Westeros

Here’s an interesting discovery at Amazon.com: a 20th Anniversary edition of A Game of Thrones from the publisher of the series, with indications that it will be illustrated. It’s due for publication this October, so it’s a ways off yet, and there’s not much more information in the accompanying description.

Truth be told, we were told that something like this was in the planning stages, so it’s good to see that Random House is ready to start revealing some information about it. Whether the illustrations will draw from the rich body of artwork that Random House has already commissioned over the years, or will commission a single artist to illustrate all the pieces (as with the Subterranean Press limited editions), appears to be something fans will have to wait to discover.

A team of students at the Technical University of Munich have worked hard over a month and more to apply their JavaScript and machine-learning knowledge to cull data from the A Song of Ice and Fire novels (as well as cross-referencing with our own A Wiki of Ice and Fire, as well as looking into what’s been going on on Twitter) to present it all in new, novel ways… and, most interestingly, to make a series of predictions on the likelihood of certain characters dying in the course of the books. The site, A Song of Ice and Fire data, explains how they used machine learning for death predictions, for those curious about the nitty-gritty of the whole process.

It’s been impressive seeing the site develop over the last weeks (one of the teachers of the seminar got in touch with us to make sure they could use the wiki data). Great work from the students, and a deal of interesting insights. We’re not sure if all of their predictions are that spot-on, but there’s certainly a method to the madness!

HBO has released three clips from the new season of Game of Thrones. One of them, the longest, features a look at an area that the show hasn’t visited since the first season and which shows how far the show’s VFX prowess has grown over the years. The videos are included in a playlist below:

Reports from the premiere last night stated a new trailer was aired there… and as expected, HBO has kindly shared the trailer with the world:

Seems like there’s a lot of new imagery in this one.

Last night, an exclusive mix of VIPs, critics, and fans had the opportunity to see the world premiere of Game of Thrones. The red carpet stream, hosted by Veronica Belmont, features interviews with most of the cast who were present on the day and you can see that below:

As noted by James Hibberd, among no-shows for this event were Kit Harington and George R.R. Martin, so no interviews with them. And speaking of Hibberd, he provided some initial impressions of the episode in his post on the premiere at EW. No real spoilers here, as the attendees were all asked to only speak very generally about the episode and to save the plot turns for fans watching on the 24th. One interesting detail, though, is David Benioff’s statement about the production:

If I’m counting right, that makes a total of eight countries the show has filmed in across six season (including briefly in the U.S., Malta in the first season, and Morocco for the pilot and third season.)

As you are likely aware, at the end of S5 we were both left highly dubious of ever watching another GoT episode, both due to the sometimes abysmal quality of the show and the risk of spoilers for the books. We later said we would wait and see if The Winds of Winter would be completed before S6 and then make our final decision. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Since that became clear, we have received a lot of questions about what we mean to do regarding our coverage, as well as a lot of requests for us to continue. Some of the commentators have argued that its important to have a news/commentary source for the show that isn’t just eating up the hype and praising it no matter what. We have talked a lot about this between ourselves, taking all of this into consideration, and ultimately we have come to a decision.

Elio has no interest in watching the show.  However, I will bite the bullet, so to speak. In part because of work-related reasons, in part because I do think there’s something to be said for a more critical look at the show than other sites may be offering. That said, the coverage will change, as I do not have the time (or inclination) to make it as complete as what we did for previous years. There will unfortunately not be any recap, which was the most time-consuming part of the process. The actual review format is something I am still considering; I may do a shorter written review and a video review, or I may just do one or the other. The book-to-screen will definitely remain, but the format will change to reflect the fact that the show is passing the books for many storylines.

Finally, I am hoping to open the coverage for each episode with a new section, giving book fans a non-spoilery sense of how potentially spoilery for future books this episode may be. This will then tie into the book-to-screen where I expect more speculation regarding what may or may not be spoilery.

Liam Cunningham—who’s always a fantastic interview subject, speaking from personal experience—turned in a game, amusing interview on Conan last night. He revealed he was informed by GRRM of a secret on their first meeting that he’s kept to himself (jokingly suggesting HBO has someone ready to “take care” of him if he fails to do that). That’s then followed by a brief excerpt from a Davos scene in season 6, one which sheds new light on things glimpsed in the official trailer. Naturally, there are spoilers.

You can see the video below:

HBO has sent out a press release announcing the title of the first episode of season 6, along with a (very) brief logline giving a general sense of the chief storylines. See below, but bear in mind some might consider some of the details as spoilers:

This feels long over-due: HBO announces an after-show for season 6 of Game of Thrones, titled After the Thrones, which will feature critic and commentator Andy Greenwald (formerly of Grantland) and Chris Ryan of Grantland-succesor, The Ringer. See the press release below:

Dubbed the “March Madness” promo, this new video for season 6 features a few things already glimpsed in the official trailer, but also a few new details for fans eagerly awaiting the next season:

Interesting final frame.

Continuing the trend of highlighting the behind-the-scenes production of HBO’s Game of Thrones series, they have now released an interesting mini-documentary on the work of the prosthetics department. A whole lot of white walkers and wights to be seen. Interestingly, much of the white walker footage is from last season’s “Hardome”:

Suffice it to say, some of the glimpses of season 6 herein could be considered spoilerish.

Last month, courtesy of HBO, we were able to give an exclusive preview of one of the Histories and Lore from the Game of Thrones Season 5 Bluray set that’s to be released tomorrow. Along with that preview, we received a review copy of the set, and over the last weeks we’ve poked at its various extras to get a sense of what’s new.

On the whole, the extras this year are particularly noteworthy because of the addition of “Dance of [the] Dragons” animated feature fully 20 minutes long, featuring now-departed actors narrating in character (Harry Lloyd as Viserys, Michelle Fairley as Catelyn, Mark Addy as Robert Baratheon, Jack Gleeson as Joffrey, Pedro Pascal as Oberyn Martell, and Kerry Ingram as Shireen Baratheon) the story of the brutal civil war that hastened the end of the Targaryen dragons. The art style for this, and the other Histories and Lore, is somewhat different from that of previous seasons. It’s cleaner in a way, but also sometimes a little more simplistic, even cartoonish, at times. The level of content is, however, quite impressive as they drew heavily from the material written for The World of Ice and Fire to provide substantial insight into the past and present of both Westeros and Essos.

Last year, Mackevision released a VFX breakdown of some of their contributions to the visually-impressive fifth season of Game of Thrones. Now another VFX company who worked on the production, Image Engine, has opened up about their work last year through an article on their site. The article includes the video you’ll see below:

The interview piece with VFX supervisor Matt Krentz—who’d worked with Look FX on two of the previous seasons—is particularly rich in additional detail. While a lot of their work as seen in the many before-and-after images seem like fairly straightforward crowd replications or removal/addition of elements, there’s also details about the 3D set extensions to Castle Black, their pipeline for creating all their work, and perhaps most notably details on creating the appearance of the “Night’s King” as seen at the end of “Hardhome”.

A Tuesday release for the trailer wasn’t anything that anyone expected, but the highly-anticipated Season 6 trailer is now out:

For fans interested in the next season, lots of digest here, including glimpses of a flashback to the fracas at the tower of joy.

A bombshell has fallen in the small world of television reviewing: HBO has stopped screeners for critics for season 6 of Game of Thrones. This is largely the result of well-publicized leaks from previous seasons—particularly the last season, in which the first four episodes were leaked weeks before the premiere—but for many critics the practice of receiving episodes early allowed them to spend more time considering and crafting their reviews. Now all the critics—at least, so far as we know—will have to write their reviews after episodes air.