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| Monday, July 1, 2013 09:08 AM |
| Book Report - A Games of Thrones |
 by Fëanor |
I just finished listening to the audio book of A Game of Thrones. I think it's probably my third or fourth time "reading" the book. I wasn't too far into it this time when I almost gave up on it. It was right around the scene when Ned has to kill the wolf. It was so brutal, and it made me remember all the other brutal and awful things to come for all these poor characters, and I just wasn't sure I could face it. These books are rough. Every time a character prays desperately for something not to happen, it happens, and vice versa. As soon as Martin establishes that a character loves something with all their heart - boom, he takes that away from them.
But I stuck with the book, and I'm glad I did. It really is excellent. I feel like later on in the series, things begin to get a bit tired and plodding, but this is a fantastic first book. I tried to focus this time on the structure and the form, on the way Martin builds the world and its people. He carefully and skillfully introduces you to a huge number of characters and a huge, complex world, giving you pieces at a time, slowly adding more, repeating things so they stick, slipping you hints of what's to come. Because I'd read it all before and knew what was coming, it was easier to notice those hints, and I was able to recognize a lot of subtle foreshadowing. He slowly begins to grow these characters, and teach them and mold them and change them. Each chapter is from a single character's perspective, and each one is a complete scene, with its own little arc. I feel like every Jon chapter he learns a little more, becomes more of a man, becomes more of a leader - the same with the Dany chapters. And everything slowly builds to those last two chapters, which are absolutely amazing - so powerful and triumphant and exhilarating. The King in the North! Mother of Dragons! This book is an impressive achievement. I'm going to try to listen to the rest of the series in audio book format, too. Hopefully by the time I get through them all, there will be a new one available... |
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| Wednesday, September 26, 2012 12:46 PM |
| Recyclotron |
 by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- I enjoy my friend's Tumblr and its many gifs. Celebrating Ian McKellen, cat being funny, one of the greatest scenes from Clue, a hedgehog, George R.R. Martin being a dick, a statement of principles, and the cutest thing ever.
- I also am a big fan of io9. They've got clips from the special features on the Princess Bride 25th Anniversary release, an essay on the good and bad and in between of time travel stories; and a weird set photo from what will no doubt be a very weird movie, Darren Aronofsky's Noah.
- I guess the all-woman Expendables is going to be a real thing, because Gina Carano just got cast in the lead role.
- A wonderful new Wondermark.
- Twitter repostings! The toaster that burns the weather into your bread (conceptual only, sadly), and clips of David Lynch's guest appearance on Louie.
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| Tagged (?): Animals (Not), Animated GIFs (Not), Books (Not), Celebrities (Not), Comedy (Not), Gadgets (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), George R.R. Martin (Not), Language (Not), Links (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Photography (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Song of Ice and Fire (Not), Technology (Not), TV (Not), Video (Not), Web comics (Not) |
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| Friday, July 8, 2011 09:56 AM |
| (Last updated on Friday, July 8, 2011 10:33 AM) | | Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- I've got a bunch of Song of Ice and Fire links for you today! First up is a list of ten characters io9 suspects they will leave out of season 2 of Game of Thrones. I'd be happy if they left out the rather horrendous story of poor Lollys, but I'd be really sad to lose Vargo Hoat, Aeron Greyjoy, and Craster. Next is a huge, amazing map of Westeros (via). Then we've got 11 versions of the excellent theme song from Game of Thrones. Finally, a few photos of the actress who will play Brienne in the series. She seems a little too pretty for the role, but George R.R. Martin says she looked the part when she came in to audition, so...
- If you haven't already seen it, here's our first look at Dori, Nori, and Ori from The Hobbit.
- A shirt that gives us a map of the Earth, if the Earth were reimagined as Super Mario World.
- A cool illustration blog, featuring covers for books from video game worlds. (Via)
UPDATE:
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| Tagged (?): Art (Not), Clothing (Not), Comic books (Not), Craft (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), George R.R. Martin (Not), Green Lantern (Not), Links (Not), Mario (Not), Movies (Not), Muppets (Not), Photography (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Shirts (Not), Song of Ice and Fire (Not), Star Wars (Not), The Hobbit (Not), Tolkien (Not), TV (Not), Video games (Not) |
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| Monday, June 20, 2011 09:47 AM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
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| Tagged (?): Advertising (Not), Art (Not), Celebrities (Not), Clothing (Not), Comic books (Not), Commercials (Not), Doctor Who (Not), Fantastic Four (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), George R.R. Martin (Not), Harry Potter (Not), Links (Not), Mashups (Not), Music (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Star Wars (Not), TV (Not) |
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| Friday, April 15, 2011 10:48 AM |
| On the Viewer - Game of Thrones (Episode 1 - "Winter Is Coming") |
| by Fëanor |
Last night I was lucky enough to see a preview screening of the first episode of Game of Thrones, HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's excellent ongoing series of fantasy novels, A Song of Ice and Fire (thanks, Mike V!). I believe the idea is for each 10-episode season of the series to adapt one of the books. For whatever reason, the TV series as a whole is named after only the first book.
(If you would like to be absolutely spoiler-free for the actual television premiere of the series, stop reading now!)
The show opens just as that first book opens - with a prologue in which the Brothers that guard the North ride out seeking Wildlings and find something much, much worse. The sequence is as bloody and disturbing as you could hope for. I don't remember the dead bodies being laid out to form a mysterious symbol in the book, but I like this addition; it makes everything that much more mystical and creepy. The Others aren't quite the way I pictured them - these creatures remind me of Predators more than anything else - but they're certainly frightening and deadly enough.
After the prologue we get the title sequence, which is really wonderful. The camera zooms in on, and swoops over, a map of Westeros and its environs, and each of the major cities of the series pops up out of the map like some kind of cardboard, clockwork model. Then the title of the show appears, engraved in a piece of hot metal surrounded by fire. (If you were at the screening, the woman who whooped joyously and applauded loudly at this point was my friend Jill, bless her. And yeah, okay, I joined in.)
Soon we get introduced to the Lannisters, and to the Starks in their stronghold of Winterfell. The series takes some liberties here and adds some scenes that never occurred in the books. But these scenes and the dialog in them feel true to the characters, and anyway the series creators needed some way to quickly introduce certain characters and subplots, and this way probably makes the most sense. Anyway, I'm glad they chose to avoid using narration or a voice-over of the characters' thoughts to achieve this; that would have ended up being clumsy and cheesy, and it would have ended up telling us too much. As it is, I really admire the subtle touch they've used, and how they've treated their audience like adults, letting us figure things out and piece things together ourselves. Actually, in some cases they may have gone a bit too far, and I wonder if someone who hasn't read the books would be able to follow everything that was going on and pick up all the subtle details (like, would you realize that the Baratheon sigil is a stag, and the Stark symbol is a direwolf, and that's why everyone's looking at each other so grimly when the Starks find a stag and direwolf that died killing each other?). But I think I'm okay with erring on the side of not telling enough, rather than the other way around.
I particularly like how they establish the character of Arya. Instead of having someone say, "She's a tomboy," and leave it at that, they show her bored and annoyed at her sewing, and then they show her running out to hit a bullseye with an arrow.
The show is well cast, and the actors handle their parts well. I particularly like Sean Bean as Lord Eddard Stark and Mark Addy as King Robert Baratheon. Addy is lusty and rotund, and Bean makes Ned hard and implacable, but also human, troubled, and likable. The first time he says, "winter is coming," I have to admit, there may have been some fist pumping on my part. And that scene that I mentioned earlier, where he and his family return from the execution of the deserter and find the dead stag and direwolf, and the direwolf pups, is pretty much perfect.
Daenerys and Viserys are here, too, of course, the former just as innocent and lovely as she should be, and the latter just as slimy, petulant, and naive as he should be. I like the foreshadowing of Dany calmly and wordlessly stepping into a bath her servant thought was still much too hot for any normal human to withstand.
The masterstroke, however, may have been deciding to end the first episode with Bran's fall. Dramatic, shocking, powerful, brilliant.
The show is funny and clever, violent and bloody, rude and obscene. There's plenty of sex, nudity, perversion, corruption, and intrigue. So yeah, pretty much exactly like the novel!
Perhaps my only complaint is a slight change to one of my favorite scenes in the book. I really enjoy the unlikely friendship between Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister, and I relish every chapter they're together. The chapter in which they meet is particularly excellent, and ends with one of my favorite Tyrion lines: "All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs." The series writers left this line out and instead used an earlier line of Tyrion's: "All dwarfs are bastards in their father's eyes." I can sort of understand why they did this - if you're only going to use one of those lines, this one's better, as it also includes a reference to Tyrion's rocky relationship with his father - but... I'm still disappointed.
That's only a minor complaint, however. Overall, I am really impressed by what an excellent job the show creators have done here. They nailed it. They've transfered the beginning of the novel faithfully into the television format. I'm eager to see the rest of the first season, to see how they manage the rest of it. How I'm going to achieve that I'm not sure, as I don't have HBO and don't plan to get it, but I'll see what I can do. |
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| Wednesday, April 13, 2011 02:32 PM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- Hey, it's Mumm-Ra the ever-living! What a guy! I always loved that subtitle, "the ever-living."
- The latest entry on Making Game of Thrones is about designing the throne room.
- Oh man, Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Cosmic Cube would be so awesome. Way better than Crystal Skull, surely.
- Paramount just greenlit a movie version of The Martian Chronicles. I'm not sure it'd be possible to make a good film adaptation of that book - it seems uniquely... bookish; delicate and lyrical and easily ruined - but I'd be excited to see someone try.
- Here's the first episode of the new web series, Mortal Kombat: Legacy. But yeah, don't bother watching it unless you're really curious or a superfan. It's composed almost entirely of cliches. Also, if you're going to shoot a person with a gun, why would you move really close to that person first? You've got a gun! It hits people from far away! Sigh.
- Here's a cool thing: a World of Warcraft player hit the level cap without ever killing anything, and completing only one quest. The person apparently leveled up almost entirely via exploring and discovering.
- AT-AT for America seems like a worthy cause. Let's do this, people!
- The art of banana carving.
- I posted this to Twitter a while back, but it's worth another link: George R.R. Martin's top 10 fantasy films. A lot of great picks here. I'm especially excited about the inclusion of Ladyhawke, a little film from the '80s that my brother and I seriously adored when we were younger.
- Nesting robots.
- Oh sweet lord. Taco Bell is testing taco shells made from nacho cheese Doritos. Is this disgusting or deeply desirable? I can't seem to decide. All I know is, I'd definitely eat one. (Via)
- Have you seen this one-of-a-kind, fan-made Tron light cycle board game yet? Great concept, wonderful execution.
- "Comedian Brett Kreischer is apparently in the habit of leaving surprises for the hotel maid."
- LEGO mechs.
- Hey, Warren Ellis is going to write a couple more novels! The first one will be called Gun Machine. I really enjoyed Crooked Little Vein, so this is good news. Plus, you know, Warren Ellis. (Via)
- Oh no! One of the blogs I read - Download Squad - is closing up shop. Sadness.
- Heh.
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| Tagged (?): Art (Not), Boardgames (Not), Books (Not), Captain America (Not), Cartoons (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Craft (Not), Dinosaurs (Not), Food (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), Gaming (Not), George R.R. Martin (Not), Indiana Jones (Not), Internet (Not), LEGO (Not), Links (Not), Lists (Not), Mortal Kombat (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Photography (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Robots (Not), Song of Ice and Fire (Not), Star Wars (Not), Toys (Not), Tron (Not), TV (Not), Video (Not), Video games (Not), Warren Ellis (Not) |
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| Monday, April 11, 2011 11:02 AM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- Game of Thrones family sigil desktop wallpapers!! Awesome. It's too bad that I hate all the Greyjoys (especially Theon, whose chapters I can barely read, he's such a complete dick), because their sigil and words are so excellent.
- Dan Hipp has been at it again, posting all kinds of amazing illustrations on his blog, including a Predator fighting a Wookiee, a poster for The Wolverine lamenting the film that could have been, and a truly fantastic Tintin/Alien mashup image.
- Check out the teaser for Daniel Radcliffe's next film, a period ghost story called The Woman in Black.
- The next Superman movie has its General Zod.
- Famous sci-fi scenes recreated with a cast of peeps.
- I was going to post links to all the coolest recent additions to Reelizer, but there are too many. Just go there and look around yourself.
- A great Beetlejuice illustration.
- The second item here purports to reveal the truth behind Olive Garden's claims that it sends its chefs to Italy to learn real Italian cooking. Unsubstantiated, obviously, but certainly seems believable.
- A selection of neat nesting dolls from a recent art show.
- You're stuck on an important video conference call with the Romulan ambassador, but you desperately need to go to the bathroom. What do you do? As usual, Riker has the solution. (Via)
- The first trailer for Lars von Trier's Melancholia (which is slightly NSFW, due to brief, distant nudity). It's technically a sci-fi film, as there's an important plot element involving a mysterious planet suddenly appearing and heading for Earth, but it seems to be much more about relationships and people being really emotional. Looks intense.
- A trailer for the new Mortal Kombat web series, based on that video that went viral a while back. Sadly the trailer is nowhere near as cool and exciting as the original video was. It's just a rather clumsy fight scene.
- Looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger's getting back into movies in a big way.
- Some very nice Thor art on this blog. (Via)
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| Tagged (?): Aliens (Not), Art (Not), Books (Not), Celebrities (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Craft (Not), Food (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), George R.R. Martin (Not), Links (Not), Mortal Kombat (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Predator (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Song of Ice and Fire (Not), Star Trek (Not), Star Wars (Not), Superman (Not), Thor (Not), Video (Not), Web comics (Not), Wolverine (Not) |
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| Monday, February 21, 2011 12:06 PM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- A nice piece of Super Mario Bros.-themed art featured on Drawn.
- Hey, GRRM and Paris finally got married! Also, another new behind-the-scenes video from HBO's "Making Game of Thrones" blog. This one is sort of a travelogue of Westeros, giving us a quick sketch of each of the various different realms. Pretty exciting!
- GeekDad provides a visual roundup of the action figures and statues at the recent 2011 Toy Fair.
- A sign that fails to be reassuring.
- Slave Leia will always be an icon of the geek world. Here's Jessica Rabbit in the slave Leia costume, and an otherwise rather dumb and unimaginative music video that features Alessandra Torressani dressed as slave Leia.
- The fantasy world map.
- A lot of the trailers I've seen so far for Thor have not impressed me, but this one did.
- Steve Kloves, who co-wrote all of the Harry Potter films, has been hired to help polish the script for Akira.
- Here's a cool project: making figures along the line of the old MUSCLE toys. I used to love those things. (Via)
- Super Punch showcases some great art pieces by Tom Fowler.
- Robocop is not done his good work in Detroit! Francesco Francavilla is auctioning off an illustration of the fellow to help feed the city. (Via)
- Hey. Cool bat.
- The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets' brilliant concept album, Spaceship Zero, has been out for a while, but they just finally got around to putting together a snazzy video for "20 Minutes of Oxygen," one of the excellent (if deeply depressing) tracks from the record.
- A new Toy Story short will premiere in front of the new Muppets movie. This is apparently a different short from the one about Barbie and Ken going on vacation.
- GeekDad looks back on 25 years of Zelda. The original Legend of Zelda is still one of the best video games of all time.
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| Tagged (?): Art (Not), Celebrities (Not), Craft (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), George R.R. Martin (Not), Harry Potter (Not), Links (Not), Mario (Not), Movies (Not), Muppets (Not), Music (Not), News (Not), Photography (Not), Pixar (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Song of Ice and Fire (Not), Star Wars (Not), Thor (Not), Toys (Not), TV (Not), Video (Not), Video games (Not), Zelda (Not) |
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| Monday, February 14, 2011 11:00 AM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
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| Tagged (?): Advertising (Not), Art (Not), Awards (Not), Board games (Not), Books (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Commercials (Not), Dollhouse (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), Gaming (Not), George R.R. Martin (Not), Ghostbusters (Not), Links (Not), Masters of the Universe (Not), Movies (Not), Music (Not), News (Not), Photography (Not), Products (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Song of Ice and Fire (Not), Toys (Not), TV (Not), Video (Not) |
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| Friday, January 14, 2011 02:01 PM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
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| Tagged (?): Aliens (Not), Animals (Not), Art (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Computers (Not), Craft (Not), Fighting (Not), Food (Not), George R.R. Martin (Not), Google (Not), Harry Potter (Not), Health (Not), Links (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Photography (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Science (Not), Song of Ice and Fire (Not), Technology (Not), Toys (Not), Tron (Not), Tron Legacy (Not), TV (Not), Video (Not), Video games (Not) |
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Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
