Home » Posts tagged "media tie-ins" (Page 12)

The Shining in Book and Film: Guest Post by Elizabeth Eckhart

There are so many good reasons to write about The Shining right now. Stephen King’s birthday was September 21– born in 1947, he now             officially qualifies for Social Security benefits. We can only hope he doesn’t retire!

 

As almost a birthday gift from him to his readers, his newest release,  Doctor Sleep, was released last week, and since then, it has hit the bestseller lists with a bang, taking the #1 slot last week. How does   this relate to The Shining?

Well,  Doctor Sleep is the long-awaited sequel to The Shining, telling the story of what became of Danny Torrance.

 

 

 

The Shining was made into a very effective movie by Stanley Kubrick, and there’s been debate in the past over the translation from book to film.

In the spirit of, well, getting “into the spirit”for King’s newest book, out just in time for our haunted holiday, writer Elizabeth Eckhart has written a little about the movie and the book, and why they’re controversial among fans.

 

Enjoy! And if you’re interested in following through on any of these, the images you see to the side are direct links to Amazon. All you have to do is click!

 

 The Shining in Book and Film

By Elizabeth Eckhart

Stephen King’s The Shining, originally published in 1977, was a commercial success and helped to cement the author’s stature in the world of popular literature. The book also served as the basis for a Stanley Kubrick film of the same name which, despite being panned by critics upon its initial release in 1980, is now regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time.

The novel, in summary, follows the story of a character named Jack Torrance, a writer and recovering alcoholic with a violent temper. Jack lives with his Wife Wendy and young son Danny, who is imbued with psychic power. After Torrance loses his job as a high school teacher for hitting a student, he manages to secure a job as the caretaker for the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. The family will live in the hotel throughout winter. The Overlook is inhabited by ghosts, who Danny can see and commune with. Danny becomes friendly with the Overlook’s cook, Dick Halloran, who also has Danny’s psychic ability. Eventually, the ghosts start to communicate with Jack, and they persuade him to murder his family, as previous caretakers had done in the hotel.

At the climax of the book, Jack is chasing after his wife and son with a roque mallet, and the topiary animals outside of the hotel come to life. Dick Halloran tries to intervene to save the family, and he is viciously attacked by Jack. Jack regains composure long enough to try to save his family, and the boiler room explodes as Wendy and Danny escape.

Now, 36 years after the initial publication of King’s novel, a sequel has been slated for release this month. King’s new book is titled Doctor Sleep, and it will reportedly follow the story of Danny Torrance, the child with extrasensory perception from The Shining, as a grown man. Torrance is now in his 40’s and works in upstate New York as a hospice care provider who uses his special abilities to soothe terminally ill patients as they’re dying. King has also disclosed that a gang of vampires with psychic abilities become involved in the story at some point…

With talk of this new sequel, one can’t help but wonder how the new book will perform in the marketplace, and whether or not public interest will merit a film adaptation. King has produced a huge volume of work over the course of his career (well over 50 novels, and that’s not even accounting for scripts or shorts), and a large percentage of those works have been adapted for either TV mini-series or feature length films. Some adaptations have been strong, while others have left much to be desired.

The Shining makes particularly good fodder for this discussion, as it long since polarized fans. For all the similarities between King’s novel and Kubrick’s film, there are many differences. Stephen King himself was highly critical of Kubrick’s film when it was originally released.

In more abstract terms, the tonal differences between the two seemed to be a product of the artists’ conflicting spiritual ideologies. King’s work is commonly laden with spiritual undertones, whereas a defining characteristic of Kubrick’s films is a cynicism so potent that, at times, it borders on misanthropy. King’s biggest complaint with the film was that Kubrick dedicated too much attention to the neurosis of Jack Torrence, and directed a film which places too much emphasis on the mental instability and volatility innate to the character, while undermining the more supernatural parts of the story. King felt that Kubrick’s religious skepticism made for a situation where, because Kubrick himself couldn’t believe in supernatural occurrences, he failed to produce a believable film. King also did not like Kubrick’s decision to cast Jack Nicholson, as Nicholson already had a reputation for playing brooding and neurotic characters, and his descent into insanity would hardly surprise viewers. King had hoped for an actor who would evoke more sympathy from viewers. King’s notion was that the character was troubled, but fundamentally moral, and that he fell victim to the corrosive influence of the spirits in the hotel. In the mid-nineties, King directed his own adaptation of The Shining, which was a three-part mini-series for ABC. Was this version truer to King’s novel? Perhaps. Was it more compelling? It was certainly no Kubrick film…

In more concrete terms, though, there are several differences between the book and the film. Kubrick’s version substitutes a large hedge maze for topiary animals. In the book, the Overlook burns down and Jack Torrance perishes in a boiler room explosion, whereas in the movie, he freezes to death in the hedge maze.

Another key difference is that in King’s novel, Jack Torrance doesn’t end up actually murdering anyone. In the movie, however, Jack kills Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers). The book ends more optimistically, with Dick Halloran spending time with Danny over a summer vacation on the east coast. In the film, we get one extended zoom on a photograph of a full ballroom, with the image dated in the forties — but there, in the very foreground of the image, stands Jack Nicholson. Apparently, his spirit has been permanently integrated into the restless community of ghosts in the hotel.

The Shining, both the book and the film, occupy a very special place within our collective cultural consciousness. We see it referenced and parodied everywhere, from TV cartoons to countless other feature length horror novels and films. Let’s hope that this new novel from King serves as an adequate follow up to The Shining, and resonates with the public; and, if popular interest merits it, let’s hope that whatever film treatment it receives does the book justice.
Author Bio: Elizabeth Eckhart is a film and entertainment writer for DirectTVcomparison.com. She still considers the The Shining Jack Nicholson’s most powerful role, and is excited/concerned about the upcoming sequel. She lives and works in Chicago.

 

Posted on October 9, 2013 by , Reply

Banned Books Week: America’s Top Ten Countdown

 

Hey, it’s Banned Books Week!  The news is out now from ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom– the top ten banned and challenged titles for the year! And we’re counting them down here, just like Casey Kasem!

Thank you, Casey Kasem, for counting them down with us!

At number 10, Beloved by Toni Morrison took the place of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Both titles are often challenged, and have appeared on and off the top ten list over the last several years.

At number 9, newcomer The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls took the place of The Gossip Girls series by Cecily von Ziegesar, a series that has been in and out of the top 10 over the last ten years.

At number 8, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a favorite here that’s no stranger to challenges (last seen on the top ten list in 2008), jumped back into the top ten, displacing What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones, which also made the top ten in 2010 and 2011.

At number 7, newcomer Looking for Alaska by John Green displaced Brave New World  by Aldous Huxley. Brave New World had been in the top ten since 2010.

At number 6, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, which also made the list in 2008, took the place of the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor,  which has made the list three times in the past ten years.

At number 5,  the heartwarming story of a penguin family, And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, moved The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie… but we haven’t seen the end of that, so stay with me! As a side note, And Tango Makes Three has been number one four times and number 2 once in the past ten years already. Those penguins are alarming folk, apparently.

At number 4, the controversial erotica title Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, overshadowed My Mom’s Having a Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy by Dori Hillestand Butler.

At number 3, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher displaced… The Hunger Games trilogy. Yes, really. With all the media attention directed to The Hunger Games, I’m kind of surprised those books didn’t make the top ten.

At number 2, guess what shows up? The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie actually moved UP the list, displacing The Color of Earth, a Korean manga series, entirely.

And… the number one banned or challenged book in the United States this past year is….. drumroll, please….

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS!  

Now, I’m not a fan of potty humor, but really? What does this say about us as a society that the books most objected to in the country are challenged because of poop jokes?  Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series knocked the series ttyn; ttyl; l8r, g8r by Lauren Myracle out of first place. Both series have had frequent appearances, in the top ten, though. That means her books will probably be back.

Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to have a list like this every year? It’s great to hear how we should all promote literacy and do our best to put books into kids’ hands, to give them ownership. But look at the books in our top ten countdown here. Every one of them is a book a teen or child might read. Some might only read them in school, but some of them are absolutely written for and intended to be set in the hands of the people we want to be growing readers and thinking individuals. So a book makes a few people uneasy. How can we dare to take it away from everyone?

And that’s the Monster Librarian, counting them down. America’s Top Ten Banned Books. Now go find a copy of one and read it! And find a second one, and give it to a teen or child who otherwise might miss out on some really good reads. Or at least some quality potty humor.

 

 

 

 

Posted on September 23, 2013 by , Reply

Unmasking The Phantom of the Opera @ Your Library

        

      

(Can you find the phantoms pictured above mentioned below?)

When I was in high school, the frenzy over the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom of the Opera was in full sway, at least for the theater geeks. In the days before there were places to share fanfiction online, my friend Mindy filled legal pads with stories that put her in the role of Christine Daae. I cannot ever begin to tell you how many times I listened to the music, forwarding and rewinding to the best parts (yay for audiotapes)!  I saved money for six months to go on the drama club field trip to New York where we stayed in a ratty hotel near Times Square and saw Broadway shows every night, of course including Phantom of the Opera. That show, in what I remember as an enormous, elegant theater, pulled us in to become a part of it. I’ll never forget the giant crystal chandelier over the audience crashing down onto the stage (not over me, because I was in one of the cheap balcony seats high up in the back– but what a view)! That show, along with The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I also saw on that trip, slammed home to me the power of live performance. I loved musicals before, but I’ve been an opera fiend ever since.

But I am a reader. And having learned that the musical was based on a book, I tracked down my own copy of the novel by Gaston Leroux and read it cover to cover, including the introductory notes. I must have a shorter attention span these days, or maybe it’s trying to read it while also putting the kids to bed that made it difficult to get through the first pages, but as with Frankenstein, it’s worth it. You can get lost in Leroux’s Paris Opera House, where the novel is set.  It’s not difficult to see how the superstitious could come  to believe their theater was haunted.  Lloyd Webber couldn’t replicate the details of Leroux’s book, but in a theater, suggestion is a powerful element in establishing setting. I looked forward to seeing how the musical would translate to film. And it didn’t, really. Trying to include the minute details that work so well in the book onto the screen just didn’t have the power of either the story or the musical, and it failed them both. The sad truth is that, as much as book lovers often say that the adaptation failed because it wasn’t true to the book, sometimes the adaptation fails because it tries too hard.

The classic horror film is a totally different creature. I have to admit I have never seen it all the way through. I have seen the unmasking scene, though. There is something about black and white that strips a story down to its basics, and Lon Chaney, Sr. is terrifying, with makeup, lighting, and camera shots combining to make some very scary moments. I was introduced to this short video of the unmasking scene that shows two different versions of the unmasking scene, the original and the one most of us are familiar with, and in the original, it appears that he is looking straight out at us as his disfigured face emerges from the shadows in a very menacing way.

Since I haven’t seen the entire thing I can’t say for sure how it compares to Leroux’s novel, but I can say this, just from watching these two versions of the same scene– it doesn’t take much to alter the look, meaning, and feel of  a story or character. Small changes make a big difference.

It’s kind of astonishing, the ways the Phantom of the Opera has morphed through our culture, taking its place in the pantheon of iconic monsters we learn about even from picture books and poetry (like Adam Rex’s Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich). There are references and appearances everywhere, from video games to music, romance novels to children’s series books(the Bailey School Kids strike again!), comics to television cartoons. While sometimes he’s still presented as a frightening monster, he’s not threatening to most people today in the way he once was.  The Phantom doesn’t get the kind of press the major monsters do, so librarians take note: tis the season to find those variations and give them the spotlight. There’s something there for everyone, from Twilight-loving teens and tweens, to horror fans, to seven year old monster lovers (I’m not going to list them here, but Amazon shows at least a dozen adaptations for children at varying reading levels).

Whether he’s presented as a disfigured monster, a romantic antihero, or a rooster who dreams of singing opera, though, the masked Phantom can awaken imagination, and, I hope, draw them in to his world, opening eyes to the many forms of the music of the night.

Posted on September 20, 2013 by , Reply
First « 1011121314 » Last