Watch 14 minutes of HBO’s Game of Thrones

The HBO press machine has been in full swing lately, releasing one teaser or “behind the scenes” featurette after another. However, this one trumps them all: it’s the opening minutes of Game of Thrones, and includes our first glimpses of both the Wall and the lands beyond it, and Winterfell, home of honorable House Stark. Sure, I have some relatively minor quibbles — one of my favorite scenes in the entire series, a discussion between Eddard Stark and his son Bran on the nature of courage, is truncated — but overall, it looks fantastic. Winter can’t come fast enough.