S ALREADY A NAME. It's pronounced 'cate-lyn'. hearing it pronounced 'cattle-in' is going to be painful. And if he wants 'Petyr' with a long second vowel, he has to write a silent 'e' at the end! Pee-ter, Pee-tir, Pet-ter, Pet-tir, Pay-ter, Pay-tir... all those I can cope with, but 'Pe-tire' is just ignoring how it's spelled... (not to mention how we normally pronounce 'Petyr' as a name in English, though I don't know how it's pronounced in its native language). *Also bad connotations. "Sir" and "Jamie" are incompatible. Jamie Lannister must be either the childhood form of the later Sir James, or else the Lannister's ne'er-do-well bastard cousin. Or a snooker player. I just thank God they're not calling him 'Jimmy', but it's only one step away... Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:57:58 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/roy-dotrice-is-grand-maester-pycelle/#IDComment82016525 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/quick-hits-castle-set-scheduling-conflicts-and-signs/#IDComment82015188 It's incredibly common. Or at least it used to be. In my grandparent's generation, it was THE name/nickname combo that everybody had to have. In fact, my grandmother was universally known as 'Peggy' even though her real name WASN'T Margaret - the nickname was too fashionable to pass up! But at the time all Margarets would be Peggys (with a few Maggys, I guess). Another example: "Ned" for "Edward". There's one down the road from me, for a start. [Unfortunate connotations, really: 'Ned' is like having the main character be called 'Nigel', 'Reg', or 'Steve'] Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:46:52 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/quick-hits-castle-set-scheduling-conflicts-and-signs/#IDComment82015188 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/roy-dotrice-is-grand-maester-pycelle/#IDComment82014463 But... Hugo Weaving was only in two other famous films by that time! And you mention only one (I'd have thought Priscilla was a more appropriate film to distort your perception of Elrond!). So are you saying that you want an actor who has never been in even one well-known film or series before? I think that if that's so much of a problem, either there's something wrong with your watching or there's something wrong with their acting. Great actors can be in many different films and portray different characters - that's what acting is! When you see Punch Drunk Love, do you think of the nurse from Magnolia? (Hoffman). When you see Magnolia, do you think of Born on the 4th of July? (Cruise). Or of The Fugitive? (Moore) What's Eating Gilbert Grape or The Thin Red Line? (Reilly). The Truman Show or Air Force One? (Hall). Raiders of the Lost Ark? (Molina). Once Upon A Time in the West? (Robards). Of course it's possible to typecast some specific mentally: I can't imagine Bean as Ned, because Bean has been so ubiquitous all my life playing mostly a fairly limited range of roles. And, in particular, I'm afraid of what HBO will do with the accents. But that's different from a blanket prohibition of... well, actors, basically. Because someone might always have seen them before, unless they're people who've never acted before. And there is also something else here: many 'great' American actors aren't very good at acting, and a 'great' because they look sexy and cool and have bucketloadss of charisma. In those cases - yes, sometimes you'd prefer an actual actor. But there are actors out there: a DeNiro or a Hackman or a Hoffman (either) can inhabit a wide range of roles despite being incredibly, incredibly famous. [Obviously there are also good actors who AREN'T world-famous - just pointing out that there's not theoretical contradiction]. ((Unfortunately the problem is rather bigger with actresses. The number of good well-known actresses seems to be extremely small these days, possibly because most roles call for striking eyes, breasts and hips rather than depth of talent)). Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:41:48 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/roy-dotrice-is-grand-maester-pycelle/#IDComment82014463 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/roy-dotrice-is-grand-maester-pycelle/#IDComment82011021 Huh? 87 isn't old enough for you? 87 from an actor with a reputation for looking older than he is? How old do you want the actor to be - 120?? Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:13:49 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/roy-dotrice-is-grand-maester-pycelle/#IDComment82011021 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/kristian-nairn-is-hodor/#IDComment81807394 Minor nitpick: WWI wasn't just 'the Great War of his generation' - it was, at the time, from a Western perspective, THE great war, the greatest of all of them. We often forget how much bigger it was than WWII. Put together the WWI war dead of Romania, Turkey and Italy, and you've got more dead soldiers than from the whole of the Western involvement in WWII. More British soldiers died at the Battle of the Somme than died in the whole of WWII. [Of course, WWI was in turn matched by the Sino-Japanese war, and by the Eastern Front of WWII. But I'm not sure that the enormity of Chinese and Soviet losses would really have hit home yet to a parochial Englishman in Oxford shortly after the war, nor would the American view of the war (as they had not really experienced WWI, they saw their involvement in WWII as unparalleled in size) have yet been hammered home into English memories.] Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:43:54 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/kristian-nairn-is-hodor/#IDComment81807394 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/roy-dotrice-is-grand-maester-pycelle/#IDComment81804740 Oh great glorious holy fuck! Sorry. It's just... I was thinking 'oh no, it's not someone notable after all. They've just gone with the anonymous old guy who I've only heard of because he does the audiobooks. And who apparently was once in some trashy American series that I'd never have heard of if not for being a GRRM fan. And, oh, he was in Angel and Xena and Hercules and Hellboy... But then I realised that he was also LEOPOLD FUCKING MOZART. In Amadeus. You know, the film with eight Oscars (plus three nominations), four BAFTAs and four Golden Globes. And he was the fourth-biggest role in it, and he was WONDERFUL. I adore that film. I'm almost tempted to buy the audiobooks (I've never listened to an audiobook and dislike the concept), just because they're narrated by Leopold Mozart. I'm really surprised that between WiC and GRRM and the comments here, nobody has previously mentioned his most famous role! Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:21:47 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/roy-dotrice-is-grand-maester-pycelle/#IDComment81804740 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/grrm-is-at-it-again/#IDComment81690069 Why have you deleted my long post, you irritating comment system???? Anyway, summation: the Black Prince is Rhaegar, to Aerys' Richard II. Later on, the borrowings get mixed together (eg Richard III is both Tyrion and Stannis, Robert is Edward IV, Henry V, Henry VI, and maybe Henry IV; Henry IV is also John Arryn; Richard of York is Ned, Jon, and a tiny bit of Robb; Cersei is Margaret of Anjou, but also Elizabeth Woodville, with a bit of Sommerset thrown in, and so on), but at that stage, the parallels are intensely clear, except that they've become father and son rather than brothers. Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:01:54 +0000 http://winter-is-coming.net/2010/06/grrm-is-at-it-again/#IDComment81690069