Isegoria

Angus wall discusses how they created the Game of Thrones opening title sequence — which is far more clockwork-inspired than I would have expected for a high-medieval quasi-English setting:

One of the things we realized early on was that you couldn’t really tilt the camera up very far because it raised the question, what’s beyond the map? I kept thinking that if you had all the money and craftsmen in the world, and you could do whatever you wanted, what would you do? In my mind, you’d build the most intricate, beautiful map you could possibly imagine. You’d get the best craftsmen in the world, give them the materials they’d need and give them five years to make this crazy, working, super-detailed miniature.

Our goal was to try to replicate something that looks and acts like a physical object. Art Director Rob Feng referenced Leonardo’s machines which have a timeless sense of design. We wanted the title sequence to be rooted in world of the show, which is a technically unsophisticated place, but to also have a complexity that gives it life. It’s definitely not contemporary! Everything is made of wood, metal, leather, fabric, all natural materials… stuff you could see human hands hammering out and molding.

The fact that I wanted to be able to move the camera anywhere led us to the fact that this whole world had to exist on the inside of a sphere, which took us a while to figure out. I had initially thought, okay, the shape of this thing… imagine it’s in a medieval tower and monks are watching over it and it’s a living map and it’s shaped like a bowl that’s 30 feet in diameter and these guys watch over it, kind of like they would the Book of Kells or something… they’re the caretakers of this map. I quickly realized we were still going to shoot off the map. So the next thought was, what happens when you put two bowls together? You have a sphere. Next question was “how is it lit?” And obviously, If you have a whole world inside a sphere, what would be in the middle of that sphere? The sun! Or whatever the light source of this world is.

Harvard University Press is finally publishing an uncensored version of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray:

Wilde’s editor JM Stoddart had already deleted a host of “objectionable” text from the novel before it made its first appearance in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in June 1890, cutting out material which made more explicit the homoerotic nature of artist Basil Hallward’s feelings for Dorian Gray and which accentuated elements of homosexuality in Gray himself.

Deciding that the novel as it stood contained “a number of things which an innocent woman would make an exception to”, and assuring his employer Craige Lippincott that he would make the book “acceptable to the most fastidious taste”, Stoddart also removed references to Gray’s female lovers as his “mistresses”. He went on to cut “many passages that smacked of decadence more generally,” said Nicholas Frankel, editor of the new edition, for Harvard University Press.

The public outcry which followed the novel’s appearance – “it is a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French Decadents – a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction,” wrote the Daily Chronicle – forced Wilde to revise the novel still further before it appeared in book form in 1891.

Some examples:

“It is quite true I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man should ever give to a friend. Somehow I have never loved a woman,” Hallward tells Dorian, in one passage which was changed. The censored version read: “From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me”.
[...]
Among other restored passages, Hallward describes the feelings which had driven his portrait of Gray. “There was love in every line, and in every touch there was passion”. Another restored line describes Gray walking the street at night; “A man with curious eyes had suddenly peered into his face, and then dogged him with stealthy footsteps, passing and repassing him many times.” Gray also reflects on Hallward’s feelings for him. “There was something infinitely tragic in a romance that was at once so passionate and sterile”.

In another instance, the question; “Is Sybil Vane your mistress?” was altered to “What are your relations with Sibyl Vane?” – one of three references to Gray’s “mistresses” that were cut by the editor.

The article’s a bit unclear on the novel’s editorial history. As some commenters added, Wilde made many additions and some revisions to the already edited magazine version to produce the finished novel, including introducing new characters; those additions and revisions won’t appear in the “uncensored” version.