Game of Thrones

[Bikerdude]

Just started watching this, and its very good! I would say its a darker grown up version of LotR.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfu1sEo_FKY

[7upMan]

Catch it on EZTV, the fourth ep is already out. Really good show, very grown-up. Oh, and the boobies help, too.

[demagogue]

It's been a book series for a long time before it became a tv show.

 

It's a good series for adaptation, though. Very authentic compared to a simple good vs evil showdown.

 

I wish they'd make a tv or movie series out of Piers Anthony books ... the Adept series & Incarnations of Immortality. Ok even the Xanth series.

[demagogue]

 

So much for being able to delete accidental doubleposts.

[nbohr1more]

Aww... Yeah...

 

Rockin' the Piers Anthony !!!

 

Then you'd have to get Boris Vallejo as the art director...

 

Also, a Giorgio Moroder sound-track is required!!!!!!!

 

Yep... that would be a wild one...

[jaxa]

Just watched ep 1 yesterday.

 

 

I told you not to climb!

 

[Chiron]

Some comments:

 

• Its nothing like LotR. Rather like a epic history lesson (War of the Roses) with some mystery attached.
  

• Brilliant adaption. They don't simplify or change the plot. Makes me whish that LotR had been filmed as an HBO series instead of some (partially) crappy blockbusters.
  

• After watching the series, read the books. Prepare yourself to remember a lot of names !
  

 

 

 

And there are hardly any consistent protagonists. They all die

 

 

[7upMan]

I wish they'd make a tv or movie series out of Piers Anthony books ... the Adept series & Incarnations of Immortality. Ok even the Xanth series.

 

I read some books of the Xanth series many years ago, and I can say that at the time I thought them to be horrible rubbish (riding night-mare horses, WTF?). I mean, there's even supposed to be the so-called "Piers Anthony effect", where the author writes his books faster than the audience can read them. On the other hand, maybe his Xanth books lost most of their charm during translation, who knows.

[demagogue]

You are dead to me, lol.

 

Anyway, they're kids books, like Narnia & Lord of the Rings, on the younger end. Target age is around 10-14. So if you read them after that, they can have that effect if you weren't already hooked. I made it up to about volume 13. Word-play is just part of it. It's not just Night-mare horses, they're riding Night-mares, which happen to be named after the Moon mares. I recall a snail boat at one point. But if he stopped with the puns, people would seriously riot.

 

That's why I said "Ok even the Xanth series" because they're undeniably fluffy guilty pleasure books. But if they hit you at the right age, they're fun.

 

Also, I was mostly thinking about the first book "A Spell for Chameleon", if they had to make one movie, because that's one of the best coming of age stories in fantasy ever IMO, in that pantheon with Lion Witch & Wardrobe & Harry Potter 1. Every kid around that age wants to feel they're special and not trapped in the drab world of their parents, Mundania, and each generation needs a fantasy book to see the main character go through that discovery.

 

But all that aside, I just threw Xanth in at the end for the kids & nostalgic crowd. I was thinking about his adult series for the tv shows, Incarnations & Adept, which were more serious and mature fantasy.

[7upMan]

Ah, well, in that case the books really got lost in translation. You see, I re-translated that with the night-mares (from memory), and today I would be able to read the original through the German translation. This is exactly the reason why I don't read translated books anymore. If I read an American author, then it's only in English. Glen Cook (the Garrett P.I. files), Timothy Zahn (everything except Star Wars), William Gibson etc. What I read in German is by German speaking authors only. There are some where I can only hope that they get translated and made a movie from the material, as there are really great stories to be found.

[ungoliant]

grown up version of LotR

 

:angry: RAAAAWWRRRRRRRR them's fightin' words!!!!!

 

Speaking of LotR and Piers Anthony in the same thread... I used to raid and PvP with one of Piers Anthony's co-authors in LotRO, he's a pretty cool guy. We used to compete for highest DPS Hunter character in the 3 kinships we've been in together. I've probably spent 300+ hours of my life grouping with him, more time spent with than most people I've known IRL. Aaaahhh, shit, now i'm getting an urge to log back on, but that game consumed way too much of my life already since '08.

[demagogue]

Of course, if we're going to get into cool run-ins with fantasy authors, one of the coolest things EVER to grace our little community was that Sir Terry Pratchett used to play FMs. I don't just mean Thief. I mean *our* FMs. He'd post questions on one of the Thief newsgroups (he never made it to TTLG IIRC), and he'd comment how much he liked the storytelling of FMs.

 

That's a moment when I felt FM making wasn't just a fun little thing we were doing for each other, but really a contribution to human culture, the leading edge of what gaming has to offer ... if only a few luminaries ever noticed.

 

.........................

 

It's not really insulting to LotR to say Game of Thrones is a grown-up version. I think he meant it mostly in the literal sense that Game of Thrones is on the very mature, dark end of fantasy (of which LotR is the paradigm standard), with all the conniving and rape and backstabbing and politics. It's emulating the kind of conniving bloody politics you'd see during the Roman Empire, which is why I think HBO felt it still sort of fit as a cable drama, up there with Rome & The Tudors.

 

Reading the books in advance helps a lot keeping track of what's going on, but I've been noticing the tv show actually does give all the information you need to get the characters and events, though you may have to rewatch certain things and pay attention. Also been noticing they're hitting about 80 pages in a 1 hr. episode. So they have to keep a quick pace through it. But for the most part I think they've been doing a good job. The way they do it is have a key scene and crystallize it with just the right dialog so you know what's going on here. Like Chiron was saying, they're staying surprisingly close to the core story from the books, considering the challenge of getting that many pages into 1 hour. So they're doing the crystallizing really well.

[7upMan]

I was just shocked to see Sean Bean get a little... round-faced.

[Baddcog]

So what's the deal with Torrent files, I need a program to DL? I've never messed with them.

[stumpy]

is this on sky tv cos I've not seen this advertised anywhere.

[7upMan]

So what's the deal with Torrent files, I need a program to DL? I've never messed with them.

 

1. Either you use the Opera browser, which has BitTorrent support built in, or you download µTorrent, a Torrent application with a very small footprint on your resources.

 

2. You download the BitTorrent file from EZTV, which you find in the link I posted.

 

 

3. You open that file in µTorrent. About an hour later (depending on your Internet connection) the file is on your hard drive. You should know how to proceed from there.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

[Baddcog]

Nice, will try.

 

On a side note I watched a movie called 'Black Death' last night. The lead actor in this was also the lead. Same role, same hair, same beard, lol.

 

Poor guy will never have another role I fear. But he is good at this one I guess.

[Komag]

...torrent...and then you get a threat email from your ISP that the copyright owner has tracked you via the torrent trackers and could press legal action if the want and that it violates the ISP agreement and such and such. You may want to avoid all that.

[7upMan]

Depends on where you live, I'd say. In Germany you're pretty safe, unless you d/l movies and such, but with TV shows you're on the safe side. Don't know how it's in the US and UK, though.

[Baddcog]

hmm, I can probably rent a dvd of it after the first season at borders, lol

[ungoliant]

buckled down to watch the first 5 episodes streaming, very impressed so far. Thinking about buying the books. The costume and set designers in this series are completely brilliant. Plot is intriguing, characters interesting, 1000x better than Merlin, which i sortof enjoyed. Was thinking of reading Mists of Avalon after watching Merlin, but after watching 5 eps of GoT, I think i'll invest otherwise.

[STiFU]

hmm, I can probably rent a dvd of it after the first season at borders, lol

Torrents are bad, as everybody can see your IP and file legal action if he wants to. So never use it without a proxy server that hides your IP. Here in Germany, even TV rips are illegal, so chances are you're unlucky once, so that the police got a reasonable suspicion and may therefor perform a house search. And well, I guess everybody has at least a couple of pirated things at home.

 

So, better use one of the one-click filehosters, that guarantee full downloader privacy, like rapidshare.com for instance. Rapidshare does not save the download logs on their servers at all, so you're good to go. But even if they did, at least no random third person can see your IP. There'd have to be a reasonable suspicion first, before police can request information about you from some company.

[OrbWeaver]

Here in Germany, even TV rips are illegal, so chances are you're unlucky once, so that the police got a reasonable suspicion and may therefor perform a house search. And well, I guess everybody has at least a couple of pirated things at home.

 

TV rips are a breach of copyright pretty much everywhere, but trust Germany to crank the enforcement up to 11 with police involvement and house searches. Still, I suppose it beats being summarily executed.

[Chiron]

Sure, it is illegal here, but I don't remember reading or hearing of cases or even house searches because of downloading foreign TV shows.

It is a whole other can of worms with MP3s, Movies, Games though

[7upMan]

Seconded.