I think most sane people would agree that AFFC and ADWD haven't been worth the long wait. Together, they've taken 10 years. I'll try not to get into a rant about GRRM's work philosophy and terrible sense of PR.

There are many reasons why they're inferior works, pacing and the introduction of unnecessary characters (4 Ironborn POVs?) and locations being the main ones. These are then compounded by the overly descriptive travelogue nature for many of the POVs (which we never saw in the earlier books, for instance, Catelyn zips around Westeros a lot without any . The main problem with ADWD, as bullet3 says above, is that his editor didn't do her job. So instead of getting the climax of that story which the whole thing is leading up to, we get chapters of Dany pining over Daario like it's Twilight.

I sound harsh, but in all fairness, they're still great writing and enjoyable to read.

And not to be an arsehole, but we're talking about the TV show in the books thread and the books in the TV thread 

The bed of blood that Ned describes at the Tower of Joy in AGOT, along with the vague cause of death, has always been the biggest hint.

I think you might be onto something there, that would make for a more interesting story to be sure. And what a twist!

Seriously though, one thing that always bums me out is thinking about Ned never being able to tell Jon the truth.

Pff! It's made very clear that his parents are Ned Stark and some broad he met during the war who he just doesn't want to talk about.

I bet that at some point this was a pretty good script. Then someone renamed it and made a trailer giving away the main twist, then a director came along who couldn't direct traffic and then someone else added shitty CGI.

I've been mostly okay with this second Abrams trek because I consider it to be the big dumb fun movie that I didn't know the first one was (not to say that Nemesis wasn't stupid). This time, I knew what I was going in for and enjoyed myself a lot more than when I watched Trek09.

As long as one doesn't go in expecting the usual cerebral quality of Star Trek, it's great fun. It's not Prometheus.

Are you guys recording the next episode tomorrow? I'm not able to attend as I'm away, so hopefully it's not the ST TNG movies!

I'm loving that cast.

Sadly, I've not read the play, for some reason it's rare to do this one in English literature class during our UK high school equivalent (which is, no suprise, shock full of Shakespeare). I probably should since I loved Branagh's version from 1993.

I'm a huge fan of Korean movies, in the last decade they've really stepped up on the quality. A Bittersweet Life, A Tale of Two Sisters, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, 300 Pounds Beauty, My Boss My Hero, My Wife is a Gangster, The Chaser, I Saw the Devil, Musa, My Sassy Girl, and JSA are among my favourites.

As a general rule, Korean movies do tend to dip into tragedy (or melodrama depending on your cynicism) in the last act, even their comedys and romantice comedies punch you in the gut.

Honestly, I think most of what the movie was trying to do went over people's heads at the time.

My friends and I are always quoting this one, and Arnie as Hamlet is still a film I'd pay to see.