SeanC

WOTW: Ian McShane talks about his role: "I am responsible for bringing somebody back that you think you’re never going to see again." Pretty obviously the Elder Brother/Meribald hybrid that I (and many others) speculated about. Perhaps most pertinently, he states he's in one episode this season.

The theory about Bond being a codename never made any sense; among other things, the post-Lazenby Bonds occasionally referenced his dead wife (most notably in License to Kill, where the returning Felix, who had previously interacted with Roger Moore, talks about Tracy's effect on Timothy Dalton's character).

There's no way they could film a banquet scene in one day. One day's filming means a handful of actors. Not to mention, if he's only got one scene or so, there's no room for any sort of major plot involving the character, let alone something like the Frey stuff, which requires a lot of setup.

The first trailer is going to be attached to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Apparently there's also going to be a trailer for the next Captain America film attached to that movie, so it will be a big day for superhero fans (and Marvel vs. FOX debates).

Given that he's probably only got one scene, there's not going to be room for anything that elaborate (I'm not sure how there'd be a context for that, anyway). From the description he gets a speech detailing that he's changing sides.

Barbrady is one of the characters from the early seasons that I wasn't especially sad to see displaced, since Harris and co. are both better parodies of police drama conventions and better parodies of the actual police, but they did a good job of reintegrating Barbrady into this episode. And it's a good commentary on the relationship between the American mainstream and the police force. Heh, so there actually is some sort of story with Leslie.

WOTW: Two Northern lord characters who will be filming for one day (December 16th). One of whom may be Lord Cerwyn, the other sounds quite a lot like Lord Manderly.

Those same kinds of social conventions govern landed elite, too. Though it's a false comparison, anyway, since running an estate is in fact a job.

This movie rates as the most pleasant surprise of the year. I didn't think much of the trailers either way, and I was dubious about rendering these characters in a computer-animated format, but I saw it after it got such positive reviews, and I enjoyed it all the way through. This impression was no doubt enhanced by having to sit through the trailer for Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip beforehand, which provided a vivid picture of how badly this could have gone awry. The worst part of going to see movies aimed at younger audiences is the trailers for bad children's movies that accompany them. The people who made this know exactly why people like these characters and what they want from them. They do a good job of incorporating the more familiar comics setpieces into a workable narrative (they even save the football gag for the credits, which is unexpected). It's also confident enough in the material to be fairly low-stakes.

The series is about James Bond. Every other character exists only to support him.

Well, yeah, but that just means the aristocrats are in the same position she's in (even if you start from the position that managing an estate isn't work).

You would think the FBI would be keeping closer tabs on a known armed Islamic terror cell with plans to blow up landmarks the day after a landmark was blown up. Yeah, for me this has firmly slotted in as "dumb fun".

This movie doesn't work, I'm afraid. Now, I could critique any number of plot points (like why Blofeld's henchman is still trying to kill Bond even though he's just heading right to Blofeld's residence, which is apparently where Blofeld wants him; or why M needed Bond to kill that guy and what exactly she knew about this whole situation), but the truth is, most movie plots, particularly in spy thrillers, can be picked apart. People said, correctly, that if you think much about it, the villain's actions in Skyfall (or The Dark Knight, from which the former borrows heavily) are absurd. But the reason that I thought Skyfall was a great Bond movie and this isn't is all in the character. To me, the improbability of the villain's plan isn't a big deal, so long as the character dynamics compel, which in that movie they did; Silva was a strong villain, and the movie worked, because I bought his vendetta against M, and the way that this affected M and Bond. Here they bring back Blofeld in a way that feels like the first draft of a script meant to create a closer link between Bond and Blofeld -- but like I said, it's a first draft, because there's just no there there. It doesn't add anything noteworthy to Blofeld's character, or Bond's, and nor does the attempt to make this feel like the culmination of the previous Craig movies feel natural. I quite like Waltz as Blofeld, for the record. There are a few moments that he sells really well. But there's just not much to the character, and even though the movie leaves him alive, I can't think of any pressing reason I'd want to see this character again, which is kind of failure. I'm a big fan of Lea Seydoux, and she has some very good moments here (and, of course, looks amazing), but there's some very ropey plotting around this character, like her suddenly running off just before the climax (for a character reason that really has not been built up at all), solely so that she can be captured and used as a hostage in the final minutes. More generally, I'm not how this character fits into the franchise. Most Bond movies end with him heading off for some R&R with the main romantic interest, of course, but this movie drops the "love" bomb and his choosing to run off with her instead of killing Blofeld (another dilemma that really doesn't fly; Bond isn't the Punisher, and if we're meant to think he's being driven to the edge by this guy, I really didn't feel it) is played like some sort of turning point for the character. I don't object to that in principle, mind you, but is that really going to be followed up on?

I think GRRM's goal with the multiple POVs for the new plot lines was to provide a wider sense of the two societies in short order.

I added this up once, and it does. By a pretty decent margin. It's the only book in the series where female POVs predominate.

I'm guessing it's some sort of confession about his teenaged relationship with Xiomara and/or when she told him about the pregnancy. This show has so many narrative threads and characters that it sometimes feels like they've dropped one here or there, but they always pop up again; I had been wondering if Milos was just some overly-complicated way of giving Petra partial ownership of the hotel, since it had been quite a while since we last saw him, but no, here he is again.

Going against the grain, I think the latter duo have decent scene chemistry.

I reiterate my statement last week: Caleb is too whiny, and not attractive enough, to be credible as the no-strings-attached fling that Shelby was claiming he was. Sure, he's incredibly unappealing on a personality level, but generally those sorts of arrangements presume a high degree of physical attractiveness to offset the lack of personal compatibility. The music director clearly got the new Florence + the Machine album just before this episode entered production, since we both opened and closed with songs from it. Granted, I'm not complaining.

They aren't reliable at all; they just repost WOTW and other claims, including rumours. There's nothing indicating Littlefinger or the Valemen will be at Snowbowl. As far as Sansa and Littlefinger's filming, they were both reported to be filming at the Winterfell set within days of each other. Whether they were filming together is unknown, but there were no other reports of actors present on either day, so obviously we don't know everybody who was on set on either day.

Luisa is basically the Milhouse of this show.

Sophie was only in Ireland during the Saintfield filming for about four days, I believe, so her part during the actual field sequences isn't likely to be that big.

Examining one's own fandom is often a risky proposition for a TV show, but I thought this was reasonably successful. "Cupid Me" was the the best part of one of the show's more lacklustre recent seasons, so I enjoyed his return here, though that sideplot was average on the whole. In the department of minor continuity, neat seeing Butters talking on Skype with his Canadian girlfriend.

No way does that happen. What would be the point of, well, anything Sansa did toward the end of last season, and what would she do all season? I agree that, at least in the abstract, Sansa going to the battlefield doesn't make much sense, but Catelyn went to the Whispering Wood. Gotta get the characters to where the drama is.

Sue the Fury over on WOTW just confirmed that Rickon isn't one of the people burning on the crosses. I'm a bit surprised she said anything about it, honestly.

I doubt that. There's way more drama in keeping her around Jon as an advisor (not to mention, it's much easier, dramatically). Jon has no reason to send her away, particularly after she brings him back to life and is the only person around who knows anything about magic.