Miregoji Returns

Millennium Godzilla, or Miregoji, in the lobby of the Hotel Gracery Shinjuku, August 2023.

Godzilla is in something of a renaissance these days. 2023’s Godzilla Minus One was an excellent movie and even won an Academy Award. The American Monsterverse movies continue to be a lot of fun with a new entry in 2027. In addition to the Minus One sequel there are additional mysterious Japanese Godzilla projects in development, apparently including a sequel to the awesome Shin Godzilla. On top of all that, Toho studios has been releasing a series of amazing shorts every year for Godzilla Fest.

This year's short has just been released and it’s a doozy. First off, it marks the return of my all-time favorite Godzilla design, Miregoji as seen in Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla vs Megaguirus, complete with his oversized jagged spikes and reptilian visage. This version of the character is going into meltdown a la Burning Godzilla from Godzilla vs Destroyah.

Godzilla head atop the Hotel Gracery Shinjuku.

Secondly. it is well-made and full of fun details (peep the active silhouettes in the windows) and is cleverly edited to look like a single cut. I'd love to see this director get a shot at a feature Godzilla movie. The short is set in Tokyo's vibrant Shinjuku neighborhood. My favorite detail has to be the kaiju coming face-to-face with the giant Godzilla head atop the Gracery Hotel which is an actual landmark in the area. It's also lovingly made through suitmation and detailed models.

The movie ends on a cliffhanger and the shadowy presence of a mystery kaiju. My money is on Biollante, a monster unseen in live action since 1989. I hope this is the case because Biollante is really fantastic and imaginative creature, essentially a hybrid of Godzilla, a human being, and a rose. Hopefully next year we will see a battle between Burning Miregoji and Biollante!

Check the short out here:

Patrick Garone

Anne Rice: A Celebration of Life

Anne Rice had a truly deep and unique relationship with her fans. In her heyday in the 1980's and 1990's she was known to hold epic multi-hour book signings often participating quirky setpieces like being driven around in her own Jazz funeral while she was still alive or climbing out of coffins wearing wedding dresses or elaborate Babylonian headdresses. She was also directly involved with the fan club for her most famous creation, the Vampire Lestat, and frequently attended the club's famous Haloween Vampire Balls in New Orleans. 

She was uniquely accessible to her fans both during the more analogue times in which she had a physical newsletter (Commotion Strange anyone?) and had a published telephone number for fans to call and leave messages. In the digital era, she had a for-the-time robust author website and later a well-developed community on Facebook for an audience she referred to as People of the Page.

And then there’s the actual content of her books which formed the relationship to her fans even in the primitive 1970’s. While she may been reduced to a "horror" writer and her books can be found in that part of the bookstore, Anne's books meant so much more to her readers. We can and do argue about her particular genre mash-up (see below) but what’s most important to her readership is the sincerity of her writing and her outsider perspective. 

Readers of her first novel 1976’s Interview with the Vampire encountered not just an ordinary vampire tale (vampire stories were and are a dime a dozen) but something much more compelling, a story with vampires which was full of emotional realism about supernatural characters living on the edge of human society and struggling with questions of good and evil and love and loss. 

And it turns out that the first generation of Anne Rice readers really responded to these themes. If you were a queer reader in 1976 to some extent you knew what it was like to live in a shadowy subculture and if you were also religious perhaps you knew something of Louis’ tortured existence. If you were an adult woman who had suffered the lifelong indignities of being infantilized and not taken seriously then perhaps you knew Claudia’s rage. If you were a parent who had experienced the unimaginable loss of a child as Rice herself did then you would  recognize the loss and grief that elevated the book to something beyond a basic vampire tale. And, really, any American living a comfortable existence within spitting distance of poverty and human misery might feel like a bit of a vampire themselves if they stop to think about. There is something fundamentally vampiric about runaway capitalism.

I was introduced to Anne Rice’s work through a battered copy of Interview loaned to me by my “cool” high school friend Autumn in 1992. I loved it and as a queer kid responded to the coded homoeroticism in the book but more than anything as a son who felt saddled with a poor excuse for a mentor in the form of my father,  I empathized with Louis’ frustration and disappointment in Lestat as “the pig’s ear from which nothing good can be made.” I felt seen and was thereafter a dedicated Rice reader.

Like all her fans I was sad to hear of her passing on 2021. When it was announced that her celebration of life would be happening this year and would be produced by her son, the novelist Christopher Rice and his producing partner, I jumped at the chance. Not only had I never experienced New Orleans during Halloween but I had missed out on all of the Rice-related events of my youth such has the Lestat Balls (which apparently are still a thing.)

The Anne Rice Celebration of life took place on Saturday, November 1, All Saints Day at the Orpheum Theater off Canal Street, the handsome Twentieth-century boulevard which forms the Uptown boundry of the French Quarter. I had looked up the space beforehand and had an approximate idea of where it was located but as soon as we reached the street we were greeted with a line of people in various levels of Gothic attire. There were lots of  vampire characters, people in different period outfits, some Victorian ladies clutching creepy porcelain dolls, some Egyptians, etc. I was wearing a polo, navy slacks and dress shoes so I felt a little underdressed. Note to self: when traveling keep a Goth outfit packed, you never know when you will need one. My colorful Golden Age Flash costume would not have been appropriate.

The venue itself is a beautiful old baroque-style theater which was decked out with wonderful old photos of Anne and other Rice-related decor, including life-sized replicas of Akasha and Enkil, the two progenitor vampires from her books. We had a pair of vertigo-inducing seats up on the nosebleeds, which required me to stare down through my progressive lenses with my glasses on the tip of my nose.

The event was a mix of biographical video, guest speakers talking about Anne, a few music performances, and some segments with actors reading selections from her books which even included some deep cuts like the Sleeping Beauty series, Violin, and Christ Out of Egypt among the better known Vampire, Witch and Mummy books.

There were some certainly some really lovely and even funny anecdotes from the speakers, particularly from the event’s producers Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn (who are also hosts of the Dinner Party Podcast) although others seemed to misunderstand the fundamental assignment and focused mostly on themselves.

I would say the strongest part of the whole thing were the biographical video segments which were at times moving, revealing, and delightful. I appreciated that they didn’t lean away from Anne’s often awkward and quirky persona and included such things as members of her housekeeping staff reacting to finding rooms full of porcelain dolls and mummies. 

I’m not sure how much of video they had completed or what further uses are envisioned beyond this event but I would love to see a full length documentary built around this footage. For an author of Rice’s profile there is little biographical info available about her aside from the early 90’s era Ramsland book. From the same time period there is the moody BBC documentary Birth of the Vampire. I am including a version of this that I have restored below. But there is little that covers her later life.

What is unavoidably clear now too is existing tension between the Rice estate, which Christopher heads and the Anne Rice adaptations that AMC is producing in the form of Interview with the Vampire, The Mayfair Witches, and Talamasca. The videos presented at the event prominently and repeatedly features clips from the 1994 Interview movie adaptation (to the point of distraction almost) but literally nothing from the new shows. This is particularly odd since AMC’s Interview With The Vampire is widely acclaimed and an all-around excellent adaptation of the novel which one would think would be worthy of highlighting given how few of Rice’s works have actually made it to screen. Couple this with one of the speaker’s somewhat shady comment about how the fans should hope for “faithful” adaptations of Rice’s work, which was met with puzzling applause. 

One can follow the sequence of events which lead to Interview ending up at AMC without Christopher Rice’s involvement whereas he had previously been attached as writer in previous iterations of the show as it was shopped different streamers around to his perhaps being unhappy with the final product. One can make a case that the show has taken some liberties with the story but it is an adaptation of the book, not the book itself. But that’s a topic for another day. Regardless, Rice rarely if ever publically comments on the AMC shows on which he is still nominally attached as a producer.

In any case, this was a lovely event to celebrate the unique life of an author who’s work touched her readers dearly. That much is clear from both the in-person testimonials and the short video excerpts sent in by readers. Her work reached people from all walks of life and inspired us and made us feel seen.

We will miss you dearly, Anne.

Note:

Personally, I fell off from reading some of her later books but that just means I have about a half dozen unread Anne Rice books to enjoy at my leisure (Including 3 Vampire Chronicles!) which makes them a precious commodity.

Patrick Garone

Adaptation is a Monster: Interview with the Vampire

Adapting a beloved book to screen is a tricky proposition. On one hand the book is beloved for a reason and one wants to retain the things about it which its readers enjoyed in the first place. On the other hand, film and television are very different media from fiction and have different limitations and strengths from prose. They should be different by nature but an adaptation is often deemed successful by how "faithful" it is to the source material.

At the recent Celebration of Life for author Anne Rice, one of the speakers struck a somewhat sour note in an otherwise joyous occasion. He said something to the effect that we fans can still hope for accurate adaptations of Rice's work, apparently a dig at the AMC shows which have varying levels of fidelity to their source material. The best and most high-profile of the three shows, Interview with the Vampire, famously makes some bold changes from the book on which it is based. 

It got me thinking that despite the popularity of her books, the work of Anne Rice has seldom been adapted for screen or television-which is sad because Anne Rice LOVED both of these media and would share her thoughts on  movies and shows she enjoyed frequently online, in print, and often in her books themselves through the pens of her characters. Sadly out of a catalogue of about thirty-seven novels only the following had been adapted prior to the AMC deal: a film based on her religious book Christ Out of Egypt, a cable miniseries based on her historic book The Feast of All Saints, and a uniquely terrible comedy adaptation of her erotic novel Exit to Eden. And, most successfully, the 1994 adaptation of Interview with the Vampire which starred Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

Interview had a tortuous almost twenty-year journey to its first adaption which included a lot of close calls with potentially disastrous productions such as one that would have starred Cher in a gender-swapped version of the Louis role. The 1994 adaption was directed by Neil Jordan and at least partially written by Rice herself. The movie for the most part keeps the book’s story intact. 

While it cut out some side plots like the business with the Freniere plantation, Lestat's secret fledgling, and the trip to Romania, the movie is about as faithful an adaption you could get in a feature-length film. It was also a big hit and remains a cult classic to this day. It was eventually followed by The Queen of the Damned which was not made by any of the people associated with the first movie nor with the same budget, thoughtfulness or general level of quality as Jordan's movie. From an adaptation point of view, it not only (mostly) skipped the second book in the series, The Vampire Lestat,  but attempted to cram a very long and complex novel into a single feature film.

The rights to the Vampire Chronicles then returned to Rice and lay dormant like an emotionally exhausted vampire in one of her books. In the 2010's there were regular breathless stories about the Chronicles being purchased by various different production companies or streaming services or attached to different creatives like Orci and Kurtzman or even Bryan Fuller (as much as I love the AMC show, can you imagine a Vampire Chronicles show from Bryan Fuller, the showrunner of the incomparable Hannibal and American Gods?) At one point there was even a bizarre rumor that Robert Downey Jr. was attached to an adaptation of the fourth Vampire Chronicle, The Tale of the Body Thief. Ultimately, it was announced that AMC-the home network of The Walking Dead franchise-would be making a series based on the books, and that they were starting with Interview. 

I was surprised and disappointed. Why we doing this again? We have a good adaptation already. Let’s get to stuff we haven’t seen on screen yet! I want my MTV Lestat! 

Then I saw the cast, most of whom were low-profile actors or unknowns. I started having Queen of the Damned panic. Is this going to be some cheap-o Hot Topic version of my beloved Chronicles? 

Jacob Anderson is Louis? Is Gray Worm really up for this role? How does a Louis-of-color change the story particularly since he is an antebellum Southern plantation owner? Who is this Australian rando playing Lestat? Daniel is being played by Eric Bogosian, an actor pushing 70? 

Then I learned the time period was being changed from the 18th century to the early 20th century. Claudia was being aged up even more than she was in the 1994 version. (My dream for Claudia has always been a VFX version mo-capped by Glenn Close.) There were lots of seemingly cavalier changes to the story. My Spider-sense was tingling hard. 

And then I watched it. And I watched it. And I watched it again. 

Not only is Interview with the Vampire a really excellent television show but it is also a masterful adaptation of Rice's novel. It should be studied by people who are looking to adapt a literary work for the screen. It is full of very smart choices.

The show does the magic trick of being extremely faithful in theme and character without being slavish to the details. Most importantly, it justifies its own existence which is a threshold many book adaptations do not meet. It even maintains some of the storylines dropped from the 1994 movie...and at least a shout out to the Freniere family. And all those “cavalier” changes? In almost every case they enrich the story.

Who knew that Jacob Anderson, a musician best known for playing a tertiary character on Game of Thrones (another work which wrestled with the perils of adaptation, sometimes successfully sometimes not) with a limited emotional palette would have this magnificent performance in him? It’s genuinely delightful and surprising to me to see that he is capable of so much that I could not see from his past work. I've never been so happy to be wrong about a piece of casting. 

Instead of being a white Creole slave-owner living in Louisiana like Book Louis, Show Louis is a black Creole New Orleans brothel owner in the infamous Storyville district of New Orleans, essentially trading one iconic New Orleans time period for another, and avoiding tiresome and toxic depictions of slavery while still maintaining Louis' as someone morally compromised by human exploitation even before he becomes a vampire, which is a thematically important element to his character. Interestingly, Louis refers to having had a plantation-owning ancestor who in the broad strokes seems to resemble the pre-vampire Book Louis, as though he is a descendant of that same character. 

Show Louis is also explicitly a gay man, whereas this was buried under subtext and narrative hand-waiving in the book and movie. The intersection of his blackness, queerness, and vampirism make him a compelling character and serves the larger themes of the book about marginalization and otherness and provide this version of the character with very rich and earned conflicts. For example, his relationship with Lestat which had always been defined by its inequality is now complicated by the racial inequality of turn-of-the century New Orleans. Indeed, the instability of the trio of Lestat, Louis, and Claudia is now underscored by the fact that Louis and Claudia are now both black characters.

Another interesting choice is aging up Daniel Malloy, the interviewer who is only referred to as "the boy" in the book but later named in The Queen of the Damned. In the show's first season we learned that Louis and Daniel had actually already had an attempt at an interview in the 1970's which ended in half-remembered disaster, likely resembling the ending of the published novel and movie. The premise for the show is that Louis wants a re-do of said interview and has a genuine need to embark on an "odyssey of recollection." He approaches this second interview with a sincere desire to accurately tell his story and reckon with his past.

We flashback to this first interview several times in the first season and more so in the second season in which we learn the true series of events which transpired fifty years earlier and it is a truly wonderful payoff to what seemed to be an odd change to the Daniel character. This is also a lovely homage in both the time period and some of the dialogue is directly lifted from the novel, as though Show Louis' first interview was very close in character to that of the book.

Speaking of fidelity, another thing that this series brings to life that was only ever tangentially addressed in the books is the idea of point of view and the reliability of the narrator. Interview with the Vampire is the only novel in the series that is from Louis' perspective. Most of the others are from Lestat's point of view in a first-person narrative. Others are from the perspective of different characters as relayed through Lestat or another character. Ever petty, Lestat devotes a whole chapter in his book The Vampire Lestat presenting the events of Interview from his point of view, where he flat-out disputes his characterization and some of the events Louis had recounted. His distaste for Louis' "miserable memoir" is a running joke in the Chronicles. And based on the trailer for season three, it seems Show Lestat isn't any more of a fan of Interview than Book Lestat.

The show, however, makes the idea of Louis being an unreliable narrator a major plot point, particularly in its second season. In fact, one of the taglines of season two is "Memory is a monster." Things that seemed to be plot holes in season one are revealed to be lapses in his memory which calls his whole account into question. Compare that to the 1994 film which leaves all of Louis' story unquestioned. Show Daniel is a much more active, skeptical interviewer who frequently challenges and pushes back on the account, creating a real tension in those scenes.

While the bulk of the first two season are from Louis' point of view, we do see sections that are from Claudia's diaries and even a scene or two from Armand's perspective. There are potentially even some scenes which are not clearly identified as being from any particular character's point of view, such as the very Hollywood Loustat reunion scene, which for all we know could have been the invention of one of Daniel's editors to give "closure" to the story. It's important to note that the analogous scene in the novel is a scene Lestat specifically claims is made-up. Season three will likely be all or mostly from Lestat's perspective and will likely provide some alternative versions of events depicted in seasons one and two. and perhaps an offhand reference to this scene having been fabricated. Either way, the show seems to relish in keeping us on our toes.

One of the challenges of adapting the Vampire Chronicles is that every novel is based on a character recounting the story’s events, sometimes there are multiple levels of this with characters recounting tales told by other characters. This is particularly true of IWTV, the conceit of which is that the text of the book is literally meant to be a transcription of an interview session. Therefore, some of the book  scenes have the quality of characters quickly recounting recalled events with a bit of vagueness as to the specifics. While that works as a literary device, it’s not really satisfying on screen and the thing that this adaption does best is to bring the characters and their relationships to vivid and very specific life. 

The way that the show handles these relationships might be the greatest change of all but I would less call it an alteration of what is on the page but an expansion on it. While the characters and relationships in the Vampire Chronicles have always been compelling, the show creators have taken every relationship in the book and really mined them to make them more three-dimensional than they ever were in the source material. The dysfunctional and messy relationships between Louis, Lestat, Claudia, Armand, and Daniel are here rendered into vivid, unforgettable detail. Even side characters like Santiago and Madeleine really shine in this version. Even the "decadent" and "useless" vampires in the Theatre des Vampires feel like specific characters, albeit bitchy theater people.

Fans of Rice and her Vampire Chronicles are lucky to have such a miraculously good adaptation. While it may not be traditionally "faithful" it captures the spirit and character of its source material beautifully. I can't help but think that Anne would have fallen in love with it.

Patrick Garone

Ranking Star Wars

8. Attack of the Clones

Look, I admit it, I enjoy the prequels. Despite their very real flaws I respect their scope, boundless imagination, and their willingness to be very different movies from their beloved antecedents.  However, while Attack of the Clones has some of the series best and most fun sequences, it is the one prequel that really collapses under the weight of George Lucas' flaws as a writer and director. His disinterest in directing actors and writing dialogue make chunks of this movie damn near unwatchable. While none of the Lucas written movies have good dialogue, Clones has lines like Anakin ruminating on his feelings about sand and Jango Fett describing himself as "a simple man trying to make my way in the universe." On top of that Lucas manages to get bad performances out of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, both of whom are actually good actors.

All that being said, there is plenty to enjoy in Clones which is more of a swashbucking adventure in the vein of the original movies. The Obi-Wan story in this one takes the form of a noir-ish detective tale leading him to some of the series' most interesting locales. Anakin's story manages to get back on the rails once it gets to Tattooine and his arc there dark and consequential. Once the movie gets to its last act, it is firing on all cylinders, and we not only get a giant battle featuring dozens of Jedi, the epic start of the Clone Wars, and a lightsaber battle featuring none other than Yoda himself.

7. Return of the Jedi

Compared to the groundbreaking fun of Star Wars and the darkness and relative maturity of Empire, Return of the Jedi seems like a somewhat uninspired and perfunctory conclusion to the beloved Original Trilogy. It is a lazy movie that copies sections wholesale from its predecessors, whether it is a creature cantina on steroids in the form of Jabba's Palace or a bigger louder assault on yet another another Death Star, much Jedi feels a little too familiar. Combine that with stilted performances from Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher (both of whom were well over it at this point) and a fairly ridiculous ground battle in which a bunch of teddy bears defeat the Emperor's "finest troops" and you have a movie that feels like its creators just wanted to wrap the whole series up and move on to other things.

All that being the case, Jedi has some great sequences such as the assault on the Death Star II and lightsaber duel both of which are improvements on their corresponding Episode IV moments. I'm not one of those practical effects fetishists, but Jabba the Hutt holds up as an amazing movie creature and is certainly better than any of the digital versions that have appeared in other movies over the years.

6. The Force Awakens

J. J. Abrams has a gift for making blockbuster movies with an emphasis on character and relationships. He also casts really good actors and gets good performances out of them. These were much needed in the the Star Wars series and, on this front, The Force Awakens succeeds where all of its predecessors have failed and introduces a charismatic new generation of actors who turn in compelling, credible, performances and deliver dialogue that doesn't sound like it was translated into English by a computer. However, The Force Awakens has a fatal flaw for a Star Wars movie: it is profoundly unimaginative.

Much has been said about it's recycled plot (although The Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi both repeated plot points from A New Hope  and the various Kurasawa movies from which it borrowed) but the real sin of The Force Awakens is the criminally lazy and uninspired design. If nothing else, the Star Wars movies have all delivered groundbreaking design and effortless visual world-building but The Force Awakens really contributes nothing new to the visual world of Star Wars. At the very least, I expect a Star Wars movie to provide interesting environments, ships, aliens, and costumes and The Force Awakens really did none of that. It's most successful visual contributions to Star Wars are Kylo Ren and BB-8, both of which are derivative of Original Trilogy designs. Planets? Jakku, which is Tattooine with crashed spaceships. Spaceships? All the original ship designs are vague slabs. For a film series built on imaginative visuals, this is a big problem.

 5. The Phantom Menace

Mostly famous for being a movie that nerds on the Internet love to hate, it is easy to forget that this was a well-reviewed, immensely popular movie upon its initial release. Like any movie that George Lucas was involved with it has its flaws (questionable alien characterizations, awkward dialogue, and badly-directed acting) but it also has Lucas' wonderful visual imagination and unparalleled skill for cinematic storytelling. It also has a truly spectacular lightsaber battle which is scored with one of the best pieces of music in a Star Wars movie (which is really saying something.)

Perhaps TPM's greatest sin against fandom was being strikingly different from its predecessors in tone and visual style and not being particularly interested in providing fan service. It is interesting to compare it to The Force Awakens as both were highly anticipated movies released after a long lapse in Star Wars films and while TFA seemed to be designed from the ground up to give the fans what they wanted, with Phantom Lucas was really only concerned with telling the story he wanted to tell. This is a movie that has none of the things that fans were expecting. There was no hint of the Clone Wars. Anakin was a small child. The Jedi were presented as aloof and ambivalent characters. The movie was largely set in halls of power instead of grungy spaceships and rebel bases. The movie presented a totally different paradigm for Star Wars.

4. The Empire Strikes Back

Considered by many to be the best movie of the Original Trilogy, Empire splits our heroes up and sends them all on dark and consequential journeys. For a 1980's space fantasy, Empire is full of  moody imagery and takes the series in a rich and mythic direction.

While Empire has some of the series' most iconic sequences-the epic Hoth ground battle, the dreamy and enigmatic lightsaber battle in the Dagobah cave, and Vader's shocking revelation-it also feels a bit small in comparison to rest of the movies. While it has been justly praised for being more personal and character driven than the rest of the Lucas-produced movies, it also is a bit smaller in scope and lacks some of the wild imagination of those movies.

Empire, it should be noted, also features some of Lucas' characteristically terrible/awkward dialogue such as Han Solo's painfully adolescent arguing with Princess Leia, her referring to him as "laserbrain" and Han's puzzing description of his relationship with Lando "Well, I don't trust him either. But he is my friend." Bad dialogue is not only found in the prequels but also in the "best" of the original movies.

3. Rogue One

The first "Star Wars Story" makes a lot of bold choices such as focusing on a group of previously unknown characters and killing them all off at the end. It is also darker and more adult than the rest of the movies. It goes a long way towards expanding what a Star Wars movie can be here presenting a gritty war/espionage movie in a Star Wars context. Compare the third acts of Rogue One and Return of the Jedi as both movies focus  a group of rebels infiltrate an Imperial facility on a planet on missions that facilitate the destruction of a Death Star and you can see how much Star Wars has grown and changed over the years.

Because the film is set literally moments before Episode IV it is very much tied to that movie's iconography but still manages to carve out a space of its own. It not only introduces some new designs that fit into the existing world but it manages to portray familiar elements in new and exciting ways. The movie prominently features the Death Star but we've never quite seen it shot like this before. Director Gareth Edwards has a gift for scale and there are some imaginative and truly beautiful shots of the Empire's mobile battle station in this movie.

Is it perfect? No. It could have paid a little more attention to fleshing out its main characters. It also follows the unfortunate pattern of shoehorning Chinese stars into Hollywood movies. While the new Star Wars movies deserve a lot of credit for their diverse casting, this feels like an inorganic way to appeal to the massive Chinese box office, where Star Wars has never been particularly popular. What's more, the movie presents his character as a kind of monkish quasi-Jedi who speaks in fortune cookie quotes (including the laziest and most unimaginative mantra ever). He is even given a big martial arts sequence which seems out of place in a Star Wars movie. Donny Yen clearly has a lot of charisma and would have worked in any number for roles in Rogue One, why did he have to be cast in one that seems so much like an Asian stereotype?

2. Revenge of the Sith

Most people would agree that ROTS is the best of the prequels but for me it is the least flawed and best of the original hexology of movies. Sith is darker, richer, and more complex and adult than any of the other original Star War movies and it is a bold and visionary cinematic experience. While it's immediate predecessor was mired by melodrama, Revenge of the Sith embraces its nature as mythic Tragedy, putting the opera in Space Opera.

Sith is a movie that transcends the flaws of George Lucas as a filmmaker. Certainly it misfires in places-Anakin's journey is not all there, Padme being described as having lost "the will to live," Vader's melodramatic "Noooooo!"-but more often than not it works and often when it does it is brilliant not coincidentally in moody, dialogue-free moments such as Anakin and Padme staring off at each other over the Coruscant landscape, the long montage of the Jedi being systematically killed all over the galaxy during Order 66, and the intercutting of the literal birth of Luke and Leia and the metaphorical birth of Darth Vader.

Sith will be remembered as the movie in which Star Wars grew up and expanded beyond kiddie space fantasy. 

1. Star Wars: A New Hope

While Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One, and The Empire Strikes Back are technically better movies, nothing compares to the sheer energy and imagination of Star Wars. We now live in a world in which the iconography of Star Wars is everywhere so it is easy to forget how funky, bold, and bizarre this movie was when it was released. Had it failed to catch on it would be reviled as a work of 1970's WTFery but instead it became a phenomenon and a a towering work of popular imagination.

How SNL Helps Us Understand Our Politics

Whatever one may think of Saturday Night Live at any given time, during presidential election years, the show seems to blossom and it delivers its most consistently incisive and hilarious satire. From the beginning, with the show's breakout depiction of Gerald Ford as a literal bumbler, Saturday Night Live has succeeded in finding ways to use comedy to express certain fundamental truths about our political figures. Who can forget Dan Ackroyd's Jimmy Carter talking a caller down from a drug overdose, Phil Hartman's affable, insatiable Bill Clinton or Dana Carvey's interpretation of George Bush as a patrician weirdo. The show not only spoofs our political figures but, now more than ever, helps us define them through satire. In recent years, the show has wielded so much power over our understanding of politicians that one could make a powerful (but unproveable) argument that it actually influences our elections. Modern politicians have even attempted to engage the show (a few have even hosted it) in an attempt to have some sort of control over their image or at least to show that they are not bothered by the joke (even when they are.)

Gerald Ford was the first president to be lampooned on SNL and Chevy Chase's "impression" of him must have seemed odd at first. The young, handsome, actor looked nothing like Gerald Ford and didn't particularly try to sound like him. However, Chase's awkwardness and pratfalls did capture a something truthful about the president and his Ford became a popular recurring segment. Later, Dan Ackroyd not only portrayed a counter-culturally astute Jimmy Carter but also Richard Nixon in Watergate flashbacks.

During much of the Reagan administration, SNL was in disarray and it was during this period that creator Lorne Michaels had left the show, only to return in the mid-eighties. By this time the show was getting back to doing some great political satire, such as featuring Phil Hartman as a Ronald Reagan who was able to go from a sweet old man to a cold-blooded mastermind on the turn of a dime. During the Iran Contra scandal, this portrayal held a lot of currency.

By 1988, Saturday Night Live was fully ready to capitalize on that year's election. The presidential debate parodies were becoming a highlight of the show and Dana Carvey turned in a wildly exaggerated, but hilarious turn as George Bush. Also memorable was Jon Lovitz as a put-upon Michael Dukakis of "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy" fame.

For the 1992 election, Phil Hartman turned in another great impression as the fast food-loving Bill Clinton and Carvey not only played Bush but also Ross Perot, who was an SNL-ready character if there ever was one.  However, it was VP candidate William Stockdale who really stole the show even even in an election full of out-sized characters. Phil Hartman and the writers seized on Stockdale's bizarre behavior and outbursts to portray Perot's running mate as seemingly crazed and shell-shocked.

While the 1996 election was not particularly inspiring in real life nor in comedy, the dramatic 2000 contest was perfect fodder for the show. Both the debates and the election's aftermath provided the show with months of rich comedy. Before he became a big movie star, Will Farrell brought George W. Bush to life on SNL as a carefree Texas dudebro. Master mimic Darryl Hammond was his foil, as a hilariously dull Al Gore.

There's a story that after his first presidential debate against Bush, Gore's team made him watch the SNL version of the debate so that he could better understand how he was coming across to audiences. In fact, once could make the argument that these two characterizations were instrumental in how the American public came to understand the pivotal 2000 election, with Bush presented as charismatic and likable and Gore coming off as smug and condescending. This is a rare instance of the show having a genuinely damaging effect on a Democratic candidate.

In the decade after the 2000 election the wall between SNL and the political world seemed to come down. For example, longtime SNL writer and cast member Al Franken was elected to the US Senate representing Minnesota. While it was not uncommon for political figures to appear on the show or its political-themed specials, in this decade high-profile political figures such as John McCain and Al Gore actually hosted the show.

By the time of the 2008 election, SNL had political satire down to a science and with the emergence of social media and video-sharing services like Youtube allowed the show's political sketches to go viral and high interest in the election meant that SNL had a bigger influence than ever on the election. While John McCain was a friend to the show it didn't stop SNL from mocking his own campaign stumbles.

However, it was his running mate, Sarah Palin, who provided the most memorable fodder for comedy. The Alaska governor was picked from relative obscurity and she delivered some impressive speeches at the start of her involvement with the campaign,  becoming an instant celebrity but as the campaign wore on, Palin proved herself unprepared for the demands and scrutiny of a presidential contest. Her stumbles culminated in a series of disastrous TV interviews. SNL responded with a series of hilarious send-ups of Palin, bringing back former cast member Tina Fey, to whom it was commented Palin beared a certain resemblance.

The Fey/Palin sketches became immensely popular and became a news story themselves. They were also expressed a fundamental narrative about Sarah Palin's persona: she was charming but ridiculously unprepared to be president. Was it true? Probably, but more importantly, people seemed to think it was true. Good satire only gets mileage if people feel it expresses a truth about their reality and Fey's impression of Palin got a lot of mileage. While Sarah Palin has appeared on SNL a couple of times, she rarely passes an opportunity to publicly grumble about Tina Fey and the way she was portrayed on the show.

2016 is another exciting election and a high watermark for the show. Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton both present excellent fodder for comedy. Trump, ever the celebrity, even hosted the show during the Republican primary, to much controversy. By the time the debate season arrived, the show revealed that Tina Fey's old 30 Rock  costar, Alec Baldwin, would be portraying Trump in the much anticipated SNL presidential debate sketches. In the modern era of SNL, stunt casting celebrity friends of the show as political figures is a way to build interest, as it did when Larry David played Bernie Sanders over the summer.

Baldwin's Trump impression proved to be biting and presented Trump as a sort of grotesque perpetually scowling man-child. This was a departure from the perhaps more technically accurate but toothless portrayal prior to Baldwin's involvement. Trump, ever thin-skinned skinned, publicly complained about the portrayal calling it "unfunny" and a "hatchet job." The popularity of Baldwin's impression of Trump and its dissemination throughout the media perhaps contributed to a larger media refocus on Trump's personal flaws.

Clinton has had a more savvy response to the way she has been portrayed on the show during this election season,  embracing the show despite its sometimes unflattering presentation of her. Kate McKinnon's portrayal has become quite popular on the shoe and the comedian seems to have captured some of the high-strung pathos behind Clinton's very controlled public persona. She seems to have come to the conclusion that despite the show sometimes presenting her as inauthentic and calculating, it was ultimately better for her image to show a sense of humor and take the hits.

It would seem that after more than forty years of SNL political satire, politicians have learned that they have no control over how it is used against them. However, people like John McCain, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton have learned that building a relationship with the show allows them an opportunity to have some control over they are defined in the media. Ultimately, SNL can offer politicians a high-risk, high reward venue to show humor, humanity, and to appear gracious and magnanimous which are few and far between in American politics.

Patrick Garone
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The Trumpiest Characters in Pop Culture

Even before his Quixotic presidential campaign, Donald Trump had carved out his own space in the pop cultural landscape. Whether it was his hit reality show The Apprentice, his appearance in Home Alone 2, or his numerous appearances on The Howard Stern Show over the years, Trump has been all over the media for over three decades. But what about characters that are not The Donald but just Trump-y? In light of this wild presidential campaign, there are a lot of characters that in retrospect seem to capture the man's strange essence.

Super Mario Cartoon or backstage at Miss Teen USA?

Sure there are obvious ones like Archie Bunker with his bridge and tunnel political incorrectness but what about Bowser from the Super Mario series of video games? Both have improbable hair, fight with plumbers, have grandiose taste in architecture, and like to man-handle hot blondes. I could see Trump absconding with Megyn Kelly to some sort mushroom themed floor at Mar-a-Lago. Then there is Daniel Clamp from  Gremlins 2: The New Batch, a character that is very much based on Donald Trump's career as a real estate developer. Strangely, the character based on Trump from a wacky sequel to an 80's kids movie is less cartoonish than the real thing. Clamp is fairly benign in the movie whereas Trump behaves like one of the gremlins. Just don't let him tweet after midnight!

In 1992's Batman Returns there are two characters who, if combined together make the ultimate Donald Trump. Max Schreck is a wealthy Gotham City industrialist with a cut-throat mentality and a gangsterish edge. He relentlessly bullies his secretary and ultimately pushes her out a window to cover-up his evil plan to steal energy from Gotham's power grid. If that wasn't enough, he has crazy hair and an American Psycho-ish son.

Eerily similar platforms.

The movie also features the Penguin, a freakish villain with a nasty temper and a plan to destroy Gotham by running for office. I like to think he is a reflection of Trump's inner life. Like Trump, the Penguin of Batman Returns, proves to be an undisciplined  candidate who is difficult to control and whose campaign is undone by the fact that he can't keep his mouth shut. In fact, "Burn baby, burn," was briefly considered to be the Trump 2016 campaign slogan.

Biff Tannen as depicted in the "darkest timeline" section of Back to the Future II is widely considered cinema's Trumpiest character. When we first meet him in Back to the Future, Biff is a shabby middle-aged bully but in the alternate time-line of BTTF2 Biff has managed to enrich himself by using a stolen almanac from the future to bet on sporting events. When we meet this alternate version of him, Biff is the richest and most powerful man in Hill Valley and has run the rest of the town into the ground. It's like what Trump did to Atlantic City. He lives in the penthouse of a giant gawdy casino tower emblazoned with his name. He also has kind of an epic combover. The writers of BATTF2 are on record as saying that this version of the character is actually based on Donald Trump, obviously years before he went full Donald on the world.

For my money, though, the Trumpiest character and the one that gives the best vision of what a president Trump would be like is Immortan Joe from Mad Max: Fury Road. Immortan Joe is the despotic ruler of a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland in which he controls the flow of water to a desperate populace. So, basically it's glimpse of a what a hypothetical Trump second term would be like. Joe is also the head of bizarre death cult that worships him as a god, which if you've ever seen a Trump rally is not far off.

Even the hair is right!

When it comes to women's rights, the similarities are striking. Like Trump, Immortan Joe keeps a a hot trophy wife for breeding purposes with others in the wing to replace her when he gets bored. Joe also very much believes in severe punishment for women exercising their reproductive freedoms. I think a second Trump term might end with Hilary smuggling Melania out of the White House and across the desert wasteland in her big rig with Trump and his War Boys in hot pursuit.

Patrick Garone
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Shin Godzilla Review-ette

WARNING: SPOILERS

After years of drought it seems we are having a flood of kaiju movies with an upcoming sequel to Pacific Rim, an impending show-down between Legendary's Godzilla and King Kong as well as their upcoming solo movies, Nacho Vigalondo's new kaiju movie Colossal, and, now, a brand spanking new Japanese Godzilla movie. After 2004's  Godzilla Final Wars, Toho Studios retired the big guy to allow room for another attempt at an American made Godzilla franchise, resulting in the well-received 2014 Godzilla  but much as they did in the 1990's, the company doesn't seem content to leave Godzilla to Hollywood. Toho has always been competitive about their biggest star and even with the relative quality and success of the recent American version, they apparently felt that the time was right for the Japanese Godzilla to assert himself. Perhaps, also, a new Godzilla movie was a way to process some of the recent events in Japan through the popular consciousness. The resulting movie,  Godzilla Resurgence (Shin Godzilla in the US) has been a huge hit in Japan and now has a limited run in the United States. This is the first time a Japanese Godzilla movie has been released in the US since Godzilla 2000.

Much like the original 1954 film which was very much a reaction to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear testing in the Pacific, the new movie is charged with imagery and thematic content relating to the recent Fukashima disaster and the government's reaction to it. While this certainly gives the movie a resonance (perhaps more so to a Japanese audience) it spends a lot of time in the political arena with innumerable meetings, conferences, and "walk-and-talk" scenes. The movie seems to intentionally walk the line of comically demonstrating the absurdity of slow-acting Japanese institutions and being genuinely boring at times. 

In its obsession with the political, Shin Godzilla  is almost a kaiju movie by way of Aaron Sorkin. The movie also borrows a bit from modern kaiju movies such as The Host and Cloverfield.  Its examination of the complicated relationship between the US and Japan resembles that of The Host which did similar thing with the US and Korea. To Cloverfield it owes an emphasis on first-person and on-the-ground disaster sequences.

Shin Godzilla joins Gojira and The Return of Godzilla as movies in the series that don't feature any other opponents for the King of the Monsters. For me, these tend to be among the least fun of the series as a big part of the franchise is kaiju combat but your mileage may vary. These movies also tend to emphasize the human stories more and Shin Godzilla doesn't necessarily shine here. There are few stand out or memorable characters, with the exception of one character who is supposed to be a high ranking American official of Japanese background who was apparently raised in America with aspirations of becoming the US president but who seems to be speaking her English lines phonetically. While this may not have been noticeable to the average Japanese audience, it might have been nice to have re-dubbed her English dialogue for the international release. Unfortunately, this character stands out as the most memorable one in the movie.

The good news is that when Godzilla actually is in the movie he is quite remarkable and the visual effects in this movie are, for once, Hollywood quality and about as good as those of the recent American Godzilla movie. The notoriously conservative Toho Studios has made a lot of uncharacteristically bold choices with their most famous creation. The studio had been very CGI resistant in its Millennium series of Godzilla movies, only using it sparingly to do things that were absolutely impossible to do with a suit (such as shots of Godzilla swimming under water) but Shin Godzilla features a mostly CGI/motion captured performance, albeit one that is very beholden to the character's classic silhouette. 

Despite a final design that from a distance hearkens back to early incarnations of the character, there are some rather remarkable changes and departures from classic depictions of the character. Perhaps most surprisingly is that Godzilla is given a new origin story and much like classic Toho monsters like Hedorah and Destoroyah, Godzilla goes through a multi stage transformation in the movie, which is a first for the character. When he first makes his way out of Tokyo bay Godzilla turns up as a truly bizarre looking creature that looks like a cross between a fish and a stegosaurus. This was a genuinely surprising sequence and the creature design is genuinely gross and weird, looking a bit like the ungainly monster from The Host.

Godzilla's final form in the movie has the familiar triangular body shape with huge thighs tapering up to a relatively small head. This version of the character is much bigger even than the 2014 Godzilla (take that America!) and has perhaps the longest tail we've ever seen on a Godzilla design, which ends in a weird quasi-club (much more on that later).  Overall, the proportions are a little weird, particularly in the lower body. Ironically, the recent American Godzilla was mocked as "fat" in Japan but he seems more muscular than this rather tubby design. Godzilla's dorsal plates are traditional but don't go down to the tail as they have on recent designs. Godzilla's arms are much thinner than we have previously seen and end in twitchy, angry-looking claws.

The head recalls the original 1954 design a bit but features very small eyes and an oversized mouth with rows of uneven needle-like teeth. Overall, the head and mouth proportions are a little weird. With the beady eyes and the messy mouth area, it is a little hard to read the face and this ends up as one of the least expressive Godzilla designs ever.

One thing that is emphasized in this version of the character is his toxic, radioactive nature. When we first see him, he leaves behind a weird ruddy wake in the water and the first form of Godzilla basically excretes a disgusting red substance from his gills. This version of Godzilla is dangerous even if he doesn't step on you because he is leaking radiation all over the place. Visually, the design takes a cue from the great Burning Godzilla design from Godzilla Versus Destoroyah and his flesh scarred and glowing red from the radiation that powers him. 

Another area where this version of Godzilla departs from previous incarnations is in his power set. This is perhaps the most destructive version of the character ever. He not only has his trademark atomic breath (purple here and his lower jaw splits to emit the ray) but he also has a kind of atomic fire or plasma that can flow out over a huge area like lava. Most controversially, perhaps, this Godzilla has the ability to shoot an array of lasers out of his spines and out of the end of his tail, which...okay. 

I'm not a Godzilla fundamentalist by any means (my favorite version of the character is Godzilla 2000 which was widely mocked for its "extreme" dorsal spines) and I really respect the attempts to redesign the character, much of which is really fascinating and are properly in the spirit of Godzilla being a nuclear Hell Beast. This is probably the scariest Godzilla since the 2001 version of the character and certainly the most horrific with a lot of gross and weird touches. Particularly memorable is the disturbing and enigmatic final shot of the movie which is a close up of the end of Godzilla's tail which features frozen skeletal humanoid forms with Godzilla's trademark spikes growing from their backs. While Shin Godzilla is a bit of a mixed bag and is not necessarily a "fun" Godzilla movie it definitely takes the series into some new places, introducing an element of biological horror into the series which has surprisingly been only a small part of a series of movies about a giant nuclear mutant.

Our Best Look at the New Godzilla

The new Japanese Godzilla movie has been out in Japan and will likely get a release in the state later this year. In the meantime, check out this special effects video from Toho which gives us a full 360 degree look of the new design which has previously only been seen in trailer snippets.



What do you think? There's a lot of great detail in this design and I particularly like the very tortured, melted skin texture throughout and the nods to "burning" Godzilla from Destoroyah. That said, this design doesn't feel like a real evolution. It's still very vertical and very tubby and I am not a fan of the Mr. Burns face or the tail which instead of tapering off to a point swells into something that is not quite a club. The whole thing recalls the 1954 Goji a bit much for my taste.

It is interesting that Toho has finally embraced CGI which they had only used very sparingly in the Millennium movies. This Godzilla seems to be fully or mostly motion captured, which is a nice medium between CGI and suitmation.

Godzilla Resurgence is planned to be released in the US in the Fall.

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 7 "The Broken Man"

Compared to some of the other entries this season, "The Broken Man" may seem like a bit of a low-key episode. There aren't a lot of huge shocks or momentous developments. Instead, there are some really good, quieter scenes and a lot thematic and character moments. The show is doing some skillful place setting prior to the final three episodes of the season. What didn't we see in this episode? No Dany or Meereen scenes. We also haven't checked in with Ramsey Bolton in a few weeks. Perhaps we are meant to let our imaginations work over the fate of poor Rikkon Stark. Lastly, we haven't been back to Dorne since the beginning of the season. Are we just done with that storyline?

We start-jarringly-with a rare pre-credits scene which gives us the long awaited return of Sandor "The Hound" Clegane last seen being left for dead by Arya Stark after his defeat at the hands of Brienne of Tarth in season four. It turns out that the Hound was found by a kindly septon, Brother Ray played by Ian McShane, and nursed back to health and has been living in a religious community ever since.

We get a lot of good scenes with Clegane and he does seem to have gone through somewhat of a change. He's always been a remarkably angry and bitter man but he seems to have let much of that go. "The gods have a plan for you," Ray tells him (or at least George R. R. Martin does). However, the Hound's idyllic life is disrupted when the Brotherhood Without Banners lays waste to his community while he is gone causing Clegane to take up arms again (well take up ax). 

The Brotherhood is another returning element from early seasons. They were a group of bandits with a Robin Hood-esque mission to bring Clegane's brother The Mountain to justice and to protect the smallfolk during the War of the Five Kings. They were led by Beric Dondarrion, a knight, who like Jon Snow, was resurrected by a Red Priest, They briefly captured both Arya and the Hound. However, they seem to have taken a sinister turn since we last saw them.

There is an interesting parallel in the Hound and Arya's stories, Both have disappeared from the larger Westeros story to live in isolated religious communities. Both have been changed by those communities but ultimately find them to be a poor fit. Both leave those communities to take up arms.

Speaking of Arya, we find her happily strolling around Braavos and booking a ship back to Westeros. Of note, she has a new Ned Stark-ish haircut and a new and suspiciously bulky outfit. In the episode's most shocking moment, she is approached by an old woman who stabs her repeatedly in the stomach and pulls off her mask, revealing herself to be the Waif who was ordered to kill Arya in the last episode for botching her mission to murder the actress. Arya falls over a bridge and resurfaces in the water. We leave her clutching her stomach as various Braavosi look on coldly.

Despite this annoying cliffhanger, its pretty clear that Arya is not dead. If no other reason, we have seen shots of her in the trailer, so not only is she not dead, she is well enough to parkour. So what happened? Clearly, Arya is smart enough to know that the Faceless Men were after her. She wouldn't be gallivanting around without a plan. Beneath that suspiciously new and bulky tunic is not only protective mail but likely whatever the Braavos equivalent of blood packs are, possibly obtained at the theater. Her plan was probably to put on a big show to either make the Faceless Men believe that she is dead or to lure the waif to a predetermined location to settle things once and for all. I like this idea because it proves that Arya did actually learn some skills from her time in the House of Black and White. Despite the fact that she is a Faceless Men drop-out, this will serve as her comprehensive exam. Arya Begins.

Throughout the North, Jon, Sansa, and Davos engage in some tricky diplomacy and we learn that the name Stark does not necessarily guarantee assistance from their former subject houses. In these scenes, we see the value of Davos, who had some experience in matters of state serving Stannis while Sansa and Jon reveal themselves to be diplomatic novices. Fear of the Boltons and general war fatigue are working against them.

First, at the Bear Islands, they meet young Lyanna Mormont, who we have only known from her sassy letter to Stannis last season declaring that she only recognized the fallen King of the North, Robb Stark as her liege. Of course, we've met a couple of other notable Mormonts on the show. Her uncle was former Night's Watch Lord Commander Jeor Mormont for whom Jon Snow served as steward and protege. Lord Commander Mormont also was the one who bequeathed Jon his Valyrian steel sword, Long Claw which was originally the ancestral blade of House Mormont, a fact which goes strangely uncommented upon in this scene. Therefore Lyanna's cousin is Jorah Mormont, former Danaerys Targaryen advisor, eternal Friend Zone occupant, and current grayscale sufferer. Like her two relatives, young Lyanna is stubborn, direct, and doesn't suffer any fools. Despite her words of loyalty to Robb the Starks only are able to get sixty-two soldiers out of her. 

Lyanna is a great new character and preserves a storyline from the books that has been excised from the show. In the novels, due to Jorah's exile and Jeor's having taken the black to atone for his son's crimes, the Mormont women are largely calling the shots on the Bear Islands. During the War of the Five Kings, we meet a couple of these Mormont She-Bears who fight for Robb Stark and are fierce and funny characters. While they were never featured on the show, Lyanna does refer to them in her scene and she is certainly a character in their mold.

Frustrated by the lack of progress in raising an army large enough to take Winterfell, Sansa writes a raven, presumably to Littlefinger who commands an army of Vale knights. This is a bit of annoying decision for Sansa, a character who has had a really solid season of growth and maturity. The fact that she sent Littlefinger and his army away was somewhat petulant and short-sighted. It is also annoying that she is keeping this information from Jon because presumably she feels he would not approve of working with him although we have no idea what Jon knows or thinks about Littlefinger because the show has been stingy about Jon scenes.

Speaking of the Committee to Retake Winterfell, Melisandre is conspicuously absent from this episode. While it makes sense that she would be distracting (to say the least) at the Wildling parlay and not necessarily an asset in meeting with any of the northern houses its been awhile since we've checked in with her. Its almost as through the show used her to bring Snow back and doesn't seem particularly interested in her now. This is too bad because not only is Melisandre an interesting character in her own right but I feel like the show is missing an important scene between Jon and Melisandre in order to see where they are both at, you know with the resurrection and Jon's possibly status as a messianic hero.

Also uncommented on is Jon's likely perceived status as a Night's Watch oathbreaker. Recall much of the first episode of Game of Thrones dealt with punishing a Nights Watch deserter. It's not something that is treated lightly, especially in the north. Most people aren't going to know that Jon has been brought back to life by magic and he will have the reputation as someone who abandoned his watch.



At Riverrun, Jamie and Bronn(!) arrive to oversee the ineffective Frey siege of the castle. Riverrun is the ancestral seat of House Tully, the original house of Catelyn Stark which backed Robb during the War of the Five kings and whose forces were decimated during the Red Wedding. Since we last visited the riverlands, the castle was taken over by the Freys who later lost it to Brynden "Blackfish" Tully, younger brother of the former lord of the riverlands, Hoster Tully (whose funeral we witnessed a few seasons ago). The Blackfish is now holed up with his forces in the castle which is mostly impregnable resulting in the standoff. The Freys, the realm's famously weaselly and ineffective family of ne'er-do-wells have taken to trotting out Edmure Tully, rightful heir to the castle, Red Wedding groom, and the Blackfish's nephew and making empty threats to hang him.

In Volantis, Yara, Theon, and their loyalists from the Iron Islands are enjoying a stop at a brothel on their way to Meereen.  In between making out with prostitutes, Yara gives Theon a pep-talk urging him to overcome his trauma and become Theon Greyjoy again. This was a great scene and I'm glad we got it as they could just as easily skipped over this moment but it offers a lot of character and relationship development between Theon and Yara. She is rough but compassionate with him in way that feels true to character.

In Kings Landing, having previously met with the High Sparrow (and received some really disturbing and unsolicited sex advice), Margaery has learned that her grandmother Oleanna is now in his sights unless she "repents." When Margaery later meets with her grandmother under the watchful gaze of Septa Ulenna (hilariously referred to as "it" by Lady Tyrell) she urges her to leave Kings Landing and presses a scrap of paper into the old woman's hand although the sound effect is so ridiculously loud that for a moment it seems as though she breaking all of her grandmother's bones. Later, Oleanna looks at the paper to see that Margaery has sketched a rose, the symbol of her house and giving us our clearest indication that Margaery is, in fact, playing the High Sparrow. What concerns me is that she seems particularly confident of whatever she has planned which is not necessarily a good thing in Game of Thrones.

Later, Oleanna aka Lady Sassmouth gets a visit from Cercei requesting her assistance in going against the Faith. Tyrell rejects her offer and gives her an epic dressing down, essentially laying all of the problems of Kings Landing at Cercei's feet and reminding her that she has no friends or allies left and should probably leave Kings Landing. This is a pretty good summation of Cercei's situation. Not that she and Jamie were particularly effective together and now she doesn't even have her brother. Her allies are the Frankenmountain and Qyburn. Cercei is essentially backed into a corner and is likely to do something drastic.


Patrick Garone
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