Jump to content

AlpenglowMemories

Members
  • Posts

    317
  • Joined

  • Last visited

3 Followers

About AlpenglowMemories

  • Birthday 03/08/1994

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Scotland
  • Interests
    Film, photography, literature, fantasy, psychology, the natural world, Medieval and Ancient history, music.

Recent Profile Visitors

2,825 profile views

AlpenglowMemories's Achievements

Hedge Knight

Hedge Knight (5/8)

  1. 4/10 I'll say this: it's was better presented most of the other actiony stuff this season. But it was really, really dumb. Like, so dumb. Am I supposed to seriously buy that wights can be stopped by some cold water? And even then, can't the White Walkers just freeze the lake? When did fire stop being the only way to kill wights? Jon not getting on Drogon felt very, very contrived - pointlessly so, considering he's back safe and sound at the end of the episode. Gendry ran to Eastwatch....what? Benjen swooped in out of nowhere, and I'm still not sure why they made him Coldhands: does his magic still work even if all the Children dead? Arya and Sansa? Another false conflict to extend Littlefinger's existence out just a tiny, tiny bit longer. And chains? The Others have giant chains now? Why? In case a dragon fell into a lake?
  2. Not saying this is a reference or anything but it is a bit of a fun overlap. In this interview Tolkien uses the now somewhat famous Ice and Fire phrase "All Men Must Die". Not saying it's deliberate reference from GRRM or anything, but it is pretty fun and quirky - at least for me.
  3. 4/10 That cheesy conversation with the actress and Arya (is domestic abuse badass now?), the awful "butthole" jokes, the Hound butchering the man's groin - is this show written by 14 year olds? Grey Worm doesn't know what a joke is. Tyrion wants everyone to drink, oh and his own vineyard. This scene goes on forever. Dany's return was the most underwhelming and pitiful scenes they've done all season. Rivverun felt like filler. So the Blackfish either escaped again, or died off-screen (what is it with them wasting actors now?) and Jaime loves Cersei long-time. Ugh, just ugh. Also Arya fighting the Waif was mehly done.
  4. We’re at the third act of the season now and everything still feels like set-up. Dry, tedious exposition is still their primary way of conveying information. Every scenes feels too long, bogged down. Yara is now a lesbian, apparently, and is empowering Theon through shame. Arya really shouldn’t be surviving that. What a waste of Ian McShane. The Hound’s out for bloody revenge because that isn’t an overused trope by now. Sansa’s snarking everyone into action. Just meh.
  5. 5 The opening fight scene was really meh. The Sam/Gilly/Family stuff was extremely boring. Tommen and Margaery was long, tedious, cringey. I had to fast-forward through it. That dinner scene as well...talk about going on forever. I also don't buy Sam going there, even sending Gilly there, when Randyl is present. Seriously, those scenes felt endless. Arya kills the waif next, I'm guessing, so good thing they've done a Meryn Trant on her, making her as unlikeable and 'deserving' as possible. Dany's end scene was pretty repetitive. Felt like that should have been linked with E4's moment.
  6. 5/10 If last week showed improvement, this knocked it back down again. Emilia Clarke was really bad in her scene and the teary-eyed goodbye to Jorah had me laughing. Jesus wept, the man’s an obsessed stalker. Arya’s scenes continue to bore: now she’ boxing with the waif! The play was entertaining, but too long, and they’re dragging the life out of this stuff now. The Kingsmoot was atrocious. From Theon upstaging Yara to Euron arriving like a drunk at a wedding, no charisma or charm, no dragon-horn. Somehow he wins the Kingsmoot, but Yara still has more supporters, enough to steal most of his ships, but it’s okay he’s going to make 1000 more with...what? Jon hasn’t changed at all, the Night’s Watch no longer votes, and Sansa has become yet another cipher in the show bleating about ‘ruvenge’. The Others reveal...who cares? They’ve created zero tension or mystery surrounding this, nobody in that cave has been established as an interesting, sympathetic character, so why should I care about them dying? The scene where the children ‘create’ the Night’s King looked really cheesy. I wasn't too impressed by the action scene at the end: the Children’s napalm bombs amuse me more than they look cool, Summer’s death was weak and bordering on offensive, the wights are the least threatening things on the planet: one slap, I swear, and they go down.I'm pretty sure Hodor's name-origin will be different in the books. They kinda wasted Sydow.
  7. 6 Jon’s return scene was okay. Character motivations still don’t make much sense, but the Tormund moment was nice. Bloody boring episode overall though. Scenes continue to drag on and on, endless exposition in dry scene after dry scene. That Tommen/High Sparrow part was excruciating. Varys offering the woman money to leave was LOL funny. Dany’s scene was fine, I guess. Ramsay-Sue continues to frustrate, now we’ve got a dead Shaggy-Dog and a potentially raped Osha to add to the endless misery and shock value. Umbers motivation is extremely weak. Tower of Joy...bleh. Arthur Dayne swinging two swords around like Darth Maul, the weak performance from YoungNed, Bran and Sydow stupidly pointing out obvious points, Howland backstabbing Dayne was weak, implication of Ned bragging doesn’t fit either show or book character. Sam and Gill was another scene that just went on and on.
  8. 6 Bran’s vision was okay. The actor, forgot his name, was really dull though. The scene with Meera left me indifferent as well. The Wildlings vs the Night’s Watch was...underwhelming? Everything about it felt so passive, bland, perfunctorily handled. Plot contrivances continue to annoy me: the man mocking Cersei in public, suddenly Robert Strong is just randomly there? Why and how? Really tired of the exposition scenes on the show now, they’re just so...plain? Uninteresting? Repetitive? It just feels so depressingly dry. Characters hanging around, stating what they think and feel, or rambling on about the plot… it’s just...there’s no artistry to it. Ramsay’s killing off Roose felt extremely contrived. Don’t know why a woman who has just given birth in a medievalist world is wandering around. Why does Davos seem okay with Melisandre? Why hasn’t he demanded answers about Shireen and Stannis? And why, why, is he so adamant about protecting Jon’s body?
  9. I gave it 5. The opening scene was decent though it suffers from the thinning of Jon’s story, putting all of it on the wildlings doesn’t really capture the essence of the betrayal against the vows. Ramsay with Myranda was laughable. The show feels boring to me. Every scene is just some dully written exposition dump with zero creativity put into the establishing of information. Tyrion and Varys was one of the worst examples of this, especially the weak attempts at humour “Well, she won’t be sailing to Westeros now...” Sansa being afraid of icy water when her tormentor’s men are on her heels was absurd – she’s a child of the North for the love of God! Brienne appeared out of nowhere for a somewhat stilted fight (people really hang around waiting to be killed in this show, don’t they) and the hounds vanished? Dorne is still terrible, except now makes even less sense: so apparently the people are fine with their Prince just being murdered? And now Trystane was on another ship? How? When? What? Jaime reverts back to his season one characterisation – why? Cersei is still the weepy good mother, bland as usual. Some of dialogue is truly wretched: “We’re not here to feed you!” “We’re here to kill you”. On the whole it just felt boring. Really boring.
  10. I watched a scene from season one and then one from season five. The decline in the quality of the dialogue is tremendous. I have to wonder at this point do they even care about turning in a solid adaptation? I've had increasing problems with the show since the second season - the issues in S1, bar the lower production quality, seem like trivialities now - but I must confess I never really expected it to get this bad. Even the smallest of changes seemed to be befuddling and have an absurd impact on the quality of the episodes. Do they honestly think that Ramsay Snow is a better chief villain than Roose Bolton? Why on earth did they think having two random servants - an old woman and man - were a quality replacement for Lady Dustin and Wyman Manderly and Alys Karstark? Do they also truly think that having Dany frown and read lines dramatically, forcing Clarke to turn in the same limited performance every year, is working? Is cutting Bowen Marsh and the pink letter wise? Did they really feel replacing the political aspects of the Wall with Thorne and Olly was a worthwhile venture? So many bamboozling choices, so many failed scenes.
  11. 5/10 Worst episode the season. Really bad. The Walk was the only scene I thought they did a decent job with. Everything else was either mediocre or really, really bad (Trant, Dorne).
  12. I settled on a 6. Possibly the weakest episode 9 of the show so far. Dorne is almost offensive in how bad it is. Everything from the acting, the direction, the writing, the characters, the action scenes. It's been progressively worse with each passing appearance. Bronn/Tyene's last interaction made me want to punch the screen it was so cheesy. Ramsay's attack on the camp - what was that? A 30 second sequence of miscellaneous extras running around and tents somehow just bursting into flames in a CG wideshot? And this all happened because Ramsay knows the geography? Arya was...fine, I guess? Nothing too interesting there. It was cool that Mace had some more screentime. Not sure what the purpose of making Trant such a pervert was. He murdered Syrio, abused Sansa, is a general jerk. I think that's motivation enough. Or it would be is B&W credited their audience with any kind of intelligence. Shireen burning...I can see Stannis doing it. I just don't think it worked particularly well. It seemed underwhelming to me, as if it was mostly thrown in there. Undeserved, as someone said, is a good word. Jon's List...meh. Why are they on the North of the Wall? For false drama, of course! Otherwise the scene was just sort of there...not doing much. Could have just taken them along the South side. Nutter's direction is mostly just competent. Granted, he shot the fight choreography in Daznak's better than most of the other action this season, but holy smokes was it a disappointment. The random Sons of the Harpy attack, Hizdhar's death just randomly thrown in and forgotten about, Dany somehow feeling for Jorah again. And Drogon; they managed to make a dragon lame. That's talent. He flies in, burns a few guys, gets hit by a few spears. I don't know. It lacked spectacle for me. It lacked emotion. Dany riding him didn't feel like a huge character moment, it just felt like something that happened. And the shots of her flying looked really mediocre. :dunno:
  13. 7.5-8 Olly continues to be a ham-fisted plot device. We've had, what, three scenes dedicated to this exact same information? It's tiresome now. The Tyrion/Dany scenes were fine, although still underwhelming. The Sansa/Theon scene was nice as well. Hardhome is obviously intended to be the highlight. I thought it was mostly good. There was sufficient build-up (although it seems Jon's developed a very modern potty mouth) and the CG and effects work was very impressive - possibly the best they've done. I have two gripes though: firstly, some of the close-combat stuff was almost incomprehensible, and I can't fathom why they continually shoot action like this. And I don't think the fast-moving, super agile, climbing around like Spiderman wights are all that scary. The White Walkers are cool though, I'd have liked to see more of them. So, it was a good action set-piece, though not as good as Watchers on the Wall.
  14. 7.5/10 Parts of it were good, parts of it were underwhelming. Aemon's death wasn't particularly strong and felt tossed in. That seems to be a theme this season: the "big" moments have passed by without much of an impact. Like Slynt's execution - they're not bad, they just don't resonate very well. I also find three violent scenes (Sansa's abuse, the flayed woman, attempted rape) very trying on a viewer. I don't see why they needed the sex scene to be built up through sexual assault: sharing comfort over Aemon's demise would have sufficed, and added pathos. I'm not sure why Ghost doesn't travel with Jon - are they dropping the connection? I also liked the High Sparrow and the Queen of Thorn's sparring, although it did read a bit to modern in my mind. Ramsay is particularly gruesome. The Tyene scene was fine for what it was - at least the nudity had a point. Direction-wise, I thought MS was fine, he made good use of the sets and environments. One thing I didn't like was the fight scene (it's also, iconographically, way too close to Gladiator) where the motions felt very augmented and visually unappealing. Tyrion beating the slaver was funny though. Thrones continues its complete lack of subtlety in the "30 Dismayed Reaction Shots of Olly" and "Cersei Threatens to Burn Cities - What Could THAT Mean?" department. :rolleyes:
  15. I changed my rating to a 7/10. I'm still not fond of Sansa being in Winterfell, but looking again, I felt the scene was well-performed and deserves credit on its own merits. The House of Black and White is, again, very nice tonally well done. Arya manipulating the girl to take the water might be the best scene. I don't feel the overall direction was as strong as "Kill the Boy" from Podeswa, but it was mostly serviceable. The worst thing? Definitely Dorne. It's been the strangest thing they've put on screen. Everything about that sequence was beyond bad.
×
×
  • Create New...