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DrVenkman posted:Minor aside, but King must've really dug the name Hockstetter since there's a Patrick Hockstetter in FIRESTARTER as well. That's one of those things I appreciate about King because anyone who grew up in a small town will tell you that repetitious regional names are definitely A THING. Back home, I can usually tell you what county someone is from based on their last name.
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Sep 19, 2017 10:49
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BiggerBoat posted:So I'm about halfway through On Writing and it's pretty good but I'm amazed at how little he actually talks about the process of writing. It's more of a biography so far than anything. Should I check out Danse Macabre? I think I tried to read it once a long time ago but seem to remember being "out of the loop" since I hadn't seen or read most of what he was referencing. Danse Macabre is real good, if dated*, look at horror as a genre, from the ground up. Nothing earthshaking, but a really solid and readable look at a genre from the inside by one of its core surviving figures. The only thing I'll say against it is that Stephen King actually has really weird and often unappealing taste in (then) contemporary horror literature. He's much more of a film buff, ironically. *he published an appendix of horror recommendations post-Danse Macabre, if you can find it online, and really want to know what he thought of The Ring EDIT: also, apropos of nothing, I'm rereading It in honor of the new movie, and holeeeee shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, Richie's voices are a lot more racist than I remembered. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Sep 27, 2017 |
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Sep 27, 2017 03:28
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oldpainless posted:In IT the trek to Its lair is through a bunch of cramped tunnels that even as children sometimes get really tight. Later, Tom kidnaps Audra and takes her to the lair and all I can imagine is Tom struggling through poo poo water and cramped tunnels in the dark while trying to carry a grown woman who is fighting him every single step of the way while trying to make sure she doesn't drown or get seriously injured himself. Also, I really want to know what happened when Bowers got to Its lair. Did he go in? What did he see? What happened, Stephen? It doesn't seem as if Henry Bowers ever made it into IT's inner lair; Belch and Criss seem to have died relatively soon after entering the sewers and Bowers tried to flee the sewers after that, eventually making his way to the surface.
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Sep 29, 2017 09:45
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Medullah posted:Mr. Mercedes got a second season. I never read the book, but it really doesn't seem like it has enough meat to warrant that - is there a lot more in the book that isn't in the series? There were two sequel books. They weren't great.
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Oct 11, 2017 02:57
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Medullah posted:Ah that's right. There goes my hope of a nice mini series type event. Actually think the show is pretty decent. You know, I couldn't remember if I'd read the sequels or not, so I looked up the summaries on wikipedia and I still couldn't remember if I'd read them or not so I checked my itunes inventory and apparently I've listened to both audiobooks. That's how little of an impact they made. Also, apropos of nothing, I just got done listening to Danse Macabre again after re-reading IT for the movie, and it's fascinating to see Stephen King putting together all the elements of IT as he wrote about the history of horror. You can trace an almost direct through-line in the book as he assembles the elements of what must have been his first draft a few years later; from the history of horror monsters to ruminations about childhood and the peculiar power of children and fear.
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Oct 12, 2017 00:56
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Phanatic posted:There was no dramatic tension whatsoever because the bad guys were such a bumbling bunch of idiots and were totally overmatched from the get-go. It's like King set up a bunch of tin soldiers for the protagonist to knock over. So the spooky/creepy poo poo was neutered and it was just the literary equivalent of a stale Twinkie. Thematically, I felt like the Monstro-Hippies were okay, because it was the natural extension of a normal King schtick; that the bad guys are just everyday, hosed up people with their own trials and tribulations who got swept up into some bad poo poo and kept digging down instead of digging up. When it works, like in The Stand or The Shining or the middle part of the Tommyknockers, that shtick works really well. The problem was, there just wasn't much of a story going on around them.
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Oct 19, 2017 21:36
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BiggerBoat posted:I actually felt the opposite way about the adults actors and thought they were rather bad, which bummed me out because I know most of them are actually good actors. The child actors and Curry were great. Yeah, I felt the same. Especially for Judge Night Court: adult Richie's dialogue is kind of unworkable on screen under the best circumstances, and I love Judge Night Court on Night Court, but he is "yuck-yucking" all over the screen in a painfully unbearable manner for the whole miniseries.
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Oct 30, 2017 09:57
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BiggerBoat posted:I know all those people can act becasue I've seen them other things. Only thing I can figure is they were running out of money and had limited takes. I think a lot of it is just that dramatic Television at that time was just so loving dire in terms of basic direction and filmmaking that it's hard to fathom today. I would go so far as to say that the IT miniseries was well above average for televised drama of its time, it's just that the standards of its time were garbage. Take a look at its competition*; LA Law, Murder She Wrote, Quantum Leap. None of them are any better. At the time, TV was still considered a ghetto and anyone who had any talent was trying to claw their way into films. For a good comparison, the Stand miniseries came out 4 years later. You can watch it now on youtube. It had an even better cast, and even more money, and it was actually nominated for six emmies (and won two), but you can watch it today and... yeah. It's okay, I guess. But in terms of direction and writing, it's only up to about an average episode of the X-files. *Twin Peaks is, of course, the huge and glaring exception to everything I just said. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Oct 30, 2017 |
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Oct 30, 2017 21:09
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Karmine posted:I mean, Richie is kinda supposed to be annoying as gently caress. Kid Richie is. Adult Richie is supposed to be funny and successful.
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Nov 3, 2017 00:48
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chernobyl kinsman posted:I realize that it is an accurate description of the mechanism but literally no one calls them that I've heard any bright, searing source of light referred to as an "arc lamp" or "arc light" before, but usually without the "sodium". People used to use it synonymously with "search light", since that was the type of bulb searchlights used in WW2. I think Stephen King uses it because arc lamps would have been the bulb used in movie theater projectors of his beloved childhood movies, so it still has that cachet in his mind.
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Nov 25, 2017 13:53
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feelix posted:Does the Dark Tower get better because the first part is really unpleasantly adolescent The first 4 Dark Tower books were written in between King's other books and published at about 5 year intervals, and each is so different from the others that it's almost like a different genre. But if you didn't like the 1st, I can't promise you'll like the rest, although for my money, the end of book three and beginning of book four* are probably the best thing's he's ever written. *Maybe just all of book 4.
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Jan 12, 2018 02:16
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RCarr posted:I've actually never read the Wind Through the Keyhole. Should I?
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Jan 13, 2018 18:12
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Ornamented Death posted:Oh then you definitely want Needful Things. The aforementioned 'Salem's Lot fits the bill, too. It doesn't get a lot of love, but I think Tommyknockers is maybe the most fun example of Stephen King building up and then totally destroying a small New England town. It's 100% pure EC Comics pulp horror.
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Jan 24, 2018 01:43
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JustinMorgan posted:Just finished Dead Zone on the recommendation of this thread. Was it ever made into a movie? Yes, starring Christopher Walken. Also a TV show, starring Anthony Michael Hall.
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Feb 16, 2018 03:00
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I've always been shocked that this hasn't been licensed before. It seems as if it'd fit right in with the Walking Dead crowd.
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Apr 27, 2018 02:07
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Khizan posted:It's a teen dystopia story with no romance and no action scenes.
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Apr 29, 2018 21:33
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Dapper_Swindler posted:its a double edged sword. i like the slow build up and establishing different characters and people before the poo poo starts. Also, the meandering parts are often the best things he writes. One of the most memorable parts of the Stand, "No great loss", literally has zero impact on the rest of the plot.
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May 14, 2018 23:35
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I always really liked it, but I have a natural fear of birds so I might not be objective.
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Nov 9, 2018 03:30
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I really loved it and thought it was fantastic It's an extremely polarizing book. It's definitely King at his most self-indulgent.
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Apr 14, 2021 15:13
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FPyat posted:Wow, Jake is more than six feet tall? I did not get that impression from the entire first third of the book. Stephen King is 6’4”, and has a slightly skewed perspective on the average male height.
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Mar 8, 2024 15:17
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It's true; there's a bunch of sequences in Salem's Lot that I always think happened in IT, because it seems like later, more fully formed King. I'm thinking specifically about the long "the town gets under your skin" sequence, which feels like it should be talking about Derry. But no, it's just King being an absolute maniac from day one.
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Mar 18, 2024 05:28
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