About the title sequence, it changes from episode to episode depending on where the story is taking place.  So while every episode features King's Landing and Winterfell, some episodes feature places like Pentos and Vaes Dothrak.  ALso, the bands around the sun are heiroglyphs telling the backstory of the main houses of Westeros.

As for the show, "Sopranos in Middle Earth," is still the best description I've heard.

I quite enjoy the first two X Men movies and only recently saw the third one which was a giant yawn the entire way through.  I actually prefer the second film to the first and I hope one day DiF covers all three.

^This.

My son is all about wanting to move away from pooping in his diaper and more in a direction of covering his legs in shit while he cackles maniacally at me.  In that sense, mission accomplished.  I still would prefer a more traditional approach to pooping in his predetermined paper sack.

.....and this reminds me quite a bit of Pirates.

I want everyone of the casts characters listed here, NOW, Zarban.

Just now digging into this one.  Not to defend MTV, but MTV hardly invented frenetic editing, or bad editing for that matter.

Im seeing TVOTR live thursday, btw at a taping for Cee Lo Green's new show.

I agree.  The trailer for Captain America has a great line where Stanly Tucci answers Chris Evans who asks, "Why me?"

"Because a weak man knows the value of strength." 

There ya go Thor, there's your movie.  Put Thor in Donald Blake's crippled body, have him help people, Jane falls in love with the content of Thor's character.  Instead of having Kat Dennings remind us how hot he is every few minutes.

EDIT to post thoughts.

Finally saw it with my buddy Sean on Saturday night so I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. 

To start, I want to clarify my position on something that, sadly, is tainting the conversation of Marvel's recent slate, and making criticism of these films a bit muddled: The Avengers.  Yes, I am an avid Comic reader.  No, I'm not going batshit over the very thought of The Avengers happening.  If I do buy into the pre release hype over a comic movie, its only over what I know is possible with the character and/or world that is being adapted.  Lots of comic movies get made and most dont do much for me.  But some characters are deep wells to mine from.  For instance, I was equally excited as the idea of an Iron Man movie as I was a Punisher movie.  Both characters are rich, have a deep backstory to delve into, and are potential acting and directing showcases.  Well, one movie hit it on all cylinders from casting to story to creating a world, and one certainly failed in all three of those.  But in either case, those movies were created because someone LOVED those characters and thought they could support their own film.  While you could certainly say that Thor has a rich backstory, is an interesting character, and lives in a cool little world, the fact of the matter is this movie exists for one reason: to put him in the Avengers.  Not only that, but the script and film have to be structured around these immovable little breadcrumbs that are meant to dovetail into Captain America and later, The Avengers (cosmic cube, odin's armory, and Hawkeye all appear in Thor to set up plot points of Cp and Avengers).  This is bad for a few reasons.  One, it makes telling the story a little harder, but it also affects the criticism of it.  Any deficiency in the film will be hanged, rightly or wrongly, on the fact that this movie is being tied to another.  I see a lot of folk make very well articulated points of contention with the film, but a lot of it concludes in "...because they're trying to sell me on another movie."  I think Thor has plenty of problems, in that I agree.  But very little of it has to do with The Avengers, and I'll explain why.  I also want to say that Thor never has been at the top of my pull list of monthly comics.  He's a character that is largely writer dependent, as the wrong writer can make him woefully boring.  It's similar to Superman, that when you have a character that fucking strong, it becomes harder to challenge him.  Unlike Supes, Thor has no real weakness.  So I wasn't counting down this movie like I was Iron Man or am now with Green Lantern (god help me).   

Unlike Teague and Dorkman, I knew exactly who each of the Asgardian characters were, and what their motivations were.  In brief:

ODIN:  Wants peace.  Not afraid to smack a civilization down BUT NOT ERADICATE IT (this is important) in order to keep it.  This is illustrated in the opening story by Odin going to war with the Frost Giants but letting the king live.  He hates war, but is good at it, and most importantly all his actions are directed towards securing peace. His very act of adopting Loki is motivated by by this.  The movie hinges on Odin's desire for no war, and I buy it.

THOR:  Idolizes his father, but for the wrong reasons (as a child he wants to hear.  He's loyal, hot tempered, and definitely good at fighting, which he enjoys too much.  Anthony Hopkins has a look that works very well for me.  Its when Thor enters for his coronation.  Odin sees his son showing off and realizes, "Shit he's not ready..." and is almost relieved when they get interrupted.  When the Frost Giants first sneak in, Thor is ready to throwdown because to him, the idea of warfare is kingly, and that will make him more like his father, who he adores.  The banishment makes sense because Thor almost plunged Asgard back into war, and when scolded by his father, Thor says something awful, motivated by anger and frustration that he never got to demonstrate his own power and ability to make king like decisions.  Again, his definition of leadership is a false one, one that he "learns," (sorta, we'll get to that later) over the course of the film.

LOKI:  Wants to have the love and respect Thor gets.  Wants his father's respect more than anything.  This motivates every one of his actions.  Mike had a problem with Loki suddenly killing the Frost Giant King (his blood father) but that actually worked for me.  Loki is the god of LIES and MISCHIEF for f's sake.  He doesn't want to rule over Yottenheim, shit is cold there.  He HAS an awesome Kingdom.  He wanted to save his father's life in front of his mom (and his Dad.  They establish that Odin is aware during the Odinsleep) and BE the HERO that Thor was supposed to be.  He doesn't want Asgard to burn.  He wants to rule it, and destroy any trace of where he really comes from, which, Dorkman, in and of itself is a very bad thing that a HERO would want to stop regardless of wether or not doing so would destroy the bridge that his blank slate of a girlfriend is on the other side of.  Loki is my favorite character in the entire movie, and even though a villain, in many ways he's the most sympathetic.  Homeboy just wants love and respect from the people who had lied to him his whole life....but he'd commit genocide to get it, and therefore HAS to be stopped. 

Now...I gained none of this from the comics, because I never really read Thor with any sincerity.  Most of Thor's comics are about his adventures on earth, anyway.  I got all this from the same movie that Dorkman and Teague saw.  Where I consider the film fails is not on the Asgardian drama, but on the earth side of things.  Specifically, with the single most important relationship in the movie that is supposed to be the vertex that the titular characters arc hinges on.

Yes, Natalie, I'm looking at you.  Unlike Teague, I will unleash the full might of my hate cannon on her character.  She is underwritten, under motivated, and holds NO chemistry with Thor.  This is a huge problem for the movie, as in order for Thor to become Thor-y again.  He has to learn humility.  How does he learn it?  Some legit bad news about his Dad, and making eggs for Stellan Skaaaarrrassssgaaaaaaaaard, and finally throwing himself in front of the Destroyer.  Sorry folks, not enough.  Movie, I need more steps in between to see Thor gradually learn humility.  If I can't buy Thor learning humility, then I can't buy him getting his powers back for the big win.  Jane as a character is practically a cypher.  The only real Avengers intrusion is in this stuff, and it just comes off random and rambling.  I like Kat Dennings, but her character should've been called QUIP-A-TRON 9000, as all she's good for is mispronouncing Mjolnir.  That and her offensively hot titties. 

Yeah, Thor's whole arc is tied to him growing through a love interest.  Seeing the world through her eyes, realizing that peace is worth protecting, and discovering that a King's job is to serve the people and not rule them would have made this movie awesome.  Jane is supposed to do all these things and none.  Of.  It.  Works.  I liked the movie, mostly, but anytime Thor drew Yggdrassil on a notebook, or made eggs or whatever, I didn't give the tiniest of shits, and I was supposed to.  Jane exhibits no personality traits that would seem to intrigue, let alone attract the God of Thunder.  But the movie decided that she should, so she did....kinda....but she didn't really.

So I don't disagree that the film had problems, but just not quite all the ones Teague and Mike were saying.  Teague asked me on IM why Iron Man worked for him and not Thor.  It worked because as an audience you buy the relationships that motivate the change in the title character.  The actions he takes to become a better person are interesting as a result, and the final fight is that character DEFENDING his new outlook as well as innocents or a girl or whatever.

To wit:  Tony Stark is a genius who makes weapons and sees no problem with that.  Until he is attacked and kidnapped, and watches soldiers and innocent people dying from his creations.  He meets a good man who DEMONSTRATES selflessness by saving his life twice, and challenges him to do better.  Tony then returns home to those who love him (Pepper and Rodhey) determined to be a better man and make a difference.  As he pieces together his armor, his internal self is changing that change is represented physically as he creates a new self (the armor) to combat the old one (Stark weapons in terrorist hands).  In the end, he fights an older shadow of himself (Obie, who wants to exploit Toney's armor) and saves lives in doing so.  When he finally says, "I am Iron Man," its not out of hubris, its him showing the world, "Look, I've changed."

We buy all of this because of the relationships in Toney's life. We buy his relationship to Pepper, who always saw this good in him.  To Yinzen, who teaches Tony the value of life and second chances.  To Obidiah, which deteriorates as Tony matures.  When Tony demonstrates behavior that progresses his arc, its usually scenes with these people the preceede him armoring up and kicking ass.

Compare that to Thor, and while many of those elements ARE there as I listed, the scenes with his human relationships just dither on and fall flat.  If you don't buy those, huge chunks of the movie don't work.

^This.  I'm a long time TVOTR fan.  I saw them when they won the 2004 SHortlist Award and haven't looked back since.  I like this album a lot, and find it a nice change of pace while still moving their style forward.  Very good album to listen to while writing.

And no, while I like Metric, I am not related to the singer.

No kidding, Dorkman.  People don't often realize just how much was riding on that first film, especially.  Had it tanked, New Line absolutely would have gone out of business and PJ would be directing Zippy's commercials in New Zealand (they have Zippy's in New Zealand, I think).  Jus tthe fact that Peter and Fran always pitched LOTR as two movies goes to show what conventional thinking was at the time: there's no way they are giving me three films off the bat.  Robert Shaye has balls bigger than I ever will.

I don't think you're entirely wrong, but he did come out and say plainly, "I'm in no position to say Video Games can never be art, because it's in the future and there's no way of knowing."

He did also have a few words for fanboys, and honestly considering just how many cracks I saw directed at his weight and health issues, I can understand just a tad bit of acrimony on his part.  I love nerdy things, but nerd culture can be an ugly, ugly beast at times.  Look no further than the Donald Glover/Spider Man debacle.  If he would have said "From what I've seen, in their current incarnation, video games are not art." I seriously wouldn't have given a shit.  But he took it a step further then he needed, undoubtedly.  As a result, he got rightfully shelacked by folks, and at the end of the day I truly felt like while his opinion didn't shift, it did change his perspective a bit.  That's what good debate should do.

I also understand the almost willful ignorance of a lot of younger folk and the temptation to snap back with some invective, like Roger did.  Shit, I'm 33 and I feel like waving my cane at my wife's dance students when they think Britney's new single is great song writing.  Certainly that's not a 1-1 comparison of video game fans to tween girls, but as a regular player of WoW and Halo I can tell you without hesitation that most gamers I've played with are fucking loons.

One thing I wanted to mention on the anniversary show with respect to my son, is that I also dont plan to daisy chain films back to back either.  We live in the age where I could show my son these films all in the same weekend if I chose, but I actually think that's detrimental in the long run.  Part of being into nerdy things is the anticipation.  Some of the most defining nerd moments I have in my life were built around waiting for something cool to come out.  SO when he hits a certain age, I'm thinking 4-5, I'll show him A New Hope.  THen, a few months later, I'll show him Empire.  I'll TRY as best I can to make him wait for  Jedi.  After talking those out and seeing what his feelings are, we may...or may not watch the prequels.  Point is, I think it's important to regulate the frequency of completing franchises, especially at a young age.