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What to watch while you're waiting...


jamesM

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Heads up...if you guys are in the New York area, Jennifer Ehle is in Mr & Mrs Fitch opposite John Lithgow. It's a comedy about gossip columnists by Douglas Carter Beane of "The Little Dog Laughed", playing at Second Stage. If you go, we'd love reports! (we being the Jennifer Ehle fan blog- email to [email protected])

PS. Discounts abound. Under 30yos get $30, $15 for student rush, and if you search for discount codes they're $49 (as opposed to $70 full price).

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  • 5 weeks later...

I've heard from friends that Bean's performance as Zeus in Percy Jackson: The Lightening Thief is quite good, although very short. Kevin McKidd plays Poseidon. The rest of the film gets OK reviews from my friends.

Might give Americans who have only seen Sean as Boromir another reference point.

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Heh, my grandfather was in The Order. Or maybe it's a different The Order we're talking about. Nope, my grandfather's version of [The Order starred Jean Claude Van Damme. The other one stars Heath Ledger. But you can watch my grandfather's movie as well, if you like Van Damme.

"The Order" is known in most of the world outside the U.S. as "The Sin Eater," which is a far, far better title. It's most of the same cast and crew as "A Knight's Tale," because everyone had such a great time making that movie (I think Peter Weller is only major addition to the cast - one should never complain about having Buckaroo Banzai added to your cast).

The version of The Order that your grandfather was in was directed by someone I used to know quite well when I was working in film, Sheldon Lettich. He was a client of the company I worked for - nice guy, far better writer than the stuff he got pigeon-holed into doing (he wrote Bloodsport and kind of got stuck in the genre after that). He and Van Damme did a lot of movies together.

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No tie-ins that I know of but the series I call

Spartacus Blood and Porn is so far surprisingly good and

has gotten better since the first episode.

It has been compared to the movie 300 quite a bit but I feel as though it

is much better as there are more subtleties in the dialogue and in the political

maneuverings of the characters.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sopranos is the definite choice, if one wants to watch the best HBO have produced so far, while the setting is different it shows perfectly what HBO does best.

Discounting mini-series this is probably the best tv-series ever produced.

The Sopranos was a very good TV show, but I disagree that it is the best HBO show ever made. The series is not consistently great from season to season. It started off as a great show, but by the last season it was just alright.

Werthead is 100% correct when he stated the following:

Add The Wire to the list. In terms of story content, aside from the thematic similarities in different characters' quests for power and/or redemption, obviously it is nothing like it, but in terms of the vast cast of fully-realised, realistically-motivated characters, numerous intertwining storylines, a total fearlessness to kill off major characters when their time comes and a dark sense of humour, it is fairly similar. You'll also get a good handle on how HBO will handle characters vanishing for long periods only to come back later and how they can do justice to very complicated storylines on TV.

One of the great things that David Simon does with The Wire is allow the first few episodes of each season to exist without jumping into the plot too quickly. Those first few episodes are critical because they allow the viewer to understand the setting in which the story takes place, the characters involved, and motivations for each of those characters. After the setting, characters, and motivations are established; the story is able to organically introduce the plot. In many ways, I believe that GRRM does the same thing with aSoIaF.

If you ever get a chance, you should definitely pick up David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. IMHO, it's one of the greatest pieces of Non-Fiction ever written. I wouldn't be surprised if this book influenced aSoIaF in some way.

I apologize for the rant. I think I have a man-crush on David Simon.

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