Review time, wouldn't that shock you!?!  I tell you what will, its Stephen King day...

Storm Of The Century - stars Timothy Daly, Colm Feore

The first story that King penned for the big screen.  Not a book adaptation, but written for the screen, and specifically designed as a TV mini-series.  Interesting?  Well its King, so you can imagine it ain't gonna be boring.

The story centres around Little Tall, an island off the coast of - you're gonna love this - Maine.  What is it with King and Maine???  Anyhoo, yeah so as a big storm heads for Little Tall and the residents brace themselves for the worse, a mysterious stranger arrives and without rhyme nor reason, kills a much loved elderly lady.  Attention getter?  You bet, Little Tall is in hysterics at the loss of the old Mrs, but even after he's locked up, strange things continue to happen between the people, with a message: "Give me what I want, and I'll go away."  They realise this stranger isn't what they first thought and he seems to know them all very well.  Secrets come out, conflicts arise, but at the end of the day, he isn't going anywhere until he gets what he wants.  So what is it?

Its a classic story there's no doubt.  It moves along smoothly albeit it a little slow at times and doens't do the jump about thing the King oh-so-loves.  And talk about angst at finding out what this dark stranger wants, the flick had me gagging for it.  Feore as the stranger is really good and Daly playing the town sheriff is also really good.  I really can't go into the plot too much because everything spoils everything.  For anyone who watched and enjoyed Red Rose, knock yourselves out caus' you'll dig this just the same, and be equally aware that you've got another four and a half hours in front of you too.  3 and a half stars.

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining - stars Jack Nicolson

Imagine if Stanley Kubrick got a hold of a Stephen King novel and brought it to the big screen?  Could you get any more out there then that???  Welcome to The Shining, a simple story of cabin fever and a bit of the supernatural thrown in.  Jack (Nicolson) takes a job as the winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, he brings along wife and child and proceeds to go completely nuts.  Nutty stuff ensues.

The thing that frustrates me about King's writing is his insistence of skipping forward, skipping backward, chopping and changing the present as we read it.  According to the screen adaptation of this however, he didn't do it.  But is that just caus' Kubrick was too intent of filming "stuff" than worry about the story-line itself?  Did he get creative licence on this one?  Well apparantly not, in the little reading up I've done on this "masterpiece" his version of the book ain't quite what King had in mind.  The thing that frustrates me about Kubrick is his insistence on filming "stuff" as I said before.  And simply for the sake of it.  Storyline has never been high on the Kubrick agenda, so if King's The Shining was any good you wouldn't garner that from this flick.

Nicolson's totally evil from the getgo whether or not that was the intention, and his wife is just plain stupid.  Both characters have Kubrick written all over them, the son on the other hand, whose "shining" we see a lot of in the shape of Kubrick-shots (there's no other word them I'm afraid) is priceless, and get this - young Danny Lloyd never acted again other than a small appearance two years later in a telemovie.  He won the role from a list of 5000 that were auditioned for the role, go figure.  Actually I wouldn't blame him, getting instructions like "stand there for five hours while I film your hair" probably put him off the gig for life, lol.

Lets hope David Lynch doesn't like King books too much, lol.  3 stars.

Just as a post-script, "Stephen King's The Shining" is also available for hire, I'm actually interested to go out and get this one now to compare stories.  I thought Kubrick's was the only screen version, seems not.  Moral of the story is, do your reading Benno you git!

BH