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Philippe posted:Newer King can have a weird edge to it too. The last bit of Revival felt very old King to me. his new stuff seems to veer between "oops here is a monster" or "oh god cosmic horror". i still think pet sematary is my favorite because it threads the needle of both.
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Oct 2, 2023 20:52
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Letterman posted this today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8wxjIecmD4 The Firestarter! Mister Kingdom fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 23:13
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Mister Kingdom posted:Letterman posted this today: This is actually the nicest thing I've heard him say about the Shining film. Also, only tangentially relevant, but there was a book I read and found really interesting called The Forest and the EcoGothic: The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination which I found because it tackles what a famous sociologist/philosopher named Max Weber called "the disenchantment of the world." The book references a CS Lewis quote to beautifully illustrating this: quote:The process whereby man has come to know the universe is from one point of view extremely complicated; from another it is alarmingly simple. We can observe a single one-way progression. At the outset, the universe appears packed with will, intelligence, life, and positive qualities; every tree is a nymph and every planet a god. Man himself is akin to the gods. The advance gradually empties this rich and genial universe, first of its gods, then of it colours, smells, sounds and tastes, finally of solidity itself as solidity was originally imagined. The book's central thesis is that Horror is the last refuge of this old enchantment; that we can "scare ourselves " back into the mindset of our ancestors. Something about Horror transcends even our Fantasy or Science Fiction precisely because it appeals to such primitive, indelible notions or instincts in humans. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 23:36
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I totally get the things that King dislikes about The Shining and, as an artist myself, can relate. But nothing in his critique (which was fair) makes it a bad film either. It's just one writer's opinion about a movie that he felt missed the mark of his intent, which happens all the time. Authors and script writers butt heads constantly. A lot of changes were made to Jurassic Park, for instance, but both the film and the book are really good. Imagine writing a novel; where you naturally have images in your head of what things look like, which parts are deeply important to your narrative and who certain characters resemble running through your head. Then you see it and it's someone else's exact same thing when they imagined it while reading it.
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Oct 3, 2023 00:19
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BiggerBoat posted:Also, Beverly murdered her abusive father in self defense and at the end of the film we learn she's going to love with her aunt. Wouldn't there be a police investigation of some sort? We're never really shown what happens to the body or any of the aftermath there. I know it's Derry but a 13 year old girl murdering her dad would have consequences I think. She for sure knocked him the gently caress out and left him bleeding on the bathroom floor, but I don't remember it being explicit that he died. Assuming he lived everybody being cool with her splitting town to get away from her abusive dad that she hospitalized seems reasonable.
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Oct 3, 2023 02:16
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And in Derry, questions that should be asked often get put on the backburner
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Oct 3, 2023 02:48
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Yeah, people tend to just not make a big deal out of things in Derry. literal toddler goes missing in the back yard? Eh their dad probably just abducted them. Eleven year old runs away from home? S’all good man, no need to look into that poo poo.
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Oct 3, 2023 03:32
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NikkolasKing posted:This is actually the nicest thing I've heard him say about the Shining film. this is very interesting. i agree with the thesis
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Oct 3, 2023 05:01
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deoju posted:She for sure knocked him the gently caress out and left him bleeding on the bathroom floor, but I don't remember it being explicit that he died. Assuming he lived everybody being cool with her splitting town to get away from her abusive dad that she hospitalized seems reasonable. Doesn't she also go back to her childhood home to see if he still lived there, both in the book and in the (2nd) movie? If so it would be a weird thing to do if she had killed him.
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Oct 3, 2023 08:35
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scary ghost dog posted:this is very interesting. i agree with the thesis Would def recommend it. I myself should go through it again but here is a sample I made sure to note down: quote:Of all our fictions, it is horror especially that functions as mythology. This is due, firstly, to the fact that myth, as James Frazer contends, must be ‘dramatised in ritual’ to stay alive—and horror, in a sense, is one our most ritualistic and participatory of genres.168 One’s introduction to the genre is often relayed in terms of an initiation, and for those who enjoy the experience, it is a compulsion sought again and again. Moreover, the genre in itself is essentially repetitive: as Carol Clover asserts, we encounter within it ‘a set of fixed tale types that generate an endless stream of what are in effect variants, sequels, remakes and rip-offs’.169 The subgenre of horror in the woods, remember, is merely a more specific ‘cliché’.170 This means, to an extent, that when we engage with horror fictions with an inevitable anticipatory dread, we know roughly what to expect. We are engaging, in a sense, with a form of ritual. This is underlined by the fact that the genre characteristically carries a sense of catharsis, which is inherent, too, in myth. René Girard has written much on the idea of ritual as a central element of our myths. He focuses on the importance of ritualistic sacrifice as a means of exorcising the human desire for violence, whilst simultaneously and firmly denying the very existence of this desire, therein avoiding its potential to result in an endless cycle of violence.171 Chapter 5, in which Girard is discussed in further detail, explores the idea that the horror genre itself serves as a substitute for human sacrifice. This is especially relevant in texts such as The Cabin in the Woods, which consciously addresses our desires to witness this violence. The main reason why our Gothic fictions serve in the same way as our myths is because they are grounded in anxiety. Fear, significantly, supplants logos with mythos. This is why, to repeat Maitland again, ‘most of us post-enlightenment and would-be rational adults’ continue to be ‘terrified by the wild wood’.172 When we are afraid, we imbue our make-believe ideas that are intentionally terrifying with some degree of credibility. We experience a dark transition between the fantastical ‘make-believe’ of willingly suspended belief and the nightmarish elements of what will, regardless of consent, make you believe. Texts which feature the Gothic forest show it to be a ‘strange and monstrous’ space—to be a mythic environment that is, in varyingly disturbing ways, very much alive. Importantly, these texts, collectively, can change how we view our environments, if we return to this idea of symbiosis between our fears and their fictional expressions. For example, it is likely that one will have a very different experience wandering through the woods after having read, say, an enchanting text such as Edith Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree (1943), and, by contrast, having recently seen something so intentionally horrifying as The Blair Witch Project. Our myths wake a little, indeed, within the wilderness.
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Oct 3, 2023 08:54
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Reading Pet Sematary after my grandfather passed in February probably wasn't the best idea on my part, but the book actually helped me work through my grief in a way.
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Oct 3, 2023 16:27
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MNIMWA posted:I've started listening to hte podcast Just King Things - it's good! I decided to try it starting with the episode about The Stand and...these guys are loving dopes. Their entire episode seems to be based on a partly remembered reading from years ago, despite supposedly reading it fresh. That is when they're not conflating it with the miniseries (the "Hand of God" you whine about kind of isn't there in the text, my dudes). Vargatron posted:Reading Pet Sematary after my grandfather passed in February probably wasn't the best idea on my part, but the book actually helped me work through my grief in a way. Having had a kid, I have no intention of ever picking it up again, despite being one of my top 5 Kings.
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Oct 3, 2023 23:04
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People are always talking about the hand of God in The Stand and not understanding that it's a metaphor. Flagg is undone by someone who believes his dogma more than he does, bringing it back home to roost. I think it's Ralph who sees the hand of God in that, but Ralph's a religious guy, so of course he does.
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Oct 3, 2023 23:33
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It's a hard read when you've got a little kid. I reread it when my kid was about 4, and it was loving eerie how well I could replace Gage with my own child in my mental picture of the scene.
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Oct 3, 2023 23:34
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:I decided to try it starting with the episode about The Stand and...these guys are loving dopes. Their entire episode seems to be based on a partly remembered reading from years ago, despite supposedly reading it fresh. That is when they're not conflating it with the miniseries (the "Hand of God" you whine about kind of isn't there in the text, my dudes). Is there not a scene where the exploding bomb looks like a hand? Have I just fully hallucinated that? I haven't seen the miniseries. Anyway yeah I like the podcast but often their opinions are bad. So it goes.
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Oct 3, 2023 23:46
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Certainly no Hand of God in the text, definitely not  
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Oct 3, 2023 23:57
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Leave posted:Certainly no Hand of God in the text, definitely not OK, good, that was exactly what I was remembering and now I'm less convinced I'm going doolally.
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Oct 4, 2023 00:09
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Leave posted:Certainly no Hand of God in the text, definitely not case closed
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Oct 4, 2023 00:12
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Vargatron posted:Reading Pet Sematary after my grandfather passed in February probably wasn't the best idea on my part, but the book actually helped me work through my grief in a way. I can see that, actually. Sorry about your grandfather. Leave posted:It's a hard read when you've got a little kid. I reread it when my kid was about 4, and it was loving eerie how well I could replace Gage with my own child in my mental picture of the scene. A lot of stuff is like that. There are tons of movies and books that landed much harder for me after I had a child. It actually makes a ton of sense from an empathy and identification standpoint.
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Oct 4, 2023 00:29
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lines posted:Is there not a scene where the exploding bomb looks like a hand? Larry thinks "huh, looks like a hand" which is quite a ways off from "a magic hand descends and jerks off a missle"
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Oct 4, 2023 03:44
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I mean, if you see a hand and a phallic object and don’t immediately think of the hand jacking off the object then why are you even alive
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Oct 4, 2023 03:48
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oldpainless posted:I mean, if you see a hand and a phallic object and don’t immediately think of the hand jacking off the object then why are you even alive more like oldlubeless
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Oct 4, 2023 04:14
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:Larry thinks "huh, looks like a hand" which is quite a ways off from "a magic hand descends and jerks off a missle" Oh is that specifically what they say? Yeah I never got that, that's just Big Brain Lit PhDs I guess.
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Oct 4, 2023 08:48
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In the miniseries it's literally a giant golden hand that descends from the sky and sets off the warhead, as I recall it. It was never really a very subtle scene or story.
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Oct 4, 2023 13:52
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I mean....the religious element of The Stand is pretty undeniable. It's Good vs. Evil in a metaphysical sense, God and his chosen vs. The Devil's Imp.
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Oct 4, 2023 14:45
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I think in the text we're meant to think that a force of Manichean good ensured this outcome, but not that a literal zappy hand came down and blew up Vegas. The "hand" is a ball of electricity Flagg summons and can't control, just like Trash is a fanatic he created and can't control. It's about evil destroying itself in its venality and greed, and God lining up his little soldiers to set a stage where that can happen, but God isn't reaching down from the heavens to bop Flagg. The force of Manichean good in The Stand is pacifistic and humble, so it sets Flagg up to bop himself.
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Oct 4, 2023 15:33
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Leave posted:It's a hard read when you've got a little kid. I reread it when my kid was about 4, and it was loving eerie how well I could replace Gage with my own child in my mental picture of the scene. yeah, as the father of a one year old son I'm not gonna touch that book again for a long time. Even reading book 7 of DT at the moment Jake's deathis getting to me Rev. Bleech_ posted:I decided to try it starting with the episode about The Stand and...these guys are loving dopes. of course they are, they're podcasters
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Oct 4, 2023 15:43
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BiggerBoat posted:I totally get the things that King dislikes about The Shining and, as an artist myself, can relate. But nothing in his critique (which was fair) makes it a bad film either. It's just one writer's opinion about a movie that he felt missed the mark of his intent, which happens all the time. Authors and script writers butt heads constantly. A lot of changes were made to Jurassic Park, for instance, but both the film and the book are really good. The way I've always seen it is the issue ian't that King doesn't like the film (for the very justifiable reasons you point out), it's that other people get upset that he doesn't like the film.
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Oct 4, 2023 21:35
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I get what he means, and I'm kind of there with him. It's a good movie, all the same, but it's not the book; that's not a failing on the film's part, or on Kubrick, or on King, or anyone. It's an impossible story to truly convey in a few hours on film. I like the book better. I don't like how Kubrick killed Dick, tho, I really don't think that was needed, he was so cool Leave fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Oct 5, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 21:58
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Dick dying would be great as a book reader. But most people, includingnmyself, saw the movie first, so it was just that 60s - 80s thing of black people dying to save white people in movies and was more predictable than it should have been.
Darko fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Oct 5, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 23:32
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Leave posted:I get what he means, and I'm kind of there with him. It's a good movie, all the same, but it's not the book; that's not a failing on the film's part, or on Kubrick, or on King, or anyone. It's an impossible story to truly convey in a few hours on film. I think Kind might have a stronger argument if his self directed, endorsed, written (or whatever it was) TV 2 part series weren't so horrible. Film and literature are different mediums. They share a lot of elements but what makes one work might not in the other. There's a reason a lot of King's adaptations have been bad and they're not all entirely down to the filmmakers being bad at their craft. A lot of King's narrative takes place in the mind, the inner narrative and in his descriptive prose of mood and feeling. Very hard to film. He also was all on board for Maximum Overdrive. What I'm saying is he should stick to writing books and stay in his lane even though, again, I understand what he disliked about The SHining and think it's fair criticism. Your point about Halloran is fair too but I believe the thinking was that Kubrick needed a kill count for a horror movie and who else you got with such a small cast and 98% of them are ghosts. I liked it for the surprise element since I'd read the book first. Should we spoiler that? I went ahead and did so.
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Oct 5, 2023 00:05
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The TV movie was crap because it was directed by Mick Garris, who is a completely pedestrian TV director. The climax of the Dr Sleep movie was the climax of The Shining book (the movie just merged the book and movie together) and worked perfectly fine visually. Its easy to do the biggest beats, like the heartbreaking bee sequence in cinema. Early King isn't as much in the mind as when he started doing the longer form novels.
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Oct 5, 2023 01:17
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I need another decade of King making GBS threads on chuds and religious zealots. Please universe. There’s nothing funnier than reading reviews of Billy Summers, The Institute or Holly and seeing people whine about him injecting politics into the book. If you don’t know his politics by now you’re an idiot and his politics are cool and good.
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Oct 5, 2023 01:21
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Darko posted:The TV movie was crap because it was directed by Mick Garris, who is a completely pedestrian TV director. Take away the context, point someone at this quote, and ask them which King miniseries you're talking about. You will get half a dozen different answers, all of them correct.
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Oct 5, 2023 02:35
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Shammypants posted:I need another decade of King making GBS threads on chuds and religious zealots. Please universe. There’s nothing funnier than reading reviews of Billy Summers, The Institute or Holly and seeing people whine about him injecting politics into the book. If you don’t know his politics by now you’re an idiot and his politics are cool and good. Wait, what? Who's saying he's just now injecting politics into his books? First one of his I read was The Dead Zone where the protagonist basically tries to stop someone like Trump. What, are people complaining that King is woke now?
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Oct 5, 2023 02:48
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BiggerBoat posted:He also was all on board for Maximum Overdrive. Maximum Overdrive kicks rear end. BiggerBoat posted:First one of his I read was The Dead Zone where the protagonist basically tries to stop someone like Trump. Tries to stop him... permanently!!
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Oct 5, 2023 04:35
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BiggerBoat posted:Wait, what? Who's saying he's just now injecting politics into his books? First one of his I read was The Dead Zone where the protagonist basically tries to stop someone like Trump. What, are people complaining that King is woke now? Oh yea. Check out the top review of Holly on Goodreads with 1 star. “I’ve read almost every king book and he injected too much politics into this one.” Uh ok. 👍
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Oct 5, 2023 06:41
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Shammypants posted:Oh yea. Check out the top review of Holly on Goodreads with 1 star. “I’ve read almost every king book and he injected too much politics into this one.” Uh ok. 👍 I agree with Kings politics but they're a large part of why Holly is unreadable dogshit, page after page about covid and masks and Trump is not good reading at all but glad you got to enjoy some idiots one star review
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Oct 5, 2023 08:49
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Breadallelogram posted:Maximum Overdrive kicks rear end. I still think there's a good movie to be made out of Trucks. It's a really solid little apocalyptic story.
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Oct 5, 2023 09:39
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Lt Jon Kavanaugh posted:I agree with Kings politics but they're a large part of why Holly is unreadable dogshit, page after page about covid and masks and Trump is not good reading at all but glad you got to enjoy some idiots one star review It sounds kinda like how people were criticizing Under thE Dome a page or two ago only Holly is far more in your face? I've never read it. But I think I love Under the Dome because it says a lot of things. It's not just "Big Jim and Little Jim are Cheney and Dubya," although that's one valid read. It's also an analysis of how humans might act in a crisis. Then again, this reminds me of that book about kids stranded on an island and how some people are like "this is an analysis of human nature" and others go "no, it's an analysis of some spoiled British kids." Maybe both are true. You get out of a piece of art what you put into it, I firmly believe that.
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Oct 5, 2023 10:00
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