“FaBio here, popping back out of the rabbit hole to bring cheer and good will and lovingkindness (trust me, it’s a Jewish word) to the holiday season.
And what better way than to bring fair tidings from the mouths of kings?
Stephen King, to be precise. In the year-end (Dec 28 through Jan 4) double issue of Entertainment Weekly, the prolific author and fright-meister (and part-time E.W. columnist) set Game of Thrones high on his exalted list of awesomeness—not once, but twice.”
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“Now THAT was an episode!
HBO has a history of, in other programmes, promising big battles but delivering sub-par results. Neil Marshall, who directs this episode from a great George R.R. Martin script, keeps things tight and intense. There are wider shots of what have to be CGI ships in a CGI harbour, but when it comes to showing combat scenes, they’re shot almost claustrophobically. There are bodies and hacking axes and slashing swords and I can’t tell who is who outside of Tyrion, Bronn, Stannis, and a few other recognizable faces. Still, it doesn’t really matter from a viewer standpoint; we’re getting carnage and blood and people being cleaved in twain, and that’s exactly what you’d expect from a war in the Seven Kingdoms.
The amazing thing about this episode is that, for the first twenty-thirty minutes, there is no battle. There’s just tension, and that makes the battle even more effective. You know what’s coming, they know what’s coming, and it’s just stomach-churning to watch these characters we’ve grown closer to all season prepare themselves for potential death.”
Fucking deal. — Dan O’Brien (cracked.com) on Game of Thrones (x)
