Game of Thrones: fantasy television | Television & radio | guardian.co.uk

My new favourite TV series, after Mad Men.

This is the sort of show where gruff men in wolf cloaks mutter ominously that “winter is coming”, exiled princelings bitch about their lost birthright and there is much discussion of prophecies of old. Yet even if that kind of thing usually makes you run screaming to the nearest crime drama, Game of Thrones is worth sticking with.

Don’t be put off by the huge number of people in the cast, just sit back and enjoy the clever way in the tale unfolds. Essentially the story of Ned Stark (Bean) and his fateful decision to help his old friend Robert Baratheon rule, Game of Thrones is also about the evil that men do in the name of power, the lengths that people will go to hold on to a throne and the corruption that ultimately corrodes a kingdom.

Looking forward to reading the books as well. On the London Underground, they’ve become a new staple amongst the frazzled and harried commuter class.

In Case You Were Planning to Watch ‘The Playboy Club’... - The Daily Beast

Nora Ephron, who wrote When Harry Met Sally, takes aim at the original Playboy prince:

I have for many years been puzzled by the persistence of Hugh Hefner. Why is he still here? Why does anyone write about him? Why does anyone quote his remarks about his own cultural relevance as if they are anything but wishful thinking?

Everything Hugh Hefner is responsible for—the magazine, the clubs, the philosophy, the T-shirts, the keys, the bumper stickers, the brand—has been deposited in the junk shop of 20th-century life, where it belonged. The stock tanked. The magazine’s circulation fell. The clubs were closed, one by one.

But Hefner himself, now 85, is a whack-a-mole, popping up from his life on the D list to give interviews about his pajamas and his little blue pills and his cadre of surgically enhanced women. Why does anyone read about him? Why do I? I can’t explain it.

Hit the link for more of the same, it’s funny stuff. There’s also the dawning realisation that, thanks to the success of Mad Men, we’re going to be deluged with TV shows set in the 1960s that copy the style but have none of the substance.

Mad Men Reading List | The New York Public Library

Wowowowowow. The New York Public Library has compiled a reading list of books which were directly referenced in Mad Men, and it’s updated on a regular basis. The list so far:

Meditations in an Emergency - Frank O’Hara
The Best of Everything - Rona Jaffe
Confessions of an Advertising Man - David Ogilvy
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword - Ruth Benedict
Exodus - Leon Uris
Ship of Fools - Katherine Ann Porter
Lady Chatterley’s Lover - D.H. Lawrence
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
The Agony and the Ecstasy - Irving Stone
The Group - Mary Mccarthy
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon

Each of these links go directly to the library’s online catalogue, so readers can see how many copies of the book are available to borrow, and put a hold on it for themselves. How’s about that for engaging with your customers?

BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: MADISON AVENUE

Adam Curtis talks about advertising, Madison Avenue and the Sixties:

The widespread fascination with the Mad Men series is far more than just simple nostalgia. It is about how we feel about ourselves and our society today.

In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.

I think we are fascinated because we have a lurking feeling that we are living in a very similar time. A time that, despite all the great forces of history whirling around in the world outside, somehow feels stuck. And above all has no real vision of the future.

And as we watch the group of characters from 50 years ago, we get reassurance because we know that they are on the edge of a vast change that will transform their world and lead them out of their stifling technocratic order and back into the giant onrush of history.

The question is whether we might be at a similar point, waiting for something to happen. But we have no idea what it is going to be.

He also shares some archive footage and profiles key personalities from the era. Simply fascinating.

Smoking, Drinking, Writing, Womanizing, Smoking, Drinking... - Mad Men - Television - NYTimes.com

Weiner’s achievements with “Mad Men,” which is produced by Lionsgate, are plentiful, starting with the storytelling. Setting it in the early 1960s, on the cusp between the repression and conformity of the cold war and McCarthy-era 1950s and the yet-to-unfold social and cultural upheavals of the 60s, allows Weiner an arc of character growth that is staggering in its possibilities. It also gives him the opportunity to mine the Rat Pack romance of that period, when the wreaths of cigarette smoke, the fog of too many martinis — whether exhilarating or nauseating — and the silhouettes specific to bullet bras only heightened the headiness of the dream that all men might one day become James Bond or, at the very least, key holders to the local Playboy Club.