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by temporarely 702 days ago
Even the opening long shot "has stakes". That's an amazing film packed with talent in all departments.
1 comments

Just don't ask Stephen King for his opinion on it.
I tried to read the book and it sucked. They did him a favour really.
I never read the book, but I saw the TV mini-series remake that King was personally involved with and approved, and it was awful.

Personally, I think King's stories just don't translate very well to movies, unless (as with Kubrick's "The Shining") huge liberties are taken with the source material. Most adaptations I've seen of his stories were just bad.

When I heard they were making a movie of Doctor Sleep, knowing that the final 20% of the book is absolutely untranslatable to coherent movie content, I could not understand how they could close it. In the end, they more or less worked around the finale, which is basically a series of psychic battles fought remotely. It's a tolerable movie.

One example of a truly unfilmable King/Bachman novel is Thinner, though maybe it could now be done, at great expense, with AI (there was a ridiculous TV version, though).

I interviewed him, when I was aged 16, in 1983, and asked him about The Shining. He was in a conciliatory mood on the topic that day, but re-emphasized how little he thought of Kubrick's shot choices for the scene where Danny discovers Wendy reading his manuscript.

To that criticism, Kubrick responded over the years that if we had just been jump-scared by Jack suddenly appearing over Wendy's shoulder as she read, we would have felt relief and even started laughing to blow it off, which would have undermined the tension Kubrick was looking to build past this point in the scene.

I agree with you with one exception, Dolores Claiborne is a gem of a film.
I think there's several exceptions. The Shawshank Redemption was fantastic for instance.
> The Shawshank Redemption was fantastic for instance.

Eh it comes off as a corny and flat depiction of people who might otherwise be interesting. Romantic, but not a depiction of believable humans. And the problem certainly ain't the actors.

Rob Reiner's Misery and Brian de Palma's Carrie are both excellent too.
Thanks! One of my favorite books of his. I didn't know that it was made into a movie too. Somehow I've missed it for the last 27 years.
I don't think it sucked but it was told, not sold.
I agree. All of Stephen kings’ drivel runs together in his books.