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SeanC

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Everything posted by SeanC

  1. I mean institutionally, they're both basically unaccountable spy agencies operating more or less at the discretion of their directors. The only real difference is the "good intentions" of the people running them.
  2. I saw Testament of Youth earlier this week, a film adaptation of Vera Brittain's memoir about the First World War. It took me a minute to recognize Hayley Atwell, who's rather de-glammed and plays Vera's boss when she becomes a field nurse.
  3. Brad Bird's Ghost Protocol was my favourite of the series, but Rogue Nation is better still; perhaps the action scenes aren't quite as eye-catching, but it's got a better plot and a much better villain, both of which felt rather perfunctory in Bird's film. Other than Mad Max: Fury Road, I can't recall another film that starts as quickly as this one; it's customary to include an opening action sequence in action films, but whereas most films follow that with more in the way of setup and exposition for the main plot, Rogue Nation throttles forward after a lull of maybe a minute. The movie as a consequence feels longer than it is, not in the "check your watch because it's dull" sense, rather the "wow, so much has happened already" sense. Amongst the cast, Cruise continues to demonstrate that he's the most durable action star of his generation. I don't know how much longer he can keep this up, but I'll be interested to watch. So much of the praise for this film has centered around Rebecca Ferguson, who along with the ladies from Fury Road should set a new standard for the female leads in action movies. And while Ferguson is phenomenal, it's not just the actress -- the Ilsa character is quite intriguing even on a scripting level, and she generates genuine mystery around her motivations and true loyalties for much of the running time, which is often a pretty perfunctory plot device (indeed, the movie does the same thing, to way less effect, with Jeremy Renner's character). Simon Pegg's role in the series continues to expand, and he definitely feels like the member of Hunt's team who inspires genuine interest and affection from the creative team; the aforementioned Renner is fine, but he's clearly a replacement character who is never going to actually replace Hunt, and Ving Rhames' Luther feels like he's here largely because he's the only surviving supporting cast from the first two movies. If it's true that they tried to get Paula Patton and/or Maggie Q back for this one, I wonder if one of them wouldn't have replaced Rhames, because he already doesn't have much to do, and I struggle to see where more characters would fit into this narrative. In the Department of Overthinking It, the movie clearly frames Chief Atlee's plan for the original Syndicate, directed by the Prime Minister, as a bad idea -- but what exactly is the difference between ur-Syndicate and the IMF, which is established in this movie as being a neoconservative wet dream organization that operates in total secrecy, even from the Senate Intelligence Committee? The only oversight that the IMF effectively has is that it can be shut down, but since it apparently only has to disclose things when it wants to, that really isn't much of a check.
  4. I really don't think so. It's a fun crack ship, but I don't see any real reason to think it has a canonical prospect.
  5. I wouldn't say what Sansa is doing is manipulation. She's asking openly and without any underhandedness.I agree about Tyrion's hair. It's rather jarring, looking back. The darker colour used in later seasons works better for Dinklage, perhaps unsurprisingly since it's closer to his natural hair colour.
  6. I'd say there are a mix of structural and thematic reasons for it. Structurally, Sansa's first POV doesn't occur until after they leave the castle, and GRRM tells the departure from the POV of Jon, who she doesn't have much of a relationship with (I think GRRM may have retroactively softened this in books after the first one, though even then it's not much).Thematically, you could argue the lack of emphasis on leaving Winterfell and her family may emphasize her being focused on King's Landing. But it may also just be a lack of positive narrative reasons to include such scenes. The parting scenes tend to serve several purposes: to build the characters' likeability (at a time when GRRM's writing of Sansa is more satirical than sympathetic), to emphasize character relationships (Sansa's relationships with her brothers are not important; as yet, anyway), and as a plot impetus for other scenes (Jon's goodbye to Bran exists, at least in part and perhaps in the main, to bring about the scene between him and Catelyn). Semi-relatedly, I believe that GRRM has said in the past that one of the things he would change if he was doing it all over again is the fact that Catelyn never interacts with either of her daughters.
  7. I enjoyed the McCain cameo, complete with Jon Stewart puppet. The first time he's been on the show since, what, early 2008? Or was it earlier than that?
  8. They were certainly reaching backwards in time for some of those correspondents (you could tell a lot of the audience had no idea who Kilborn was in relation to the show). Seeing Colbert, Oliver and Wilmore all together really drove home how much Stewart's disciples have carried his influence to other shows. Springsteen and the E Street Band are still amazing performers after all these years. Max Weinberg, especially, just watching him drum is exciting.
  9. Stannis' rigidity is what I find interesting about him as a character -- GRRM does a good job of elucidating the positives and negatives of it as a trait; its sort of a cousin to the way GRRM uses the various Starks (Ned, especially) to examine the good and bad aspects of "honour". I think one of the reasons the character does have a following is because, in a series where most of the politically powerful characters don't really have any guiding principles beyond doing whatever benefits them the most, Stannis is one of the few that is at least trying to adhere to some conception of law. And I do mean "trying", because he is still human, and ultimately he has a lot of grudges and resentments that have accumulated throughout his life that influence his choices more than he can see or admit.
  10. Sansa is being moved to a point where she is going to strike out from Littlefinger. It will be the point where she has the motivation to try to make her own opportunities. I don't know that news about Jeyne will be what does it, but that moment is coming.
  11. SeanC

    X-Men Franchise

    I quite like ANXM Jean, but from what little we've heard about the upcoming new film version, she really doesn't sound much like that take. As far as Sophie's filming, she's in Belfast right now filming GOT, and has either been there or back in England since SDCC. There's about three weeks left in filming proper, per Singer recently. I expect she'll be back for a bit more, but it's far from unusual for filming to be scheduled around multiple projects of actors. Nicholas Hoult was hanging out with Sophie in England a lot, for instance (gossip away).
  12. Even assuming that's true, it's only because the show cut most of her book story. Book 2 Sansa had no difficulty scavenging a knife when she felt she needed one.
  13. Jeyne was Sansa's best friend, to whom she was closer than her own sister. Moreover, Sansa knows that Littlefinger is a devious guy - she just doesn't know the extent to which he has been acting against her own family and friends.
  14. For most of the book Sansa has been try to see the world as she wants to see it, but this chapter is where that goes from being purely aspirational to a defensive mechanism. When she talks about the sound of battle, etc., you can feel her desperately fighting off any sign that things have gone completely to hell -- and hence her trying to discredit Jeyne's reaction, when in fact Jeyne has a much better understanding of what's going on. There's been considerable speculation on this particular point, but I don't think Sansa really remembers the details of this conversation later in the series. Hence, why she never even thinks about asking Baelish about Jeyne. Sansa was undergoing a lot of trauma around this time (and for the foreseeable future), and unlike the reader she doesn't have this whole conversation written down to revisit later. Littlefinger deserves all the condemnation he gets for what's done to Jeyne, but one should also remember that Cersei is as, if not more, culpable, since she was the one who gave her to Littlefinger with a clear understanding as to what he was going to do with her, when there was no reason to. Pretty much anything could have been done with Jeyne instead. She's yet another victim of Cersei's total disdain for any woman who isn't her (or Myrcella, I guess).
  15. Per WOTW, they were filming at Moneyglass' Winterfell set today, with Sophie confirmed there. Plus bonus false/mistaken reports that Michelle Fairley was there! (since disproven)
  16. I don't think that's really possible for this show. The only reason to do those is, as you say, to avoid contract renegotiation, but HBO clearly doesn't care about that, since they'd like to go even beyond eight. Split seasons would bust the show's production schedule, so doing separate seasons on the normal schedule is preferable.
  17. SeanC

    X-Men Franchise

    marvel.com gives her height as 5'6, for what it's worth, which is somewhat above average for the USA (5'4).
  18. This is looking to be a good year for retro-themed spy films.
  19. The Patton/Q thing is direct from Christopher MacQuarrie, who was asked about it and said they tried, but that neither was available. Which could be spin, still, but absent some other evidence I'm inclined to believe him, since I can't see any reason why they'd be resistant to that.
  20. The sequence of events with Rhaegar and Lyanna is clearly going to be explained much more in the future. But the Kingsguard ultimately do whatever the king tells them, and Aerys never expresses, as far as we know, any belief that those three are traitors (surely that would have come up in Jaime or Barristan's POVs), so clearly he must at least have consented to whatever the arrangement was.
  21. I really don't see, even if you ignore her period, how Sansa could be read as 20. She is very clearly a girl on the edge of puberty, in worldview and her emotional state, when the story starts.
  22. In addition to Stannis and Jon Arryn, you have Renly (and by extension some of the Tyrells), Littlefinger, Varys, and Pycelle all knowing -- basically the whole Small Council other than Selmy. In Varys' case it's because he's got spies hidden in the walls, but that isn't so with the others. Pycelle covered because he's a Lannister stooge, but the other three just sought to use the information for their own benefit.
  23. The reason Jaime and Cersei weren't "officially" caught was because everybody who found out before Jon Arryn and Stannis were working their own agenda, not because of anything Jaime or Cersei did. I'm dubious that Littlefinger would ever risk giving his enemies such an obvious means to destroy his standing, since if it became at all known his career would be over.
  24. That, and, I suspect, if you don't hold off on the Reeds until Season 3 Bran has even less to do that year. The way they introduced them and people were suspicious was a logical but clearly unforeseen consequence (and I'm not criticizing the showrunners here, because I don't recall any book readers anticipating that either). But yeah, it was definitely frustrating to watch people try to figure out what was up with the Reeds, when there wasn't anything up, but yet that was still an entirely reasonable avenue for people to look down. One detail I really missed from the books is the Reeds' oath when they first appear ("by ice and fire", and all that).
  25. Heh, given that he's a big X-Men fan, I tend to doubt that (though the Hound isn't really an anti-hero; among other things, he would need to be a protagonist for that).
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