Westeros

With the holidays fast approaching, we thought that there might be some who are scrambling for last-minute gift suggestions. And what better way to give some suggestions, than to share what we’d give to various characters from A Song of Ice and Fire?

Arya

Far away from home, Arya could use something to help her find her way back to Westerosâ`¦ so how about The Lands of Ice and Fire map collection?

While I’m still a fan of comics in general, I stopped collecting years ago. But back in the day, I remember some particular moments from those days (we’re talking—gulp—25 years ago now), as a kid in middle school trading comics with friends (we’d gather on a hillside besides the athletic field and swap comics around; got to the point that a teacher volunteered to run an after-school comics club), going to Adventure Comics in Monterey (right near the Monterey Bay Aquarium!) with my brother and father to get the weekly fix. One significant name in that time, among many significant creators who I admired, was Todd McFarlane. His fame initially came from his artwork, especially on Spider-Man. Then he was a founder of Image comics, championing creator-owned mainstream comics (and, eventually, non-mainstream stuff, giving a home to, most notably, The Walking Dead).

McFarlane would go on to diversify his interests, and one of those would be McFarlane Toys. When word came out earlier this year that McFarlane’s company had received a license to produce Game of Thrones products, it was not a surprise: McFarlane Toys has often been on the cutting edge of pop culture properties; the aforementioned The Walking Dead has been a big success for them, by all accounts. Dark Horse and Funko and threeZero hold licenses for various figures… but McFarlane Toys has had real success with its construction sets, basically thematic “LEGO for adults” that helps fans recreate in miniature places and scenes from their favorite shows.

This is all a long-winded way to saying that courtesy of McFarlane Toys, we received a copy of the Iron Throne Room Construction Set, and below we’ll be discussing some of its particulars!

After a long delay in continuing our series of videos discussing the Dunk & Egg novellas collected in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. This episode discusses “The Mystery Knight” in detail:

One big note of apology: as we started filming rather spur-of-the-moment, and as I’ve gotten a little bit rusty, forgot to check that the focus was absolutely perfect ... and so half the video is, alas, a bit fuzzy. Won’t happen again, but for those who find it problematic, feel free to consider it a podcast while you browse the web!

HBO’s now released a teaser for the next season, although it’s made up of material from previous seasons… except for voice overs at start and at the end, I believe:

Our friends at Dark Horse occasionally send us some of their Game of Thrones-licensed products for review, and we’ve had the pleasure of highlighting them over the last few years. The most recent arrival was particularly apropos, though, because in the package we had not one but two figures: 8 inch figures of Brienne of Tarth and the Hound. These are just two entries in what must be well over a dozen figures now in these series of high-quality sculpted figures, but I admit to being always particularly drawn to the armored figurines because… well, I’m fond of most of the show’s armoring!

After the grim, ugly duel between the characters in “The Children, it’s hard not to think about that scene when I placed these figures together. The detail of their armor and even their weapons—Oathkeeper’s hilt is particularly intricate—is excellent, and the Hound’s posture captures quite a lot about them. I’m particularly fond of the way that these figures use a sort of rubber for flexible details like the lower half of the Hound’s brigadine or Brienne’s gambeson.

Also quite impressed with the fact that the Hound’s visor can actually pivot up and down; it’s a very nice touch. If there’s any criticism to be made, I’ll admit that find Brienne’s face not terribly reminiscent of Gwendoline Christie. It’s a bit too lean—Christie’s she’s rounder-cheeked and the outfits she wears on the show deliberately pushes under her chin to give her a heavier appearance than she has in reality. The hair could have stood to be rather messier, as well, I think, to capture the often-unkempt appearance she has on the show. It’s unfortunate that it doesn’t quite match some of the other figures in facial representation, such as the remarkably good Hodor and Bran which is a great representation of Nairn and Hampstead-Wright as those characters.

The Brienne and Hound figures are already available, with a new wave of figures coming this month, including Jorah Mormont, another example of Dark Horse’s fantastic way with the armor on the series.

Despite speculation that HBO’s schedule has pushed season 6 of Game of Thrones into early May, brand new billboards put out by HBO in Los Angeles and New York reveal that the show will air in “April”. Given that the new Martin Scorsese show, Vinyl, will run into April as well, it looks like the sixth season will begin airing on the final Sunday in April, April 24th.

See below for a couple of images of the billboard, along with the tweets from those who shared them on the social media website:

The town of Osuna, Spain, which Linda and I had the pleasure of visiting earlier this year for the official release of the translation of The World of Ice and Fire, featured in last year’s filming when its bullring served as Daznak’s Pit.

While there’s no sign the show filmed there again this year, the town is quite proud of its involvement in the series and has decided to dedicate two rooms in the Museum of Osuna to a collection of Game of Thrones materials. This permanent exhibit will officially open on November 28th, and will contain a unique assemblage of materials. Of particular note is a collection of photographic and video footage related to the behind-the-scenes experience of filming at the bullring, providing a glimpse at the role of the town and its people in facilitating the production which lasted seventeen days.

Below, we’ve provided a translation of Osuna’s press release regarding the museum:

The grand finale to Telltale Games’s first Game of Thrones game, an episode titled “The Ice Dragon”, is due to hit PC, leading consoles, and leading mobile devices simultaneously on November 17th. This simultaneous release is a first for Telltale, and as we noted previously they made the very first episode available for free on the iOs platform to mark the occasion.

At the same time, Telltale has now released a bevy of new images from the final episode—images which in some cases may be a bit spoilery. In fact, in their official post about the release, they indicate that the decisions in this final episode will be momentous enough that users are likely going to want to replay the finale to try out different decisions and see the ultimate results.  We’ll place the screenshots below, below the cut, to avoid spoilers!

Running Press, a publisher specializing in gift books and associated collectible “kits”, has turned its attention once again to the Seven Kingdoms with its latest book:Game of Thrones: The Noble Houses of Westeros.

A small but handsome, well-made volume using heavy paper stock, the 160 pages within it are devoted to a very brief overview of eleven significant noble families that have featured in the series since its inception, from the Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens all the way to more recent notable such as the Boltons and Freys. This is not really intended as a very informative book, of course: each house section gives a glimpse at the family’s seat, a brief family tree with some remarks on the fates of members living and dead, and photographs of the performers (most of them Helen Sloan’s fine work, but also stills from Macall Polay, Paul Schiraldi, and more.)

After a very long absence from recording new videos at our Youtube channel, we’ve finally mustered time to resume! We’ve decided to start off with a series of videos discussing A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and intend to have about four videos in total. The first video we released a couple of weeks ago, and it focuses on the first of the Dunk & Egg stories, “The Hedge Knight”:

And after a bit of a delay, we’ve just published our latest video, focused on “The Sworn Sword”:

Courtesy of HBO and HBO UK, we’ve received copies of the new Steelbook collections of Season 1 Season 2 of Game of Thrones.

Besides a lovely new packaging inspired by the famed opening credits of the series (the first two sets feature a Stark-themed Winterfell and a Lannister-themed King’s Landing, and the next two sets will feature the Twins and the Wall when they are released; it’s worth noting that the central sigils also double as refrigerator magnets!), the chief draw is that the set will feature a brand new audio mix utilizing Dolby’s Atmos techology. This is an evolution from things like Dolby TrueHD, taking the audio experience in some very interesting directions. Although Atmos is quite new, and it may take awhile for there to be wide use of Atmos-capable speakers (particularly upwards-firing speakers designed to bounce sound off a ceiling to help create verticality, which spare home theater enthusiasts the cost and difficulty of mounting speakers on the ceiling), it’s worth noting that the Bluray of course also works with TrueHD and will play just fine on non-Atmos 5.1 or 7.1 audio systems.

At last, the Android version of the A World of Ice and Fire app, published by Random House as the official reference app for the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, is finally available in all international Google Play stores! Linda and I have worked with Random House, filling it with much of its content (besides our entries, there’s also a good deal of art!). And on top of all that, the app contains a number of the chapters from The Winds of Winter which George R.R. Martin has previously revealed to the public.

The Android version of the app is named “Game of Thrones Guide” for search engine reasons, but it’s the same app as the iOs A World of Ice and Fire, simply on a different platform. Downloading it is free, and includes the TWoW samples, but additional content covering all the books in the series are an in-app purchase. Do give it a look!

UPDATE: Despite our understanding that it is rolling out globally, and not just in the U.S. and a few other areas, it seems it’s not actually out everywhere just yet. At least one report from India of it being unavailable there. We’re checking with Random House about the timeline to see it rolled out everywhere, but we will say we were reminded of this fact because it was now available in Sweden where it hadn’t been before.

Telltale Games has announced a November 17th release date for the final episode in their Game of Thrones adventure series, and to mark the occasion Telltales has made the first episode free on the iOs platform, as well as Android, XBox, and Playstation platforms. Telltale Games notes on their official blog that this final episode, titled “The Ice Dragon”, will be the first Telltale Games episodic installment recieving a same-day release on all available platforms; previous installments tended to role out over two or three days.

Finally, Telltale has put together a video featuring some of the Game of Thrones cast members—specifically Emilia Clarke, Natalie Dormer, and Iwan Rheon—who’ve lent their voices to the game:

For those interested in the wider topic of fictional universes and the fans that adore them, we’d be remiss not to note that BBC Radio 4’s Ben Hammersley leads a program on that very topic. Among the universes? That of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, of course, and Linda and I are quoted therein. For those who’d prefer to read the gist of it all, however, the BBC Magazine has a brief piece drawn from the radio program.

We’re told that a somewhat longer version of the program may appear down the road, as it was made up of a number of long interviews (I believe ours ran for about an hour in total).

As revealed by George R.R. Martin at his “Not a Blog” site, his award-winning novella “The Skin Trade” has been optioned by Cinemax—sister company of HBO—and a pilot script is being written by writer and producer Kalinda Vazquez. Vazquez’s experience includes working as a staff writer on Prison Break, and as a producer on shows such as Nikita and Once Upon a Time. “The Skin Trade” is a well-regarded horror novella by Martin, featuring a cowardly werewolf and a no-nonsense detective who are drawn into a supernatural investigation. As Martin remarks, there always seemed to be potential for a TV series in the basic concept, and he notes that the creation of his Doorways pilot was an unexpected result of his pitching “The Skin Trade” as a TV show back when he was a screenwriter for television.

Also noteworthy is the fact that this deal with Cinemax is cited as being partly due to the efforts of Mike the Pike Producttions, who optioned the novella almost six years ago. Sometimes it’s a very long road forward for literary properties. As GRRM indicates, it’s no certainty that it will go into production at this time, but it’s a big step forward.