George R.R. Martin's Blog, page 144

Movies Are Coming

One more day till the Grand Re-Opening of the Jean Cocteau Cinema.

Tickets for the first night screening of FORBIDDEN PLANET and ORPHEUS are "sold out" (well, given out, since all admissions are FREE this week), but we still have a few seats available for our midnight show, DARK STAR, which starts at 11pm.  Saturday and Sunday are filling up as well, but we still have plenty of tickets for the rest of the week, so if you'd like to see the new Cocteau, do come by.

BEFORE


AFTER
Pictures of the grand re-opening to come.  Watch this space.

Pizza of Thrones

Out from the wilds of Brooklyn, across the Long Bridge, comes

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ggggenji/9-dinner-specials-created-in-honor-of-game-of-thro-9mo9

What can I say?

I want a slice of each.

For New Mexicans

((... and fans from Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and other surrounding states who have reliable cars and enough free time to drive to Santa Fe... or maybe just a bunch of frequent flyer miles they need to use up.))

  Tickets are now available for the first week's offerings at the revived Jean Cocteau Cinema.

  Here's our schedule for our first week:

 FRIDAY AUGUST 9
630pm Forbidden Planet - SOLD OUT
845pm Orpheus
11pm  Dark Star

  SATURDAY AUGUST 10
2pm Forbidden Planet
415pm Orpheus
630pm Forbidden Planet
845pm Orpheus
11pm Dark Star

SUNDAY AUGUST 11
2pm Orpheus
415pm Forbidden Planet
7pm Orpheus
9pm Forbidden Planet

MONDAY AUGUST 12
7pm Forbidden Planet
9pm Orpheus

TUESDAY AUGUST 13
7pm Orpheus
9pm Forbidden Planet

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 14
7pm Forbidden Planet
9pm Orpheus

THURSDAY AUGUST 15
2pm Orpheus
415pm Forbidden Planet
7pm Orpheus
9pm Forbidden Planet

Tickets to all showings are absolutely FREE.  So come by the theatre -- we're at 418 Montezuma, just off Guadalupe, near the Railrunner depot and Sanbusco -- and pick up one, or two, or five.

And I'll see you at the movies.

Seven Days And Counting...

 We're down to seven days till the grand re-opening of the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe.

[That sound you just heard was me gulping.  Work is proceeding apace, but there's still a lot to do, and that opening is bearing down on us like a damned locomotive.  I need to whip my minions harder.]

First up, the classic 1956 MGM big budget SF classic, FORBIDDEN PLANET.



Tickets for FORBIDDEN PLANET... and Jean Cocteau's ORPHEUS and John Carpenter's DARK STAR, our other featured attraction... will all be FREE, but they're going fast, especially for opening night.  If you're in Santa Fe, drop by the box office and get yours now.

Oh, and we also hope to have signed copies of some of my books for sale at the theatre... and maybe other cool stuff as well.

Not Their Bitch

For those of you who were not able to be in San Diego for Comicon:



The rest is silence.

The Princess and the Queen

The final story in DANGEROUS WOMEN will be my own, a 30,000 word novella entitled "The Princess and the Queen," a history (somewhat abridged) of the Dance of the Dragons, as set down by a maester of the Citadel.

Tor.com has just uploaded a sample to their site.  You can find it here:

http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/07/dangerous-women-george-r-r-martin-excerpt

Enjoy.

(The full 80,000 word account of the Dance will eventually appear in a book, as yet untitled, that we're calling the GRRMarillion).

Eleven Days and Counting . . .

. . . until the Grand Re-Opening of the Jean Cocteau Cinema, the movie theatre I bought a few months back in a fit of madness.

We've been busily refurbishing the theatre all that time.  As late as a week ago, it looked as if a bomb had gone off in the lobby, and I was having a nervous breakdown.  Things have finally started to come together, however, and my contractor (the amazing Marshall Thompson of Constructive Assets) and my manager (the astonishing Jon Bowman, founder of the Santa Fe Film Festival) both assure me that we will indeed be ready come the day.  I certainly hope so.  We've kept the theatre's wonderful old marquee, after replacing the old fluorescents with brighter LEDs, and the auditorium is more or less the same (though we've installed some wheelchair seating), but the lobby and concessions area has a bold new look, designed by the wonderfully talented Jayne Franck.  Assuming our chairs and tables arrive on time, it should be spectacular...

The Jean Cocteau has been dark for seven years, since Trans-Lux closed all its theatres in April, 2006.  To celebrate our return to life, and let the Santa Fe film-going community know that we're back, admission will be FREE to all shows during our first week.

FREE!  FREE!!  FREE!!!

We open on Friday, August 9, with two classic feature films: ORPHEUS, by Jean Cocteau, for whom our cinema is named, and FORBIDDEN PLANET, the classic MGM big-budget SF movie from 1956, which IMNSHO remains the best science fiction film ever made.

Both of them will be shown on our brand new (slightly larger and definitely brighter) screen, with our brand new digital projector(an NEC 900 Digital Projection System and Integrated Media Server) and our brand new upgraded sound system (Dolby Digital Surround Sound Processor CP650), so the picture quality and sound should be better than ever.

We will also be offering pizza, pastries, and the best popcorn in town (with parmesan) from our new art deco concession counter.

(No, the food and drink won't be free, that's just admission).

And we have some cool SURPRISES in store for that first week as well.  So those of you in Santa Fe... or Albuquerque... or, hell, anywhere in driving distance, should make of point of turning up for our Grand Opening Week to see the new improved Jean Cocteau.

More on all this in the weeks to come.  Meanwhile, our website is just up, so take a look.  Be advised, website construction is still in progress, so a lot of our features are not working yet... but you can check out the general design, and get a peek at the posters for some of the films we've got booked for the weeks and months to come.

http://www.jeancocteaucinema.com/

Yadda Yadda Yadda

Me again, talking.

Here's an inteview from the San Diego Comicon, done by the guys at Nerdist:

http://www.nerdist.com/2013/07/nerdist-podcast-george-r-r-martin/

Be warned, it's mostly about stuff OTHER than GAME OF THRONES / SONG OF ICE AND FIRE. 

The Wedding Guest

He's a father, he's a son.  He's been a bishop, a cardinal, a prior, a friar, a vicar, a knight, a lord, a mayor, a director.  There's one born every minute, but by any other name he'd smell as sweet.

Later:
I see the long delay between visits from Froggy the Gremlin hasn't dulled your skill at deciphering clues any.

Yes, it's the fine British character actor Roger Ashton-Griffiths, who has been cast in the role of Mace Tyrell, son to the Queen of Thorns, and father of Loras and Margaery.

Thanks for playing, and congrats to those who got it right.

OLD VENUS Delivered

Another anthology done, another monkey off my back.

The last revision just came in on OLD VENUS, the latest (and last, for a time) original anthology that Gardner Dozois and I have been putting together.  Gardner will be delivering the final manuscript... well, e-manuscript... to our editors at Bantam Spectra later today.

Sixteen stories set on Venus.  Not, however, the real life Venus, with its rains of sulfuric acid and surface temperatures that would roast a man in the blink of an eye,  but the old watery pulp Venus of our lost youth, with its swamps, dinosaurs, and web-footed Venusians... Venerians... whatever.

The final lineup for this one will look like this:

INTRODUCTION, by Gardner Dozois
FROGHEADS, by Allen M. Steele
THE DROWNED CELESTRIAL, by Lavie Tidhar
PLANET OF FEAR, by Paul McAuley
GREEVES AND THE EVENING STAR, by Matthew Hughes
A PLANET CALLED DESIRE, by Gwyneth Jones
LIVING HELL, by Joe Haldeman
BONES OF AIR, BONES OF STONE, by Stephen Leigh
RUINS, by Eleanor Arnason
THE TUMBLEDOWNS OF CLEOPATRA ABYSEE, by David Brin
BY FROGSLED AND LIZARDBACK TO OUTCAST VENUSIAN LEPERS, by Garth Nix
THE SUNSET OF TIME, by Michael Cassutt
PALE BLUE MEMORIES, by Tobias S. Buckell
THE HEART'S FILTHY LESSON, by Elizabeth Bear
THE WIZARD OF THE TREES, by Joe R. Lansdale
THE GODSTONE OF VENUS, by Mike Resnick
BOTANICA VENERIS: THIRTEEN PAPERCUTS BY IDA COUNTESS RATHANGAN, by Ian McDonald

This one is even more fun than our forthcoming OLD MARS, I think... and there's one story in there that's so bloody good that if it doesn't win the Hugo and Nebula both, I'll count it as a major injustice.  Which one?  Ah, I will leave you guys to figure that out.  But first you'll need to read the book.  Look for it along about a year after OLD MARS.

Gardner and I wish to categorically deny the rumor that we are now working on OLD URANUS.