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HBO True Detective
January 17, 2014
CONTENT CREATION, FILM & TELEVISION, KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

The Golden Age of Television: Whither HBO?

I’ve said it before: The Golden Age of TV, which has spilled over from premium cable into network and streaming services, is responsible for the surge in quality of award-season theatrical releases. And Netflix and company have created an income stream for indie features that ten years ago would have died after a festival run and never been seen. And that stream is critical to bottom-line projections that help close film-financing deals, which in turn get alternative content made in the first place. It’s a seller’s market out there for writers and creators; we no longer have to shovel crap that enables delusional, ditzy execs into thinking they are mitigating risk. So whither HBO,

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By James Killough
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Game of Thrones Poster Crown
August 30, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Winter Is Coming (Unless You Live in LA)

James Killough reviews the first season of Game of Thrones.

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by James Killough

I started on a riff about Game of Thrones yesterday, bouncing off the subject of British accents and how they can make a film seem foreign to the ears of American plebs—i.e., the people who keep flocking to Hollywood dreck and thereby supporting the Great Crap Machine—even if it’s in English.  Including the riff meant the Attack The Block review grew to be two reviews in one, and at around three thousand words became seriously tangential and messy, even for a PFC post.  So it’s been broken into two.

And now, part deux:

The nuances of British accents are used to pleasing effect—albeit in an esoteric way pleasing to Anglophiles—in HBO’s TV adaptation of Thrones.  It’s doubtful that most American viewers, even the non-plebs who can afford premium cable, understand the fact that the dour northern Stark of Winterfell clan and its supporters speak with Mancunian/Liverpudlian accents from the north of England, while the louche, venal southerners from Kings Landing and Castlery Rock speak with ‘received pronunciation’ (RP) accents, or the so-called posh tones of BBC news readers, the royal family and the regions around London, not including thugs in council estates and the like.

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By Pure Film Creative
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Arya Stark Game of Thrones
August 16, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

So Many Gods

by James Killough

In the fourth book of the Game of Thrones series, the reluctant tomboy exile Arya Stark of Winterfell arrives in the free city of Braavos, described as a cross between Venice in its heyday as a Republic and ancient Rhodes: a colossus statue-fort called the Titan straddles the entrance to a lagoon city built on a hundred islands.  The citizens are distinctly Italianesque in their suave charm and balletic swords skills.

Arya has already spent the past four years, since she was eight, and over three thousand pages, being buffeted about in a series of extraordinary and gruesome circumstances, which no child should ever be subjected to.  But hers is an eternally medieval world; even though she is one of the heirs to a powerful feudal kingdom, she has had more bad luck than an urchin born in the slums of Mumbai.

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By James Killough
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July 25, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Comic‑Con Artist

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

It does pay to read your friends’ spam email blasts, otherwise I wouldn’t have known that my buddy Tristan Eaton was going to be in SoCal doing signings of his book and launching a prototype of his new toy at Comic-Con last weekend.  I’d always wanted to go to Comic-Con, so this was the perfect opportunity to pack a picnic lunch, hop in the train and take myself on an outing, as my mother would call it.

But, James, you ask, aghast.  Why on earth would a modern misanthrope like you want to throw himself into the greatest concentration of unsightly, badly dressed geeks in the galaxy, if not the universe?

Greek revival: Henry Cavill as Theseus in Tarsem Singh's forthcoming "Immortals."

You’re quite right, it was all of the above, and I should have been forewarned.  Before you savage me for being un-glamorous as well as inconsistent, it pays to remember that I’m not the only one with a geek hovering inches beneath my glossy-if-a-bit-tarnished exterior:

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By Pure Film Creative
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