HBO hacked: Game of Thrones data leaked
Script for the next episode, plus episodes of some other shows no one cares about
How much will the new iPhone cost?
Horace Dediu is predicting the price ceiling will be $1100, so perhaps $999 for the starting rung of the fancy (Pro?) model
The Queen’s Justice
Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 3
We start with Jonny Snow and Davos arriving at Dragonstone to meet Danaerys Targaryen, the first of our three queens in this episode. The big meet with Dany doesn’t go smoothly. Jon refuses to submit to her rule, Dany doesn’t believe about the White Walkers and it seems Jon will wind up a prisoner in the castle until Tyrion brokers a deal of sorts. Jon is allowed to mine Dragonstone and to leave freely, and Dany is allowed to catch a fleeting glance back at him as he leaves… looks like a Dany/Jon romance is officially in the cards, which would certainly be one way for Jon to submit to her without losing face. He’d wind up King of Westeros, not just the north!
In Greyjoy news, Theon gets taken aboard an anonymous Kraken ship. Euron parades the captive Yara, Ellaria and Tyene through the streets of King’s Landing to the delight of manifold background performers, and drops them off in the throne room, but Cersei won’t marry him until the war is over. Euron taunts Jaime some more in delightful fashion, and Cersei comes up with a suitably horrible punishment for Ellaria, who poisoned Cersei’s daughter Myrcella: she poisons Ellaria’s daughter Tyene with the same poison, leaving her to die in a cell with her mother, who will be kept alive – and so she gets to watch her child rot for the rest of her life. Lovely. So that’s Cersei’s form of justice.
Sam’s storyline advances promptly and predictably: Jorah is cured of his grayscale, and departs to rejoin his queen. Sam is neither punished nor rewarded for his efforts, but is assigned to transcribe a tableful of rotting scrolls and books. I’m guessing there are some juicy secrets up in them scrolls though to keep this plot going?
Up in Winterfell, Sansa is queening it up proper-style, preparing for a long winter. “Command suits you,” oozes Littlefinger, before he gets all metaphysical on her – “fight every battle, everywhere, always, in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend, every possible series of events is happening all at once.” Such a worldview would predispose one to a mistrustful nature.
But Littlefinger’s musings are interrupted by the arrival of Bran, who has gone full wizard. He has trouble explaining his powers to Sansa, but his ability to see “everything that’s ever happened, to everyone, everything that’s happening right now” sounds a lot like someone else: Littlefinger.
We get the Unsullied assault on Casterly Rock and as expected, they exploit Tyrion’s knowledge of the sewer system to sneak in and take the castle from the inside. Surprise! Most of the Lannister forces are missing, and Euron shows up conveniently and trashes their fleet.
The Lannister forces show up outside Highgarden, allied with the Tarlys and led by Jaime. The battle takes place offscreen, but goes well for Jaime. He gets a poignant scene with Oleanna, in which she unsuccessfully attempts to convince him that Cersei is “a disease”. Before she dies from poisoned wine, she tells Jaime that she’s the one who poisoned Joffrey. This is significant because Jaime and Cersei blame Tyrion for this. Cersei may not believe Oleanna, but Jaime does and this could ultimately bring him closer to Tyrion.
Overall this was an impressive episode. It hurtled forward at alarming pace when it wanted to (Casterly Rock, Highgarden), and took its time elsewhere, namely on powerful, one-on-one scenes between most of the show’s key remaining players. The character count went down by two. Cersei is definitely the success story here: she’s gone from a terrible position at the start of the season to near dominance in a mere three hours of screen time. This will drive Dany to forego her cautious approach and get her hands dirty, making her less likely to help the northerners any time soon.
Various loose plot droppings, nuggets of interest, and questions:
- Interesting scene with Varys and Melisandre, where we learn she is checking out and heading to Volantis, but will return to Westeros at some point because “I have to die in this strange country, just like you.” I’m surprised to see her go already; I thought she had a chance to convert Dany to her fire god. Dany likes fire, after all.
- Jon stops Davos from mentioning his murder and resurrection, and Dany notices. What will come of this? Surely there is some significance to Jon’s undead status, or was it just a fakeout cliffhanger for the end of a season and/or book?
- We have a super-expository scene between Cersei and a representative of the Iron Bank, in which she vows to pay her debt in full within a fortnight. Why have this scene? Perhaps if she secures fresh funds from the bank, she will seem all the more impossible to defeat.
- What exactly is Littlefinger’s plan? Waiting around for Sansa to listen to him doesn’t seem good enough. Moreover, if Bran can get his wizard shit together he could expose Littlefinger’s shenanigans fairly quickly. My guess is that LF is still in communication with Cersei. He may have betrayed her by siding with Sansa against the Boltons, but he’s the most likely to help her in the north at this point. If I were Bran, I would be worried about Littlefinger.
- things that are being telegraphed by repeated mention: dragons have weaknesses, the battle for King’s Landing will be bloody, the northerners should look out for Cersei
- I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in the next episode or two we see the White Walkers attack Eastwatch and either breach or bypass the wall. Probably the latter, by going in the water. This could leave Winterfell as the climactic battle scene of the season. By that point the Lannisters could be marching north…
The case of the Russian media czar who died mysteriously in D.C. isn’t so closed after all
Anthony Scaramucci Called Me to Unload About White House Leakers, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon
Wow. Trump hires the top people.
Read the Full Text of Bill Browder’s Testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee
Some deep background on just how corrupt and awful Putin is, and the insane story behind the Magnitsky Act:
Sergei Magnitsky was murdered as my proxy. If Sergei had not been my lawyer, he would still be alive today.
That morning I made a vow to Sergei’s memory, to his family, and to myself that I would seek justice and create consequences for the people who murdered him. For the last seven and a half years, I’ve devoted my life to this cause.
Stormborn
Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 2
In episode two of the shortest season of Game of Thrones to date, things are moving along at a fair clip. The plans of Teams Lannister and Targaryen are elaborated and set in motion; the north squabbles some more, and the “X Episodes Without a Character Death” sign gets reset to zero again. It’s a lot more drama than a typical Thrones Episode 2, but then that makes sense.
Danaerys is getting stir-crazy in Dragonstone, and who can blame her with all the crappy weather. Her Hand Tyrion wants to take the seven kingdoms “without turning it into a slaughterhouse”. He wants to avoid using the Unsullied, Dothraki or the dragons to take the capitol, for fear of bad optics and/or fiery massacres. The plan is for Yara Greyjoy’s fleet to take the Dornish down to Dornville Central and pick up their army, and then bring them back to lay siege to King’s Landing along with the army of the Reach. Meanwhile the Unsullied will take Lannister HQ Casterly Rock. The other allies are less cautious, and Lady Oleanna counsels Dany, “you’re a dragon – BE a dragon.”
The Lannisters are still amassing allies. To a roomful of Tyrell bannermen, Cersei paints Danaerys as a crazy, cruel invader at the head of a bloodthirsty foreign army (do I detect some echoes of Trump-era nationalism?), and asks for them to betray their liege lords to serve the crown directly. Jamie makes a private plea to Randyll Tarly, offering him the Wardenship of the South, but Sam’s nasty dad doesn’t make a decision. Meanwhile, Cersei’s creepy maester Qyburn has a plan to take down dragons, and it involves a rather large ballista. Not very imaginative, really. Was hoping for a paper maché fake sexy dragon full of wildfire barrels, or something.
In the north, Jon gets ravens! Sam’s message about the supplies of obsidian on Dragonstone arrives, as does a message from Tyrion, asking Jon to head down to meet Dany, to strike up an alliance and/or “bend the knee”, as they say. Jon tells his unruly war council that he and Davos are going to accept the invitation, which is another unpopular choice, but everyone seems okay with it when he leaves Sansa in charge. Also, Littlefinger tries to befriend Jon but Jon throttles him.
In Oldtown, Archmaester Ebrose declares Jorah’s greyscale incurable, and shoots down Sam’s ideas from the texts his been digging up in the library. Sam, out of apparent loyalty to Jeor Mormont, Jorah’s late father and Sam’s old commander at the Night’s Watch, disobeys orders and attempts a rather painful treatment that involves tearing off all the stone skin piece by piece.
Arya meets some old friends. She finds Hot Pie at the inn we last saw him at, serving pie, as one does. He tells her that Jon is now King in the North. She decides to go north instead of south and on the way encounters Nymeria, her direwolf, who is leading a pack of wolves. But Nymeria no longer wants to be a pet, it seems.
We get a fiery nautical action scene to close out the episode. Euron intercepts Yara’s fleet, kills two of the Sand Snakes (no, I can’t remember their names) and takes Yara and Ellaria captive. Theon reverts to Reek-era wussiness (ok, PTSD) and escapes overboard.
I’m pretty sure this episode contains everything we have come to want from Game of Thrones: Sex! War! Scheming! Backstabbing! Character Deaths! Yet it’s hard to be too satisfied what this episode is giving us when it is clearly setting us up for even more dramatic payoff further into the season. We get the satisfaction of seeing characters like Varys and Dany, or Arya and Hot Pie meet up, but soon it will be Jon and Danaerys, or Cersei and her daughter’s killer Ellaria. We see the battle lines drawn, but not that much actual battle just yet. Nonetheless, these early-season episodes aren’t usually this compelling. The amped-up budget and shorter season are helping things along.
Random things:
- I didn’t mention the Missandei / Grey Worm sex scene, but yeah, it was there. A little surprised they didn’t go full frontal with our eunuch friend? Too Much 4 Thronez?
- In other eunuch news, Varys gets a grilling from Dany. A lot of exposition gets laid down. They are throwing down some plot tickets, but for what? Easy guess is that Dany will go a bit nuts, and Varys will say something to her.
- Similarly, Jon assaulting Littlefinger seems designed to give Petyr more motivation to betray Jon.
- Theon: my take was he was reverting to Reek mode, but my wife thought he was actually making a pretty good move. In fact upon reflection it does seem like the smartest possible play. I’m curious to see where his story goes; certainly Theon solo is a lot more interesting than Theon as Yara & Ellaria’s butler.
- I never mentioned Ed Sheeran last episode, but it’s an interesting issue. In brief: there’s a tradition of pop music interacting with the show, and it’s usually done in a clever fashion. I found this instance no exception. I felt a cute, popular singer was helping the scene demonstrate to Arya that perhaps some of the people she considered enemies were not deserving of death by vengeance. But I can see that for others, perhaps he’s just too well known a pop star and he takes them out of the scene. These are people who clearly did not recognize Sigur Ros during the Purple Wedding.
Hello – I’m cottaging! Just in case anyone was wondering where the Thrones write-up was. Hopefully I’ll have it up sometime tomorrow.
Balls Out: The Weird Story of the Great Truck Nuts War
It was an intense and bloody battle between two older men who didn’t really know how to use the internet—over fake balls.
When I was ten I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
Goodnight, sweet wince.
Whaaaaat
•Sorry. Trump’s Attacks Aren’t Remotely Like Clinton and Starr
Josh Marshall:
It is very hard to come up with any plausible interpretation of these actions other than that the President is concealing grave wrongdoing which he will not allow to be uncovered. We are far, far past the point where ego, impetuousness, inexperience or anything else is a credible alternative explanation.
Trump Aides, Seeking Leverage, Investigate Mueller’s Investigators
It’s becoming clear that Trump will get rid of Mueller.
The Dirtbag Left and the Problem of Dominance Politics
Jeet Heer on Chapo and how they want moderate Democrats to “bend the knee” to the Sanders wing. He ties it to Trump-style dominance politics and argues it’s doomed to fail for the left. It’s an interesting take, but I’m not sold. I think some measure of browbeating could work well if paired with a more inclusive outreach effort. Which obviously should not be left to Chapo. (And is it me or is Chapo getting a lot of press these days?)
Life
Perhaps I’m spoiled by the character development that good TV can produce by virtue of its ample running time, but I’m noticing a pattern of movies too eager to burn through their first act. They want to get to the jumps, scares and high-drama hijinx the second act will provide, so they plow through the exposition and character development. For the viewer, at first this seems good: hey, we’re getting right to the meat and potatoes! But the problems come home to roost well into the second act, where mid-explosion the viewer thinks, yeah who gives a shit, and checks her phone.
I wanted to like Life, really I did. I love horror; I love sci-fi. So by the same combinatory logic that drives public interest in peanut butter cups and sporks, I’m willing to give any horror sci-fi a watch, even if said enterprise is perhaps fatally indebted to a more famous predecessor in the genre. A diverse crew of space explorers retrieve alien life from an otherwise empty vessel; said alien life proceeds to massacre the crew one by one like they were teens at Camp Crystal Lake. Yep, that’s the plot of Life and Alien. There are differences: Life has a near-future, near Earth orbit setting, aboard the International Space Station, where the crew (that includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Renolds) is retrieving samples from a Mars probe. While Alien is really, really good.
As you’ve probably figured out from the first act of this review, Life hurtles through its opening scenes, eager for its alien creature to get busy. It does get busy, but the underdeveloped characters are little more than food. If that’s all you want from Life, great, but I’m looking for something more.
‘Game of Thrones’ Showrunners Announce Next Project for HBO: ‘Confederate’
Set in alternate reality where the south won the Civil War and slavery is still legal in present day
Game Of Thrones badass Bronn used to be a cuddly British pop singer
Oh wow.
We Are Living in the Coen Brothers’ Darkest Comedy
Burn After Reading
“Dragonstone”
Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 1
The way to a Thrones’ episode’s heart is through its title. The episode titles point directly to the themes being explored in that hour: most often, they mark a thread that weaves through the show’s various disparate plot lines, trying its best to make the ep seem less like a collection of unrelated scenes, and more like a standalone piece of storytelling that actually means something on its own. But, for the first episode in a season, this can be a challenge. The canonical unit of this sort of television is really the season, not the episode, and as such the first few episodes tend to function as the first act, setting up the board and moving pieces around in ways that, while they don’t seem that exciting right now, will be setting up for big moves later on. Fitting that the episode actually features two scenes with maps of the game board, the continent of Westeros, with the characters only getting started.
“Dragonstone” is the episode title and it represents the most significant dramatic action that occurs in this hour, right at the end: Danaerys Targaryen and her army finally land in Westeros. To her it represents her home, and the culmination of six seasons dicking around in the east. In King’s Landing, to Mad Queen Cersei and Ser Jaime the Exasperated, it signifies a huge new threat from the east, joining the others that surround them: Dorne and the Reach to the South and West, respectively, and the newly resurgent Starks in the North. Euron and his magnificent fleet arrive; he’s a potential, much-needed ally, but he wants to marry Cersei! The feeling is not mutual, so Euron leaves to bring her a “prize” of some sort (start your theories).
Down in Oldtown, we are treated to a surprise shit-and-gruel montage featuring Samwell Tarly and the restricted area in the library, which he finally breaks into and reads about…. Dragonstone. Which is indeed a repository of obsidian, one of the two things that can kill the White Walkers.
Up in Winterfell, Jon knows about obsidian but not Dragonstone, and orders a search for the rare material, before Sansa publicly and vociferously disagrees with the new King in the North about how best to use the castles of the Karstarks and Umbers, the Northern houses who sided with the Boltons against the Starks. Sansa thinks the castles (and titles) should be given to lords who didn’t betray them, while Jon points out the traitorous lords have already died on the battlefield, and he does not wish to punish the sons for the sins of their fathers. Jon gets his way, but the simmering Jon vs. Sansa feud bubbles on, starting to embody a particular thematic obsession of the show: different models of leadership. Jon is the noble hero who rules justly but is statistically a great deal likelier to lose his head; Sansa is the cold-hearted player of the game who “learned a great deal” from Cersei, the most cold-hearted of them all.
We also get two storylines that have not much to do with Dragonstone but do say something about those who pay the highest price for the games the nobles play. The Hound is now traveling with the Brotherhood without Banners, and they run across the property – and the long-dead corpses – of a farming family he last met when he was traveling with Arya. Then, he took their silver and left them for dead; now, he struggles with the results of that decision. He’s a rich character, well on his way toward the back half of the patented Thrones Villain-to-Hero Redemption Arc™, and the Brotherhood is helping him along. When Thoros gets him to gaze at the flames in the fireplace, The Hound sees the Army of the Dead passing through Eastwatch. Beric asks, “Do you believe me now, Clegane? Do you believe we’re here for a reason?”
The other storyline is Arya, and she provides a rare cold open. Wearing the face and voice of the always charming Walder Frey, she encourages his entire family to drink a toast… of poisoned wine. Boom. Later in the episode, she’s traveling to King’s Landing to continue her revenge quest when she runs into a small group of Lannister soldiers who have been sent to keep the peace in the Riverlands. Initially she wants to kill them, but they’re such friendly and kind-hearted lads she gives them a pass. From the cold open we’d deduce she’s of the Sansa/Cersei school of cold-hearted score-settling throne-gaming – literally killing the sons for the sins of the father – but from the other scene? It’s not so clear. She may have a heart left.
If I can sum up, which I can, it was an above average episode of graceful board-setting.
Loose ends:
- Look at that, I fucking forgot about the Bran scene. He arrives at the wall – that’s it. You know what, Bran? Get off your ass a little and maybe I’ll remember your scenes next time.
- The costuming is excellent as usual. Euron looked like a Biker Lord.
- That was maybe the most artful “previously on” recap I’ve ever seen. Did they do an original score for it?
- The dagger that was used in the attempted murder of Bran Stark back in the first season shows up as an illustration in one of the restricted books Sam and Gilly look through. Interesting! I didn’t remember it, but here’s some stuff about it: it’s Valyrian steel, it was owned by Littlefinger, I can’t tell if it’s the same one he uses to betray Ned Stark in the first season, but it’s supposed to be in the book. I wonder what its future holds!
- Sure enough, as I predicted in my preview, Jorah Mormont is in Oldtown and he’s already met Sam. Although Jorah is NOT looking good.
- Eastwatch. Sounds like that’s where it’s going down. It’s the fort on the wall where the wildlings will be posted, plus one can surmise the Brotherhood will head there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWd6XgBVIcg
“literal vampire potbelly goblins are hobbling around coming after us”
•Doctor Who announces Broadchurch actress as first female Doctor
That’s great. Although what an incredibly dull intro video.
Transcript & slides from a great talk about Keeping VR Weird, basically. I used to love Mondo 2000 when I was a teen.
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