Rose Red

[Jedi Master Carr]

Part One of this new miniseries was on tonight by Stephen King. I thought it was pretty good, one of the better King miniseries I have seen, the first part runs kind of slow, it to introduce the characters and then get them to the house and also explain what has happened at this house in the past. The movie seems like a combination of Amietville(sp) Horror, The Haunting of Hill House, The House on Haunted Hill (the Price version), and The Legend of Hell House. The second part looks to get very scary plus there is a lot of mystery especially with the character played by Nancy Travis, some parnomarl proffessor who seems to want to house awakended for some unknown reason. The next part is on tomorrow night and it concludes Thursday (I hate it when they do that).

[Figrin D'an]

I'd consider watching it, but I missed the first part, and I've never been overly impressed with the miniseries' made from King's books (or even his 'made for TV' stuff). The TV adaption of 'The Stand' was okay, although it was butchered in parts.

I love King's books... the TV adaptions have never been all that great, IMO.

'Misery' was a great film, though. It still freaks me out when I watch it.

[darth_mcbain]

While some of King's stuff hasn't worked too well on TV, I found this to be quite good. I can't wait for parts 2 and 3.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I actually liked the stand and thought it was one King's better adapted books, I understand what you mean by butchered though, to really capture the book though it would have needed another two nights.

[Jinn Fizz]

I thoroughly enjoyed part one as well. I'm generally leery of miniseries because too often, it seems like the first episode pokes along like very old molasses, but this one moved along at a fairly good clip. It seems to have the usual group of colorful Stephen King characters, and I think it's a good bet already on at least one or two of them who won't live to see the final scene. :cry

I agree, the track record for adaptations of King novels has been dreadfully uneven, especially on TV, but It was very nicely done (Tim Curry was awesome as Pennywise >D ). And I was also highly impressed with The Stand, because it was such a rich storyline, almost impossible to translate to film, but they managed to do as good a job as they possibly could. It was also the first time I'd ever seen Gary Sinise in anything, and he's been a favorite of mine ever since. But as for Molly Ringwald...eh, no offense to her, but I thought she was totally miscast. :x

[Jedi Master Carr]

I agree I didn't like Ringwald in that movie, but I thought the rest of the cast was terrific from Ray Walston, Gary Sinese, Miguel Ferrer, Rob Lowe, to the one that played the antichrist figure I can't remember his name, something Sheridan I think. Part 2 was great, its getting weirder and weirder it looks like the house has already taken one of the females (the pretty one darn it:( ) And has killed I think three people (the last one wasn't clear but it didn't look good for him) I hope that witch of psychologist gets it in Part 3 all she cares about is her book and the same with the winney momma's boy all he cares about is himself. Sands character seems to be the smartest and I think he will survive until the end at least and I think the autistic girl Annie has a major role to play in the last part as well along with the last descendent of the man who built the house, Steve I think his name is. Also I just realized I mispelled the name of the movie in the title of the thread now I feel stupid:o

[darth_mcbain]

In The Stand, it was Jamey Sheridan who played Randall Flagg - and I liked him quite a bit.

As for Rose Red - I really liked part one, but part two seemed to get on my nerves a little bit. True, the house is really cool and seems to be coming alive in really interesting and deadly ways. But, I can't get over the fact that they are supposed to be there studying the house and trying to gather proof and evidence of its being haunted, yet all they can seem to do is hang around - tell campfire stories, have pizza parties, and dance to big band favorites... More like a weekend getaway than a research expedition... It is fun though - I don't want to wait until Thursday to see the end.

[Jinn Fizz]

Oh yeah, Jamey Sheridan as Randall Flagg...he was simply fabulous in the part.

As for Rose Red, overall, I thought part two was great. I'm usually kind of jaded when it comes to things like this, I don't scare easily, but there were a couple points in this episode where I was starting to get kind of spooked. If I were the character who watched the things move toward her under the carpet and then under the bedcovers, that would be the point where I would have run screaming from the house. :eek

I want to see mama's boy Emory get it in the end too, especially since he let the one poor guy die out on the patio. And I also hope the professor gets her comeuppance...I mean, after all, she was jonesing over all the psychic energy her geiger counter was registering, and all the while people were dying. Plus, I can't help but think she's with the boyfriend just because he owns the house. So she needs a good swift kick in the pants, that's for sure. :mischief

Having to wait until Thursday for the conclusion sucks. :\

[Jedi Master Carr]

I know I hate having to wait myself, I also hope that both of those two you mentioned get it in Part 3. Also I disagree with you Darth about Part 2 I think that eat pizza and parting scene showed how calm most of them were and did not believe they were in danger because they were lied to that *itch of a professor, Nick said it best when he told Steve that she didn't care if people died as long as she got what she wanted. What I want to know is what is causing the house to be evil. Does anybody think it will be revealed, I'm mean it started before the hosue was even finished that is what is so weird. Did anybody see that cameo by King, I thought that was great.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I saw Part 3 tonight and it was very creepy, I was a little disapointed by the end, first they kill off a character I liked and let one the characters I liked least live. Also I wanted them to tell us why the house was so evil it never really did to my satisfaction. I know the wife did a lot of it like push her husband out the window, and a lot of evil things happened there like the guy killing himself but what about all the disapearances and odd deaths that started before the house was first built? Maybe some of this is in King's compainion book The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer or are they plotting a sequel? Still it is far better than the ending of IT when the wicked clown turned out to be a giant spider (what a let down there) Still it was a great miniseries better than The Tommyknockers, The Langoliers, The Shining(the one on ABC), and The Perfect Storm. I would it rank second only to Stand (IT is close behind IMO)

[Jinn Fizz]

Overall, yes, this was definitely one of King's best miniseries. I was totally shocked by the fact that the house ate Nick, I thought for sure he would make it through to the end and be one of the leaders of the survivors. Wow:eek . And I thought for sure when Emory's mother came out of the mirror and started pulling him in, that he was finally a goner. But then with Cathy yelling at him to fight his mother for once in his life, it was better that he did end up making it out, because then at least there was a little something of what could be called "personal growth." And the strange thing is, I was actually starting to feel a little bit of sympathy for him, even though he was such a complete jerk, because at least I could understand where he was coming from--he was afraid of being in the house, and I couldn't blame him for that--and then there was the whole finger thing.... :eek. And at least he was being nice to Annie at the end.

I also liked what happened to crazy Joyce the professor. Nice poetic justice there, her being surrounded by those ghosts, most of whom were dead because of her actions. And then to see her up in the tower along with Ellen and her maid...that was cool.

I do sense a sequel, though, because all I could think as they were showing the ariel shots of Rose Red at the very end was...should they really build anything on top of the land that that house stands on? Seems to me like after all that happened in the house, it would make the land itself "bad" too. "Sour," like the term used in King's Pet Sematery. So maybe there could be a follow-up story about what happens after the condos are built.

[darth_mcbain]

On a related topic, I read on CNN that Stephen King is considering retiring after he writes five more books (two of which are already scheduled for release) I hope this doesn't mean that we won't get an ending to the Dark Tower. I think I remember him saying that the whole story would take about 6 or 7 books, and he's written 4 (plus the prologue to 5) so far. So unless the remaining books he plans to write are the concluding books to that series, we may not get an ending to that, which IMHO would really suck. According to his official site, he is planning on finishing the series, but that entry was dated Jan 11, while the CNN article was dated Jan 29... Lets hope he can keep it going, I love his stuff and would hate to see some of his work go unfinished.

BTW, here's the link to the article... http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/books/01/29/stephen.king/index.html

[Jedi Master Carr]

He said he was going to finish it before he retires. He also could change his mind other writers have talked about retiring only to keep writing, so he wouldn't be the first.

[darth_mcbain]

Yeah - people certainly have the right to change their mind - and as far as I knew, he did say he would finish it... Let's hope he does.