Be Excellent To Each Other

Anyone watching this? I'm recording it right now but was wondering if anyone could give me a brief non spoliery explanation of what it's about, to sell it to my darling girlfriend. She has decided it's rubbish. Also contains gnomes.

I have also decided it's rubbish, but have set to record out of curiosity.

All I know of it is that it contains Sean Bean looking beardy with a sword. It will either be awesome or tediously sub-par, I reckon.

I think this post may have actually contained negative information. I'm sorry for wasting your time.

/

What does Mogwai have to say about the tape spewing out of his arse?

I'm pissed off about Sky Atlantic. I'd really got into the first episodes of Boardwalk Empire before the trial period on Virgin ended with the channel disappearing.

At least you can feel morally superior about not sucking Satan's cock.

I'm fairly sure that I end up the same to him, whilst releasing him from the obligation of putting me a satellite up for the privilege.

I was just about to thread this up! I don't have Sky Atlantic, but I did download it last night (it was on HBO yesterday I believe). Looking forward to watching it, but I have to wait for Mrs Bulge to return from being away for the week before I'm allowed to watch it. I just skipped through the file to check it was all HD and pretty and stuff, and saw a pair of adult female breasts. Excitement increasing.

I'm also half-way through the utterly excellent first book, but as with everything in my life, it's on an indefinite hiatus thanks to more pressing issues.

You could go on a 30 year sabbatical in the Hindu Kush and you'd still outpace his ability to write the damned things.

It's basically high fantasy. Based on a series of books by a chap called George R. R. Martin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire

The books are truly excellent* (think LOTR levels of awesome and detail), and HBO tend to make brilliant telly. Also, it has Sharpe in it.

*By all accounts - I'm halfway through the first one and it's great so far.

Ha! People are getting quite foamy at the gills about the latest one's delayed release, I've gathered!

Holy fucknuts, why didn't I know this series was related to some of my favourite books ever!
Off to the downloadatron!

I've recorded it, because it, erm, clashed with Glee.

Oh and the books are fantasy that isn't afraid to throw away the fantasy rulebook. There is hardly any magic in it, the good guys don't always win, good and evil is a matter of opinion, not everyone is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen (narrows eyes at Eddings) and it talk about adult themes in an adult manner.

Simply brilliant.

I'd also recommend his Jokers Wild series if you can find them, completely different but equally as good in some ways...

A pretty good start to the series, I thought.
There's a lot of different threads to keep track of but I'll be sticking with it to see how it goes.

It was OK.

A description I'd heard was "does for fantasy what Battlestar Galactica did for sci-fi", which made me want to run a mile because oh my fucking God but Battlestar Boring Boring Gloomy Stupid Portentous Don't Tread In The Metaphor Even Made Edward James Olmos Boring Galactica was overrated. But in the early going Game Of Thrones, while taking itself seriously, seems to have a lightness of touch that makes the GRIMDARK stuff more palatable.

Not impressed with the HUBBA HUBBA WAHEY EH LADS? EH? WHOOOOOOOAAAR!! stuff, mind. And had to keep ducking to avoid being hit in the face with chunks of exposition. All in all, though: not bad.

That rings a bell, either I have it on my kindle or have i have came very close to buying it on one of my spending splurges. Glad to hear it seems to have good pedigree then.

I had noticed the trailers a few times over recent weeks but hadn't been that bothered, then I noticed one of the women in it looked quite hot and so I decided I'd give it a bash (I caught a wee bit of something epicy and oldeny dayey on Sky1 round my sisters the other night and it had hot women in animal skins, seems to have stirred my imagination )


*feels guilty*

I will try and watch it tonight

Just checked the Kindle...I have 'A Game of Thrones', George R. R. Martin.

Go and read it, now, go on, chop chop, no lollygagging about...

Should I read it, or should I wait and watch the series so I'm not picking holes in the way they have made the show?

Good question, having read the book and not seen the first episode of the series, i'm in no way fit to answer

But.. but...
The books don't finish...
There is no resolution, no ending.. it's still all up in the air, and has been since 2005...

July this year for the next one.... apparently.... or is it july next year?

Is it possible the author/publisher found out they were making a series and delayed release of the next to build anticipation/cash in on the show? Or is he just really slow at writing!

Doubtful he held on, i'm quite surprised he was happy for a tv show to be made, to be honest! I didn't think that was his thing...
He is just really slow

Book 1 1996
Book 2 1998
Book 3 2000
Book 4 2005
Book 5 2011?

Blame WTB.

So, that was a trifle... dull.

Great, complex, intricate books don't make for good telly, I find, see Pillars of the Earth.

Hopefully it will pick up a bit as with was wonderfully shot and looked lovely.

I quite enjoyed it.

What are you talking about? LOTR was one of the shiteist, worst written serieseses of books ever.* The Game of Thrones series is fantastic, although he needs to write quicker (come on Arya! Wake up and don't be blind!).

Given I'm not surprised they got Bean to play Ned Stark, though.

*I give you Tom Fucking Bombadil, AND the endless fucking elven poetry as just two of the myriad reasons.

Yeah, LOTR was shite!

Seriously though, are you kidding? Yeah, it's self-indulgent and the songs/poetry are there to be completely skipped, but it remains a seminal work of high fantasy. THE seminal work of high fantasy.

Seminal as in "seminal fluid", yes.

It's wank, Jon.

I love fantasy and sci-fi, but Tolkien gives fantasy a bad name. It's gobsmackingly tedious badly written shite.

It's a little verbose, but "badly written shite" definitely ain't what I'd call it. Can we get a hivemind opinion from the board, please? STAT!

Please stick up any paragraph from the books. Go on. It doesn't even have to be a poetry, Bombadil or over-expansive back-story paragraph.

And it'll be crap.

He got there first, basically. That's the reason he's so fucking venerated - he created "fantasy epic", due to being a fucking weirdo. And for some reason this means that everyone overlooks the reams of tedious shite in his books. "oh yes, it's brilliant except for that bit. And that bit. And that bit, oh, and definitely that bit too. But, you know, it's allegorical.". The Silmarillion sealed that analysis in fucking amber, by the way.

The great thing about the films, and why the films are so good, is because they effectively act as the editor he should have bloody well had the first time round.

Mr Chris is having a little play, methinks.

I'm really not.

You compare LOTR to some of the awesome epic fantasy stuff ( George RR Martin being the extant example, Erikson being another) and it's fucking shite. If Erikson, Martin, Feist, Tchaikovsky, Jordan, Hobb, Abercrombie, Rothfuss (Christ, Rothfuss! he's only written one book so far and he's the finest fantasy writer in history) or countless others had been writing at the same time as Tolkien, he wouldn't have had a bloody look in.

It's almost literally like the Bible for some people. It doesn't matter that a load of other people have come up with the same idea, or much, much, much, much better ones, NO. THIS IS THE FONT OF ALL TRUE FANTASY.

lolwut?

You can totally start a thread about the books, we're trying to talk about the TV series. Thanks.

1000%

Somebody already did, i think it was WTB...

I would link to it, but I am iPad impaired at the moment.

I enjoyed reading LOTR, and I don't really like high fantasy as a general rule.

Very few people were, of course. But feel free to get a mod to split the interesting stuff out into another thread.

Mr Chris is....



...wait for it...


Entirely correct. LOTR is a big pile of flowery horse manure.*waits for the universe to implode*

Don't worry, it's probably just a one off. Apparently you can give monkeys typewriters & eventually they'll write LOTR or something, they'd probably do a better job as well.

Is slagging off LOTR the new yo-yo?

for the record, I like Lord of the Rings.

Now, about Game of gnomes. Have I misunderstood, or is
Also, I fancy the blonde chick who's married the mentalist. That is all.

Oh, no it's not all.

Oh also, what is the guy who plays the man in the Kings court who owns the whorehouse been in before?

Eastenders, wasn't he?

Grrr, I want to carry on watching this, but so does Mrs T. She wants to wait till the series is over so we can take a run up...

The Wire. He was the politician type in S3/4/5. And you're not wrong: