Stephen King

[Travern]

19 hours ago, seneschal said:

Who'd have thought a mundane discussion of a popular author would endanger mankind!

Do you read Sutter Kane?

Edited April 10, 2020 by Travern

[Travern]

19 hours ago, TheEnclave said:

You state, verbatim, that someone can't be a Lovecraftian author without being an atheist, and you imply, in so small way, that Lovecraft drew nigh-exclusively from nihilistic philosophy and literature, and that themes of hope, survival, friendship, or faith are incompatible with cosmic horror.

What I said was that cosmic horror was fundamentally atheistic (and anti-anthropocentric).  King doesn't put aside his vague deistic outlook and humanistic beliefs in his stories to engage in that, so no, he does not count an echt Lovecraftian author—not as far as cosmic horror—just a Lovecraft-influenced one.  It's a bit like how an author must have an ethical or moral framework in mind when writing a detective story or else it'll break with the genre.  Nor did I say that Lovecraft drew nigh-exclusively from nihilistic philosophy (not to mention Neitzsche himself is not a nihilist and Schopenhauer's a pessimist).  What you're inferring is not what I'm implying.  Again, I'm uninterested in being cast as your straw interlocutor.

19 hours ago, TheEnclave said:

Lovecraft wrote Nodens, and he was still an enemy of Nyarlathotep before Derleth.

As a side note, Nodens is not a benign figure in Lovecraft's fantastic stories.  He's more like a deity from the Classical Greek and Roman pantheon that HPL loved—"awful" in the old sense of the word, but not rooted in human morality.  He's beyond good and evil, if you will.  Concluding he's good merely because his foe Nyarlathotep is malign is a leap of faith, so to speak—and a creative misinterpretation Derleth makes when he depicts the struggle of the Elder Gods and Outer Gods as a 'War in Heaven', like Paradise Lost with tentacles.

19 hours ago, TheEnclave said:

Do you advise that because Joshi is an atheist?

You seem rather fixated on atheists.  I don't know what Joshi's personal beliefs are because he doesn't project them onto his examination of Lovecraft's philosophical outlook, which is what I recommend as contemporary scholarship.  He does take Lovecraft's atheism seriously, however, and considers its importance in his fiction and his worldview.  (Anyone interested in this can check out his website as a starting place.)

22 hours ago, TheEnclave said:

I've got no hostility either.

Nobody's accused you of hostility, though.  Perhaps the one thing we can both agree to leave aside this derail and return to the OP's topic of Stephen King?

[TheEnclave]

5 hours ago, Travern said:

Perhaps the one thing we can both agree to leave aside this derail and return to the OP's topic of Stephen King?

Yeah, agreed. Our opinions on all this aside, it's definitely off-topic.

[soltakss]

9 hours ago, TheEnclave said:

15 hours ago, Travern said:

Perhaps the one thing we can both agree to leave aside this derail and return to the OP's topic of Stephen King?

Yeah, agreed. Our opinions on all this aside, it's definitely off-topic.

Yes!

[Ian Absentia]

5 hours ago, soltakss said:

Yes!

I also agree -- we should return to the topic without further digression.

!i!

[Loïc]

Also agree.

And by the way, what are your favorite Stephen King story and your favorite Stephen King adaptation ? I'm asking this, because for my part, it's not the same story, and I'm curious to see if some of you are in the same situation.

Favourite story: I would say The Mist anthology, or Pet Sematary if I have to mention a novel.

Favourite movie: Stanley Kubrick's Shining, although Stephen King doesn't like it, although it's quite different from the novel... Since, the atmosphere is catching and there is a real steady rise in horror. Promess, now if I bump into twin girls in a corridor, I'm running right away!!!!

[soltakss]

Favourite story: The Stand

Favourite Movie: Carrie, the original version. 

A lot of movies based on his books are entertaining. Carrie, both versions, is excellent, The Shining is a classic, Misery is excellent thanks to the main actress, The Green Mile is all-round brilliant, Dead Zone is really good, Christine is a good B-Movie, The Running Man is very good but very different from the book, Thinner was OK, Cujo was OK, The Shawshank Redemption was good and so on. I remember watching Children of the Corn but can't remember if I liked it, I certainly didn't not like it, though. Same with Pet Sematary.

Same with TV adaptations, The Stand was good, Salem's Lot was excellent, Dead Zone was good and I liked Under the Dome but they dragged it out for too long.

So, a lot of really entertaining stuff.

Edited April 12, 2020 by soltakss

[Travern]

Favorite Story: Pound for pound, King's first anthology, Night Shift, delivers so very many top contenders across different styles and subgenres—"Jerusalem's Lot", "Graveyard Shift", "Night Surf", "I Am the Doorway", "The Mangler", "The Boogeyman", "Gray Matter", "Sometimes They Come Back", "Children of the Corn", "One for the Road".  (That's batting an impressive .500 for his debut.) "Gray Matter" may be the best of the lot, combining King's talent for depicting what should be merely comic-book horror and his eye for the realistic, with a social-issues subtext that drives it home.  The novella The Mist is also very good, although by this point in his career, King can't bring himself to conclude on the bleak note his story demands (in general, he has always had problems with his endings).

Favorite Movie: David Cronenberg's adaptation of The Dead Zone is quite good, especially featuring a restrained, vulnerable performance by Christopher Walken.  It tends to get overlooked by The Shining, which, by the way, is an excellent Stanley Kubrick movie—chilly, tense, relentless—but entirely misses the empathy that is one of King's strongest suits.  Carrie is the best "b-movie" adaptation of King, with a terrific performance by Sissy Spacek and de Palma cinematically in full force.  Misery punches above its weight, thanks to excellent two-hander performances by Kathy Bates and James Caan and cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld, but Rob Reiner's direction is pedestrian and William Goldman's screenplay too reluctant to fully embrace King's nuttiness.

EDIT: I should add that on average King's work translates better to TV rather than film, even if there are much fewer great versions.  Tobe Hooper's truly creepy miniseries of 'Salem's Lot is one of the best King adaptations, period.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Travern

[soltakss]

3 hours ago, Travern said:

Favorite Movie: David Cronenberg's adaptation of The Dead Zone is quite good

I really like David Cronenberg's films and I liked Stephen King, so the combination sounded good. In my opinion it over-delivered.

[Loïc]

I do agree with Soltakss and Travern: there are many good films adapted from Stephen King. And I also agree with Travern about Shining (my favorite): it has not much empathy, although it's my favorite, and in many ways it is more a Kubrick movie than a King story. But I must confess I like when a movie offers something else than a simple word for word adaptation. In that case, I prefer reread the book... 😉

[Bill the barbarian]

On 4/11/2020 at 11:37 PM, Loïc said:

Favourite movie: Stanley Kubrick's Shining, although Stephen King doesn't like it, although it's quite different from the novel... Since, the atmosphere is catching and there is a real steady rise in horror. Promess, now if I bump into twin girls in a corridor, I'm running right away!!!!

oh I am going to get myself into trouble in an already controversial topic, but what the hell. I hate Kings works, read a bit in the 80’s and figured he couldn’t write his way out of a wet paper bag. On the other hand I have always loved Kubrick and I truly agree with Loic, The Shining, what a great movie. 

Ducking the certainty of incoming vegetables and looking for a door... exit stage left!

[Lloyd Dupont]

Flying rotten tomato! 😮 

[Ian Absentia]

3 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

On the other hand I have always loved Kubrick and I truly agree with Loic, The Shining, what a great movie. 

Kubrick's The Shining, totally separate from its source material, is a work of art.  There are certain films that rise above the book on which they're based (The Maltese Falcon also leaps to mind), and this is one of them, though it's almost an entirely different animal.

!i!

[Loïc]

4 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

oh I am going to get myself into trouble in an already controversial topic, but what the hell. I hate Kings works, read a bit in the 80’s and figured he couldn’t write his way out of a wet paper bag. On the other hand I have always loved Kubrick and I truly agree with Loic, The Shining, what a great movie.

If I don't hate King, he's not my favorite at all, and the longer are his stories, the more really boring they are, as I already said, with too much psychological circumlocutions and teen fantasies, at least in my opinion. Except maybe for IT, and then I haven't read it since my 14 years old...

51 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

Kubrick's The Shining, totally separate from its source material, is a work of art.  There are certain films that rise above the book on which they're based (The Maltese Falcon also leaps to mind), and this is one of them, though it's almost an entirely different animal.

Absolutely agree with you and Bill. I enjoy several movies based on King's works, but this one is something beyond any genre matter. I mean, Dead Zone or De Palma's Carrie are excellent thrilllers, but Kubrick's movie is both a thriller or horror movie and something more, something deeper, both narratively and esthetically. Some directors can do that. Ian says that's also the case with The Maltese Falcon, and I also agree. There are few examples like these in any genre I think (for Kubrick, I would also mention 2001, although I do enjoy Clarke's The Sentinel). And I observe it happens when the movie firmly diverts from the original story (yes, even in The Maltese Falcon), i.e. when an artist decides to produce an original work/vision - whereever he finds his inspiration - and not just illustrate word for word a story... (no, I won't add to polemic with examples!!!).

[Bill the barbarian]

1 hour ago, Ian Absentia said:

Kubrick's The Shining, totally separate from its source material, is a work of art.  There are certain films that rise above the book on which they're based (The Maltese Falcon also leaps to mind), and this is one of them, though it's almost an entirely different animal.

 

Kubrick was a master. And the Shining, wow! I do not often swear here (BRPC), but this movie can still scare the shit out of me. 

[seneschal]

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

"I'm sorry, Dave.  I can't do that."

In such a discussion as this, it isn't that we're tossing rotten tomatoes at you.  It is the Killer Tomatoes leaping to the attack!

Edited April 14, 2020 by seneschal