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SeanC

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Everything posted by SeanC

  1. Jaime's arc has been about his falling out with Cersei, so him having to kill her at the end is hardly out of step with that. I doubt that very much. Even if you accept that your reading is the only possible way to read those words (even though almost nobody reads them that way), the obvious thing would be to modify the words to correspond with the intended meaning, not eliminate them altogether. And GRRM is a far more detail-oriented writer than D&D, so I'm quite sure he said what he meant.
  2. Sure, but we didn't get a story about somebody telling Merrett Frey that. We got a prophecy that has everything to do with the tangled Lannister family dynamic, and the overarching stories of those siblings has been about the family's gradual unwinding. While it's true that some of the other figures were unknown to the child Cersei, none of those are really comparable to the valonqar, because they didn't/aren't governing her actions in the same way. And I think the omission of the valonqar prophecy from the show is very telling in that regard. The writers of the show are far more interested in surprising the audience than GRRM is, and I think the reason it's not in there is because the obvious answer is the correct one.
  3. I'd call that pretty slim. Plus, if you expand the reach of the quote to encompass any younger brother (and Arya requires you to ignore gender, too), it becomes such a broad category as to be all but meaningless. It's far more potent if the set in question was already known to Cersei as a kid (Jaime + Tyrion) and she settled unthinkingly on one of them. As with above, the child Cersei had no possible reason to think about an epidemic of wights (nor has the adult Cersei to date, really).
  4. Boston Online Film Critics Awards: Picture: Mad Max: Fury Road Director: George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) Actor: Michael B. Jordan (Creed) Actress: Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn) Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone (Creed) Supporting Actress: Kristen Stewart (Clouds of Sils Maria) Screenplay: Spotlight Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul Documentary: Amy Animated Film: Inside Out Cinematography: Mad Max: Fury Road Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road Original Score: Mad Max: Fury Road Ensemble: Spotlight
  5. Yeah, to me, any answer other than Jaime (or, I guess, Tyrion, if you're going with the "self-fulfilling prophecy" route) sacrifices any meaningful basis in character in favour of a cheap shock. Prophetic misinterpretation should tell you something about the person. That she she was told that "the younger brother" would kill her and she immediately and unhesitatingly assumed it was Tyrion, even though Jaime equally fits that description, tells you something about Cersei, both who she loves and who she's predisposed to hate. And, moreover, Jaime being the one to kill her is meaningful, the ultimate twist in their relationship. She dies at the hand of the one person she could never see as an enemy. None of the alternatives are anywhere near that meaningful, and most are so random or so unpredictable that it doesn't tell you anything about Cersei that she didn't see them coming. Stannis or Arya, to name two, are people Cersei already considers her enemies (to the extent that she's aware of Arya), just not people she's tagged as the prophesied figure. And then you have suggestions like "wight Tommen", which are so out-of-nowhere that no sane person would ever anticipate that.
  6. Having seen Spotlight, I think there are three probable acting nominees there (the three famous actors on the team), though I'm not sure there are any probable winners. However, I'd be quite surprised if it doesn't win Original Screenplay (which is where they're submitting); not just because it has a great screenplay, but it's the sort of movie that will be tagged as "writerly", so the screenplay will be one of the first places Oscar voters think to vote for it.
  7. I just got back from seeing it. Quite meticulously made, and extremely well-done; one can definitely see why it's being compared to All the President's Men. I was vaguely amused that the Spotlight team is a four-person group composed of Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, and...other guy. I think the movie was trying to make you think that shoe was about to drop, what with all the conversations involving him seemingly trying to tamp down the story.
  8. That and lead roles for women tend to skew younger, so that skews the pool Oscar draws on. On the whole, I much prefer the female acting categories in this regard. Older women can still get nominated and win (when the films get made to begin with), but when you get an exciting young talent it's actually conceivable that they'll be recognized, whereas with male talent that isn't true. If the lead in Life of Pi had been a woman the same age as Suraj Sharma, that actress would have been at least a strong contender for a nomination, but Sharma was never part of the serious discussion in the Best Actor category.
  9. The first teasers never do. At least this one isn't making you jump through a bunch of hoops to see it, like those awful "The Sight" videos last year.
  10. My main reservation about his chances is that Netflix has yet to show it can really compete at the Oscars. The Square got a documentary nomination, but that's a sideshow with its own specialized rules, etc. Now, the Emmys have gone all-in with internet releases, so maybe the Oscars will follow suit. It's much tougher for boys to get a nomination than girls. There's only been one in the last 25 years (Haley Joel Osment for The Sixth Sense), whereas Quvenzhané Wallis, Hailee Steinfeld, Saoirse Ronan, Abigail Breslin, Keisha Castle-Hughes, and Anna Paquin were all nominees in the same period. The male acting awards, in general, skew older than the female ones (e.g., a young male equivalent to Jennifer Lawrence would struggle to get nominated, let alone win, no matter how good they were).
  11. Wonder Woman looks cool. The Superman vs. Batman stuff looks dreary, thus far.
  12. WOTW: The main article is about an interview given by the guy who played Black Walder in season 3, asked about his odds of returning, but one of the minor notes below, which I don't think I'd ever seen before, was that back in late July there were reports that they were filming at the location where they filmed Runestone in Season 5. It's mentioned in the context of Lino Facioli, the actor who plays Robin Arryn, being confirmed as returning. I note that because, if they were filming at Runestone, that would suggest that we're likely to see Baelish going there to gather his army; many were speculating that he was going to have been doing that when he was offscreen toward the end of Season 5.
  13. I confess, while I quite liked Bridge of Spies, I don't quite get all the love for Rylance's work in that. He's good, don't get me wrong, but there's really not that much to the part.
  14. Ehh, they nominated the first one but ignored The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Granted, that's the same situation as Creed vis a vis the Rocky series, but the latter is a much more Academy-friendly genre, and there are other blockbusters this year with more in the way of prestige. I was shocked by Mad Max winning. I'm glad that it may get into the conversation, at least. A directing nomination for George Miller is one of the things I'd most like to see. Looks like the Stallone train is definitely leaving the station. That's my favourite supporting male performance to date; I just hope that this isn't one of those situations where a single aspect of the movie becomes the early focal point of all awards attention, because there are other parts of Creed (including the film overall) that I hope get nominations.
  15. I watched The Princess and the Frog the other night, for the first time since I saw it in theatres. I think it's quite a good movie -- watching it reminded me, though, of how the directors must have been besieged by a zillion studio notes about all the different messages they had to convey and all the pitfalls to avoid, often ones that are a bit at odds with each other. Both because it was the first Disney "princess" movie made after the Disney Princess line became a thing, and the first movie with a black female lead, they had to address a ton of baggage on both fronts. So, e.g., the prior movies have been criticized oftentimes for the girls' lack of interest in anything but romance, so we've got Tiana's main plot being about wanting to work really hard and open a restaurant; but they'd catch hell if the first black princess had no love interest, so she's got a romance too. It's a wonder it all works as well as it does. It's also quite atypical for the "princess" movies in that it's set in the recognizable modern world (or, I guess, the recent past). They gingerly hint at racial discrimination, since they couldn't ignore that outright, but at the same time too much would swallow the movie (and, again, a concern the other movies don't have; nobody worried about whether Beauty and the Beast was an accurate representation of the life of a 17th century French peasant).
  16. Tomorrow the National Board of Review fires the starter gun for the awards season gauntlet, followed by the New York Film Critics Circle the following day.
  17. Oh, I absolutely believe that the books are doctored to hell. But the fact remains that he is telling everybody else that he's increased revenues tenfold; it makes no sense that nobody has ever wondered how that can be the case and yet they still have a huge debt, given that the government doesn't seem to be particularly profligate in its expenses. The two main things governments spent money on in this era were wars and buildings (primarily fortifications), and the kingdom's expenses in neither area would be unusual -- indeed, the kingdoms have been quite peaceful.
  18. It creates parallels between her and Adonis, in terms of pursuing a dream in the face of obstacles (including potential future health consequences, in his case).
  19. I don't know whether this was intentional or not, but I appreciated that the elite government torture unit succeeded only in getting Alex to confess to something she didn't do. Conversely, and alarmingly, Quantico's new class is evidently full of people who have no problem sending people to jail on falsified evidence. Actually, that part is probably accurate.
  20. I think it could definitely get into the conversation for other nominations. It looks like it's going to make a decent chunk of money, and the critical reception is rapturous. Screenplay would be the other obvious place to start, though it would be competing in Adapted, which is almost always a tough row to hoe. At a glance, other notables in Adapted this year would be Carol, Room, Brooklyn, The Revenant, The Martian, The Danish Girl (critical reception lukewarm, but the Academy generally likes Hooper more than the critics do), and Steve Jobs (strong critical reception, but its weak box office performance seems to have derailed its momentum for the moment). Purely from a strategy perspective, while the Academy has correctly been noted as a heavily white voting membership, it does have a sizeable number of non-white voters, and more white voters who will want to see non-white nominees (particularly after last year, I expect), so Creed could do well if it makes a strong appeal to that group (along with the demographic that like boxing movies; if you look at the record over the years, boxing is far and away the Academy's favourite sport). There aren't any other notable POC-lead movies likely to appeal to the Academy (some people were talking about Straight Outta Compton being a contender earlier this year, but I can't for the life of me see that happening).
  21. But the thing is, we're told that Aerys left the treasury full of gold, and that under Baelish revenues have increased tenfold. There may have been postwar expenses, but the government can't possibly be ten times more costly then it was in Aerys' day.
  22. I wasn't talking about the Targaryens, but the Baratheons. Regardless, giving the lands to Robert's brothers or Robert's children would have the same effect in the long-term.
  23. Intermarriage amongst the kids doesn't mean you have fewer cadet branches; it just means your daughters marry within the family. You still have as many sons to find places for as you had before.
  24. Going to see Creed, it was very obvious that the trailer selection had been made with an "urban" audience in mind. There were four trailers, three of them for movies with black casts or leads: Barbershop 3 (also like Creed in that it's a sequel to an old movie series), Central Intelligence (which got a huge response from the audience; that one's going to be big, I think), and something called Fifty Shades of Black (which was actually a decent trailer parody, but I can't imagine it will be anything other than excruciating at feature length).
  25. Crowe was the overwhelming favourite to win that year before he ruined his chances by getting into a fight at the BAFTAs. The bad PR knocked him out of the game, and so Washington won. That wasn't really a makeup Oscar, both for that reason and because Denzel already had an Oscar.
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