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Stephen King


Michelle

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The Shining is a really good film (I'll just say that it's left me terrified of the days of the week...!) Sheeta, just very very different from the book so you need to engage with it on its own terms

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I finished Shining, but I heard that the movie isn't as good as the book (it wouldn't be difficult though, what a fantastic read!), so should I see it now or will I think for two hours "oh my God that is terribly bad"?

 

Excellent film but has very little correlation with the source material. Kubrick made a film about domestic breakdown which just happened to be set in a haunted hotel, whereas King wrote a book about a haunted hotel and the history of evil and murder associated with it, which just happened to have a young family as the main characters. The book is all about the hotel, the movie all about the family. King hated the movie and although i do like it, i agree that it bears little resemblance to the novel.

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I finished Shining, but I heard that the movie isn't as good as the book (it wouldn't be difficult though, what a fantastic read!), so should I see it now or will I think for two hours "oh my God that is terribly bad"?

 

The movie The Shining is one of the best if not the best 'adaptations' ever made, it is genuinely creepy. But as everyone else has said it is Kubrick's take on the tale rather than a true adaptation of the King novel.

 

I would argue that its actually better than the book, but i'd probably get hammered for it :D

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I thought 1408 was awesome but then I haven't read the story, is it vastly different?

 

Actually, not vastly different at all. Obviously they had to make a few cuts here and there for the sake of the movie run time but by and large the movie is very similar to the story and if you read the story first you would likely think "Thats nigh on impossible to film" but they managed to pull it off!

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The movie The Shining is one of the best if not the best 'adaptations' ever made, it is genuinely creepy. But as everyone else has said it is Kubrick's take on the tale rather than a true adaptation of the King novel.

 

I would argue that its actually better than the book, but i'd probably get hammered for it :blush:

 

<gets hammer out> :roll:

 

Ha, everyone is entitled to their opinion but on this issue we will have to agree to disagree! I felt the novel was actually frightening, as in genuinely 'i-feel-like-im-right-here-in-the darkened-empty-room-217-and-the-wind-is-howling-outside-and-oh-sweet-jesus-whats-that-noise-coming-from-the-bath' horrifying and the story of The Overlook slowly but surely wrapped its evil form around your psyche until you could take no more and wanted to put the book down. The movie had great acting but stubbornly refused to explore the history beyond the whole 'evil caretaker slaughtered family and they may still linger here'. None of the hedge creatures, none of the boiler room debacle etc. Not true to the source.

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So I saw The Shining, and I'm in love with Jack Nicholson. :( I found Wendy a little too idiot, sometimes, but there are great scenes in this movie! It's different from the book, I agree, but still interesting and haunting. But I think it would have been better without the book in my mind...

 

1408 was better in the short story, in my opinion, since I've seen the movie just after reading it. But maybe it's a great movie, and it's like The Shining for the first character, a good actor! But Jack is the best. :)

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Guest Eliza1

I've read the Dome and I thought it was good, yeah. He has this mixture of really good character development and the ability to make things eerier than you thought possible. I just finished reading Salems Lot but My favourite is pet Semetary - that wins hands down. The ending of the Dome.........seriously wierd

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I've also been debating whether to get Under the Dome or not. I did go through a Stephen King phase a while ago... quite a while ago in fact but it's been a while since I last read one of his book. I think the last time was a couple of years ago when I re-read IT.

 

I do think Under the Dome sounds quite good though, although I've heard a couple of people say the ending's a little weird. I'm not sure I'm really in the mood for a Stephen King book at the moment. I think I'll hold off buying it and borrow it from the library at a later date instead.

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I've read the Dome and I thought it was good, yeah. He has this mixture of really good character development and the ability to make things eerier than you thought possible. I just finished reading Salems Lot but My favourite is pet Semetary - that wins hands down. The ending of the Dome.........seriously wierd

 

The ending was absolutely terrible in my honest opinion, a complete cop out and after the high quality of the preceding story i was expecting a great ending for the story and a decent explanation for what the Dome was, what i got was just woeful. A great book but loses a lot of marks for that ending :D

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Yes, ending is a bit weak, although you can see where he was going with it (nothing worse than getting to the end of a book that length and just NOT getting it at all!). Definitely one of his better in recent years IMHO. I feel the publisher made a mistake comparing it to The Stand on the cover. The Stand is an absolute classic, and this doesn't hold up against it, good as it is.

 

 

Ian

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I just was gobsmacked that after the guts of 900 pages trapped within this mysterious Dome, with the inhabitants of Chesters Mill gradually becoming feral and imploding that the actual explanation for the Dome was

a group of alien kids from some random planet just deciding that for no reason whatsoever to fling an impenetrable crystal barrier around a small town and watch the ensuing chaos, i mean WTF??? And King's little analogy of the bullied girl appealing for mercy from her tormentor in order to get her clothes back is an extremely weak metaphor for the ultimate explanation. I was also cheesed off that none of the book was remotely supernatural up to that poin so to throw in an ending like that smacks off the author drowning in his own creation and being forced to throw a quick ending together just to end the book.

 

 

So, as you can see, i hated that ending. Gah, think ill have a drink to calm down!:friends0:

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I'm not the most intellectual person and I am not good at analysing underlying meanings of stories, but for what it's worth I took the whole overall story as being a play on

humans being insects who's lives bare no real significance to higher beings, and we are just play things these beings could just pull the wings off, or burn under a magnifying glass on a hot day on a whim. Its certainly made me think twice about doing anything like that ever again :friends0:

 

 

I guess that is pretty much a given. But it was satisfying enough for me personally.

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I agree with your opinion in the spoiler bar but for me, if there had been more hints of supernatural themes throughout the book then the ultimate ending would not have been such an unpleasant surprise but the way it is, the ending was completely at odds with the themes of the preceding book- isolation, social barriers breaking down, primal urges and paranoia, and it had no relevance to the lives of the characters or the plot. I know some people will say to just enjoy the journey and not the destination and the ultimate explanation for the Dome was irrelevant but i strongly disagree with that-King put a very high concept out there with the plot of this book and to end it in such a cheap way spoiled the book for me, i hope he can regain his skill for fantastic endings in his next novel.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I’m a huge King fan and I loved under the dome. I did think the ending was a slight let down, however the way the dome was constructed and operated, did make me think there may be an alien influence behind it. All in all though, I thought the book was a great success, I particularly liked the way it portrayed human brutality, by the end I despised Big Jim. In my opinion it was slightly better than the stand, but not as good as the dark tower.

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