skywaterblue

1. I am reading Game of Thrones, but very very slowly. It's not that interesting to me and often I will read one chapter and be like 'that was great' and then the very next chapter will have me saying 'and that was complete shit'. I think this may be one of those books where if I was LESS well-read in the genre I would be more impressed, because mainly what I keep thinking is that it's basically a Very Good YA Novel. I think many of the books fans would choose to object to me and say 'but you can't do that and that in a YA book' and a. that isn't true now and b. wasn't that true back then either.

( These aren't really spoilers, but I'm cutting for length. )

2. I am sorry to say I thought the pilot episode for the Game of Thrones TV show to be poorly done. Very adapted by the numbers. One of the big problems with adapting this show is that all of the book is written via the perspective of a character. And that character (at least at the point of the book I'm in) is an obvious authorial stand-in. They observe which characters are evil slimy bastards and the narrating character is So Obviously Correct About It. And a lot of times I find that decision authorially boring. Like, wouldn't it be way more interesting to see that wedding from the eyes of Dany's brother?

This runs into even more problems in the TV show, which has some appallingly poor edits in the pilot that break up any tension the scene was developing. More than the info dumping, what the producers of this show need to develop is a sense of POV perspective when they write and film these scenes to match (or alter) the book.

It's not like the author's great skill is in dialogue here. There's some witty lines but it's not Mamet or anything, guys. (And tragically, the script and directing fucking /dumps/ all over what wit was in the book to begin with leaving the actors stepping all over the good lines.)

So anyway. It's got some problems besides its issue with the male gaze (inherited from the book) and awkward Race pony people.

Flat, flat, flat. Moments in the book imbued with great foreshadowing importance or drama are rendered inert and the problems clearly lie in the screenwriting and later overall direction. It can only improve, one hopes.

3. Doctor Who, "The Impossible Astronaut".

So much fucking better than the pilot episode of Game of Thrones for one clarifying reason: Steven Moffat understands how to navigate the audience/character POV perspective in television. In fact, there's no one in screenwriting I can think of right now who does this better than he does.

Go back through and watch this episode. Is River Song indeed, finally as sympathetic to the audience as the reviewers claim? (I think the answer is yes, but I was never against her from the start.) Why? Go back and watch this episode again - how many of the scenes are being expressly written from River's Point of View. The answer: almost the entire episode.

( More about this and other things I liked: )

Anyway, I thought this episode of Doctor Who was structurally fabulous from top to bottom with everyone from the main cast giving a perfect performance. Great television.

I think I should say something about life, about how the Moulin Rouge burnt down today (again) but it doesn't matter because there was never going to be the money to rehab it (are you kidding me, they're trying to wall off that neighborhood so no one notices we have a downtown full of poor black crack-addicts) but thank God we're getting a new Performing Arts Center. I'm glad that the preservation company had moved the sign off the building last week.

I don't know. I'm being too hard on Vegas. The past goes out and in comes the new. We specialize in the rhythm of gentrification. At least the building looks like it belongs to downtown, all Art Deco limestone. They're going to rent the space out to worthy Las Vegas performing companies, and don't you know that it'll make us a world class city for the arts (we mean it for real this time, please don't notice that if we were really a world class city for the arts the LV Philharmonic and the Las Vegas Ballet would be able to afford their own buildings. And people might show up.)

There'll be a gift shop and a Starbucks and retail opportunities, yeah, and someone will make a lot of money, probably, because no one's ever gone broke betting on art in Las Vegas before.

...

Peter Dinklage is going to be in the Songs of Fire and Ice movie! Tom McCarthy is directing it! Sounds epic. I'm excited.

Drunk: A Comic about Vegas Bar Stories is due tomorrow. After, I think I'll go see Star Trek at the Neonopolis and then pretend to get a beer at Quark's.