🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MPG.147c552bc22c5886989688@news.cwru.edu>, Joshua Wehner 
<long_night@my-dejanews.com> wrote:

> In article <200011150837.DAA26123@pom.INS.CWRU.Edu>, rlh15@po.cwru.edu 
> says...
> > Saturday, 11/18, we're featuring The Shining.  Possibly the only good 
> > film adaptation of a Stephen King book, this film is directed by 
> > master Stanley Kubrick.  As if that were'nt enough, The Shining also 
> > features Jack Nicholson doing what he does best--a crazy bad guy. 
> 
> A lot of people liked Shawshank Redemption...

The 'shank isn't a book, it's a novella.  Which is probably why it and 
"Stand By Me" (a.k.a. "The Body") didn't have to be butchered when they 
were turned into screenplays.  Which, not coincidentally, is why they 
are also among the very, very few movies that are on the same (high) 
quality level as the "book" versions.

But I digress...the point is, Kubrick's "The Shining" does, in fact, 
kick serious cinematic butt.  Don't be swayed by the fact that Stephen 
King himself hated Kubrick's version enough to re-make it.  King's 
criticism is partly justified--any time you cut something like 400 pages 
of material, there's bound to be some damage--but misses the point that  
the movie is still a great movie, even if it isn't really the same story 
that he originally wrote.

King's version is a much better adaptation of the book; being a TV 
mini-series some 2 hours longer than the movie, it ought to be (having 
suffered much less from editing down the runtime).  But I don't think it 
packs the same punch as Kubrick's version--the combination of Kubrick's 
cinematography & Nicholson's nut-case acting (?) is just too cool.