8 Comments
Oct 17Liked by John Birmingham

great not only another book to my already structurally unsafe to be read pile, but another to add to the to_be_watched listed which currently sees me needing to live until I am 97 to watch them all.

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i always have trepidation about adaptations from King novels. The track record is . . . . varied. But not sure if it is because the themes and nuance of the novels just cant possibly be reproduced faithfully or they go a bit haywire when the movie execs try to mess with his formula/storyline to fit time or budget or whims of fancy or whatever the excuse is.

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author

'Varied' doesn't even begin to describe it. But I have to live with hope.

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11 22 63 was good, hope it stacks up

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One day back in 1990 something I met Traci Lords who was in New Zealand acting in the Tommyknockers movie. And boy howdy she was an American whiner , complete with this intense American accent, she reminded me of Yeardly Smith in my favourite Stephen King movie Maximum Overdrive.

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Stephen King is an excellent writer but I’m not a horror fan which affects my appreciation and my list below.

I have identified 11 Stephen King screen adaptions that I enjoyed, which includes The Langoliers which I thought was wacky fun.

But, for my favourites, I’m only including shows that I have gone out of my way to watch more than once, they are:

The Dead Zone

Stand By Me

The Shawshank Redemption

The Green Mile

A banal list, but there you go. Feel free to post your list.

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Oct 18·edited Oct 18

The 10 episode series format gives me hope; it's no surprise the greatest King adaptions, Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, were drawn from short novellas. And were also decidedly not "Stephen King" formula stories (took me YEARS to join the dots on Stand by Me and The Body). 🤷‍♀️

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*fingers crossed*

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