Everything you want from a book or a film: kings and swords, magic and dragons, sex and incest, eunuchs and whores, dwarfs and ghosts. A refreshing abundance of nudity, violence and juicy language.
It was an odd experience: while reading the book (vol 1 of the “increasingly inaccurately called trilogy” … no that was another one), I could not resist the temptation (I can resist anything but temptation… no, yet another one) to have peek at the tv show. It made me read faster, because I needed to finish reading before I could watch, watching seemed to be such a pleasure. And it remained so: through the careful drafting of the screenplay, obviously under very strict instructions by co-producer and novel author George R.R. Martin, and through well-advised and slight modifications to the original plot and dialogues, I found “Game of Thrones” to be a fabulous tv experience. Opulent production design, voluptuous women, vicious men, fabulous settings (only sometimes a bit heavy on the cgi backdrops),
They adjusted the setting in just the right ways: making the children older on average to have more credible acting and character faces on screen (I assume that was the reason), adding segments to clarify the roles of the abundance of characters. This works even better than in the book at times, HBO authors surely have some techniques at hand to create a decent mix of complexity yet understandability. A few of the faces may be a bit too clean and mainstream, such as Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister – initially I wondered whether there really can only be one actor playing “dwarf parts” – I wished for somebody more ugly and crooked. However: the longer the show went on, the more I liked what he did and how he did it – he carries the part of secret hero with short legs with gravity, slyness ruthlessness – all you may wish for.
Lord Eddard suspiciously looks as if they originally wanted to give the part to Robin Hood Gladiator, `Khal Drogo looks like Conan (I wonder why?) and the Dragon lady Daenerys was mostly wooden, even when naked (at least her brother will not bother us any longer) – but most of the actors are doing a great job in looking rotten (Petyr), cunning (Petyr… well, everybody and the Queen), obnoxious (Joffrey) or overwhelmed by events (the whole Stark/Snow family, really).
If I read very fast, I should make it through volume 2 of the books until season 2 starts … only 1000 more pages to go!
thomas4cinema 
2 Comments
Hi there just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of
the images aren’t loading correctly. I’m not sure
why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in
two different internet browsers and both show the same results.
fixed some, thanks for the info and for stopping by!