When the opening scene of the latest GAME OF THRONES spinoff shows a lumbering oaf taking a dump behind a tree, you know something has shifted in Westeros. This isn’t the bloody intrigue of the original series or the dragon-heavy courtly drama of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS occupies its own strange territory, chronologically sandwiched between those two juggernauts but tonally adrift in uncharted waters where comedy and bleakness converge in ways this franchise has never quite attempted before.
That oaf eventually gets a name: Dunk. He’s a knight, technically, though of the hedge variety, a lower-status category whose members cannot afford proper lodging and sleep under trees like vagrants. The show wastes no time reminding us that any knight can make a knight simply by dubbing them, a lack of gatekeeping that has created a rigid class system where highborn warriors scorn their ignoble brethren as knights in name only, and only just. There’s nothing just about any of it, of course, but the show trusts us to see the cruelty embedded in these hierarchies without underlining it.
The plot is deceptively simple on the surface. Dunk journeys to a tourney, a jousting competition where he hopes to prove himself worthy, and we follow his fumbling attempts to get on the ballot given his nondescript lineage. He falls for a girl, participates in a tug-of-war, muddles through various humiliations. He’s both hampered and assisted by his new squire, Egg, a bald pubescent boy who latches onto him at an inn and refuses to leave. Their dynamic carries the show, two misfits stumbling through a world that has no clear place for either of them, trying to manufacture dignity from the scraps they’ve been handed.
What makes A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS glorious is precisely what makes it a risk. This is GAME OF THRONES as grossout comedy, embracing bodily functions and base humor while maintaining the franchise’s visual splendor and attention to detail. It’s the series at its best because it remembers that even in a world of dragons and prophecies, most people are just trying to survive with some shred of honor intact, however that word gets defined by those with nothing else to their names. The show finds its heart in that struggle, in the gap between what Dunk aspires to be and what the world keeps telling him he is, and it plays that gap for both pathos and laughs without ever losing sight of the fundamental human dignity at stake.
🎸 RORY GALLAGHER IS COMING HOME TO THE BIG SCREEN 🎸
The world premiere of JOE BONAMASSA: THE SPIRIT OF RORY lands at the Cork International Film Festival this November, and it’s a love letter to the Ballyshannon-born, Cork-raised guitar legend who changed the sound of rock forever.
More details via 🔗︎ in bio!
⛳🍀 BILL MURRAY. IRELAND. NO PLAN 🍀⛳
The trailer for A COURSE CALLED IRELAND has landed, and it looks like the best kind of trouble.
Murray and author Tom Coyne tee off across some of Ireland’s most legendary golf courses - six episodes, north and south of the border, with plenty of wit, warmth and unscripted chaos.
Watch now via 🔗︎ in bio!
Don`t miss @scandalous_13 on the @willseeyounowshow!
The PEAKY BLINDERS, KIN and MOBLAND actor opens up about living with aphantasia, his complicated relationship with fear and the self-destructive impulses he works to keep under control.
Watch now via 🔗︎ in bio 🍀
Fifty years. One extraordinary career. And he keeps getting better 🎬
Don`t miss beloved #Belfast actor; Ciaran Hinds; in Netflix’s adaptation of John Steinbeck`s EAST OF EDEN.
Hinds re-unites with THE WONDER co-star, with the magnificent Florence Pugh!
Full details via 🔗︎ in bio.
Paul Mescal is now in your Netflix queue 🍿
Ridley Scott`s long-awaited sequel to the Best Picture-winning GLADIATOR is finally on Netflix, and it`s the perfect excuse to watch Mescal go to war from your couch 🏛️
Get more Paul via 🔗︎ in bio!
Ciilian Murphy for 28 YEARS LATER 3?
Danny Boyle just confirmed at the @zurichfilmfestival that the third chapter of the 28 DAYS LATER saga is happening. Alex Garland already has a script, and Boyle says there will be "a lot of Cillian Murphy in it."
Full details via 🔗︎ in bio!
BAD SISTERS creator @sharonhorgan is in the @criterioncollection closet.
Sharon`s new show, YOUTH, is now streaming on @hbo and @hbomax.
Who else loves THE PRINCESS BRIDE and THE RED BALLOON 🎈?
Watch now via 🔗︎ in bio!
Congrats to Saoirse Ronan!
PAPER PLANE, her 15-min directorial and screenwriting debut, has just won BIG at @encounterssff.
Despite four Oscar nominations, Saoirse still truly believes in independent film!
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73-year-old @piercebrosnanofficial tells @interviewmag that acting means constantly constructing and destroying a part of yourself to become the character.
From Bond to MOBLAND and everything in between, Brosnan is the real deal.
Full details via link in bio 🔗︎
