Game Of Thrones Catch-Up: Winter Is Coming

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*There is very little in the way of spoilers here and I currently have no knowledge of events beyond Season 1, episode 4.

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First off, can someone please change the show’s title to ‘Games of Thrones’ because that is how I always see it in my head and it ain’t changing anytime soon.

Anywho (greatest segue ever) it is clear that Game of Thrones has become a cultural phenomenon over the last 3 years. On top of being the most illegally downloaded television program in Australia, my Facebook newsfeed becomes a smorgasbord of people moaning about detested or annoying characters or posting horrified memes when a beloved character dies. Sometimes I’m inclined to take the pretentious route and ignore super popular shows just to be different and contrarian (as I’ve done with shows like Suits), but I also have a fear of missing out on significant moments and movements in popular culture and Game of Thrones with its legions of fans, HBO cred and critical acclaim gave me a massive FOMO pop-culture hard on (a phrase I swear I’ll never repeat).

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List O’ the Week: Favourite Swedish Bands

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The Swedes are masters of several musical niches: Metal, spiky new wave garage rock, wistful and delicate indie pop and catchy synth-inflected dance pop. I don’t have ear for metal but the other 3 vague categories are well represented here. I purposely haven’t include ABBA because they almost transcend and typify Swedish music.

  • 30. Billie the Vision and the Dancers
  • 29. Fever Ray
  • 28. jj
  • 27.The Hives
  • 26. Love Is All

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Mad Men 6×13 – In Care Of

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*SPOILERS*

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Picture courtesy of the fantastic Tumblr Mad Men Screenshots with Things Drawn On Them

My feelings on Mad Men’s season six finale ‘In Care Of’ very neatly summarise my impression of season 6 as a whole. There are moments of brilliance, and the show still manages to be effectively unpredictable, but as a whole there feels as though too much is happening; it all feels a little messy and the episode ends up feeling less significant than the sum of its parts. However the final scene of the season goes a long way to taking a highly turbulent season that takes place at a confused and violent time period of the 60s and effectively centring all that craziness around Don.

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List O’ the Week: Favourite Foreign Language Films

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Not the most diverse list, I grant you, but fairly accurate of my not-very-diverse tastes.

20. Memories of Murder (2003)                South Korea       Dir. Joon-Ho Bong

19. Breathless (1960)                                France               Dir. Jean-Luc Godard

18. Cinema Paradiso (1988)                      Italy                    Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore

17. Hero (2002)                                         China                 Dir. Zhang Yimou

16. Underground (1995)                             FR Yugoslavia   Dir. Emir Kusturica

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Mad Men 6×12 – The Quality of Mercy

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*SPOILERS TO FOLLOW*

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The imagery of Mad Men often walks a fine line between poetic and on-the-nose. But for an episode that opens and closes with Don in a foetal position, this one manages to stay just on the right side of pretentious. Todd VanDerWerff has a wonderfully in-depth analysis of all the Freudian underpinnings of this episode, so I’m just going to look at the episode on a more superficial level.

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List o’ the Week: Favourite Songs of the Year (So Far)

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The year is almost half way through. This is what I’ve liked so far (only one song per band)

20. Kurt Vile – Never Run Away

19. Deerhunter – Pensacola

18. Villagers – Earthly Pleasure

17. Waxahatchee – Peace and Quiet

16. Jacco Gardner – Puppets Dangling

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Mad Men 6×11 – Favors

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*SPOILERS* (All my reviews have spoilers but these are more potent)

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I feel like I enjoyed this episode a lot less than most of Mad Men fandom. Some people have compared it (with knowing exaggeration) to the Games of Thrones’s Red Wedding in terms of the shocks it delivers, but for the most part the episode didn’t really hit me on an emotional level. The episode felt disjointed and lacked the seamless integration of plot lines that memorable Mad Men episodes share. The episode had no streamline momentum; each storyline peaked at different points, some ended there, some puttered on and in the meantime Peggy has a dead rat in her apartment.

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List o’ the week: Favourite albums of 2012

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I figured I’d create a weekly list feature to help organise my thoughts and opinions

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Foxgen

25. Foxygen – Take the Kids Off Broadway

24. Spiritualized – Sweet Heart Sweet Light

23. The Shins – Port Of Morrow

22. King Tuff – King Tuff

21. Alt-J – An Awesome Wave

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Django Django

20. Django Django – Django Django

19. Field Music – Plumb

18. Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d city

17. Sleigh Bells – Reign Of Terror

16. Of Monsters And Men – My Head Is An Animal

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Mad Men 6×10 – A Tale Of Two Cities

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The ubiquity of drug use has run rampart this season. Sure it relates to its prevalence in America circa 1968, but it also underlines this season’s – and 1968’s – tackling of chaos and waywardness and the futile attempts to manage it. This theme has been well managed by this season, but by its very nature, it leads to episodes and characterisations that don’t really amount to much. Now Mad Men has never focused heavily on driving forward narrative arcs, but by the end of each episode we should get a better sense of these characters, who they are and what they want. What we get in this episode is two very enjoyable story lines that don’t really amount to much and a couple of less interesting side tales of office politics.

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Mad Men 6X09 – The Better Half

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I was a little late to this episode, due to an avalanche of uni assessments that I left as late as possible to start tackling. A few day after it aired (in the US), I saw on my Facebook newsfeed (not naming anyone……SUE!) ‘Ugh.. Don and Betty. Yuck. And why!?’. My first thought was, ‘cool, someone who watches Mad Men’. My second thought was ‘Wait…..What????!!!!!’. So my whole viewing experience came down to waiting for that moment. It was to the show’s credit that it didn’t really feel like a big deal, or even a major faux pas for Don, who I think we all gave up on seasons ago, in the fidelity department. And for whatever their relationship lacked, Don and Betty always valued their sex life.

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