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March 28, 2024, 05:08:09 PM

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The Shining Miniseries/other redundant remakes

Started by Clownbaby, July 16, 2018, 04:24:52 PM

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Clownbaby

This is one of my favourite things to sort of hate-watch. I like the book The Shining. I love the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining. I totally understand, despite loving the film, why Stephen King wasn't keen on it because, as he rightly says, Jack Nicholson is sinister right from the start because of his own naturally sinister face. Jack Torrance in the book is a relatively ordinary but troubled person who starts to distort and become frightening once the Overlook has its effect. In the movie Jack seems like a crazy man already and everything he says sounds premeditated and sarcastic, so I can understand that Stephen King wouldn't approve of the casting of a inherently threatening presence like Jack Nicholson. Not to say Jack Nicholson isn't great though.

Watching the miniseries, it's just so odd to me that this was what Stephen King apparently had in his head all along. Really? This unsettling and vivid story was actually kind of a cheesy miniseries in his head all along? So much of it really doesn't translate well to the screen at all. Danny's imaginary Tony from the book doesn't work at all in the flesh, as a floaty magical ghost boy with specs. It's like something from a kids movie. Tony being just a croaky voice coming from Danny makes more sense visually and I think it was a really good move in the film that a lot of the ghosts or visions looked like real people, rather than Halloween painted fancy dress spectres like they are in the miniseries.

Then you've got the really crap moving topiary animals, they're horrible. It would be hard to make that not look stupid to be honest, that's something else that doesn't translate very well to screen. AND, the miniseries is not mini in any way shape or form cause it's very long. I get why Stephen King would try to cram as much of his book into the series as possible because it's his book, and he felt like it was gloss dover in the film. But the film seems to me more like it's just inspired by the story rather than a straight up adaptation of the book. And the boy in the series is proper annoying. Oh my god what an annoying boy.

mothman

Aren't most Stephen King miniseries redundant or just downright awful? Rose Red, Golden Years, ugh... I gather the original Salem's Lot one was considered OK but I've never seen it.

Clownbaby

Quote from: mothman on July 16, 2018, 05:52:07 PM
Aren't most Stephen King miniseries redundant or just downright awful? Rose Red, Golden Years, ugh... I gather the original Salem's Lot one was considered OK but I've never seen it.

Aye pretty much.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: mothman on July 16, 2018, 05:52:07 PM
Aren't most Stephen King miniseries redundant or just downright awful? Rose Red, Golden Years, ugh... I gather the original Salem's Lot one was considered OK but I've never seen it.

Salem's Lot has a lot of fans, but I've always thought it was pretty shit and suffered from exactly the same mini-series tropes as the others.  On top of that you've got Tobe Hooper behind the camera, who was surely one of the most over-rated directors of all time.

As for The Shining, I haven't seen the series, but I've never been particularly keen on the film, despite being a huge Kubrick fan.  I think the main problem for me is Jack Nicholson being Jaaaaaaaack - at the beginning of Nicholson the actor becoming a charicature of himself (also cf. Christopher Walken).  Wasn't all that keen on the book when I read it either - from memory a lot of it seemed silly to the point of being ridiculous, but admittedly I've not read it for over 25 years.


As for the original question, I started a thread about it (zero replies), but as it's very fresh in the memory - the new adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock.  Absolute ballbags with a bewilderingly awful soundtrack.

Small Man Big Horse

Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital is an absolute mess of a series, it takes all of the good things about Lars Von Trier's original and makes them shit.

bgmnts

Quote from: mothman on July 16, 2018, 05:52:07 PM
Aren't most Stephen King miniseries redundant or just downright awful? Rose Red, Golden Years, ugh... I gather the original Salem's Lot one was considered OK but I've never seen it.

I liked It and The Stand myself.

mothman

The Stand is probably the one good one. Well, good-ish. Made today, it'd have a much better cast - or more better actors anyway, now the stigma against film actors doing TV has evaporated. They lucked into getting Sinise just as he was about to hit the big time on the big screen. They could have done so much better when casting Flagg, for example. It's not that he's bad, he's just not good enough.

Phil_A

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on July 16, 2018, 07:44:26 PM
Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital is an absolute mess of a series, it takes all of the good things about Lars Von Trier's original and makes them shit.

Absolutely, an utter travesty. Magic fire extinguisher my arse.

King does not know how to write well for the screen and he never has.

bgmnts

Quote from: mothman on July 16, 2018, 08:18:39 PM
The Stand is probably the one good one. Well, good-ish. Made today, it'd have a much better cast - or more better actors anyway, now the stigma against film actors doing TV has evaporated. They lucked into getting Sinise just as he was about to hit the big time on the big screen. They could have done so much better when casting Flagg, for example. It's not that he's bad, he's just not good enough.

Gary Sinise? Rob Lowe? Pretty decent names.

I think Sheridan did a decent job of playing "mental funny" quite well, myself.

magval

Agreed.

How about The Langoliers? Love that one. Bronson Pinchot, tearing up strips of paper as Craig Toomey, is still the benchmark 'guy slowly going mental' in my mind's eye.

Bad Ambassador

I watched The Langoliers last week. It is insanely padded and protracted.

mothman

I've always liked the original story but never felt the adaptation was up to scratch. I tend to lfavour some of the less-popular King works (Langoliers, Tommyknockers, even Cell) but the filmic/televisual variants have all sucked. But for such a prolific writer, and who has to be one of the most-adapted of any living author, there's an astonishingly low hit rate.

gatchamandave

The problem i think is that King's books focus on the internal, mental states of his characters, their journey towards good or evil, and how they think. That needs skilful actors, intelligent directors and adaptors, and time for their characters to change. Cant often be done in a 100 minute movie made out of a 500 page doorstop. David Cronenberg managed it, John Carpenter didn't because character change isn't Carpenter's strongest suit - which is why Christine was the unhappiest experience he ever had in cinema according to John Kenneth Muir. That's why It worked, for me, both times - first time they gave themselves four hours with a good cast, second time they only told half the story.

Tobe Hooper did a great job on 'Salems Lot, though i recognise the validity of m'learned friends comments up-thread because i am one of few people i know daft enough to have persevered through a double bill of The Mangler and Crocodile.

mothman

Agree. For instance, I didn't really feel the way the Pinchot character in Langoliers went crazy - or gradually lost his pretence at sanity, I think he was crazy to begin with - didn't really display the nuance of the book one, and was a bit too stereotypical "descent into madness." But that's just me.

Another one I like that I don't think has been adapted is Insomnia. Which relies heavily on internal monologue and though processes. Hard to portray onscreen.

Ant Farm Keyboard

Initially, Stephen King praised the adaptation of The Shining, then he started to have second thoughts on some aspects of it. At this point, Kubrick wanted him to shut up, so it wouldn't damage the box office for the film, and offered him the adaptation rights back after a while if he stopped making public comments. That's why he was allowed to do the miniseries.

Also, Kubrick tried to work with King for the adaptation. King had to endure phone calls in the middle of the night asking him if he believed in God. He gave up.

Clownbaby

I'm just gonna whack in another redundant remake. Anyone seen the remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Absolutely pointless. They had to sanitise it for an early time slot so it's completely lacking the joyous lasciviousness of the original. There's a genuine wonky beauty about the original film cast that can't be replicated. They look like if you touch them you'd get a sticky hand.

The cast they chose could have been interchanged with anyone, Riff Raff looks like a stupid emo, Magenta is black even though Riff Raff and Magenta are brother and sister, Laverne Cox was OK as Frank-N-Furter but not nearly as committed/unhinged as the sex-crazed transvestite needs to be. It was done by the people who did High School Musical which says all that needs to be said to be honest. The attempt to "update" the sexuality themes in the story was pointless and misguided because they actually ended up sanitising most of it. And the whole point of the Rocky Horror is wanton sexuality and "giving yourself over to absolute pleasure." Why take a thing that did that so well and then make pre-watershed?

metaltax

Quote from: Clownbaby on July 17, 2018, 11:48:23 AM
I'm just gonna whack in another redundant remake. Anyone seen the remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Absolutely pointless.

The worst thing about that whole hideous sack of shitness was the sorry way they capitalised on having Tim Curry in it, as if that gave it an ounce of credibility, when you know that in any other circumstances he wouldn't have been seen dead on the same continent as it.

Clownbaby

Quote from: metaltax on July 17, 2018, 12:09:48 PM
The worst thing about that whole hideous sack of shitness was the sorry way they capitalised on having Tim Curry in it, as if that gave it an ounce of credibility, when you know that in any other circumstances he wouldn't have been seen dead on the same continent as it.

Oh aye that pissed me off. Sad to see him looking so old, felt like a piss take even if they didn't intend it to be.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Clownbaby on July 17, 2018, 11:48:23 AM
I'm just gonna whack in another redundant remake. Anyone seen the remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Absolutely pointless. They had to sanitise it for an early time slot so it's completely lacking the joyous lasciviousness of the original. There's a genuine wonky beauty about the original film cast that can't be replicated. They look like if you touch them you'd get a sticky hand.

The cast they chose could have been interchanged with anyone, Riff Raff looks like a stupid emo, Magenta is black even though Riff Raff and Magenta are brother and sister, Laverne Cox was OK as Frank-N-Furter but not nearly as committed/unhinged as the sex-crazed transvestite needs to be. It was done by the people who did High School Musical which says all that needs to be said to be honest. The attempt to "update" the sexuality themes in the story was pointless and misguided because they actually ended up sanitising most of it. And the whole point of the Rocky Horror is wanton sexuality and "giving yourself over to absolute pleasure." Why take a thing that did that so well and then make pre-watershed?

Yeah, I completely agree with all of that, I initially heard positive things about it but after about 15 minutes I found myself skipping forward in the hope it'd improve, but if anything it got worse.

I didn't get on with their live version of Jesus Christ Superstar either. The singing was mostly strong but it lacked the absurdity of the film, and their Mary was all rather poor and Yvonne Elliman was ridiculously superior in the movie.

Quote from: Clownbaby on July 17, 2018, 11:48:23 AM
Magenta is black even though Riff Raff and Magenta are brother and sister.

Non-white actors are often cast in plays that are set in times/places where everyone would have been 100 per cent caucasian.

And it's an issue I'm not touching with a barge pole.

Clownbaby

Quote from: thecuriousorange on July 17, 2018, 01:15:14 PM
Non-white actors are often cast in plays that are set in times/places where everyone would have been 100 per cent caucasian.

And it's an issue I'm not touching with a barge pole.

The characters are siblings though so they wouldn't be 2 different races. Either have both Magenta and Riff Raff white, or both Magenta and Riff Raff black, for consistency. They did seem to brush over the brother/sister thing in the remake though, like many other parts of the original that made it so entertaining.

kalowski

Why would you need skillful actors for a Stephen King adaptation? Every character he writes is exactly the fucking same, with their popp culture references and memories of adverts & songs long gone by.

The man can come up with a good story, but can't write people for shit.