So I'm Watching 'The Shining' For the Millionth Time.......

Sheeeeit, I wish my SO brought me sandwiches while I was working period.

I actually just saw it the other day—or, at least, skimmed through it. It’s available for free on Internet Archive (at the moment, that is). Stephen King likes his miniseries, yeah, but what about The Shining made it so necessary to make a six-hour miniseries?! You could have chopped off about half of it and had—pretty much everything. There’s so much padding in it that after a half hour or so I started skipping through it.

It’s to King’s credit that he put his (or ABC’s) money where his mouth was and not only criticize the movie but also make his own version. (And it’s King’s influence, not the director’s or anyone else’s, that dominates the production, right down to the goofiness—curiously a King trait.) But that’s a backhanded compliment on my part, because I thought the miniseries was pretty much awful. In Doug “Nostalgia Critic” Walker’s review, he keeps saying that it isn’t scary, and he’s right, but even more than the subjective “scariness” criterion, for long sequences nothing happens on-screen. Because the director didn’t know how to build tension, as Kubrick did, much of the massive running time feels like scenes of people wandering around a rather quaint and cozy hotel. (King might have gotten a spooky feeling from the Stanley Hotel, but it certainly doesn’t come across in this production.)

But Walker’s right about the “scary” thing. For a guy who has made his living in scaring people, King doesn’t seem to get what’s scary, certainly not in film or on television: he has a weakness for goofiness, exemplified here in a shot where he gets a close-up while playing the bandleader. How on earth does he think that cheap makeup and wolf masks (!) are scary, let alone an evil fire hose? He enjoys the sillier adaptations of his works, and that’s just his taste, but it certainly has nothing to do with horror. Is he somehow unable to take film seriously? Because I’ve read some King, and his books are scary, and he’s a good writer.

I actually thought Steven Weber, the guy from Wings, wasn’t too bad. Early on he seems to be sleepwalking through the role (literally), but as it goes on he’s better. (As one YouTube reviewer insightfully noted, though, for all of King’s criticisms of Nicholson’s Nicholson-ness from the beginning of the movie, King’s script lays on the hints at the ending so thick in the beginning of the miniseries that this Jack’s journey is no more tragic than movie-Jack’s.) As everyone says, Rebecca de Mornay was the best part of the whole thing: her Wendy, completely different from Shelley Duvall’s, is very good (though she screams just as much as Shelley did!). I don’t want to criticize child-actors too much, but, yeah, the kid was annoying—much more so than Danny Lloyd, I thought. Melvin Van Peebles doesn’t compare to Scatman Crothers.

Sorry for turning this all into a rant, but it just annoyed me that King finally got the version he wanted, and it stinks. Still, it’s fascinating to compare how good Kubrick made his version with how poor King made his.

Now THERE'S an annoying character...

I think you just don't like Wendy and "Doc".   There are basically two camps here.  And I like Wendy a lot.  She is appealing and sympathetic and beautifully brought to life.   Of course, I am biased myself as I love me some Shelly Duvall.   Her energy waves were sublime.

Yes, I think Robert Altman was the perfect actor's director.  His manner of getting the actor to respond seemed so much "healthier" and every bit as vital as Kurbick.  Of course, Shelley is very effective here as well.   She had such vulnerability, it was stunning.   And so cute in her own manner.  She was never unsympathetic.   Even when she was unkind to Pinky, she was always so human.  I love her.   I don't know if I could fully trust somebody who thought Shelly was outright ugly.