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Canuckistan posted:So it's a zombie movie now? Cool. Zombies are fresh and exciting. 
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Feb 8, 2019 13:33
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I thought the trailer looked good, but then again I haven't read the book yet.
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Feb 8, 2019 13:46
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Canuckistan posted:So it's a zombie movie now? Cool. Zombies are fresh and exciting. They could put the zombie bull in. Don't think that's been done yet. Also is Church not canonically black? Or was that just the 90s movie?
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Feb 8, 2019 15:59
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syscall girl posted:They could put the zombie bull in. Don't think that's been done yet. he was grey there. It's only appropriate to make him a Maine Coon 
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Feb 9, 2019 06:18
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:he was grey there. It's only appropriate to make him a Maine Coon I can dig it, I like them Also, looking through my copy, which has a black cat on the cover, the bull's name is Hanratty and is a Black Angus. Church is referred to as "gone like black water" at one point but most descriptions focus on his green eyes. The 90s one looks like a Russian Blue, which while adorable probably look just as horrific as any cat that you bury and dig up all matted.
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Feb 9, 2019 08:11
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1989, folks.
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Feb 9, 2019 08:39
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ConfusedUs posted:I know almost everyone hates The Regulators, but it's honestly one of my favorite King books. It's so loving weird. I'll back you up. I thought The Regulators was fun. I did not care for the companion book (Desperation?), when everyone else seems to think is better.
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Feb 9, 2019 22:08
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Zamboni Rodeo posted:I'll back you up. I thought The Regulators was fun. I did not care for the companion book (Desperation?), when everyone else seems to think is better. I liked them both, but absolutely will give the edge to The Regulators for it's absolute whack-a-doodle story. For me, both are in the camp with Tommyknockers, where they are good B-level King novels that don't seem to take themselves overly seriously. Would take these over Gerald's Game any day.
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Feb 10, 2019 05:02
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regulators is better, because weirder and riskier, than desperation
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Feb 10, 2019 06:06
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I liked both The Regulators and Desperation as well. For some reason the description of Collie going through half of The Regulators with only half his face shaved is the thing that I think of before all the wacky poo poo.
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Feb 11, 2019 03:04
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i remember the weird bullets and the poop stuff
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Feb 11, 2019 05:16
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i remember the weird bullets and the poop stuff Desperation was just too bleak to be enjoyable. I feel like SK was Going Through Some poo poo when he wrote that, it's just so hopeless and mean. Regulators was really weird, and some elements were dumb as hell, but it had that little streak of humor & optimism that makes King's books work. It's been ages since I read it, but there's a scene where (I think) an old white guy is trying to see over a fence so he has to stand on a black guy's back, and he makes a joke about South Africa or something, and it's just this human, hilarious moment in the middle of all this nightmare stuff. Stuff like that is why, even when a King book isn't great, it's still enjoyable.
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Feb 11, 2019 14:58
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The bleakness of Desperation is what I liked about it. It was heavy but the highlights for me were the bit with the scary creatures in the trailer and the bit at the end with the shotgun shell. And the puma/cougar attack was one of those broadcast things in the book and it was effective as a scary cudgel. An Tak was just mean and sarcastic as gently caress. Yeah, I liked that book.
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Feb 11, 2019 18:22
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Dr. Faustus posted:The bleakness of Desperation is what I liked about it. It was heavy but the highlights for me were the bit with the scary creatures in the trailer and the bit at the end with the shotgun shell. And the puma/cougar attack was one of those broadcast things in the book and it was effective as a scary cudgel. An Tak was just mean and sarcastic as gently caress. Yeah, I liked that book. I already posted my thoughts on it itt but very much same. It was also very un-King to have the magical person be a born again christian. Having Ron Perlman fixed in my head as Collie didn't hurt for the re-read either, tak
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Feb 11, 2019 19:16
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Desperation is my favorite King novel. I don't know what it is about it, exactly, but I can feel how hollow the town is, how scared the people are, and just how hosed up it all feels. Perlman was a great choice for Collie, but I always pictured Johnny as Kris Kristofferson, for whatever reason. It just works for me.
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Feb 11, 2019 19:43
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I enjoyed the way Tak let the author character talk about his current book idea then later just savaged him for how derivative and stupid it was. That was a bit of King putting his own fear in the story and it was brutal. I felt a connection with him in that moment, as we all doubt ourselves and Tak used that to great effect.
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Feb 11, 2019 21:31
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Didn't know about another book til now: Deep in the woods of Maine, there is a dark state facility where kids, abducted from across the United States, are incarcerated. In the Institute they are subjected to a series of tests and procedures meant to combine their exceptional gifts - telepathy, telekinesis - for concentrated effect. Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He's just a regular 12-year-old, except he's not just smart, he's super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use... Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local Sherriff. He's basically just walking the beat. But he's about to take on the biggest case of his career. Back in the Institute's downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise 'just another day in paradise', Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape. But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments - even the infamous Mrs Sigsby - suspect. Thrilling, suspenseful, heartbreaking, THE INSTITUTE is a stunning novel of childhood betrayed and hope regained. Book Description Combining the suspense of THE OUTSIDER with the childhood camaraderie in IT, THE INSTITUTE is a powerful new novel from Stephen King which is destined to become the No. 1 blockbuster of Autumn 2019.
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Mar 14, 2019 11:29
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Was The Institute the name of the group hunting the protagonists in Firestarter? That name sounds familiar in his work.
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Mar 14, 2019 11:54
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Randalor posted:Was The Institute the name of the group hunting the protagonists in Firestarter? That name sounds familiar in his work. I think that was The Shop? I could swear they were mentioned in one of his other books, but it's been forever since I read his older stuff. I'm of two minds on this one.... On one hand, the Shop was terrifying, and I think this sounds like SK is getting back to the stuff that made him awesome. On the other hand, we should have known that eventually SK would take a crack at his own Hogwarts, and with every book he puts out lately, his Boomer-ness is showing more and more.
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Mar 14, 2019 12:08
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April posted:I think that was The Shop? I could swear they were mentioned in one of his other books, but it's been forever since I read his older stuff. Yup. I had it in my mind that the Shop was a Sombra division but according to the wiki it's a legit government agency.
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Mar 14, 2019 17:49
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As part of my twofold quest to 1. Read every King novel and 2. Destroy my fondness for reading, I just finished the Tommyknockers and it’s not QUITE as bad as some folks (in this thread and elsewhere) have made it out to be, but hooooo boy it would’ve benefited from some aggressive editing. There’s maybe three likable characters and one of them is a dog, lots of pointless wheel-spinning (or trench digging, as the case may be), and lots of just waiting for stuff to happen but not in a cool suspenseful way. That said, there’s also some really solid world building, body horror, and a surprisingly touching ending from coke-era King. If it had been 300-400 pages instead of 550 it could’ve been a real gem. Karmine fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 14:29
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What are your guy's opinions on Peter Straub? I picked up a used copy of Koko because the cover looked cool but I only made it about 1/4 of the way through before giving up. It wasn't horrendous but it just felt like store-brand Stephen King and really didn't grab me. I have Ghost Story on my shelf but I'm not thrilled about starting it up any time soon, anybody have any thoughts?
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Mar 19, 2019 03:31
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Hello, I am the thread's resident Straub fan/apologist. If you want to have a really good time, check out Floating Dragon. It's the novel he wrote when he was thinking about getting out of the gothic horror genre for a bit and decided to, and I am paraphrasing here, "Take all of the elements of the genre, mix them all together, then blow it up." It's a very fun story with a really silly premise. He also wrote a heart-beaking story that kinda fits in the realm of The Talisman in that it is a almost a mature version of a Young Adult novel, in which a couple of young boys, friends from a school, are brought out to the mansion of one of the boys' mysterious uncle who is supposedly some type of amazing magician. It's called Shadowland and while it is, like most of Straub's novels (apart from Floating Dragon) a rather slow and dry buildup, it comes to a pretty gruesome climax. That's kinda par for the norm in his stories. Koko is a weird one, like the Blue Rose trilogy in general, it's more of a noire detective story with some gruesome bits. In that trilogy he does the thing you will see at the beginning of Black House, where he guides the reader in a sorta fourth-wall-breaking way through an aerial tour of the setting of the book. In the Blue Rose trilogy it's an Island and the various locations become set-pieces in the story, which is also what happens in Black House. Lots of readers of Black House hated that, but I recognized it as a Straub-ism and I think King wanted it in there for that reason. Anyway, I cannot say you will ever grow to enjoy P.S. I did, but I am ok with the slow burn and that is mostly what Straub does. Or did, anyway, when he was writing genre horror. Ghost Story is another good one, imo. But Floating Dragon is just insane. It's pure high-octane weirdness that can be stomach-turning at times. I can't even tell you what it's about because it really does combine a lot of different tropes into one big cocktail of hosed-up.
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Mar 19, 2019 04:11
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Human Tornada posted:What are your guy's opinions on Peter Straub? I've tried and I just can't get into it. For some reason, I tend to find myself sort of glazing over or spacing out as I read him. I've tried The Talisman twice and slogged through Black House. Just doesn't do it for me.
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Mar 19, 2019 11:49
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I tried and tried to get into Ghost Story but rather than a slow burn I just found it monotonous, so had to abandon it. A friend got me Floating Dragon for Christmas a few years back, I think based on your recommendation actually, but haven't got around to reading it yet. I need to live to 1000 years old to get through everything I want to read.
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Mar 19, 2019 13:38
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The Talisman is one of my favorite King books. How much of that is King and how much of that is Straub I don't know. I've never had any motivation to seek out any other Straub books and I didn't care much for Black House. It sounds that was a good decision.
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Mar 20, 2019 21:27
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Krispy Wafer posted:The Talisman is one of my favorite King books. How much of that is King and how much of that is Straub I don't know. Back in the late 80's I read Straub's Ghost Story, Shadowland, and Floating Dragon because of The Tailsman. Honestly I remember enjoying all 3 books (especially Ghost Story), but for some reason I never read anything else by him.
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Mar 21, 2019 18:32
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going to read floating dragon now, will check back in with impressions —- but i just finished another stephen king style small town america horror story that also has more than a little elmore leonard influence called Niceville (and two sequels.) its pretty enjoyable but unfortunately the main plot points and characters, which are the most kinglike, are far less interesting than the leonardine secondary characters and plot elements. nonetheless an enjoyable trilogy of books that should have been one book probably.
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Mar 21, 2019 20:19
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Maybe it won't totally suck? https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-dark-tower-is-finally-a-go-at-amazon-as-a-new-gunsl-1833467428 quote:The movie version of The Dark Tower fled across our memories, and the new Amazon television show followed in its path. But some news today has refreshed our excitement once more.
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Mar 21, 2019 20:43
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scary ghost dog posted:going to read floating dragon now, will check back in with impressions —- but i just finished another stephen king style small town america horror story that also has more than a little elmore leonard influence called Niceville (and two sequels.) its pretty enjoyable but unfortunately the main plot points and characters, which are the most kinglike, are far less interesting than the leonardine secondary characters and plot elements. nonetheless an enjoyable trilogy of books that should have been one book probably. I read this and enjoyed it well enough, but you're spot on about which story lines were the most compelling. Any time things started to get other-worldly my interest definitely dipped a bit. I had no idea there were two sequels though. I'll probably skip em. I also could have done without the police officer character who personified the author's hero fantasies of brutalizing criminals and breaking all the rules if it means serving justice.
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Mar 21, 2019 23:19
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Canuckistan posted:Maybe it won't totally suck? Here's a weird one: The Dark Tower movie sucked immensely, however, now I can't see Roland as some white dude anymore and Sam Strike just seems wrong. The casting of Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey was the only thing the film got right, but it got it extremely right.
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Mar 22, 2019 05:38
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Brutal takedown of Pet Semetary. https://film.avclub.com/pet-sematary-should-have-stayed-buried-1833825874 Too bad. I was looking forward to this one and, for the most part, King adaptations have been doing well recently with Gerald's Game, IT, 1922 (The Dark Tower not withstanding).
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Apr 5, 2019 22:53
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Also not an overwhelming favorable review: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/pet-sematary-remake-may-be-the-funniest-film-of-2019-no-thats-not-a-typo/
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Apr 6, 2019 03:11
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i saw it tonight; it's firmly okay. lithgow is far and away best part of the film. Creed gets too much screentime considering that the role is played by a dude who has only two facial expressions ("frowning" and "slack-jawed existential despair"). movie does an okay job of examining how parents' attempts to protect their kids can end up harming them, and how parents' own traumas and limitations affect their children, and also roundly indicts atheist materialism as a way of being-in-the-world. the little girl who played Ellie owned. i was slightly tipsy and enjoyed it. e: there are three (3) gratuitous shots of john lithgow's ankles which function solely to build tension for those who have seen the 1989 film, but are deeply weird in themselves chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Apr 6, 2019 |
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Apr 6, 2019 05:59
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chernobyl kinsman posted:e: there are three (3) gratuitous shots of john lithgow's ankles which function solely to build tension for those who have seen the 1989 film, but are deeply weird in themselves Haha, that's great.
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Apr 6, 2019 15:28
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I just saw it like an hour ago. Some of it was laughably bad, some of it worked ok, but I was kinda rolling my eyes the entire time. There’s a truly horrible green screen shot that only lasts like two seconds but it’s two incredibly pivotal seconds, the acting is bad pretty much across the board (yeah, even Lithgow, which is a huge bummer), and there was some glaringly dumb poo poo in the script. It’s been a while since I’ve read the book so maybe it’s an issue with the source, but Jud and Louis take dead Church to the Pet Sematary, and Jud is like “no don’t bury him there follow me over this mountain of bramble and through this terrible forest!” and Louis just sorta does it like a dumbass? No skepticism, no barrage of questions, no nothing, when they spend an entire scene earlier on establishing that he has very skeptical views about the afterlife. There were gore effects and stuff like that that worked, but overall it was really not good at all.
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Apr 6, 2019 22:17
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How are the newer Carrie adaptations? I've seen a lot of people praise the original as possibly the best adaptation of a King novel ever but I don't know much about the newer stuff.
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Apr 7, 2019 00:44
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Reading Pet Sematary for the first time and I have to say it's one of the most atmospheric and "scary" books of King's that I've read. Maybe it's because I'm only reading it at night, or maybe it's because I'm getting older than when I used to read him and the whole thing is drenched in anxiety about mortality and death, but yeah. Only 100 pages in and really digging it.Krispy Wafer posted:The Talisman is one of my favorite King books. How much of that is King and how much of that is Straub I don't know. I read that earlier this year and really liked it, it reminded me of the good early Dark Tower books. Supposedly they alternated chapters, sent them to each other and edited each other's work to try to merge the styles. There were a few chapters that really felt very strongly King (the 1980s Americana, the internal monologue, a skeptic's fascination with religious preachers) but if I didn't know he hadn't written the whole thing I wouldn't have noticed it being different from any of his other books.
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Apr 8, 2019 03:09
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NikkolasKing posted:How are the newer Carrie adaptations? I've seen a lot of people praise the original as possibly the best adaptation of a King novel ever but I don't know much about the newer stuff. The 1976 one is still the best. The FX, fashions, and the style of the film are all of their time, but Chloe Grace Moretz is no Sissy Spacek. Just take the prom scene. in the 2013 version, it’s all CGM waving her arms around and trying to be dramatic, while Spacek just stands still and lets her eyes do all the acting.
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Apr 8, 2019 14:28
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Carrie is one of those movies that fits the time period so well. 70's teenager movies seemed to perfectly hit their mark for creating a sense of aimless gloom with plenty of melancholy. By the time it got to the 80's and 90's the movies had too many happy endings tacked on. Also the school receptionist lady in Ferris Bueller is one of the bad girls in the beginning shower scene.
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Apr 8, 2019 15:05
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