Moohoohahaha Agree. I liked reading Green Mile in the serial paperbacks as they were released, too. Also agree on Doctor Sleep and I liked Under the Dome. (TV version, not so much.) The Dark Half is one that stuck with me that doesn't get mentioned much. Every time I see a bunch of sparrows on a tree outside a house, I think about that, like small town antique shops remind me of Needful Things.
As much as I love Spielberg? I still wish Kubrick had been the one who directed A.I. 20 years of development notes, 235 million box office take, and it was a blatant love letter from Spielberg to Kubrick with every bit of source material possible and Kubrick's direct and clean hand over of the project. But at the end of the day no matter how I feel about Spielberg, I'll always wish I'd seen the Kubrick version. Hell, the 98 remake of Psycho is basically a shot for shot remake of the original. It still inherently feels like a copy of a hitchcock, and not a hitchcock movie. Honestly, I read Sanderson's ending and I wasn't overly impressed. I guess I wasn't disappointed overly either. But I'll always wonder how that story could have been told if it was finished by the artist who captured my imagination with it's start. I'm open minded/cynical enough to suspect that Jordan couldn't have done any better and quite possibly wouldn't have done as well given how awful the mid series books were. But years as a fan, I'll always wish I could have seen what Jordan would have written. With GRRM, he's talked in a lot of interviews about the fact that he's not an architect writer. He doesn't do strictly planned books - he's a gardener. He writes the story as it grows and changes things organically. I don't give a fuck how many details he has written down - until it's published, there's every chance and hell every likelihood, that he'll change his mind and redirect the entire bloody thing somewhere else completely. If anyone other than GRRM ends up writing the ending, I'll always wonder what might have been.
The King stories that stuck with me were the short story collections, most notably Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. I remember "Gramma" scaring the fuck out of me as a kid as well as "The Mist", "I Am The Doorway", "The Raft" but the one the freaked me out most was "The Boogeyman." No parent should read that one. He had one from one of those two called "Survivor Type" that was so gruesome he wanted to reprint the book without it, calling it "Too sick, even for ME."
Re: Moohoohahaha If you guys like King, his son Joe Hill is a serious contender for the mantle. He wrote a collection of short stories called 20th Century Ghosts which put a whole new spin on the literary ghost tale. It's a breath of fresh air in a stagnant, silly genre. Truly remarkable, my favorite collection even above King's. Reminds me a lot of King writing as Bachman. There is one story called Pop Art which had me in tears. He's also got 3 novels, 2 of which are passable. However, Horns is outstanding. It's about a guy, some time after his fiance is found raped and murdered, wakes up from from a wicked bender with 2 horns growing out of his skull. People start confessing their sins and thoughts to him and he finds out everyone thinks he killed his own fiance. Around Halloween the film version starring Harry Potter comes out. For the record, Different Seasons is one of the best books ever written. Those novellas are perfect.
King was/is in a rock band called The Rock Bottom Remainders that includes Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Matt Groening and a volley of alternating authors. Dave Barry proudly calls them "The worst band in the Observable Universe."
King, in spite of his warped mind is known for being a great guy to be around. Fans who approach his super-duper gothic house in Maine are often welcomed in by King himself, who happily gives them The Tour and let's them swim in his pool. Dave Barry is best friends with thriller writer Ridley Pearson, who often has Barry as a vacation guest and constantly tries to scare the fuck out of him: Awesome. I love writers. When they aren't starting their own self-appointed sex cults, they're keeping each other up at night.
Summer Glau shows you how to smile without using your eyes: ...its probably a comfort that Team Neckbeard is paying at least $100 a pop for these photos,
As far as unappreciated King novels go, I think Roadwork and Desperation top the list. Tommyknockers was pretty good too, but God that movie was awful.
Tommyknockers TV movie was abysmal. However The Shining TV version was the best one, and it did the impossible: it made the scene in Room 237 scarier than Kubrick's.
No, no it doesn't. People can draw their own conclusions. Kubrick's version of the scene was certainly gross, but in the remake....those eyes: or:
They remade it largely at King's request. He didn't like Kubrick's version at all. The TV version was certainly no masterpiece but he prefers it over the original. I think Kubrick's is good, but seriously flawed and I don't get this cult-like phenomena it spawned where people think it has these endless hidden messages. There's a documentary called "Room 237" about it.
Let's be real though. The reason King hated the original so much was because Kubrick basically called him a shitty writer. King by all accounts seems like a great person, but he has a very sensitive tolerance to criticism. For my money the original Shining is one of the best horror movies ever. I loved the book too though. I'm going to have to go back and reread Different Seasons. I remember being blown away the first time I read it, but it was almost 15 years ago and I've forgotten so much of it. In terms of pure volume and quality it's really hard to argue with King. I haven't loved everything he's written, but there are so many great works in there. I think what made him such a great writer for me was his remarkable ability to make every character so interesting. Well, that and nobody writes crazy people like King. His endings kind of suck, but a lot of his books feel like they could go on forever and you could continue reading.
I believe that Shelley Duvall is not an actress, but a practical horror effect created for the film. That, or they hired Tom Petty in drag.