You are currently browsing the archives for the Television category

Hear Me Roar

April 27, 2011 Books / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Television
No comments

I was watch­ing The Kingsroad, the sec­ond episode of Game of Thrones, with Dong Ha on Mon­day, which was inter­est­ing because she’s only read through half of the episode. (Yeah, Phil­son T, Nicholas P, and I keep giv­ing her shit for lag­ging, but she’s stub­born and eas­ily dis­tracted at the same time. I don’t get it.)

Any­way, I couldn’t help judg­ing the show based on the book. I have to say, I com­pletely agree with this blog post:

The series looks to be mov­ing along at a break­neck pace… and I can’t really fault it for that, because the books are so very com­plex and detailed, and there are so many char­ac­ters and dif­fer­ent threads to fol­low, and they only have ten or eleven episodes. How­ever, I’ve read each of the exist­ing books at least six times thus far (and in a few weeks I will start read­ing them a sev­enth to pre­pare for A Dance with Drag­ons this sum­mer), and I think my brain fills in all of the back­story and details that may not nec­es­sar­ily be shown on screen.

…

Ulti­mately I think my con­cern for how the show is viewed by “out­siders” cor­re­lates to my con­cern for the show’s longevity (I know it’s been renewed for a sec­ond sea­son already, but two sea­sons is still not the seven or eight sea­sons the entire series will need). Let’s face it, the major­ity of the view­ers of this show are going to be peo­ple who have never read the books before, and prob­a­bly won’t bother even if they enjoy the show.

I think peo­ple who are watch­ing with­out hav­ing read the books are get­ting maybe 25% of the awe­some­ness. If you are one of those peo­ple, please set me know what you think of the show and if you are feel­ing lost at all.

Also, I feel the need to con­stantly check myself from spoil­ing things.


(from Penny Arcade.)

It’s damn hard for this series, where no one and noth­ing is safe. If you hadn’t heard, there’s a joke that goes, “Every time you ask if the next book is done, George R.R. Mar­tin kills [another char­ac­ter that you love].” (Redacted for your protection.)

Speak­ing of which, GRRM posted on his blog today that he fin­ished A Dance With Drag­ons, the fifth book in the series. It was actu­ally half of the fourth book, and takes place simul­ta­ne­ously, but he had to split it due to length. I won­der how HBO will han­dle that, assum­ing the show catches up.

Happy Endings

April 21, 2011 Family / Food / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Television
No comments

Just fin­ished the first class in the NERT course. (More on that later.)

As I walked to the bus stop, I made an impromptu detour at Bi-​Rite Cream­ery, which I had not been back to since Chi Ba and Mike E came to town. Tried the Cof­fee Sun­dae this time, and it was awe­some. I’m a sucker for tof­fee bits. A happy end­ing to a good day.

Oh, and speak­ing of happy end­ings, any­one watch that new show? It’s a new sit­com about a group of young friends. (In fact, the girls seem to have a 1 – 1 cor­re­spon­dence to the girls of Friends.) The twist is that this show starts with Rachel leav­ing Ross at the altar. I picked it up for Elisha Cuth­bert, but the chick from Scrubs is also pretty good. Daman Wayans seems so mel­low, it’s weird. The other folks don’t stand out much to me one way or another.

The Things I Do For Love

April 18, 2011 Books / Post-A-Day 2011 / Television
No comments

I just watched the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones!

I’ve got to say, over­all, I have mixed feel­ings about it. I real­ize the major­ity of my issues are related to the medium more than any­thing. In a book, any­thing is pos­si­ble. In TV/​movies, you’ve got to com­pro­mise for time, bud­gets, egos, ethics, and even laws of nature/​physics. With the nar­ra­tive style of A Song of Ice and Fire, where you jump between many view­points, you also lose a lot of intro­spec­tion and mem­o­ries (unless you take the risk of leav­ing that in and con­fus­ing viewers).

The open­ing sequence was great. After that, I’ve got some nitpicks.

I feel a lot was lost with the Gared/​Royce exchange which set up the commoner/​nobility con­flict that is ever present in Wes­t­eros and on the Wall in par­tic­u­lar, since Men of the Night’s Watch are tech­ni­cally equals. I also won­der why they made Will sur­vive instead of Gared. The wights are scary in the woods chase, but I thought they were sup­posed to be lum­ber­ing yet unstop­pable despite dam­age. Royce never even got his sword out in this ver­sion. The way the moved made me think of the Chil­dren of the Forest.

The chil­dren look older than I imag­ine, but child actor cast­ing has got to be very tough. Cut­ting the Joffrey/​Robb train­ing scene makes Joff a nobody instead of an ass, and makes Sansa seem less moony.

Dany’s wed­ding didn’t build as it did in the books. You also do not meet Dany’s hand­maid­ens or Drogo’s blood­rid­ers. Drogo also seems much more sav­age on their wed­ding night.

And the linch­pin scene in Bran 2… Cer­sei and Jaime did not seem twinly or even par­tic­u­larly lov­ing. Def­i­nitely not two bodies/​one soul.

As it stands, I am still enjoy­ing it, and I hope it will get more folks to pick up the books.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →