Young characters in books are almost always aged up as heavily as the writers can get away with, in order to give the casting director a better shot at getting trained/experienced actors to play them.

@Ryan 2 miles? So the rest of the world is basically watching for the lulz rather than getting a major mining company to undertake a not-particularly-complex feat of engineering that could be pulled off by modern mining tech relatively quickly (at least fast enough to avoid a famine).

It's an old tv tactic now - but still an effective one - to have a character appear to be 'the lead' or 'the supporting lead' and get suddenly killed off near the end of the very first episode, when the show's writers want to signal either 'any character can die at any time' or that it's going to be the kind of show…

You know, this time round I'm really hoping they have a couple of polar bears show up in the first couple of episodes, and none of the characters know why those are there, and then they just never mention it again.

@avclub-6ca57d2774f04ac8acf3d2b10f0338f4:disqus  - wait, when did James Dean stop being the teen model version of Emo Dean?

Yeah, I hope they give Norris the material to continue that portrayal. Jim-type-characters are a lot more convincing if their threat comes more from having a clear cut 'us v them' (or a 'if you're not with us you're against us') mentality, with a genuine emphasis on protecting/rewarding 'his' loyal lot at the cost of…

One of the worst mistakes an adaptation can make is to prioritise fidelity to the source material. Even if you want to recreate the same 'feel' doing the same thing in different media will create very different outcomes. Not to mention that writing is solo, while film is collaborative - it isn't just the screenwriter,…

@avclub-a171d9b078d8fd668b699188db001042:disqus - The Cat People is another clear contender for greatest horror film ever made, but it predated King by decades - it was an early black and white horror, which largely defined the technique of only showing glimpses of the monster (a technique that was stabbed in the back…

@Claude:twitter
 - born 1978, pretty damn familiar with the monumental changes in horror aesthetic, from camera angles, lighting, use and deliberate drowning out of colour, story tropes and themes that changed drastically around 1970, again in around 1977, again in 1980 where film was basically stuck in a loop until…

- 1 great, but dated miniseries of Salem's Lot (trust me - at the time it was masterpiece - the added beginning and end with the man and boy in the Mexican church, with the final ambiguity over whether the vampires were successfully hunting them with their deaths inevitable, or whether the pair  are deliberately…

I have. I recall seeing a film that opened with Sheryl Crow's cover of Sweet Child of Mine (this was before Axl Rose's prolonged idiocy made GNR uncool). As soon as the vocals began, a friend of mine stood up and shouted 'WHAT THE SH** IS THIS?!!?'

Yeah. The books and show would be so much better if they just stuck to the cliched fantasy tropes that we've all seen 100 times before. It just feels too jarring when they base the major events of the war from real historical occurrences in medieval wars for the sake of realism. Besides, don't they realise how much…

In fairness, I don't think you actually get to see the decision making process in the books - the first you know of it is when Jon gets saved by Stannis's army appearing unexpectedly, and THEN he starts to act as the 'noble king'.

I'm surprised there's no comment on how it's essentially a love story 'after the fact' - i.e. after the lovers have ended things and died, and there's no getting back together even now they're alive again.

Dude. It's Hustler. The one pre-internet pornmag company that STILL manages to qualify as 'grossout' in the internet age, whilst most of its pre-internet porn-mag contemporaries don't even call themselves porn anymore.

One assumes that prison would be the esonaquivalent of a high-end commercial realestate when eit comes to the soliciting and meeting with clients in Moriarity's line of work. Also pretty good as a source of alibies and personal protection (she can make a hardass like M kill himself wit.h a message - one presumes that…

I love the way that they're going with the classic 'anti-Batman' version of Slade: a guy who may be a token villain, but nonetheless has a rock-solid commitment to his own personal honour code, including loyalty to his allies and a refusal to take contracts that would result in unjustifiable harm to innocents (reminds…

Am I the only one who would prefer that If Roy is going to become the young sidekick hero, I'd be far more interested in him becoming Arsenal instead of Red Arrow. There's already been two many archers around for a few seasons at least, and it kind of fits Roy's character that he'd be FAR more familiar with gunplay…

Same leverage, but a lot more weight thrown upon it. If the Boltons thought that it was in their interests to kill Jamie, they would have taken his head instead of their hand. As it is, they aren't willing to piss off both the Starks AND the Lannisters by killing Jamie. By now it would make sense for Jamie to be…

Possible, but my reading was just that he has has royal blood and isn't (a) too weak from having his life force drained in order to participate in another magical-assassin-sumonning-ritual, and (b) on her 'do not assassinate' list (Stannis certainly ticks at least one of these two boxes).