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So Dean Norris (the guy who plays the brother-in-law on Breaking Bad) is going to play Big Jim Rennie in the ABC miniseries adaptation of Under the Dome. I'm completely thrilled by this news and am interested in the project for the first time. I hope they don't gently caress this up... or if they do, we still at least get some good Rennie scenes out of it. I hope that the chap they hired to play Junior (Alexander Koch) also does his character justice. Apparently this Mike Vogel feller was hired to play Dale Barbara. For my money, I couldn't see anyone else but Adrian Brody for the role, sorta reprising his character Jack Stark from The Jacket.
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Feb 16, 2013 03:58
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I'm not thrilled with the news that this could be expanded beyond 13 episodes, but Dean Norris is great.
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Feb 16, 2013 04:16
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Lurk Ethic posted:So Dean Norris (the guy who plays the brother-in-law on Breaking Bad) is going to play Big Jim Rennie in the ABC miniseries adaptation of Under the Dome. I'm completely thrilled by this news and am interested in the project for the first time. I hope they don't gently caress this up... or if they do, we still at least get some good Rennie scenes out of it. I hope that the chap they hired to play Junior (Alexander Koch) also does his character justice. I literally just found out tonight that my brother knows Dean Norris and cooks for him at least twice a week (my brother's a chef in Albuquerque). I'm excited that Norris is going be in the miniseries, he's a great actor. If the rest of the casting is done right I may actually enjoy this.
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Feb 16, 2013 06:37
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Wow, Hank is playing Rennie? I'm suddenly a lot more excited about this series. I figured they'd get, at best, that guy who played Todd Packer on the Office to be Big Jim. That's great news. Mike Vogel looks an awful lot like a boy band member, but I will reserve judgment until I see him in the role.
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Feb 16, 2013 22:14
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Just finished the Dead Zone, the epilogue actually had me in tears. What a hell of an ending, easily one of King's best.
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Feb 17, 2013 22:56
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So I started the JFK time travel thing. Does this get supernatural scary I or is it more than a thriller like his newer books? It's cool to be back in Derry, but it doesn't seem to be a straight horror yet. Also: what the hell does this thread title refer to?
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Mar 1, 2013 03:11
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schwenz posted:So I started the JFK time travel thing. Does this get supernatural scary I or is it more than a thriller like his newer books? It's cool to be back in Derry, but it doesn't seem to be a straight horror yet. It's a good read, regardless.
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Mar 1, 2013 03:22
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schwenz posted:
"Beep beep, Richie" is a recurring line in IT. The other Losers say it when they need Richie to shut up. Jealous Cow is a poster in this thread. I'm not sure how the two are related. 
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Mar 1, 2013 05:45
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Is Salem's Lot regarded as one of Stephen King's scarier work around here? Whats King's spookiest book with a decent audiobook version ?
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Mar 1, 2013 05:58
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Kneel Before Zog posted:Is Salem's Lot regarded as one of Stephen King's scarier work around here? Whats King's spookiest book with a decent audiobook version ? Its not the spookiest but it is really tense and one of his best early works. Personally, I think Pet Sematary is the scariest thing he has written.
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Mar 1, 2013 06:28
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I still haven't finished my re-reading of Pet Semetary. I don't have as much stomach for dark stuff these days. Agreed though, definitely one of the scarier ones. I'd put The Shining up there too.
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Mar 1, 2013 06:31
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I remember my very young mother (she was 24 at the time) letting me watch the original airing of the Salem's Lot mini-series when I was in 2nd grade (yes this was in 1979 so I'm old now). It freaked me out so hard that I made crosses out of Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys to protect me. Also I used clothes pins and/or safety pins to ensure my curtains were shut tight just in case Danny or Ralphie Glick are banging outside my window. To this day I do not like to sleep with the curtains open. I didn't read Salem's Lot until later, but even now when I pick-up I can still feel that fear on a 7 year old creep up on me. So which book someone finds the scariest depends on each individuals' experience, and as you can tell Salem's Lot is mine. Funny fact it took Best in Show to make me stop seeing Fred Willard as Larry Crockett.
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Mar 1, 2013 14:20
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Kneel Before Zog posted:Is Salem's Lot regarded as one of Stephen King's scarier work around here? Whats King's spookiest book with a decent audiobook version ? Dunno about audiobooks, but yes, Pet Sematary is absolutely horrifying. Not in any stupid "OMFG ZOMBIE CAT" way, more of a "hey guess what, everyone you know and love will die one day and there's nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it" kind of way.
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Mar 1, 2013 18:17
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:Dunno about audiobooks, but yes, Pet Sematary is absolutely horrifying. Not in any stupid "OMFG ZOMBIE CAT" way, more of a "hey guess what, everyone you know and love will die one day and there's nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it" kind of way. I touched on that earlier in the thread. Pet Sematary is the only King book that has remained scary to me over the years. Most of his other stuff is interesting, or thrilling, but only Pet Sematary makes me afraid. I go back to it every so often, and each time I find something else in my life that I'm terrified of losing.
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Mar 1, 2013 18:21
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Zelda still freaks me out along with the first visit from Victor Pascow.
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Mar 1, 2013 18:38
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nate fisher posted:I remember my very young mother (she was 24 at the time) letting me watch the original airing of the Salem's Lot mini-series when I was in 2nd grade (yes this was in 1979 so I'm old now). It freaked me out so hard that I made crosses out of Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys to protect me. Also I used clothes pins and/or safety pins to ensure my curtains were shut tight just in case Danny or Ralphie Glick are banging outside my window. To this day I do not like to sleep with the curtains open. I didn't read Salem's Lot until later, but even now when I pick-up I can still feel that fear on a 7 year old creep up on me. So which book someone finds the scariest depends on each individuals' experience, and as you can tell Salem's Lot is mine. Took me watching Roseanne to make ME stop seeing Fred this way. I agree with you all on Pet Sematary. The movie version is so drat cheesy but it honestly scares the crap out of me more than any other scary movie I can think of. The book is the same. Zelda and Pasgow, eeeuh. Just thinking of them gives me the willies right now. Actually, same with the Salem's Lot movie, too. It's so old and the special effects are so primitive that we jaded 21st c. folks should be able to laugh at them. But nope, still scary! I also watched/read these books when I was probably way too young to be exposed to such things. I was born in 69, so I was even older than you at the time it aired on tv. I can give credit to my poor teenage mom for not letting me watch Helter Skelter when it first aired, at least. I wanted so badly to be in the room with them but I was Not Allowed and was barred from entry. Which, in retrospect, was probably a good thing.
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Mar 1, 2013 21:09
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nate fisher posted:I remember my very young mother (she was 24 at the time) letting me watch the original airing of the Salem's Lot mini-series when I was in 2nd grade (yes this was in 1979 so I'm old now). It freaked me out so hard that I made crosses out of Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys to protect me. Also I used clothes pins and/or safety pins to ensure my curtains were shut tight just in case Danny or Ralphie Glick are banging outside my window. To this day I do not like to sleep with the curtains open. I didn't read Salem's Lot until later, but even now when I pick-up I can still feel that fear on a 7 year old creep up on me. So which book someone finds the scariest depends on each individuals' experience, and as you can tell Salem's Lot is mine. Yuppp. Me too, except I had a pair of slightly older cousins who watched it with me as well and dealt with their fear by intensifying mine. I STILL can't watch the movie without flashbacks!
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Mar 1, 2013 21:27
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So the cover art for the hardcover of Doctor Sleep has been revealed, and I'm glad to see that all those people who did work for Clive Barker and World of Darkness back in the day can still manage to find employment.
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Mar 2, 2013 01:53
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Holy gently caress, a sequel to the Shining?! loving there.
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Mar 2, 2013 02:04
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ConfusedUs posted:"Beep beep, Richie" is a recurring line in IT. The other Losers say it when they need Richie to shut up. It got old. Quickly.
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Mar 2, 2013 02:25
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H.P. Shivcraft posted:So the cover art for the hardcover of Doctor Sleep has been revealed, and I'm glad to see that all those people who did work for Clive Barker and World of Darkness back in the day can still manage to find employment. It's a million times better than the three covers the limited edition received.
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Mar 3, 2013 17:12
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That cover is pretty loving awesome.
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Mar 3, 2013 20:13
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ravenkult posted:That cover is pretty loving awesome. Yeah, I like that more than the one we're getting.
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Mar 3, 2013 20:20
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I've read quite of SK's works, including the short story collections and the novels that get the most discussion here, but I can't quite bring myself to commit to starting the Dark Tower series. I read the first few comic books though and was interested in the story. Is it worth starting out? There's so much grumbling and hand-wringing that it's scared me off so far. I just finished the latest book of Song of Ice and Fire and don't have anything planned yet. As for movie adaptations - what did everyone think of the end to The Shawshank Redemption? Sometimes I feel like the only person who hated it, but it really bothered me. The awesome part about the novella was how it ended ... "I hope." The story's heading/subtitle is "Hope Springs Eternal." But part of what makes hope such a poignant and breathtaking thing is the possibility of utter disappointment, it's fate hanging in the balance and choosing to believe that things will work out for the best. The fact that the movie provided an ending eliminates the need for hope, because we find out how things work out. It's a very Hollywood ending and maybe the movie had to end that way, but I felt it took away the whole point of the story.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:04
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That's EXACTLY the same issue I had with the ending to the Mist, in short, yes I absolutely agree with you.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:07
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iostream.h posted:That's EXACTLY the same issue I had with the ending to the Mist, in short, yes I absolutely agree with you. They just had to wrap it up. Stephen King is dark, right? What's the darkest ending we can do? Oh yeah, mainstream moviegoers are going to love this.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:09
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Heh, I feel like the ending to the Mist was the opposite in some ways. As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, it was like a "gently caress you!" to the audience rather than catering to the audience at the expense of the story. I'm ambivalent about the Mist's ending, though. Again as was said earlier, I do see how it could have fit into the story if the story had ended a few pages later. I suppose the same argument could be made about Shawshank, but the whole theme of the story was hope and the ending completely nullified it. It had to end how it did. Now that you mention it though, I'm curious as to what King thought of the ending. But I'm still going to hate it even if he loves it. 
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Mar 11, 2013 03:14
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From what I recall, King said he liked the ending to the movie, but there's a line in the short story where he specifically states that the National Guard do not come out of the mist and there IS no 'happy neat ending'. The whole theme of the short story was hope, as evidenced by the closing lines. The movie just turned it into some nihilist crap.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:33
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Tojai posted:I've read quite of SK's works, including the short story collections and the novels that get the most discussion here, but I can't quite bring myself to commit to starting the Dark Tower series. I read the first few comic books though and was interested in the story. Is it worth starting out? There's so much grumbling and hand-wringing that it's scared me off so far. I just finished the latest book of Song of Ice and Fire and don't have anything planned yet. I think it was worth it. At some point I will read them again, but it will be awhile. It's hard to explain without messing things up, but I'll try my best. The first three books, when they came out, were this strange, mysterious, crazy story about a kick-rear end Gun Slinger and his companions, jumping around worlds, kicking everybody's rear end. They're really freaking good. Book four was good, but differently. While it didn't advance the story much, we got to look at Roland's roots (some of the comic book stuff you probably saw). Then there are the last 3 books. They are also good, but they have a different feel to them. You can tell that King was in a different place than when he started to work on them (for awhile it seemed like he was going to quit all together). So there are things that seem a little rushed, there are some things that are anticlimactic, and there are things that are crazy and will make you groan a bit. (In particular the introduction and involvement of one character towards the end). It's an ending to the series, and the longer you mull it over, it's a decent and fair ending to the series, but it's not really the ending that everybody was hoping for, or that everybody wanted. That being said, I've never regretted a moment that I spent reading The Dark Tower. I also think that your experience of reading them all for the first time now, will provide a different experience than what many readers went through, in which they read the first three books at least once, (perhaps more) and had to wait years and years for book 4, and then more and more years for the end.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:41
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iostream.h posted:From what I recall, King said he liked the ending to the movie, but there's a line in the short story where he specifically states that the National Guard do not come out of the mist and there IS no 'happy neat ending'. the original ending just had them driving down the road, with the giant dinosaur looking legs around them, if i remember correctly.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:42
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Roydrowsy posted:I also think that your experience of reading them all for the first time now, will provide a different experience than what many readers went through, in which they read the first three books at least once, (perhaps more) and had to wait years and years for book 4, and then more and more years for the end. I was told the same thing about A Song of Ice and Fire, I didn't start reading them until a few years ago so the only book I had to wait on was the last one. Apparently that was a very different experience from people who'd read the series since the beginning. I will probably go ahead and start the series. For the last few years I've been mulling it over but I'm going to end up doing it eventually. Oh, and about the ending to the Dark Tower - it was spoiled for me already, so no worries there. The bits and pieces of the mythos I've picked up from short stories and the comic books have been pretty intriguing, so I'm more interested in just learning about the world of the Dark Tower rather than find out what happens. The one thing that I think I might dislike most is the bits that overlap with our world. The fantasy aspect to Dark Tower really appeals to me, I don't even really mind random bits and pieces of our world floating over and affect theirs (like the music or the gas station for example), but the idea of Roland et al visiting our world didn't sit well with me. Of course I'm talking out of my rear end as I've not read any of it, but that's the only real trepidation I have.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:49
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Roydrowsy posted:the original ending just had them driving down the road, with the giant dinosaur looking legs around them, if i remember correctly. Close, soon after that scene they're in a hotel and he's writing all of the events in a journal with the revelation that as he was tuning the radio he heard a word that sounded like one of two words, 'one of them was Hartford, the other was hope'.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:50
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Roydrowsy posted:the original ending just had them driving down the road, with the giant dinosaur looking legs around them, if i remember correctly. As I remember it they were just pulling in to a HoJo's but the future looked pretty loving bleak.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:53
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Tojai posted:I was told the same thing about A Song of Ice and Fire, I didn't start reading them until a few years ago so the only book I had to wait on was the last one. Apparently that was a very different experience from people who'd read the series since the beginning. The first 4 books are absolutely worth the disappointment that the last 3 books are. Especially books 2 and 3. book two has a large amount of overlap between his world and ours, but King keeps it surprisingly fascinating. I had the same worry you did about that, as I found Roland's world far more interesting. But book 2 is mostly Roland trying to figure out our world and it's hilarious/awkward/wonderful at the same time. Book 3 is largely Roland's world and my personal favorite of the series for some of the wonderful imagery King evokes. I don't think any book he's written has felt so visible to me in my mind. The series does indeed get really derailed later on as he rushes to finish it, but there are still interesting and well done parts to the final 3. Even if the story goes in stupid directions King can still write a heartwrenching or scary scene really well. Song of Susannah was such a poo poo book but I can read the Eddie/Roland shootout at the gas station over and over. Actually, Eddie and Roland's parts of that book weren't too bad, everything else was just really awful. gently caress that Mia storyline. Febreeze fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Mar 13, 2013 |
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Mar 13, 2013 07:35
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Febreeze posted:Song of Susannah was such a poo poo book but I can read the Eddie/Roland shootout at the gas station over and over. Actually, Eddie and Roland's parts of that book weren't too bad, everything else was just really awful. gently caress that Mia storyline. Agreed. I read them one after another and didn't have to wait. I can only imagine how those who waited 10+ years felt.
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Mar 14, 2013 16:53
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Jealous Cow posted:Agreed. I read them one after another and didn't have to wait. I can only imagine how those who waited 10+ years felt. I liked books 5 and 7 well enough. They didn't top book 4, but few things in fiction have topped book 4. I wasn't all that fond of book 3, though it was certainly better than book 6. It's like Stephen King was looking at his "retirement" and thought "I have to get all the awful things I've written about women into a single book" and Mia was born. That's unfair to book 6, I guess. I hated the Susannah story at almost every turn, despite fiercely loving the character. But at least she wasn't Fran Goldsmith.
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Mar 14, 2013 17:19
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rypakal posted:I liked books 5 and 7 well enough. They didn't top book 4, but few things in fiction have topped book 4. I wasn't all that fond of book 3, though it was certainly better than book 6. It's like Stephen King was looking at his "retirement" and thought "I have to get all the awful things I've written about women into a single book" and Mia was born. Book 6 was definitely the worst. I don't mind 5 or 7 either, but 6 is what keeps me from ever wanting to go back through the series. I honestly don't like Susannah's character throughout the series. She's both a woman and black, both things King has a hard time writing. The multiple personalities thing just seems soap opera-y rather than an interesting aspect of her character, and it never goes away, even though it seems like it might for a little while. Susannah-related spoilers: Also, the Mordred conception scene is the grossest thing. When Roland went in the ring it was whispers and perfume and seduction, but when it's time for Susannah to do it it is ice-dick demon rape.
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Mar 14, 2013 18:39
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I consider Insomnia to be a Dark Tower book, because everything that happens to Ralph and Lois happens so they can save the life of Patrick Danville, who saves Roland in book 7 of the Dark Tower series. It's a great book on its own though, even if you've never read the Dark Tower series, although you'll understand it better if you have.
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Mar 14, 2013 20:39
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I'm actually re-reading the Dark Tower series right now and it's a lot better this time around. Agree that Song of Susannah is the weakest, though. But in Wolves of the Calla the Harry Potter Sneetches and Doctor Doom Wolves I now acknowledge serve a very important thematic purpose regarding the way King is playing with intertextuality and stories and influence and blah blah blah. With the latter books in the series, I'm also becoming increasingly okay with the author self insert, because again, it serves important purposes.
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Mar 14, 2013 20:45
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Pheeets posted:[Insomnia]'s a great book on its own though, even if you've never read the Dark Tower series, although you'll understand it better if you have. Does it get significantly better in the second half? It's taken me about six months to get through the first third of Insomnia; I'll read about ten pages, find some other book that I want to read more, read that all the way through, come back to Insomnia, rinse and repeat. It's not really terrible, and there was actual stuff happening in the chapter I just finished, but I don't know if I should bother finishing the book. (I read and mostly enjoyed the first three Dark Tower books, if that makes a difference.)
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Mar 15, 2013 00:02
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