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I don't know what to make of this. A documentary about a fictional space alien spider clown that's only been portrayed by two different actors ever across basically two movies. It's not a doc on all the Batmen, James Bonds, Draculas or even Tarzans but I guess this is going to be a thing. One could say it has legs I guess.quote:https://screenrant.com/it-miniseries-pennywise-documentary-movie-us-release-date/ Does Pennywise really warrant a documentary in his own right? Seems like this would be more sense as a DVD extra or something. Not sure how you pad that out into a full feature and, to me, a full fledged retrospective on King villains/monsters in general might make more sense.
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Mar 15, 2022 23:33
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What other King villains/monsters would people even care about? Most of them are some variety of hosed up human. Pennywise is certainly the most iconic and recognizable, so I kind of get it even though the timing seems very off and the ceiling is probably pretty low. IDK, as long as Tim Curry gets a check I can't be too mad about it. I do agree that an exegesis of King villains would have more mileage and maybe some more interesting things to say than this Pennywise documentary though.
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Mar 15, 2022 23:57
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Randall Flagg documentary but it's just Charlie doing his Pepe Silvia routine.
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Mar 16, 2022 01:50
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Yeah, a beyond-book audience knows Pennywise, Cujo, Annie Wilkes (though probably not by name), Carrie if she counts, and....?
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Mar 16, 2022 02:04
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Mat Cauthon posted:What other King villains/monsters would people even care about? Most of them are some variety of hosed up human. Pennywise is certainly the most iconic and recognizable, so I kind of get it even though the timing seems very off and the ceiling is probably pretty low. IDK, as long as Tim Curry gets a check I can't be too mad about it. Jack Torrance, Annie Wilkes, the prison warden from Shawshank, Kurt Barlow, Christine, Cujo, Carrie's mother, The Overlook Hotel, the Crimson King, Randall Flagg... I just meant there's more meat on the bone for a full rogues gallery retrospective of King's work than there is focusing singularly on Pennywise. Seems like we're in agreement if I read your post right and I get that he's iconic but he's not Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, Dracula levels of infamous and there's not a ton of lore to be mined there. At least to me. Maybe there is. It's a big book widely regarded as one of King's best and the movies are long so I dunno. I just don't see how you build a whole documentary around Pennywise unless there's a bunch of cool behind the scenes poo poo with Tim Curry that I'm not aware of.
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Mar 16, 2022 02:17
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Eason the Fifth posted:Yeah, a beyond-book audience knows Pennywise, Cujo, Annie Wilkes (though probably not by name), Carrie if she counts, and....? Jack Torrance e: beaten by BiggerBoat.
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Mar 16, 2022 02:21
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YouTuber “The Vile Eye” has done analysis videos on many King villains, and he normally goes into both books and films. They are often pretty good.
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Mar 16, 2022 02:24
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MrMojok posted:YouTuber “The Vile Eye” has done analysis videos on many King villains, and he normally goes into both books and films. They are often pretty good. You have any good links? I found a bunch of Star Wars stuff but if you have a good deep dives on some Stephen King hook me up
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Mar 16, 2022 02:49
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BiggerBoat posted:You have any good links? I found a bunch of Star Wars stuff but if you have a good deep dives on some Stephen King hook me up https://youtu.be/ITuQbO39g8k https://youtu.be/07sIviggH8M https://youtu.be/oYF2pvjAdnA https://youtu.be/qZBD_7x0U8w
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Mar 16, 2022 03:28
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I'd watch a Flagg documentary. When I was a kid, the idea of the same villain showing up in different books was the coolest thing in the world, but basically all media is like that now.
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Mar 16, 2022 05:46
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Back when I rea The Stand some people tried to offer justifications for why people followed Flagg but I'm still skeptical and I'd appreciate a video that maybe tried to explain it better. No matter how evil a person is, nobody thinks of themselves as the villain outside of bad cartoons. Raw terror and fear can only get you so far. To be genuinely successful, people need to believe in you. And yet Flagg is described as putting the fear of the Devil into anyone who looks at him. I think the only time he is ever described as somewhat pleasant to the person looking at him was the one woman....Dana? She was from the good guy side and met with him and died...sorry it's been a while. But Flagg was able at least temporarily avoid giving off a vibe of evil incarnate. But everyone else who sees him, especially the people who work for him, are very explicit that they can actually feel what he is. He does not have a cult of personality, it's more he just has a load of people too scared to go anywhere else but they're also terrified of him.
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Mar 16, 2022 06:07
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The people under Flagg didn't see it as a good vs evil situation. They saw it as "us vs them" and "powerful vs weak". They were told how much better it was in Vegas and despotism was the price to be paid to be on the winning side. I would wager that most of the people didn't see Flagg personally, except in their dreams. People were leaving at the end. I remember someone, Glen perhaps?, taunting Flagg that people were leaving in ones and twos and that his all-seeing eye wasn't seeing that.
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Mar 16, 2022 09:22
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Remember in Las Vegas everyone worked and there was no drug abuse and virtually no crime so it was basically a heaven. While in Boulder people just kinda did whatever man and it’s like I don’t FEEL like working you know let’s just hang out and somebody else can worry about the food supply and all that stuff that THE MAN is trying to bring you down with. What I’m saying here is we need to abolish welfare
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Mar 17, 2022 03:15
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More like old jean jacket
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Mar 17, 2022 03:29
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After reading a couple posts here about Apt Pupil and remembering how good of a story it was, I decided to watch the 1998 movie. I had never seen it and I couldn’t remember why I avoided it so watched it today. I always thought Ethan Hawk was in it, and was kinda surprised it wasn’t him. It sure looked like him on the cover. Anyway 30 minutes in is a very long nude teen boys shower scene, and then I remembered why I had avoided it for so long… Bryan Singer and all the molestation he did, literally on the set of that movie.
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Mar 17, 2022 03:51
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The new "What if Carrie had a loving family" movie was unexpected, but I enjoyed it. Pixar's "Turning red"
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Mar 17, 2022 16:06
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I just read Apt Pupil and its one of my favorites of Kings. Tbf ive mostly been working thru his novella/short stort stuff but I thought it was one of his most bitingly hilarious and fantastic pieces. The way he sets up the main character as this ALL AMERICAN Todd-o motherfucker, the DUTIFUL newspaper delivering blonde blue eyed boy, and then skewers the sick fascination and worship so many white Americans have for Nazis. It repeatedly emphasizes (and lampoons) how much of a wonderful and functional child and family this is by the standards of American society, the most fertile ground for Nazi adoration both in the way we inspired Nazism in a lot of ways before and then afterwards incorporated and in a weird way lionized it, stared in fascination at the "gooey parts" brought it in w/ the likes of Operation Paperclip, anti-communist death brigades, History Channel love letters for white dads and weird white kids in military jackets...it's the spirit of secret not so secret Western Nazi Love that made Patton and Churchill want to immediately arm Nazis and use them to attack the USSR. A lot of white people, be they just intellectually or literally 14, even if they intrinsically recognize Nazis as "bad guys" truly just think they were loving cool. I can't remember a lot of media effectively skewering this kinda poo poo, other than like, the weird dude in Falling Down. That's why I appreciated Apt Pupil. I love the assumptions characters make that Todd-o couldn't be a monster purely cuz of him hitting society's goalposts. I'll admit it started to lose me once it went into Bret Easton Ellis territory, not a fan of the American Psycho type passages. I preferred its initial section before it got into full serial killing territory, feels like it could have ended multiple times gracefully with Todd at 14, like when it's revealed Dussander didn't really have a safety deposit box... buuuut I still really liked the ending though. And for such a sick story it really has the most intentionally and effectively funny moments in any writing of King's I've yet encountered. Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Mar 19, 2022 |
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Mar 19, 2022 06:26
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p.s. is the movie any good?
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Mar 19, 2022 06:31
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Rereading Running Man, kinda wish Bachman did more with this setting, it’s wildly off from the actual present but it’s still a pretty cool dystopian alternate history future in the background. Kinda sucks he was outed as King’s pseudonym before we got more than, what, this and The Long Walk out of him for this setting?
Last Celebration fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Mar 19, 2022 |
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Mar 19, 2022 09:00
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Last Celebration posted:Rereading Running Man, kinda wish Bachman did more with this setting, it’s wildly off from the actual present but it’s still a pretty cool dystopian alternate history future in the background. Kinda sucks he was outed as King’s pseudonym before we got more than, what, this and The Long Walk out of him for this setting? Just pretend that the TV network is owned by Sombra Corp.
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Mar 19, 2022 16:03
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Punkin Spunkin posted:p.s. is the movie any good? It's been a very long time since I saw it, but I remember thinking it was well done. I don't think it had as much killing as in the book, and remember it ends differently, and there were probably a few other things different that didn't stand out as much Biggest thing to know is that it is has an added scene with three naked minor boys showering, all of whom have later come out with some horrific stories about the director Brian Singer. I was shocked to find out how it was already known back in the 90s, but didn't get the renewed attention until recently with the me too movement and other gross things about Singer. Not sure I could watch the film now knowing that, especially that scene
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Mar 19, 2022 16:40
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Wow yikes, creepy poo poo that was added to a stephen king adaptation and not removed from his text in the process of adaptation is def a first. Gonna have to avoid that poo poo...... Really digging Different Seasons though. I think novella length stuff (or w/e you'd call these quite longer short stories) is a good sweetspot for King.
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Mar 19, 2022 22:23
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Punkin Spunkin posted:Wow yikes, creepy poo poo that was added to a stephen king adaptation and not removed from his text in the process of adaptation is def a first. Gonna have to avoid that poo poo...... A lot of it is, but having recently re-read The Mist, I kind of wish it had gone just a little longer. That one flows so nicely and is interesting all the way through, and I just want more of it.
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Mar 20, 2022 01:00
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Douche4Sale posted:It's been a very long time since I saw it, but I remember thinking it was well done. I don't think it had as much killing as in the book, and remember it ends differently, and there were probably a few other things different that didn't stand out as much  well now I'm not gonna watch it, thanks for that.I remember enjoying the novella (?) quite a bit, along with most of the story compilations he was releasing in those years. You guys have been tempting me to dig back into some of those old stories, it's perfect for my reading time these days which is limited to short bursts.
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Mar 21, 2022 00:11
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I think Apt Pupil is the weakest story in DS smg it's still pretty good. Different Seasons is real fucken good.
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Mar 21, 2022 00:23
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Punkin Spunkin posted:The way he sets up the main character as this ALL AMERICAN Todd-o motherfucker, the DUTIFUL newspaper delivering blonde blue eyed boy Punkin Spunkin posted:I love the assumptions characters make that Todd-o couldn't be a monster purely cuz of him hitting society's goalposts. Haha, right. Like, his parents think he's just being a wonderful young boy, going over to an old neighbor's house and reading to him, helping him with stuff around the house, etc. when he's actually listening to Dussander talk about the holocaust, and forcing him to dress up in an SS uniform and goose-step around. And then later, when Todd is older, he's having sex with a girl and he cannot achieve orgasm without thinking about death camp stuff. Holy poo poo.
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Mar 22, 2022 00:04
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So this is kind of a larger question but I'm focusing it here on King. I'm sure you've heard the whole "but what have they done lately?" I used to hear thiss a lot for Tim Burton but it's applied to a lot of creators who are interpreted as having done great things once but not anymore. I remember when I first started reading King and posting in here someone divided King's writing career into various phases and we are still in the post-accident phase so far as I know. King has written some of the most famous books of our time but that was all before his accident and I'm not sure if people like his more recent stuff nearly as much. Do you think this is a good or valid criticism? Somebody did great work once but not so much anymore?
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Mar 23, 2022 16:18
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NikkolasKing posted:So this is kind of a larger question but I'm focusing it here on King. To me, his work is very different after the accident. His ratio of good books to crap books seems to be about the same, but his themes have shifted toward humanism and away from nihilism (again this is a general statement and individual works do buck that trend, e.g Revival) and his style hasn't really changed except he seems a bit more willing to enhance his prose whereas he used to focus on ripping through the story at lightning speed rather than making the reader work for anything.
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Mar 23, 2022 17:22
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NikkolasKing posted:
All the time. How often do you hear "well, I really like their old stuff" when people discuss musicians?
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Mar 23, 2022 17:25
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NikkolasKing posted:So this is kind of a larger question but I'm focusing it here on King. King was and is and will be great in my opinion. I feel like when most people say "This author/band/TV show/whatever used to be so good" they're really saying that the novelty has worn off. When they found the thing they like(d) it was a brand new, exciting thing to them. And they looked forward to more, new things but the things that were produced were actually too much like the first thing and didn't have the same effect anymore. Doesn't mean the new stuff isn't good anymore, you're just used to it now. In King's case, he's written some really great books "post accident". Lisey's Story, Under the Dome, 11/22/63, Revival, Mr. Mercedes are all really excellent novels and had they come out at the beginning of his career would probably be looked at the same as The Stand and It and Carrie. They just don't hit the same because in many ways they're more of the same. Also, books just don't mean the same to the majority of people as they did in the 1970s. We have access to so much entertainment that a 1000 page book just looks like time and effort that could be spent elsewhere to a lot of people. I still love to read, and won't think for a second about starting a 100 hour book, but I'll get much more out of a 100 hour video game.
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Mar 23, 2022 17:35
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BiggerBoat posted:All the time. How often do you hear "well, I really like their old stuff" when people discuss musicians? James P Hogan, Dan Simmons, Poul Anderson, it's very common with authors. And physicists. People like Fred Hoyle who did original, Nobel-worthy, ground breaking worse, and then get brain-eaten. Hell, going back to Newton, invented calculus and wrote the Principia, and then devoted himself to alchemy. And musicians. Obviously musicians. Consistently producing over a lifetime is probably the exception rather than the norm.
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Mar 23, 2022 17:44
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Skrillmub posted:King was and is and will be great in my opinion. I have read none of those books, I will look into them, thanks. Any particular one you think I should start with? IT and The Shining are my favorite King books if that is any help. mdemone posted:To me, his work is very different after the accident. His ratio of good books to crap books seems to be about the same, but his themes have shifted toward humanism and away from nihilism(again this is a general statement and individual works do buck that trend, e.g Revival) and his style hasn't really changed except he seems a bit more willing to enhance his prose whereas he used to focus on ripping through the story at lightning speed rather than making the reader work for anything. This is really interesting to me, can you expand a bit more on what you mean? I know you said it's general and I've only read his big main works but I never got the impression from stories like IT or The Stand that King was ever a nihilist of any kind. These are very religious works in their idea of good and evil as inherent concepts of the universe, where humans have a responsibility to battle evil. I know Insomnia came a bit later but I read that too and it explained everything, even poor little Gage's death, in terms of The Purpose and The Random. It's almost Christian to me, reminiscent of Tolkien in The Silmarillion having Eru (God) declare that even selfish discord and malice contributes to the good of His vision. That was my understanding of Pennywise and Atropos, foul and hateful creatures who nevertheless serve a benevolent, moral universe. But you and others here have almost assuredly read and understood way more than me.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:14
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I think what I mean by "nihilism" there is more properly described as "existential horror" based around how indifferent the universe (and the baddies in it) are to human life and society. Manichaean, yes, but that's on a scale larger than the human. Think about how Derry experiences the Tommyknockers after they discover the aftermath of what is essentially a meaningless accident. He still works in that mode these days, but I think he tempers it more often with humanist tones than he used to. For example, If he was forced to update those early books, I think we would get a lot more editions that are about the characters and their internal lives, than editions that are about the forces/demons/whatever the story is ostensibly "about".
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Mar 23, 2022 18:26
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mdemone posted:but his themes have shifted toward humanism and away from nihilism (again this is a general statement and individual works do buck that trend, e.g Revival) I'll disagree with this a bit, I think. (Disclaimer - I'm having trouble finishing books at the moment, even King, and have not read all of his recent stuff.) There are bits towards the end of Under The Dome that I'm thinking of, in particular, where dammit Stevie, you didn't have to kill that character. Same for The Institute, perhaps - I think a younger King might have left the hero's parents alive. (Again, that's a book that I haven't finished.) And these bits of bleakness seem in keeping with Cujo, or Pet Sematary, for example. Duma Key chews its way through characters, doesn't it? The Outsider was a bit wrenching, after establishing the little league coach.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:29
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Yeah there is definitely still a strong sense of cosmic horror in some moments of his later work. It could be that I'm not giving his recent short stories enough consideration -- thinking about his last couple of collections, which mostly had that good ol' Kingfeel of "holy *poo poo* that's hosed up". I also think he just gets off on killing his characters and that much hasn't changed throughout his career.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:53
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Stephen King pre accident was a good writer. Stephen King post accident is a good author. I will not be taking questions.
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Mar 23, 2022 19:07
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My brain brings up the ending of Revival a lot more than I want it to.
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Mar 23, 2022 20:51
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By virtue of output alone across decades, King is basically the Ken Burns of Americana pop fiction. Like, he cited Secret Agent Man in The Shining and then turned around and did the same thing for Game of Thrones in Doctor Sleep. I think you can judge the quality of his fiction pre and post accident for sure, but as an overall take on the guy, I think he's going to be known for a kind of Americana Horror (edit: or American Naturalism) the way people see Gabriel García Marquez as the spearhead of literary magic realism.
Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 21:13
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NikkolasKing posted:I have read none of those books, I will look into them, thanks. If IT and The Shining are your favourites because of the deep character development, I'd say Under the Dome and 11/22/63 might be good for you. If it's the spooks you like, maybe Revival.
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Mar 23, 2022 21:46
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RandolphCarter posted:My brain brings up the ending of Revival a lot more than I want it to. Playing Elden Ring, admiring the work of Giger or Zdzisław Beksiński, putting out ant poison. Lots of triggers.
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Mar 23, 2022 21:52
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