version used to have a few different aesthetics (one was having a blank square of color like an autechre album cover as his av + posting mark fell quotes + coldly praising the "sound design" of gloomy dub techno and post-dubstep tracks) but at some point he decided to go all in on the mid century tough guy gentleman aesthetic
The Shining
IdleRich
IdleRich
Anyone seen the sequel to The Shining? I haven't got the patience to read through twelve pages just to find out so I'm just gonna go straight in and tell you what I'm thinking...
It's called Dr Sleep and I'm watching it now cos it was on telly last night and I watched the first bit then and then paused it to finish off today. When it started and I was just idly watching it it took me ages to work out what the hell it was cos, although it's set some thirty years after The Shining, at the start it has bits with the kid and his mum and the caretaker as they were at the Overlook Hotel - and they do that by having actors who look a lot like the original ones but who clearly aren't them. At first it didn't cross my mind that it could be an actual sequel - although I now I've looked it up I do remember hearing about it and seeing people talking about it but I completely forgot straight away. Forgetting the title would be understandable in that it has no link to the original film, but I totally forgot that it existed at all, and as a result when it came on and I saw this kid riding round a hotel on a tricycle and talking to this woman who looked a lot like Wendy Duval, the only thing I could think was that it had to be some kind of pisstake or at least parody of the The Shining cos of the lookalikes and also cos it looks really sort of cheap. The main character is this bloke who looks a lot like Ewan McGregror, in fact it looks so much like him I kept pausing it and looking really carefully before I could conclude definitively, once and for all that it isn't him - although it should have been obvious that there is no way such a big star would appear in something that was obviously made on a shoestring and direct to dvd.*
It's a very odd film cos, despite having many of the same characters the two films feel completely different. I suppose a big part of that is cos one of them was directed by a talentless hack who seemingly turns out random films in whatever genre is required and who threw out most of the plot from the book to create a muddled mess of a film, and the new one is by this guy Mike Flanagan I know next to nothing about except that he directed a film about a haunted mirror which I watched a few years back.
I said that it's a very odd film which was a really poor choice of words cos one of the things that is peculiar about it is how normal and literal it is, while The Shining was ultimately a mysterious film which left lots unexplained, this one - after a confusing start (especially confusing if you think it's a parody) with lots of different characters in lots of different places - soon resolves itself into a rather straight-forward story that has exactly the same plot as David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks.
It turns out that Danny Torrance (McGregor) has grown up into a beardy alcoholic who tries to hide his shining by being drunk all the time - which was lucky for him I guess cos the antagonist Rose The Hat leads a group of psychic vampires called The True Knot who hunt down children who are gifted with the shining and torture them to death so that they release a substance called steam which they need to consume to remain alive. The film splits into three parts with one bit following Rose and her evil friends, another following Danny and a third following a powerful child who will yield enough steam to nourish the baddies for ages. I'm guessing that Danny and the child must join forces to defeat Rose and co before she eats them.
*It is him
It's called Dr Sleep and I'm watching it now cos it was on telly last night and I watched the first bit then and then paused it to finish off today. When it started and I was just idly watching it it took me ages to work out what the hell it was cos, although it's set some thirty years after The Shining, at the start it has bits with the kid and his mum and the caretaker as they were at the Overlook Hotel - and they do that by having actors who look a lot like the original ones but who clearly aren't them. At first it didn't cross my mind that it could be an actual sequel - although I now I've looked it up I do remember hearing about it and seeing people talking about it but I completely forgot straight away. Forgetting the title would be understandable in that it has no link to the original film, but I totally forgot that it existed at all, and as a result when it came on and I saw this kid riding round a hotel on a tricycle and talking to this woman who looked a lot like Wendy Duval, the only thing I could think was that it had to be some kind of pisstake or at least parody of the The Shining cos of the lookalikes and also cos it looks really sort of cheap. The main character is this bloke who looks a lot like Ewan McGregror, in fact it looks so much like him I kept pausing it and looking really carefully before I could conclude definitively, once and for all that it isn't him - although it should have been obvious that there is no way such a big star would appear in something that was obviously made on a shoestring and direct to dvd.*
It's a very odd film cos, despite having many of the same characters the two films feel completely different. I suppose a big part of that is cos one of them was directed by a talentless hack who seemingly turns out random films in whatever genre is required and who threw out most of the plot from the book to create a muddled mess of a film, and the new one is by this guy Mike Flanagan I know next to nothing about except that he directed a film about a haunted mirror which I watched a few years back.
I said that it's a very odd film which was a really poor choice of words cos one of the things that is peculiar about it is how normal and literal it is, while The Shining was ultimately a mysterious film which left lots unexplained, this one - after a confusing start (especially confusing if you think it's a parody) with lots of different characters in lots of different places - soon resolves itself into a rather straight-forward story that has exactly the same plot as David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks.
It turns out that Danny Torrance (McGregor) has grown up into a beardy alcoholic who tries to hide his shining by being drunk all the time - which was lucky for him I guess cos the antagonist Rose The Hat leads a group of psychic vampires called The True Knot who hunt down children who are gifted with the shining and torture them to death so that they release a substance called steam which they need to consume to remain alive. The film splits into three parts with one bit following Rose and her evil friends, another following Danny and a third following a powerful child who will yield enough steam to nourish the baddies for ages. I'm guessing that Danny and the child must join forces to defeat Rose and co before she eats them.
*It is him
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IdleRich
IdleRich
I'm intrigued by the similarities between this and The Bone Clocks though, in Mitchell's book there are two groups of powerful immortals who battle each other throughout history, the good guys have a kind of naturally occurring immortality but the bad guys are psychic vampires who can only survive by tracking down psychic children and torturing them to death before transmuting their essence into black wine which they drink.
The Shining was written by Stephen King in 1977 and Doctor Sleep in 2013 - has anyone read The Shining? Do you know if this idea about an evil society that feed on shiners is in it? If not did it it come in any of his other books or did he first mention it in 2013?
David Mitchell wrote The Bone Clocks in 2014 and I think it is the first book of his that has this idea of a group of immortals that survive like this in it, however almost all of his books have characters in them that overlap with his other books (going right back to his first book Ghostrwittten in 1999), some of them appear to be descendants of others but others turn out to be the same person hundreds of years later ie immortal. And in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet there is an evil Japanese immortal guy who has a prison of captive women he uses for breeding children that he eats to maintain his eternal youth.
In other words, it seems to me that both King and Mitchell came up with this idea of a society of immortals that survive by eating the essences of psychic children - and both of them wrote books that contained the set-up but from which no-one reading it would be able to glean that idea until the concluding book emerged many years later. So, as far as I can tell, neither can have copied the other, they both came up with the same strange idea independently, but more than that they both decided to write about this society in the same way in that they wrote books that laid the groundwork but left it literally decades before they wrote the final book which explained that.
I almost feel that there is a piece that I am missing here - could there be another book with the same idea that they both nicked it from? Or did King touch on this idea in other books before he got to Dr Sleep? Has anyone else noticed this similarity or heard it mentioned anywhere else? Or better still heard it discussed or explained?
The Shining was written by Stephen King in 1977 and Doctor Sleep in 2013 - has anyone read The Shining? Do you know if this idea about an evil society that feed on shiners is in it? If not did it it come in any of his other books or did he first mention it in 2013?
David Mitchell wrote The Bone Clocks in 2014 and I think it is the first book of his that has this idea of a group of immortals that survive like this in it, however almost all of his books have characters in them that overlap with his other books (going right back to his first book Ghostrwittten in 1999), some of them appear to be descendants of others but others turn out to be the same person hundreds of years later ie immortal. And in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet there is an evil Japanese immortal guy who has a prison of captive women he uses for breeding children that he eats to maintain his eternal youth.
In other words, it seems to me that both King and Mitchell came up with this idea of a society of immortals that survive by eating the essences of psychic children - and both of them wrote books that contained the set-up but from which no-one reading it would be able to glean that idea until the concluding book emerged many years later. So, as far as I can tell, neither can have copied the other, they both came up with the same strange idea independently, but more than that they both decided to write about this society in the same way in that they wrote books that laid the groundwork but left it literally decades before they wrote the final book which explained that.
I almost feel that there is a piece that I am missing here - could there be another book with the same idea that they both nicked it from? Or did King touch on this idea in other books before he got to Dr Sleep? Has anyone else noticed this similarity or heard it mentioned anywhere else? Or better still heard it discussed or explained?
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shakahislop
Well-known member
william_kent
Well-known member
yes, but... I remember enjoying it, but as much as i want to join in the conversation here... I can't actually remember anything about it, even though it was only a few months ago.. unlike the Kubrick version which is etched into my memory.. I can only conclude that it was somewhat "lacking"
King is certainly aware of the Bone Clocks though - i seem to recall that he praised it, so he is obviously aware ( ah, wikipedia says "called one of the best novels of 2014 by Stephen King." )
IdleRich
IdleRich
OK... a quick google....
And this review begins...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1088364623
And...
https://youdontreadiwontgotobedwithyou.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/the-bone-clocks-david-mitchell/
OK, so it has at least been noticed, I was thinking that it had to have been really.
And this review begins...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1088364623
And...
https://youdontreadiwontgotobedwithyou.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/the-bone-clocks-david-mitchell/
OK, so it has at least been noticed, I was thinking that it had to have been really.
