Molly Ringwald? Robe Lowe? Now I’ll have to watch that.
Molly Ringwald is the weakest link in an otherwise stellar cast. Totally miscast in the role.
Also, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar makes an appearance!
I don’t see that the 1994 version is available to stream. I’d like to watch it again.
Thanks. Justwatch said it wasn’t available for streaming. Same with IMDB.
The first third of that (with the start of the plague and the effects) still hold up as some of the scariest shit ever put out there, and the book was even scarier. No supernatural stuff - just a chain of events that I have no problems believing would actually happen.
Don’t have CBS streaming service, so I won’t be able to see the new version. But not sure I want to anyway.
Older mini-series above - overall did pretty well. I wish they hadn’t have combined so many characters, but even mini-series have a time limit, I suppose.
My memory finds more reasons than you might think to dredge up him ringing that bell and shouting, “He’s here! The monster’s here, the dark man’s here!”
This week’s episode was so great. Stephen King’s characters are great. At this point I care a lot about all of them. Even the evil ones! :)
Yeah, you really can’t top Gary Sinese as Stu Redman and the amazing Miguel Ferrer as Lloyd. And Ed Harris.
And even though they can’t act, the director and Abdul-Jabbar are fun.
I met Laura San Giacomo once at a film festival party and she was extremely charming (shorter than I thought she’d be!). Just love her in the miniseries and Sex, Lies and Videotape.
Great write up in this and your subsequent post. When I heard about the structural changes I just completely lost interest in this adaptation - not just because it strips out and mangles the most entertaining part of the story (the end of world collapse), but because doing so betrays such a fundamental lack of understanding of how King’s story works that the director is clearly a complete moron, so I had zero faith that the remainder of the translation wouldn’t be riddled with stupidity.
If, when it’s all aired, it’s proclaimed as a masterpiece (lol) I’ll maybe reconsider - but that structural change is such a fatal flaw in reasoning that I’ll be equally wary of further judgments from the flingers of praise until verified.
And Ossie Davis as The Judge, his wife Ruby Dee as Mother Abigail, and Ray Walston as Glen Bateman. Those three old-timers lent some gravitas to the whole thing.
Never realized he was married to Ruby Dee! Yeah, they were all good. And whoever it was who played Tom Cullen - not a superlative actor but he pulled off that character wonderfully.
Bill Fagerbakke (sp?), also known as Patrick Starfish on Spongebob Squarepants, the big guy from ‘Coach’, and Marshall’s father on ‘How I Met Your Mother.’
Even Matt Frewer was good as the Trashcan Man. Really just a great cast and great adaptation.
When I heard about the changes made to the reboot I also lost interest. I’m surprised that it’s veered away from the book since Stephen King and his son Owen wrote some of the episodes.
I don’t think that the script was written in such a way that there was such a significant departure.
The changes came in post. I believe it was a response due to Covid that the plague and end of the world was de-emphasized with much left on the cutting room floor.
The writing is there; the acting is there. It’s the time-jump narrative that completely fucks with things, and my bet is that was a decision made in post-production after Covid hit.
The finale is in 2 days. I caught up to the current episode.
Some spoiler-filled thoughts about the last couple of episodes. I’ll try to hide them in a wall of text. So skip this post if you haven’t caught up. I really loved the series, but for two flaws. Flaw number 1, I didn’t like how Harold Lauter’s story ended. Maybe it’s faithful to the book, maybe it’s not, but since this 2020 series started off by focusing on Harold, I felt like his journey should have continued longer and he should have been more important at a key moment perhaps. Flaw number 2, the lightning storm was completely unnecessary. Flagg had already teased Abigail about how He doesn’t interfere directly. That’s partially why the good guys feel like such incredible underdogs. You’re fighting people with weapons and a supernatural being at the helm with just words. And they did it! The nuke was in place, the words were effective, they just needed someone to set it off. It would have been much better if it had been set off by a person, not a supernatural event. The direct interference was unnecessary, and undercuts how the being of good works through people, not supernaturally. With that said, I still loved it overall. I think in my own headcanon there was no lightning storm. There. Fixed.
This is a problem with the book, which actually describes a spiritual “hand” setting off the nuke (I think - it’s been 20+ years since I read it). It’s a bad ending, but that’s common for King.
In general I thought the new series did a fine job with the material. Not great. There really aren’t any stand-out performances or even a particular reason for this remake to exist.
I just dislike it when King’s stories end up actually being about God vs. the Devil instead of it being a setting to show good and evil people. It’s just not ambiguous at all, which I don’t love.
I’m rereading The Stand and I just want to say, the lyrics to Baby Can You Dig Your Man absolutely suck. I just can’t fit music to them in my head. Every time I read them it’s like nails on a chalkboard.
Are you thinking late 70’s white-boy soul? I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. “That brown sound gets around.” or some nonsense.
Yeah. He said that to his mother. Who used the n word a few times. Actually several people do.