A Game of Thrones

A Song of Ice and Fire is a high fantasy story written for adults. April 17th, HBO will be launching a TV show based on the series, book 1 - A Game of Thrones - to be more specific. In light of this I thought a book review might be in order. If you are interested in the TV show, you can find out more about it by clicking on the link lower in the article.

This summary does not give the book any justice, but it is meant as a reminder for anyone who has read the book and forgot, so they might prepare for the TV show.

Prologue

The story begins with a prologue, set in a moonlit but cold forest. Three men, brothers of the Night's watch have found a camp of wildlings, seemingly dead. When they look closer, the wildlings are gone, soon to be replaced by unnatural creatures, who soon kill two of the three men.

Chapter 1 - Bran

The book portrays the story in a point-of-view fashion. The title of a chapter means we see the chapter's story as the character in the title sees it.

Bran is a 7-year-old boy who is taken in a company of about 20 men to see his first King's Justice. A man, bound hand and foot is about to be beheaded by Bran's father, Lord Eddard Stark, for desertion. It is the third man from the prologue, half mad from terror. Bran faces this bravely. After they head back to Winterfell, their home, Bran's brother Robb and his bastard brother Jon Snow find a huge dead Direwolf, with 5 wolf pups. Jon convinces their father to let them keep the pups. 5 pups are a sign. He tells theirs father the pups were meant for his 5 trueborn children, 3 boys and 2 girls. He leaves himself out of this count but later finds the sixth pup, driven away from the rest. The sixth pup is an albino and will belong to Jon.

Catelyn

Catelyn is the Lady of Winterfell, wife of Eddard Stark. She find her lord husband in a godswood. She was of a different faith, she prayed indoors. The Starks had older blood. Like the First men, Starks prayed to the nameless old gods. She brings Ned heavy news. Ned used to be a ward of Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, who was like a father to him and Catelyn's sister was married to him. Catelyn brings the news of Jon Arryn's death. In addition. the king of the realm is coming for a visit. The king is a great friend of Ned. Together they usurped the old kind, who was insane.

Daenerys

We find Dany preparing to meet her soon to be husband for the first time. Her brother Visery's has made a deal with certain influential, rich people to basically sell his sister in exchange for an army. Daenerys and Viserys are the last of the Targaryen line, who were dragonkings before Robert Baratheon usurped Aerys. Viserys is a cruel and probably mad with dreams and rage. Dany is a girl of 13.

Eddard

The king arrives to Winterfell, with a host of 300. Robert Baratheon, the king, his wife Cersei Lannister, her brothers, Jaime and Tyrion, the imp and a huge host of followers and guards. We find out the king has changed somewhat since the last time they met, but he still is a great friend of Ned. They visit the tombs so the king can pay his respects to his first love, lady Lyanna, Ned's sister, who would be queen, had she not been murdered before they were married.

Jon

Jon is seated at a separate table from his family. He is a bastard and as such does not belong among his trueborn siblings. He quite enjoys this, since it means he can get drunk for the first time while his siblings have to entertain the queens offspring. He is 14, and looks much more like his father than his trueborn brothers or sisters. His seat also let him feed his wolf, Ghost, while the others had to stay in the kennels. Ghost never made a sound, but dogs always seemed to fear him. Benjen Stark, Ned's brother and a brother of the Night's watch joins him and Jon tells him he would like to join the Night's watch as well. Being a bastard, he had no rights to inherit in Winterfell. Benjen tries to dissuade him and Jon angrily and drunkly stumbles out of the great hall. Outside he meets Tyrion, the queen's dwarf brother. After the initial scare, they come to a good conversation. Tyrion, shorter than Jon, with mismatched eyes, ugly and drunk, gives Jon a lessen about being a bastard and when he opens the doors of the great hall. the light from within makes Tyrion seem as tall as any king.

Catelyn

Catelyn tries to convince her husband to accept the king's offer. The king proposed to Ned that he should become King's hand and to also wed his elder daughter Sansa to prince Joffrey. During this argument, they are interrupted by maester Luwin, who brings a message from Lysa, Catelyn's sister. The message is written in a code language, that only Catelyn knows. The message is a warning, saying Jon Arryn was murdered by the Lannisters, queen Cersei Lannister. In the end they decide Ned should go south to accept the position of King's hand, taking his daughters Sansa and Arya and his son Bran with him. Since Jon would not be welcome in King's Landing or in Winterfell, he would be allowed to take the black and join Night's watch. Robb would stay in Winterfell to learn to be a lord. So would Rickon, who was only 3 years old.

Arya

Arya is a girl of 9 years. the younger sister of Ned Stark. She is not good at the typically womanly deeds. she is much more a tomboy. Of all the Stark children she looks the most like Jon Snow and their lord father. Instead of doing her needlework, she goes to see her wolf, which she named Nymeria, after a hero princess. Sansa, her sister has named her wolf Lady, which seems stupid to Arya. They both meet Jon, who is watching Bran and the princes younger brother Tommen practice their swordplay. On the other side of the field they see prince Joffrey with his guard. After Tommen and Bran are done, Robb is ready to challenge Joffrey, but Joff makes excuses in a way that clearly taunts Robb. He asks to fight with real steel instead of blunt tourney swords. They're not allowed so Joffrey get's to leave, with Robb fuming with fury behind. Arya, having seen the show, reluctantly returns to her hated needlework, where her mother and her septon await her with scolding looks.

Bran

Bran is getting ready to depart for King's Landing. He was very excited to leave, waiting to see the knights from the stories, but now that the day was upon him, he couldn't get himself to say his goodbyes. He hasn't named his wolf yet. He reflects that Rickon's wolf is named Shaggydog, which is stupid and that Robb's is named Gray wind, which was good, because he was very fast. Instead of saying his goodbyes, Bran goes climbing. He was a great climber, much to his mother's dismay. As he climbs on the huge towers, he overhears a discussion about his father. A man and a woman are talking about Ned becoming the Hand. When he tries to go closer, he sees they are both naked. He doesn't really understand it, but a sexual relationship is strongly implied. Hanging above the window he realizes the woman is the queen and at that moment, the woman sees him. The shock of it makes him lose his grip and just at the last moment, the man catches him. It is the queens twin brother Jaime. Bran relaxes for a moment. The man says:"The things I do for love." and let's go. Jon starts falling to the ground, with his wolf howling somewhere deep below.

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5 Movies - Personal Recommendaiton

If you are a regular moviegoer, you may find yourself a bit fed up with the Hollywood formula after a while. After all, it's not the formula but the departure from the formula which turns an ordinary film into something great. The true masters recognize this fact and make their films accordingly. When you are in your home flipping through your satellite TV channels, you will find a number of opportunities if you want something outside of the typical. Here are five films you ought to check out.
1. Rodger Dodger. The cynical, misogynistic point of view gets its day in the sun with this fascinating film starring Campbell Scott and Isabella Rossellini. What happens when a jerk of this magnitude gets the right to mentor a young nephew in New York City? The state of child development hangs in the balance when Scott's character gets to tutor Jesse Eisenberg on the ways of women. Scott's character doesn't escape criticism in this excellent picture playing on IFC in high definition.
2. Glengarry Glen Ross. One look at this literary title will tell you that serious things went into this film. David Mamet's adaptation of his own hit play captures the essence of greed in the 1980's and is a real Death of a Salesman for our times. You might need to talk yourself down after all the cursing and berating involved, but the performances of Ed Harris, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey and especially Jack Lemmon (who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar) will renew your faith in the acting craft. This film's electricity is often revived on satellite TV networks like HBO.
3. Oldboy. Korean films have never made it to the U.S. on a large scale, but if pictures ke Oldboy keep getting made, that trend will be reversed. One of the boldest pictures ever made, there are haunting revenge sequences followed by the consumption of live squid and double-crossing that will make a film noir fan check the scorecard. Oldboy is a true revelation and should be seen without edits in HD technology.
4. Touch of Evil. Stepping back nearly half a century in time never felt so good as when checking out this Orson Welles classic on satellite TV network Turner Classic Movies. Welles pulled out all the stops: Charlton Heston plays a Mexican, Marlene Dietrich a Gypsy and Welles himself a 300-pound corrupt border cop. There are scenes in this film that might not get by the censors in 2010, but Welles made his picture nonetheless.
5. 2046. Foreign film lovers gushed over Wong Kar-Wai's devastating tale of unrequited love In the Mood for Love. 2046 takes the same concept and tells a much darker side of the story, with Tony Leung's character losing his chivalrous side and part of the action happening in the future. To be enchanted and stimulated intellectually at once is the filmmaker's ultimate goal, and Wong Kar-Wai succeeded yet again with this film. Check it out on IFC.

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The Tale Of The Blind Samurai Zatoichi

In the last couple of years I've become interested in a couple of Japanese related subjects. Zatoichi, "The Blind Samurai", which I accidentally clicked into while watching "Samurai Saturday" on the IFCTV channel is number one. In case you are not up on Zatoichi, he's a chubby, blind, Yakuza who is kinda lovable, but is deadly when it comes to cutting up people with his special sword.
The funny thing about that sword is he holds it upside down. I finally figured out that because he was blind, they wouldn't let him go to the regular Samurai school, so he just stumbled along as best he could and ended up teaching himself. I doubt he even knows he holds it upside down.
There was a guy a couple of years ago who went around in the movies claiming to be Zatoichi, but you could tell right off he was a fake, even before the first arm was cut off because he had blond hair. Zatoichi, with his shaved, monk looking hair was ahead of his time and at no time would he have dyed it blond.
My second interest is Japanese woodblock prints. Once I saw the bright colors of these Japanese style woodblock art and the everyday life of the Japanese people subject matter, I was hooked. It also interested me because those Japanese artists used the same technique, at least to me anyhow, that the old comic book printers used.
I began to read about woodblock prints and looked at a bunch of them on the Internet and in a few of those giant coffee table books that never end up on the coffee table. They are usually used by your spouse mixed in with a stack of other coffee table books to provide a steady base for a lamp. Not long after, I discovered that you could buy these prints on eBay.
Soon, I began to try to buy a print. I was most interested in seeing if I could get a Hiroshige for a good price. Hiroshige was what I would say was the Japanese version of Norman Rockwell. eBay is an excellent place to buy things. I bought a laptop, credit card terminal printer, a Sanada Hiroyuki movie, and a few other items that are now used to stack lamps on.
I almost bought an antique Samurai sword, but luck being with me I was out bid by what I eventually found out to be a shill who was bidding for the company selling the sword. He was trying to bid up the price. As a proper reward, they ended up buying their own fake, Chinese made, Japanese sword because I didn't take the bait. Of course, I didn't know all this at the time, I just didn't want to pay the price that they had bid up to.
Buying stuff on eBay takes a certain predisposition for patience, I've got some of the stuff but on the whole I would have to confess to a general shortfall of it. I made the decision and I decided that I would wade in and buy a Hiroshige woodblock that I had found, I would have gotten it too if I hadn't been outbid - in the last 30 seconds.
Now, I'm neither cynical or overly skeptical, but the fact that this person was able to skin me just a few seconds before the bell hit a sour note with me. I repeated this exercise a couple of times with the end result being I still didn't own a print. I decided that there may be some "black ops" software out there that allows one to better advantage oneself in this, the art of eBay battle.
Okay, I got to it and did a little sniffing around and sure enough, I found the software that would put me on equal footing with these 30 second guys. I did a little better than that though, the one I found would let me hold my bid close to my chest, and with only 3 seconds to go, I was able to raise and it was too late for the other guy. I'm sure he is still trying to figure it all out.
The thing that will kill a new hobby faster than anything, at least that I've been able to dig up, is that no matter how much you argue with yourself that this is the last one you are going to buy of this or that for a while, you always seem to run across another one you really can't pass on.
To prove my point in the clearest way I can think of. just go through Jeff's old posts and add up all the camera stuff he has managed to put in inventory. I'm not saying Jeff is addicted, or anything of that nature, but he sure seems to have a tendency to get more than a few fancy gadgets that he "just happened" to run across on his way to the train station.
I'm satisfied with the prints I have now and don't plan on buying any more in the near future, the chief reason being I don't ever travel by train. I have them framed and mounted on the wall of my office here at home. It's satisfying, looking at them and thinking about the Japan I remember. Of course this was after the Meiji period, but before the eBay period so I expect my memories of Japan don't match the reality of Japan.

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