Oh yeah. They even brought back the POSSESSED HEDGE ANIMALS from the book with the best cgi that a late 90's/early 00's network miniseries budget could buy!

seriously, while I like Stephen King (or at least his short stories), he should never be let near a film adaptation of his work.

I actually thought Stephen King was right on with his criticism of Kubrick's version. Good cinematography, good surreal imagery, and a complete shit adaptation of the story.

Except in the case of The Shining, Kubrick knew what he was doing. It might be a shit adaptation of the story, but that's only a viable, incisive criticism of the film if the story, uncut, was something really awesome. The trimmings and changes really make it better.

Yes, and the story was so great it deserved a faithful adaptation.

Kubrick wins everything about this. Ever.

Meh, in my opinion they made it a tedious and incredibly obvious descent into madness by the character you knew was going to go crazy after watching him onscreen for three minutes. His changes made the plot boring but he saved his horrible adaptation of the story by being a really good filmmaker. Then again, isn't that the case with a lot of his movies?

you know, I've heard that criticism before about casting Nicholson, and I still don't buy it. Ignoring the idea that making him already unstable goes against the book (because fuck the book and its bloated hedge monsters and ghost sacrifice or whatever), why would it be better if the audience didn't know he was going to be the crazy one?

Kubrick changed the plot from evil ghosts literally possessing a fairly regular guy to a vague force essentially warping an unstable guy into balls-out madness. How is that boring?

Stephen King was right -- this, being shittier, is a better adaptation of a Stephen King story.

I like the man's books but honestly, fuck him if he wants to criticize Kubrick for twisting his crap into a great horror film.

To each their own I guess. I found it boring.

One thing though, the dad in the book wasn't a fairly regular guy, he was an abusive alcoholic who had been fired from his previous job specifically for being violent and unstable. That's why he went to be the caretaker in the first place.

It's undoubtedly King's best, and most likely lasting, contribution to literature. King is basically the 20th century Charles Dickens. If you want to know what life was like in the 1880s, you read Dickens, and if you want to know what the man on the street in the 1980s was neurotic about, you read King.

For every Bleak House or every The Shining, however, there was four or five Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppes and Christines.

Kubrick - suspension of disbelief.
King - suspension of crack in tap water.

That's a fantastic idea.

Five stars in support of this idea.