Author Topic: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!  (Read 8966 times)

caerau

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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #50 on: 14 May, 2013, 05:21:31 pm »
And it was common for people to be married very young in the past, ie once they were past puberty. Game of Thrones is set in a pseudo early middle ages.

Well yes, but this is a TV programme that has, at least to some extent, to worry about such things as we live in the modern era.  Some of the shit the Romans got up to in reality would be very not-showable in the old HBO Rome series for example - even allowing for the rapey/butchery scenes they did show.  That's all I'm saying, I think there is a limit to what they can show in terms of conforming to decency laws and the like.  Some stuff in the books goes way beyond that limit and I think the stuff hidden behind the spoilers comes smack bang in that category.

I have to say mind, that I am being constantly surprised at just how far they do appear to be able to go.  Danaerys' wedding scenes in series one really was all too close to what was described in the book.

Really DON'T click on this if you haven't read the books.
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caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #51 on: 14 May, 2013, 05:24:43 pm »
To be fair, I suspect even HBO won't be able to get away with showing that particular plotline.  In much the same way that all the kids in the TV series are rather
Older than they are in the books. It gets around certain ummm paedophilia issues.

You reckon? Speech from Sunday's episode:

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The Ice and Fire Novels (Game of Thrones just being the first) - are excellent books and afik number one bestsellers.  I have a UK first edition of the GoT and it's worth quite a lot of money apparently.
Each to their won huh?
And this is on TV? Normal TV?

This is what people spend their Sundays watching?

If so, I am utterly, utterly gobsmacked.
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #52 on: 14 May, 2013, 10:24:13 pm »
No it's not on normal TV it's on subscription only TV in the US (HBO) and the UK (SKY).
First series has been repeated on Freeview. Can't remember which channel, but I remember seeing Syrio Forel fighting armoured men with a wooden practice sword. Damn good scene, BTW.
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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #53 on: 17 May, 2013, 08:59:14 am »
It was Pick TV but they only showed the first three episodes. It was a teaser by SKY to get you to sign up for their subscription service.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Eccentrica Gallumbits

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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #54 on: 17 May, 2013, 12:52:51 pm »
And it was common for people to be married very young in the past, ie once they were past puberty.
I think that might not be correct. I'm sure I read somewhere that most people didn't get married until their late teens and early 20s. When Shakespeare was writing about young teenagers getting married, it was always in a play he was setting abroad and it was him showing how weird foreigners are.
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #55 on: 17 May, 2013, 01:03:43 pm »
I think it was common amongst nobility trying to make political alliances.  Which is what is going on in GoT.

http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/no-sex-here-were-medieval.html
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #56 on: 17 May, 2013, 05:33:28 pm »
And it was common for people to be married very young in the past, ie once they were past puberty.
I think that might not be correct. I'm sure I read somewhere that most people didn't get married until their late teens and early 20s. When Shakespeare was writing about young teenagers getting married, it was always in a play he was setting abroad and it was him showing how weird foreigners are.
This depends on (1) when in the past, & (2) who in the past. Mediaeval marriage ages were different (earlier) from those of the 17th & 18th centuries, for example, & as said, aristocrats often married very young - though very early marriages were commonly not consummated until much later.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Tigerrr

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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #57 on: 17 May, 2013, 05:39:16 pm »
Has anyone noticed the GoT landscape is quite clearly UK and Europe? I like the details like that.
Not sure exactly when it takes place though - hard to pin down exactly which period we are in, to validate the acceptability or otherwise of the various sexual practices in their historical context.   
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Valiant

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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #58 on: 17 May, 2013, 06:08:59 pm »
What I like is that though it's American, pretty much the entire cast is British and it's shot anywhere but there:

Filming locations
Iceland
Morroco: Marrakesh, Ouarzazate
Northern Ireland: Ballymoney, Belfast, Carncastle, Castle Ward, Strangford, Harland and Wolff Paint Hall, Magheramorne Quarry, Shane's Castle, Tollymore Forest Park
Scotland: Doune Castle
Croatia: Dubrovnik
Malta: Dwejra, Mdina, Valletta
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Steph

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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #59 on: 18 May, 2013, 04:35:38 am »
I haven't watched any of it. No telly, and certainly no money going from me to Murdoch. I came across the first book* when it  first came out, but read it only part-way before giving up on it in boredom.

Now, why has nobody mentioned that wonderful axeman?


*No, not like that.
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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #60 on: 18 May, 2013, 08:56:59 am »
It was Pick TV but they only showed the first three episodes. It was a teaser by SKY to get you to sign up for their subscription service.

Nope.  They showed the whole first series on Freeview.

I know - I watched it with Mr R...


...and we've caught up with the other series by downloading them online.  In fact, we're now up to speed with the series being shown in the US.
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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #61 on: 19 May, 2013, 11:31:18 pm »
Has anyone noticed the GoT landscape is quite clearly UK and Europe? I like the details like that.
Not sure exactly when it takes place though - hard to pin down exactly which period we are in, to validate the acceptability or otherwise of the various sexual practices in their historical context.
Since it's a superficially mediaeval fantasy world, apparently (from references in the books to its own history) rather static economically & technologically for a few thousand years, trying to relate the sexual practices shown to their historical context in the real world is probably doomed to failure.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #62 on: 04 June, 2013, 01:21:41 pm »
Anyone still watching?

What did you think of the Red Wedding finally revealed then?   Single most shocking thing I've read in that series and it *nearly* done full justice on screen I think.
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Tigerrr

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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #63 on: 04 June, 2013, 01:49:34 pm »
Quite good throatslitting action.  However I think that one needs to cut much more to the sides to get the arterial spurting - that was my only issue with the show. You cant just open up the front of the throat with a quick slash, you need more of a circular cutting action that opens up both the arteries and the larynx. It is quite hard to get right and I feel the GOT team made only a reasonable rather than an excellent job of it.
No doubt a more accomplished throatslitter will be along in a minute to expand on the review.
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caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #64 on: 04 June, 2013, 01:59:05 pm »
I'm more of a Chelsea grin man meself so I never noticed that.

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It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #65 on: 04 June, 2013, 03:31:13 pm »
ARGGGGGG

Haven't seen this week's yet.
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We wondered if they would. And doubted it.

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #66 on: 04 June, 2013, 03:57:17 pm »
There's still time... and thinking about it, it was the other way around anyway
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #67 on: 04 June, 2013, 04:00:47 pm »
On a side note - after a decade of getting a round tuit I finally put my first edition of GoT on sale on ebay.  I've just sent it to someone in Paris for the princely sum of £375!!!  It astounds me why someone is prepared to pay that for piece of very modern fiction.
Lets face it, I could be wrong, but is it *really* going to be worth anything in 15-20 years time...?

I am happy to take their money though :)  I might even reinvest some of it in a replacement - less rare - copy of the book.
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Pancho

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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #68 on: 04 June, 2013, 05:05:41 pm »
To be fair, I suspect even HBO won't be able to get away with showing that particular plotline.  In much the same way that all the kids in the TV series are rather
Older than they are in the books. It gets around certain ummm paedophilia issues.

You reckon? Speech from Sunday's episode:

(click to show/hide)

And this is on TV? Normal TV?

This is what people spend their Sundays watching?

If so, I am utterly, utterly gobsmacked.

I've noticed lots of episode reviews in the (broadsheet) newspapers so it appears that this sort of viewing is pretty mainstream.

I'm not a prude (really). Whatever a man wants to do in the privacy of his own attic is fine by me. I'm just (very) surprised that it's on tele.

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #69 on: 04 June, 2013, 05:47:17 pm »
It's cable/satellite though isn't it.  I think ITV and BBC would not show this.
It really isn't gratuitous though - it's a pseudo-mediaeval universe, this is what people were like back then, like it or not.
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

red marley

Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #70 on: 04 June, 2013, 05:50:09 pm »
It really isn't gratuitous though - it's a pseudo-mediaeval universe, this is what people were like back then, like it or not.

Hmm. Not so sure. More like it's what GRRM fantasises things were like back then.

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #71 on: 04 June, 2013, 05:54:37 pm »
He does a lot of genuine research on it - I've read quite a few interviews with him (not that I'm a fan or anything ;) - but I guess we may have to agree to disagree.

Just a thought - but consider the stuff that went down in Bosnia, Rwanda, Poland (WWII) - do you *really* think we were any better as a species when there weren't cameras around to film the behaviour of armies and those kept in power by private armies?
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

andygates

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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #72 on: 04 June, 2013, 06:39:49 pm »
Even so, it's a deliberate deconstruction: here is a "fantasy" world, now let's watch reality ensue.  Oh dear.  Here is a "hope spot" -- oh, double dear.

This is what HBO do: they take big chewy grown-up material and do it justice.  Who hasn't got rattingly drunk and leered at a questionable-age girl before slurring "I am the god of tits and wine!" and slumping into a pool of piss and vomit?  Eh? 

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Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #73 on: 04 June, 2013, 07:49:41 pm »
  Who hasn't got rattingly drunk and leered at a questionable-age girl before slurring "I am the god of tits and wine!" and slumping into a pool of piss and vomit?  Eh? 
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Chris S

Re: Game of Thrones. Strong stuff!
« Reply #74 on: 04 June, 2013, 07:49:51 pm »
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