The Stand is my answer to a question that some friends routinely ask, namely, what book would you recommend as compelling to read but hardly great literature, a sort of guilty pleasure if you like? King is my go-to guy for this. I find almost all movies from his books to be too hammy for words, though I can enjoy Nicholson in The Shining. Somehow on the page King is more compelling. I read the Stand a couple of times in my life, and have encouraged my less-than-enthusiastic son to use it as a way into reading novels for fun. In fact, when I start a vacation, or at least when I had vacations, I'd often take a King novel along as it sort of signaled to my brain that this was downtime. You kind of know what you're going to get and yes, some of the characters are less than developed, shall we say, but I think King has a real talent for storytelling and his output is phenomenal. And yes, I would watch this new version if I ever get the chance just because.
Having just read the expanded edition of the book during the summer lockdown, my interest was piqued by this, but Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abigail? No thanks.
11/22/63 is one of favorite books by any author but I only made it through three episodes of the TV series.
They filmed a bunch of this around here. Fingers crossed that a Canadian network picks it up because it's my favourite King book.
I agree. That series could have been great if it had more closely followed the book. A missed opportunity.
Haven't read that book so I enjoyed the series very much. Even if I didn't enjoy it, I would have continued watching simply for the fact that the character Sadie Dunhill is one of the most lovely, beautiful and charming in tv history.
I really liked the character when I read the book, and then when I watched the miniseries, I fell madly in love!
Stand By Me and David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone are two movies that I thought adapted King's prose to film quite brilliantly. For both films, you had a) a script that followed the fiction pretty closely and b) a work that was fairly subtle and restrained, for King. Pet Sematary is a great King novel that still needs a great adaptation. There are things I liked about both film versions, but neither quite made the mark for me (though Fred Gwynne in the first one is just about how I imagined Judd would be when I read the book).
A short trailer just played this morning for The Stand, first one for me on 'regular tv'. Does this mean that I'm not watching enough on the telly, or that CBS/AA is not hitting it very hard in the promo department? Anyway, I've seen better trailers, but it won't matter. I am very stoked, as I was over 25 years ago when the book was christened on the air. It is too bad Sarah Gadon from the 11.22.63 series was not cast in The Stand.
Gotta admit, though the 11/22/63 adaptation wasn't perfect, it was a damnsight better than the Under The Dome series was! A remake of The Stand...sounds cool, and I admit I'd be more enthused if it wasn't for, you know, what's gone down in 2020 with Coronavirus etc...
Oh, absolutely. I bailed on Under The Dome after one show and a couple of later token efforts to watch that had me shut it off after about 5 minutes. But honestly, I didn't think that the book was that great either. 11/22/63 was some of King's best work, and arguably the best of his later novels, IMHO. So maybe it was impossible for the series to live up to that.
Just watched the first episode, so far so good and enjoying the flashback nature of how they're showing the story
Couldn't wait 'til prime time heh? Can't blame you, I have been juiced from the moment upon seeing some i-news on the remake awhile back. I am holding steady for prime time since thinking it would be a network event for months. Thank you for the update, cheers...
Sure, but the hatewatch factor with Under the Dome couldn't be beat. It came right at the height of the late, lamented Television Without Pity website, and the forums there were brutal (and hilarious). But it wasn't hard to do when you had stuff like the heroine walking around for two weeks after she got shot with her bloody bandage over her trouser leg.
Just watched episode 1. I'm very disappointed that they used the flashbacks as a framing device. By scrambling the story and telling it out of order, I feel like the impact that the amazing first half of the book has is somewhat diminished. I'm wondering how much impact the Lincoln Tunnel scene is going to have as a flashback, for example. That said, there's a lot of positive in this series so far. Casting is great, awesome acting jobs from those who have appeared already, dialogue is not at all corny, and it's definitely the opposite of the low budget TV movie the 94 version came off as stylistically (it's even streaming in Dolby Vision and looks gorgeous on my TV). Their choice of music is also amazing and definitely befitting King's use of music in this story.
Hi: I’ll prob get killed for this but: I thought the book was a bit much. Too long and too heavily in your face. In fact, I felt that about a lot of King’s books. He pulls hard on obvious heart strings. I think his best original book was “The Dead Zone”. An original plot with a nice ending. The Movie deviated from the book toward the end. But it wasn’t bad. I liked the start of both the movie snd the book, “The Stand”. However, Midway through both the plot became a little tedious. But that’s my opinion.
A great story terribly told is my opinion based on watching the first episode. The Stand is one of my favorite books (the first version not that bloated expanded edition). I've been looking forward to this since I heard it was being shot. The casting is fine, maybe a few too many pretty actors but it's ok. The problem is the storytelling. I'm familiar with the story after reading the book 7 or 8 times but I had problems at times figuring out what was going on. Using flashbacks for this story diminishes the impact of their killer pandemic. There's no backstories on the characters & there's barely anyone I know, much less care about. No matter how bad this gets, I'll be along for the ride but I so hope it gets better.
If the power was shut off in Frannie's house, how was she playing Black Sabbath Volume IV on a turntable?
I blame Quentin Tarantino - it seems that ever since Pulp Fiction it’s no longer acceptable to tell a linear story, thousands of years of story-telling history be damned. I’m sick to death of the flashback narrative technique. The flashback can be used effectively - the first seasons of Orange is the New Black, for instance, used extended flashbacks to tell the various inmate’s backstories, but the flashbacks never interfered with the central plot lines. I liked the first half of The Stand, with its gradually accumulating horror, much more than the apocalyptic second half and I’m sorry to hear that the new series producers have decided to go in a different direction. Maybe after it’s all over someone will do an edit that restructures it chronologically.
Try watching Westworld on HBO. It looks absolutely gorgeous and is at times quite compelling, but they take the non-linear storyline to extremes only hinted at in Pulp Fiction and with little to no explanation, explicit or implicit. I haven't watched Season 3 yet, so I have no idea if they continued down that road.
I watched the first season of Westworld but wasn’t compelled to continue. Entertainment Weekly had the third season on their Worst of the Year list saying - “Everything went wrong when the quirky robo-Western rebooted itself into a bland tech-noir cheesefest.”
