I’ve started watching HBO’s Game of Thrones. Season one is now available on Amazon Instant Video. At three bucks a throw, the season should roughly cost the same as George RR Martin’s hardcover, lo those many years ago. One nice thing, each throw buys the episode and not just rents it. In this respect the movie is like the book. Each is bought and paid for and then owned in perpetuity. Except, I think that I gave away the book. Each episode will reside at Amazon Central forever, at least until I can figure out how to download the video to my PC. Don’t ask.

Yea, I’ve read George JRR Martin’s “A Game of Thrones”. I started his book on the rebound. I had had a long and ultimately unsatisfactory affair with Robert Jordan and his “Wheel of Time” series of fantasy novels. A fantasy world, where almost nothing occurred and it took three years, each time, to find this out again. The damn bastard died before concluding his series. I had given up on Jordan and switched to George R×R Martin by then.

I loved the book and the one after, but lost interest on the third. I blame Robert Jordan. I met him once. Maybe though it was George R Martin’s propensity for murder. He loves killing off his characters, especially, my favorite ones. After many years and a few more George RRR Martin novels, his world is now portrayed upon the small screen.

For all my snark, I am a fan. I was in print and I am now on video. After many years since reading, the movie seems as true to the book as I can remember. The TV series puts paint to canvas, of what I once only imagined. It fleshes out memories of scenes in the book that have slipped away.

I’ve watched the first four episodes and at the beginning of each episode is Angus Wall’s Emmy wining title sequence. Here is an interview with him at the Art of the Title. Wall gives a very Steampunk like overview of the mythical world, Westeros. I dream that my son Dan, will someday create a similar work. It’s a tall order, but it is in his vein.

Pundits from the NY Times to my beloved Slate, have pilloried this HBO series. Count me not in their company. Having watched four episodes, I am now calculating how I shall expend the remaining seven. I feel like a stranded sailor, picking over his last seven smokes.

The Times and Slate criticized the series as being suitable only for boys. That is to say it is juvenile fare that is most suitable for adolescent males. There is much gratuitous sex and violence. The original episode did air right after “Rango”, but that’s HBO. All of HBO’s great series, have purveyed gratuitous sex and violence. It is HBO’s competitive advantage over the rest of American television.