Poll Macabre: Stephen King On Film and TV

Even though I gave up on it once (think I got maybe an hour into it), going to give The Stand another go this week for obvious reasons--one of them being I'm running out of pandemic-related viewing, having already watched Contagion, both Andromeda Strands, and Safe.

It's truly terrible.

It's rare that I devote that much time to a movie, even a long one, without finishing. But I feel like I have to do this.

A new miniseries for CBS All Access was actually in production but I guess it remains to be seen how the real-life plague will interfere with the fictionalized version.

Thought The Outsider was fun, even though they left a bunch of loose ends iirc. Casting was A+

Yes, as I noted elsewhere, it was about as close as any King adaptation has come to replicating the feel of a King novel. It seems like some people felt that it meandered too much, but King novels kind of meander. He takes his time fleshing out characters and their world and gives them room to just interact like normal people for a while before he fully brings the hammer down on them. I think that's a strength of his written work that rarely carries over in the translation to a two-hour film adaptation.

Watching only intermittently, but finished the first part of The Stand. Not exactly good, but the contours of what we're going through right now are there, which makes it interesting enough to keep watching. Performances range from passable to poor to Ed-Harris-level poor. Still waiting for Laura San Giacomo to show up.

(I should say that Ed Harris is sometimes a fine actor. When he's in George Kennedy mode, as he is here, he's terrible.)

Doctor Sleep did nothing for me beyond reminding me how few movies ever need sequels. The plot could easily exist, as a kind of horror X men, without The Shining to draw upon, but then who would care? There's a scene midway through with Jacob Tremblay that is one of the most unpleasant things I've ever seen in a movie, and which it has in no way earned the gravitas to include.

A Creepshow Halloween special is being released next month, featuring an animated adaptation of 'Survivor Type'!!!!!!