Westeros

The Making Game of Thrones site has a new post which provides some obscure quotes from recent work on the production. Some of the remarks make us think of Wyvernwood’s Tollymore photos, where a number of different scenes were recently filmed, at least one of which would have involved dead bodies (and possibly fighting leading up to them).

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Fantasy Flight Games‘s revised art book, The Art of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, should now be available at retail stores as well as Amazon.com.

FFG promise a second volume soon, with possible further editions to come. The books will draw from the company’s vast catalog of A Song of Ice and Fire-related art from their various licensed products, as well as art from professional and amateur artists alike that have drawn inspiration from George R.R. Martin’s bestselling fantasy series.

Thanks to Bird of the Canals for pointing out it’s now available at Amazon.

Via the Language Creation Society, we learn that David J. Peterson has been interviewed by a Esperanto-enthusiast magazine, Usona Esperanto. The interview discusses how Petersen came to conlang and provides some new details (and words) of Dothraki.

An extended interview with extra material can be found at the site of Jim Henry, the interviewer.

Besides being the Guest of Honor at Octocon, George R.R. Martin was also in the running for a Golden Blaster award that was to be presented at the convention. The Golden Blasters are the national Irish Science FIction Awards, and are aimed at recognizing quality work in science fiction short films. GRRM won the Creative Achievement Award, in recognition for the five screenplays he wrote for The New Twilight Zone in the 80’s.

Among the other winners were best in show Übermensch, audience’s choice winner The Astronomer’s Sun, and Stuart Creque for his horror script for He Knows

Fans at Octocon in Dublin this past weekened recieved a pleasant surprise when Kristian Nairn, the actor cast as Hodor, appeared with George R.R. Martin to discuss HBO’s Game of Thrones. The Rabbit and LugaJetGirl, two fans who were present, have written up reports on the panel which can be found Here and here respectively.

Among the more notable bits? A composer for the series has been selected, but has yet to be announced, according to the report. Also, Kristian provides an intriguing piece of information regarding a change in the character’s appearance.

As an added bonus, the Rabbit took a few pictures of George and Kristian together. Here’s one of them:

The Worlds of If review blog had an interesting post regarding fate and fortune in A Song of Ice and Fire as seen from the perspective of certain points raised by David Quint in his study of Renaissance heroic poetry. Namely, Quint contrasts the role of Fate in unified epics (ala the Iliad or The Lord of the Rings) as opposed to Fortune in more episodic literature (e.g. the Odyssey), and the blogger at Worlds of If points out how these ideas might apply to seeing some of the innate differences between Martin’s series and Tolkien’s before it. Some thoughtful points are raised that help to get into the heart of how Martin’s take on epic fantasy is different from what came before.

Two caveats: there are general spoilers for the first three books, and I’m not sure about the application of the term “anti-Epic Fantasy” to the series, which I think may be going a bit too far.

The Octocon Q&A has just wrapped, and we’ve posted a transcription from lady narcissa (from the A Song of Ice and Fire forum) to the So Spake Martin collection of correspondence and convention reports. Quite a lot of good material,but be aware that there are some small spoilers here and there for the previous books and A Dance with Dragons.

Via WiCnet, we learn that HBO has confirmed actor Ian Beattie has been cast in the role of Ser Meryn Trant, one of the seven knights of the Kingsguard. He’s due to film at the end of October with Miltos Yerolemou, who plays Syrio Forel. Miltos recently revealed that he’s due to film a scene that’s brand new and not from the books, as well. Possibly Lord Stark’s hiring of Arya’s “dancing master”... ?

Also intriguingly, we have a report that a casting call has gone out for a “head priestess” of the Dothraki, described as being in her 50’s, of mixed race or Mediterranean in appearance, and she must have a good singing voice to pronounce a prophecy. This role is needed for episode number 6.

This would be one of the dosh khaleen, the crones who rule over Vaes Dothrak and maintain the rituals of the Dothraki people. Although there’s no clear hierarchy to the dosh khaleen, in the novel the crone who is depicted most is a “bent and shrivelled stick of a woman”, suggesting that the oldest of the women—who are all former khaleesis, consigned to this ritual role following the death of the khal to whom they were wed—takes a leading role in rituals.

After posing a quiz question (a rather spoilerish one at that, actually—naughty, naughty!), HBO has posted a new still from the Game of Thrones production that features Jerome Flynn as the sellsword Bronn. Flynn’s almost unrecognizable to my eye, and I suspect this photo will ease the concerns of some who know him best (or perhaps worst, depending on who you ask) from his Robson & Jerome days when his casting was announced. He really looks the part!

Conan Stevens, the actor cast as the huge and brutal Ser Gregor Clegane, has posted about the various concerns and issues with fight scenes. He includes a number of anecdotes, including two from HBO’s Game of Thrones concerning the dangers of equipment failure and how a character’s style is developed:

In related news, Conan reports that the action film he co-wrote and co-stars in, Bangkok Adrenaline, has had its U,S. release just two days ago. A perfect opportunity to get a look at the 7’ tall actor! He provides a link to the “un"official fan site for the film, which describes its origins and provides links to clips.

Via WICnet, it seems someone named tek has already decoded Lysa’s coded message. Wow! Full details behind the extended text:

Bryan Cogman provides a post written during the Shane’s Castle tourney filming for HBO’s Game of Thrones, filmed back in August, and it’s full of interesting details ... like the Fruit Ninja craze that has swept the crew. And that the tourney—depicted in two separate chapters of A Game of Thrones—is split across episodes IV and V. But one detail leapt out at us as just the sort of thing we love best, that graphic artist Jim Stanes was working on the production and that he had done a great design for House Royce (Bronze Yohn and his sons were at the tourney in the novels).

We quickly found his blog, where we noticed he worked on Kingdom of Heaven (David, Dan, if you’re reading this—we’ve always imagined the Dornish look much like that!) and then @straphe pointed out to us that Stanes had uploaded the Targaryen arms back in December. I did a little more digging and stumbled across this beauty, described as a coded message from the production.

Before the image loaded, I of course thought it was Lysa’s to Catelyn .... but the script is so radically different from our own (which is what is being used for Westerosi)

. Of course, the fact that he uploaded it back in December suggests it was from the pilot, where only Lysa’s message to Catelyn really makes any sense.

According to this report from io9, which is reporting from New York Comic Con, GRRM’s editor Anne Groell has revealed that George has informed his publisher that he has five chapters left to write to complete A Dance with Dragons, and that those five chapters already exist in partial form. According to Anne:

This is an advance on the last update on the subject, where 8 POVs were completed.

UPDATE: DelReySpectra confirmed that GRRM has told Anne that he had just five chapters left to write. Very cool.

The Making Game of Thrones site from HBO has a brand new entry in the Artisans series, revisiting production designer Gemma Jackson as she discusses the functional winch built for scenes shot in Castle Black. This makes a nice companion piece to Bryan Cogman’s earlier post. You can watch the video below:

It’s interesting that the lift is basically a repurposed industrial building site lift, with much of the machinery tucked away and some work done to make it seem like a primitive medieval contraption of wood and iron.