Trailer for X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

A trailer has been released for Days of Future Past, the next X-Men film. This film will combine the original cast of the 2000-2006 trilogy of films with the cast of First Class, playing their younger selves. Time travel will be used to bring the two groups together to face off against a greater threat.

Returning are Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy as Professor Xavier and Ian McKellan and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. Hugh Jackman also returns as Wolverine (thanks to his immortality, they only need the one actor). Anna Pacquin, Ellen Page, Nicholas Hoult, Jennifer Lawrence and Shawn Ashmore also return as Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Beast, Mystique and Iceman respectively. Peter Dinklage (Tyrion from Game of Thrones) is the film's most notable newcomer, playing Professor Bolivar Trask. The Sentinels will play a role in the film as well. Bryan Singer, the director of X-Men and X2, returns to direct. The movie is loosely based on the highly-regarded graphic novel of the same name.

The film will be released on 23 May 2014.

GoT Season 2 UK airdate and a Golden Globe Award

HBO has previously confirmed that Game of Thrones will return for its second season in the USA on 1 April 2012. This has now been backed up by Sky Atlantic saying the season will start airing in the UK on Monday, 2 April 2012, less than 24 hours after US transmission.


Meanwhile, Peter Dinklage has won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Tyrion Lannister, adding to his already-impressive Emmy Award for the same role. Dinklage thanked George R.R. Martin, David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and his family in the speech, but also paid tribute to Martin Henderson, a British dwarf who'd been injured in a mean-spirited prank, resulting in the incident becoming a trending topic on Twitter and making headlines all over the world.

Thrones failed to win the coveted Best Drama Award, however, which went instead to Homeland.

Peter Dinklage wins Emmy Award for GAME OF THRONES

Peter Dinklage won the Award for Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Drama Series at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards last night for his role of Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones.


Dinklage, seen as the outside bet (40/1 odds according to the bookies), overcome strong opposition from John Slattery (Mad Men), Andre Braugher (Men of a Certain Age), Walton Goggins (Justified), Josh Charles (The Good Wife) and Alan Cumming (The Good Wife) to take home the award.

Game of Thrones was also nominated for Best Drama Series, Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series and Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series but didn't win any of the other main awards. It did win an additional technical award for Best Title Sequence, however. The only other SFF show to take home an award was Futurama, which won the Award for Outstanding Animated Program.

Congratulations to Peter and the rest of the Game of Thrones team, as well as the other winners and nominees.

Potential GAME OF THRONES spin-off show?

So who do we have to kill to make this happen?

The Station Agent

I picked up this movie on DVD a while ago as it had good reviews and was very cheap (it's currently about £4 on Amazon.co.uk), but I'd never gotten round to watching it. When I heard that its director, Tom McCarthy, and one of its stars, Peter Dinklage, had been signed up for A Game of Thrones' pilot episode, it seemed like a good time to give it a go.


The plot is reasonably straightforward. Dinklage plays Fin, a young man suffering from dwarfism. Tired of having people comment on his height, Fin is a withdrawn man who seeks solace in his hobby of studying trains and his job working in a model train shop with his friend Henry. When Henry dies unexpectedly, Fin inherits a piece of property, an old train depot in Newfoundland, New Jersey, and moves in, hoping to continue his life of solitude.

Fin soon finds himself uncomfortably drawn into the lives of several other people. Joe is a garrulous, friendly guy running the local ice cream van on behalf of his father, who is ill. A local woman, Olivia, almost accidentally runs Fin over and in her attempts to make amends they form an interesting friendship. A somewhat less-developed storyline sees Fin attract the attention of Emily, the local young librarian, who is having her own problems.

The Station Agent is a curious movie, which for most of its length seems to be heading down the 'heartwarming relationship drama' route before the director suddenly veers away from the threat of cliche city into a new and more interesting direction. It's a short movie (only 90 minutes) but it has a laidback pace, focusing on the characters, dialogue and their slowly building relationships in a well-developed manner. As well as Dinklage in an outstanding role, Patricia Clarkson as Olivia and Bobby Cannavale give excellent performances as Patricia and Joe, the former playing a badly damaged character and the latter being that slightly overbearing, slightly too friendly type of person I think most people have met at some point in their lives. Michelle Williams has a much slighter role as Emily but makes the most of her scenes.

The late-stage shift in the narrative is an interesting move. Without giving away spoilers, the way that McCarthy avoids corny resolutions to the character arcs and deftly subverts expectations of a neat ending is well-done. He doesn't go bonkers and kill everyone or turn one of the characters into a psychopath, but he also doesn't go down the totally corny route either. It's a thought-provoking way of concluding the film that works well, although it took me a while to get into its headspace.

The Station Agent (****) is a quiet, funny, entertaining and occasionally emotionally intense movie that is well worth a watch. As a piece of character drama, it is a rousing success. The movie is available now on DVD in the UK and USA.

First Official Casting for A Game of Thrones

Actor Peter Dinklage has been confirmed to be playing the crucial role of Tyrion Lannister in HBO's A Game of Thrones. It was feared that finding an actor to play Tyrion would be one of the greatest challenges for the casting department, but instead Dinklage's name was raised by fans almost as soon as the project was commissioned. HBO were allegedly in talks with the actor as early as several months ago, when he was reported to have been visiting their offices to discuss possible projects.


Dinklage rose to notice in 2003's The Station Agent, a small, character-based drama directed by Thomas McCarthy. Since then Dinklage has appeared in a number of projects, including a memorably enraged appearance in Elf (in which he played an entertainment troubleshooter who physically attacked Will Ferrell's character after being called an 'elf' one time too many) and an actor angry with typecasting in Living in Oblivion. A whole slew of acclaimed film and TV appearances followed, including roles on Threshold, Nip/Tuck and 30 Rock. He most recently appeared as Trumpkin in Prince Caspian, a character he will reprise in the forthcoming Voyage of the Dawn Treader adaption.


Tyrion Lannister is one of the central characters in A Song of Ice and Fire, arguably one of the three core protagonists of the series. He is the youngest son of Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and one of the most powerful rulers in the Seven Kingdoms. Tyrion was born misshapen and his mother died in childbirth, two things that Tywin has never forgiven his younger son for. Whilst not unskilled at combat (he has engineered his own saddle that allows him to fight effectively from horseback), Tyrion's size has rendered him unable to win valour in battle like his elder brother Jaime, arguably the single most acclaimed swordsman of his generation. Instead, Tyrion uses his wits and raw cunning to win achievements, and is particularly skilled at intrigue and deception. When Jaime joins the Kingsguard, forswearing all claims to inheritance, Tyrion becomes Tywin's heir, much to Tywin's fury. Much of the drama in the story is mined from Tyrion's attempts to 'prove himself' to the father who hates him whilst furthering his own ambitions. Tyrion has been called the single most well-realised character in the history of epic fantasy and it is hard to argue with that assessment.

It is, frankly, an absolute gift of a role and I think Dinklage is up to the challenge.

On an appropriate note, Dinklage's director and writer on The Station Agent, Tom McCarthy, has been announced as the director of A Game of Thrones' pilot episode. McCarthy is primarily an actor, but won acclaim for directing both The Station Agent and 2007's The Visitor. He also won a BAFTA, a Writer's Guild of America Award and a Sundance Film Festival award for his screenplay for The Station Agent. On the acting front, his most recent high-profile role was as unscrupulous journalist Scott Templeton on the final season of The Wire.


I anticipate further casting news over the next few weeks as HBO gears up for the beginning of production in Belfast in October.