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Rant & Rave Season 8 [Spoilers]: When you are cool like a cucumber, as evil as the mother of madness, but never as perfect as the pet!


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On 2/20/2021 at 6:26 AM, SeanF said:

Their pranks just weren’t funny.  What’s the point of making two young girls cry, except to be an arsehole?  Practical jokes should only be played if the object of them can join in the laughter.

I'm shocked that none of this was revealed until recently. Were people so afraid of losing their jobs that they were too scared to say anything? What Gina Carano has recently confirmed about Lucasfilm has made me wonder if it's exactly the same here.

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51 minutes ago, Count Balerion said:

the odd thing being that this stuff is being revealed in a putative puff piece. that alliterates.

Yes, this stuff that is meant to make Ding & Dong look good only confirms what we think of them.

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On 2/20/2021 at 2:44 PM, Count Balerion said:

my favourite bit in the pranks chapter is where they try to get a rise out of alfie allen ... and fail b/c he just acts cool and nonchalant about it.

it is weird how much incriminating stuff is in the book despite its being a puff piece. it's all a riot and D&D are "two wild and crazy guys" as we used to say.

i can't even w/ the waterboarding etc. i can't help wondering: couldn't they just have had the actress scream? as in pretend to be waterboarded or whatever? i.e.e, act, which is what actors and actresses do, hence the name 'actor' or 'actress'? the mania for making it 'real' reaches incredible levels at points.

Yeah, that's so disturbing, that they included that scene at all was already disturbing, but then to subject the actor who played the victim to this made it even more so. Of course, as you so rightly point out, the latter was not necessary, and just shows their contempt for the acting profession.

I'm reading an interesting book on film criticism now and she makes the point that one of the things to look for in a film is, was there any point to something? Or is it just there for, as she puts it, will or won't that thing happen. There's no thematic purpose if it's just there.

And this scene was just there. They'd already shown an abundance of rape and tortured women on the show, and never showed what it was really like for the women (like the add on victim of Meryn Trant, who was just a girl, who was forgotten, and many others).

Just like the victims of Littlefinger who were forgotten, they forgot Cersei's victim, too. They had Sansa honor Littlefinger's love and thank him for empowering her, which is worse than forgetting her. They never returned to the Lysene girl, or to Ros. Rather than denounce the villains, it was just there.

Their denouement of Cersei's arc, what they had been building to the entire series (not that they build toward things, or give anyone an arc... it's so hard to talk about them, because they are just so bad at this) is, in their own words, she is "just a girl who needs the comfort of a man."

They didn't even show that. She treated Jaime with disdain when not eviscerating him as a human being. She didn't seem like she needed "comfort" when she was smirking her way through the series, nor was she even fond of this "man" so... like everything they do, it was empty and meaningless.

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6 hours ago, Count Balerion said:

it's certainly worth asking why they do anything. commonly it's b/c benioff had a random thought in the middle of the night. apparently.

I loved one comment I read that “Benioff is an id, sat in front of a computer screen.”

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6 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

Yeah, that's so disturbing, that they included that scene at all was already disturbing, but then to subject the actor who played the victim to this made it even more so. Of course, as you so rightly point out, the latter was not necessary, and just shows their contempt for the acting profession.

I'm reading an interesting book on film criticism now (Hitchcock's Films by Robin Wood) and she makes the point that one of the things to look for in a film is, was there any point to something? Or is it just there for, as she puts it, will or won't that thing happen. There's no thematic purpose if it's just there.

And this scene was just there. They'd already shown an abundance of rape and tortured women on the show, and never showed what it was really like for the women (like the add on victim of Meryn Trant, who was just a girl, who was forgotten, and many others).

Just like the victims of Littlefinger who were forgotten, they forgot Cersei's victim, too. They had Sansa honor Littlefinger's love and thank him for empowering her, which is worse than forgetting her. They never returned to the Lysene girl, or to Ros. Rather than denounce the villains, it was just there.

Their denouement of Cersei's arc, what they had been building to the entire series (not that they build toward things, or give anyone an arc... it's so hard to talk about them, because they are just so bad at this) is, in their own words, she is "just a girl who needs the comfort of a man."

They didn't even show that. She treated Jaime with disdain when not eviscerating him as a human being. She didn't seem like she needed "comfort" when she was smirking her way through the series, nor was she even fond of this "man" so... like everything they do, it was empty and meaningless.

I think that their careers are effectively over, now.  It’s just a pity they got their hands on A Game of Thrones.  Among their many faults, they can’t do characterisation, in a character-driven story.

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15 hours ago, Count Balerion said:

it's certainly worth asking why they do anything. commonly it's b/c benioff had a random thought in the middle of the night. apparently.

Truth be told, some of the more controversial ideas in cinema have developed like that, like Michael Myers and Laurie Strode being siblings. That thread persisted until the 2018 Halloween film and even into the Rob Zombie remakes.

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13 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Keeping lines that secret must have severely limited the actors - they need time to prepare their performances. Time is money on a major tv show...how much time, and therefore money, was wasted on ...fake requests that Benioff dragged out for days?

Well, I took a cursory look on the web, and this is what I got:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.moviefone.com/2018/10/08/game-of-thrones-season-8-secrecy-sophie-turner/amp/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/amp27614111/game-of-thrones-finale-jaqen-hghar-waif-scene/
 

As to your question, they used a lot of time and money; figures that I found were in the ballpark of $90 million. Would have thought all that time (nearly two years) to iron things out would have meant a better final product.

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13 hours ago, Count Balerion said:

one fun thing not revealed in the book: it *looks* as if ramsay is shooting actual arrows at jon. see 1:58:45 to about 2:11:00 in our podcast.

the book DOES reveal that cunningham's head almost got cut off. more later.

The latter nearly happened to Eli Wallach in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Remember when Tuco is lying next to the railroad tracks handcuffed to a man he just killed and waits for the train to run over the cuffs? Wallach nearly got decapitated by the steps of the train.

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and now for the fun:

BATTLE OF THE BASTARDS

they commonly called it BOB. book brags about all the emmys it won. [how?] some "critic" called it probably the best television show ever. [surely TV isn't *that* bad?]

it had to be "bigger and better" than Hardhome.

sapochnik consulted and estimated that he'd need 28 days to film the battle. "the producers countered w/ 12."

they lost the ending and had bad time mgmgt. i don't think these comments are in the book -- or not in so many words.

the terrain was a "soft, undulating field". the rain turned the ground to mud, and things never quite recovered. the bowl-like terrain turned into a "muddy soup".

sapochnik only got one restroom break in several hours, which may well be "the resolute director's most impressive feat of endurance".

horses were a problem because they defecated and micturated a lot and didn't like standing around.

there were mock corpses of horses and people. [i'm relieved they were mock.] each fake dead horse cost $4,000.

liam cunningham: "i almost got killed during the battle of the bastards." he's fairly handy w/ horses, but this horse got jumpy and leapt up so high cunningham had to duck to avoid getting his head cut off by a russian arm attached to the camera. [yes, you read all that right.]

"starks fight w/ their b*lls and not w/ their head"

1-shot of jon staggering.

finally benioff: "ppl are so good at picking up fakery on screen."

weis: KH might be of serious value in a real mediaeval army. [doubt it.]

KH looks and only sees the faults. we commented he has actual professional standards. dunn says he gave crew member his jacket.

cogman compares a scene in the episode to the trash compactor scene in STAR WARS.

not in book: in the UK it's illegal for horses to even look like they're touching each other.

the bolton crest is "fascistic and graphic". [well, i guess it is graphic.]

northerners, wildlings, and boltons all have their own styles of combat.

they had a horseman charge through a lot of corpses.

sapochnik needed 3 extra days to film a key sequence and didn't have 3 days. he dashed off an e-mail to the D-chaps, expecting to get yelled at. "D&D liked scripts executed the way they wrote them, and w/ good reason." [waht good reasons!]

the best solution sapochnik could come up w/ was having jon trampled by his own men. D-chaps said OK.

KH did subtle stuff to show jon's post-death emo-ness. his humanity's fractured. "not him anymore." [didn't really notice, except he's stupider]

"spent a whole day beating ramsay." iwan got "a few bruises." yes, therewas literal physical punching.

Ds joked at iwan rheon "isn't it great that ramsay sits on the IT?" rheon: "he's ddad, isn't he?"

rheon spent a nice long time tied to a chair surrounded by scary dogs.

sapochnik: "BOB was all about the journey back to life at the 11th hour, rediscovering the desire to live. looking back, it seemed like an insurmountable task ... then season 8 happened."

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6 hours ago, Count Balerion said:

and now for the fun:

BATTLE OF THE BASTARDS

they commonly called it BOB. book brags about all the emmys it won. [how?] some "critic" called it probably the best television show ever. [surely TV isn't *that* bad?]

it had to be "bigger and better" than Hardhome.

sapochnik consulted and estimated that he'd need 28 days to film the battle. "the producers countered w/ 12."

they lost the ending and had bad time mgmgt. i don't think these comments are in the book -- or not in so many words.

the terrain was a "soft, undulating field". the rain turned the ground to mud, and things never quite recovered. the bowl-like terrain turned into a "muddy soup".

sapochnik only got one restroom break in several hours, which may well be "the resolute director's most impressive feat of endurance".

horses were a problem because they defecated and micturated a lot and didn't like standing around.

there were mock corpses of horses and people. [i'm relieved they were mock.] each fake dead horse cost $4,000.

liam cunningham: "i almost got killed during the battle of the bastards." he's fairly handy w/ horses, but this horse got jumpy and leapt up so high cunningham had to duck to avoid getting his head cut off by a russian arm attached to the camera. [yes, you read all that right.]

"starks fight w/ their b*lls and not w/ their head"

1-shot of jon staggering.

finally benioff: "ppl are so good at picking up fakery on screen."

weis: KH might be of serious value in a real mediaeval army. [doubt it.]

KH looks and only sees the faults. we commented he has actual professional standards. dunn says he gave crew member his jacket.

cogman compares a scene in the episode to the trash compactor scene in STAR WARS.

not in book: in the UK it's illegal for horses to even look like they're touching each other.

the bolton crest is "fascistic and graphic". [well, i guess it is graphic.]

northerners, wildlings, and boltons all have their own styles of combat.

they had a horseman charge through a lot of corpses.

sapochnik needed 3 extra days to film a key sequence and didn't have 3 days. he dashed off an e-mail to the D-chaps, expecting to get yelled at. "D&D liked scripts executed the way they wrote them, and w/ good reason." [waht good reasons!]

the best solution sapochnik could come up w/ was having jon trampled by his own men. D-chaps said OK.

KH did subtle stuff to show jon's post-death emo-ness. his humanity's fractured. "not him anymore." [didn't really notice, except he's stupider]

"spent a whole day beating ramsay." iwan got "a few bruises." yes, therewas literal physical punching.

Ds joked at iwan rheon "isn't it great that ramsay sits on the IT?" rheon: "he's ddad, isn't he?"

rheon spent a nice long time tied to a chair surrounded by scary dogs.

sapochnik: "BOB was all about the journey back to life at the 11th hour, rediscovering the desire to live. looking back, it seemed like an insurmountable task ... then season 8 happened."

I didn’t think the fighting per se was done badly, in B O B.  My objection was to the sheer stupidity displayed by Jon and Sansa.

Jon is meant to be an experienced commander, who then loses the plot over Rickon’s death, and attempts to charge the enemy single-handed. On foot.  Against armoured horsemen.  

Sansa never bothers to tell Jon there are two thousand friendly cavalry in the vicinity, certainly getting hundreds of their men killed, as a result.  Granted, Sophie Turner said she did it because she wanted the credit for victory, which is worse than stupidity.  Most commanders would have hanged Sansa for her behaviour.

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11 hours ago, SeanF said:

I didn’t think the fighting per se was done badly, in B O B.  My objection was to the sheer stupidity displayed by Jon and Sansa.

Jon is meant to be an experienced commander, who then loses the plot over Rickon’s death, and attempts to charge the enemy single-handed. On foot.  Against armoured horsemen.  

Sansa never bothers to tell Jon there are two thousand friendly cavalry in the vicinity, certainly getting hundreds of their men killed, as a result.  Granted, Sophie Turner said she did it because she wanted the credit for victory, which is worse than stupidity.  Most commanders would have hanged Sansa for her behaviour.

The battle tactics that everyone was using seemed pretty dumb to  me, and I am not one who picks up on that type of stuff unless it is really, really  obvious.  Of course, everything about Sansa's behavior was insane and traitorous.  I also remember thinking that the pile of bodies was too 'theatrical' looking for a show allegedly steeped in realism. 

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9 hours ago, Ghostlydragon said:

Madness and stupidity.

If i was Liam Cunningham, I would have resigned. I hope there were massive apologies.

Ok, that would have made me spit out coffee if it was in my mouth right now, as opposed to being brewed. 

The idea of any Ds apologizing to anyone seems anathema to them. 

Cunningham seemed a bit of a good sport publicly, anyway. 

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