Kevin's Watch

the problem with It is the source material i think. a great Clown, horror, the sewers... and it all turns out to be a giant space spider? ugh.

Spiders seem to figure a lot into King's fiction. I wonder if he had a phobia as a child?

I finished Cell. I would describe it as The Stand as written by Richard Bachman. Edgier and more cut to the chase, rather than a long apocalyptic battle between good and evil. And far less characters, of course.

I agree that Cell is reminiscent of The Mist, but I think The Mist is the superior work.

I liked Cell, but I fear that since being enthralled by the last three volumes of Dark Tower, I may never again reach quite those heights with King.

Interesting assessment.

I agree The Mist is superior, but if Cell is indicative of his future work, then I'd be ecstatic.

Cail wrote:Interesting assessment.

I agree The Mist is superior, but if Cell is indicative of his future work, then I'd be ecstatic.

since you changed your avatar, Cail...i hear everything you post in "Carl-speak"!!!!!! cracks me up!!!!

I am ashamed to admit I haven't read all of the Dark Tower. but after everyone here going on about it I shall round up the books and start that as my next project. I also have never been able to finish Black House.

Lucimay, I'm having the same problem witih Cail's avatar.

I keep hearing him say in that stoned-out drawl, "Yeah, if Cell is indicative of King's work now . . . well, I've got that going for me."

"Here we are at the Masters. Cinderella story. Oh, he got all of that one."

"It's a special hybrid paper that Cell's written on, half Meade Heavy, hald California Sinse. The beautiful thing about it is you can read 300 pages, then get stoned to the bejeezus belt."

got Cell at the library! (will wonders ever cease)


seemed like leftovers from Desperation or The Regulators.

Spoiler

and how come we never get to find out where the pulse came from. that sucked.

but the little bit in the back from the new book looked good!

i like the open ended question of who made the pulse. and i liked King writing about NH (damn I miss home) the part with the girl was sad.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0775440/

Well, they certainly didn't waste any time......

no kidding!!!

thankfully it's NOT mick garis directing!!! phew.
(he's ruined enOUGH stephen king for me thank you very much)

Cail wrote:Read Cell in a day. I liked it. There are some similarities to The Stand, but it's certainly not the rip-off that some reviewers are stating. I also think it ends well, which is another complaing of several reviwers.

It actually reminded me a lot of The Mist (which is a good thing). There's not a lot of explaination about what happened, just a good yarn about what happens afterwards.

It took me 4 days (but I'm slow!!)

I liked it, a bit too close to the pinnacle of The Stand for my liking, but the ending sucked - he came up short by about 2 chapters, in my opinion

perhaps he was needing to get on with the next book (publishers are slave drivers, eh!) but really, that ending was nothing but frustrating.

Read "Cell" a few months ago now. It looked promising enough, but as someone already mentioned, it kind of stopped cold.

SPOILERS

--

--

--

--

--

Too many unanswered questions:
1) Where *did* the pulse come from?
1a) What was the reason for the pulse?
2) Did this happen all over the world, or just in the U.S.?
3) Why were all the phone-crazies psychic?
4) What happened to Johnnie G, dammit??

So overall... disappointed. I'll keep it because it's SK, but I doubt I'll re-read it.

[quote="Chassit"]Read "Cell" a few months ago now. It looked promising enough, but as someone already mentioned, it kind of stopped cold.

2) Did this happen all over the world, or just in the U.S.?
quote]

Ah!! As a non-US citizen, it probably only happened in the US - King is very focused in Americana and the "noir" side of that culture...

I recall that Randall flagg showed up on a desert island at the end of the Stand, but thats about it...

Cail wrote:I don't think it's possible. King's horror stuff just doesn't translate well to the big screen, even the short stories.

Use Trucks as an example. A good, solid short story. The King-written theatrical film Maximum Overdrive is one of the worst films ever made, and the straight to video version wasn't much better (although it was more faithful to the story).

Other than The Dead Zone (the movie), his horror stuff just flat sucks as movies.

Oh so Krubrick's Shining sucked? Darabont's Shawshank & Green Mile sucked? Reiner's Stand By Me sucked? Hackford's Dolores Claiborne sucked?

Mebbe it's me but I thought these (including the Dead Zone) ranged either to very good to fantastic translations to screen of King's novels.
But I'll agree with your choice of one of the sucky ones... Maximum Overdrive to be sure. Soon as I saw the Green Goblin's face plastered on one of the trucks I knew I wouldn't want to watch it... ever!
Other real bad ones were IMO: Silver Bullet, Firestarter, Misery (just didn't hold the suspense like the book did), The Mangler, Sometimes They Come Back (snore), Christine (another major disappointment... could've been better... MUCH better), Children of the Corn, The Running Man (yeech), It was another major dissapointment of disasterous proportions, and a couple of others.
Carrie wasn't too bad, Salem's Lot...ehh okay, The Stand... not too bad considering how difficult THAT one is to translate to the screen, Creepshow was more camp than anything else, but then that's how it was intended.

I am curious to read the Cell however...

The Shining was reasonably good, Shawshank was pretty faithful, The Green Mile was OK. Dolores Claiborne sucked, but I'll agree Stand By Me was pretty well done.

But by your own list, the number of sucky ones far outweigh the ones that are even watchable, let alone excellent.

--A

Avatar wrote:Agreed. And The Mist was really awesome...just set up for a sequel too...

--A

You know this is going to be a movie, right?

movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809834165/details

Seafoam Understone wrote:Oh so Krubrick's Shining sucked? Darabont's Shawshank & Green Mile sucked? Reiner's Stand By Me sucked? Hackford's Dolores Claiborne sucked?

You'll note that I said King's horror stuff sucked as films.

But yes, The Shining sucked as an adaptation of King's novel. King himself has said that. Kubrik's film is good in it's own right, but it ain't the book.

I've made my point many other times about both Shawshank and The Green Mile. TSR was passable, but I don't think it's the great film it was made out to be (and it's not really far up the faithful adaptation scale either). I thought TGM flat-out blew, partially because the source material was weak, partially because it seemed to be a blatant pander to both the heartstrings and the Academy.

I'd forgotten about Stand By Me. It's a good film, but it's also not horror.

Dolores Claiborne sucked. Hard. Then again, I didn't think much of the book either.

But in every single King adaptation, there's so much lost moving his books to the screen. It's be like trying to make a TC film; there's too much internal dialog. And again, look at the track record. Some very, very talented people have been involved in the King adaptations, and by and large, the source material is good or great. The man has had roughly 30 of his stories translated to either the big or the small screen, and there are literally 2 or 3 that really came off well.

I just read this. Enjoyed it more than I expected to. Glad that

Spoiler

the boy wasn't "saved" in the end

although he coulda been.

Certainly enjoyed it a lot more than Lisey's Story.

--A