Stephen King on Screen (2022 documentary)

[BudBaxter]

King on Screen - Official Trailer (2023) Stephen King Documentary - YouTube

Anyone picked this up yet? Is the audio on the blu as bad as the version shown on Sky Arts last month? The music & sound effects often drowned out the 'talking heads', making it pretty much unwatchable without subtitles. It's like it was mixed by Christopher Nolan...

[mikey 6]

Yeah I recorded that off Sky and watched it the other day, and it gave me a headache trying to focus on the voices with that frickin music playing. Not sure about the blu ray but a lot of the reviews on Letterboxed are complaining about this so I assume it’s how the actual doc is mixed which is just perplexing.

[Filmmaker]

I haven’t really sat down to absorb it, so I can’t meaningfully talk about the audio yet, but God, the compression on this is the worst. I think I can honestly say, based on FALL before it, that Signature Entertainment offers the absolute worst compression of any studio I’ve ever encountered. This thing (appropriately enough to its namesake, I suppose) is a complete horror show, a high definition Blu-ray by technicality alone. Still happy to own it mind you, but damn.

[dallywhitty]

Can't speak for the Blu-ray but I saw this on Prime Video a while back and yeah, the sound is terrible. Thankfully it becomes better as the documentary goes on (or maybe I just became desensitised to it).

[lesco]

I thought it was just my TV! So the music IS mixed too loud, after all. It's practically screeching through the first part about 'Carrie' (I didn't bother watching the first five minutes of "find the Easter eggs").

[Justin101]

I'm glad I'm not the only person who felt this way, I did think it might have been my audio set-up! I definitely wrote a review on Letterboxd talking about how bad the sound mix is lol. There are some interviews mixed over dialogue scenes in the background, it's madness!

Glad I rented it on apple for 99p rather than buying it.

[bryantburnette]

I haven't bought it. I backed the project, though, and -- stop me if you've heard this before -- they still haven't sent me the f---ing thing.

[CelestialAgent]

Dark Star’s region free US release includes deleted scenes, photos and alternative shorter cut, but not the 42 minute director interview.

[BudBaxter]

Originally Posted by CelestialAgent

Dark Star’s region free US release includes deleted scenes, photos and alternative shorter cut, but not the 42 minute director interview.

Why would anyone want a shorter cut? The regular edition is too short as it is & skips over (or only briefly mentions) loads of King movies that warranted more coverage. I love the Darabont movies, but it does feel like they take up half the doc.

I went back & watched the Sky Arts version again & the audio does calm down a bit as it goes on, but the mix in the first half is still terrible.

[Nitroes]

I see this got a US release with a rather cool slipcover:





Region Free Blu-ray
Making of First Trailer
First Trailer
77m version of the film
Deleted shot from the Intro
Photo Gallery BTS
Long Commentary of the Intro
Making of Shooting Maine Intro
Cutting Room Floor
English SDH subtitles


Oddly they listed an extra version of the documentary which is 30mins shorter. Is it that boring they can remove that?


https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/king-on-screen
https://www.wowhd.co.uk/king-on-screen/814456028521 (highly unlikely to have the SE slipcover)


Will try and watch this tonight if I have time not expecting it to be like RoboDoc

Originally Posted by Nitroes

Looks interesting until I see who gets interviewed. Few interesting folk but otherwise nomarks. Cronenberg on The Dead Zone would have been nice.

In at £6.00.

It seems to have been called King on Screen in the US and only has a DVD from what I can tell https://kingonscreen.com/

[Nitroes]

Had a look at this last night it certainly looks good.

That's the good news. The bad news -for me- was I struggled to hear what the interviewees were saying as some muppet in the edit had decided to have music playing over the top of them almost constantly.

I can see where the 30mins was excised for the short version (there's a super long intro which may be appreciated by some people).

Overall a load of crap for me because the films mentioned (I didn't watch all of it) have one thing in common: they're NOT "Stephen King" films. He had nothing to do with most of them except write the books obviously. The guy has an immense talent but this documentary has nothing really to do with King it's all about good and mostly bad filmmakers' interpretation of King and then another set of some talented and some definitely not talented talk about those interpretations.

I would have liked to have seen a doucumentary about King and that's certainly not here. The producers should have thought of a way to get King involved somehow.

Stephen King - Master of the Macabre (Full) - YouTube

That'll have to do.

[Bumblefeet]

Originally Posted by Nitroes

I would have liked to have seen a doucumentary about King and that's certainly not here. The producers should have thought of a way to get King involved somehow.

Stephen King - Master of the Macabre (Full) - YouTube

That'll have to do.

I can recommend Eli Roth's history of horror, which has King interviewed at length (included seperately) and covers a lot of his movies in the 'subgenre' themed episodes.

But yeah, the older docus offer a better insight into the substance abuse years.

[bryantburnette]

Originally Posted by Nitroes

Had a look at this last night it certainly looks good.

That's the good news. The bad news -for me- was I struggled to hear what the interviewees were saying as some muppet in the edit had decided to have music playing over the top of them almost constantly.

I can see where the 30mins was excised for the short version (there's a super long intro which may be appreciated by some people).

Overall a load of crap for me because the films mentioned (I didn't watch all of it) have one thing in common: they're NOT "Stephen King" films. He had nothing to do with most of them except write the books obviously. The guy has an immense talent but this documentary has nothing really to do with King it's all about good and mostly bad filmmakers' interpretation of King and then another set of some talented and some definitely not talented talk about those interpretations.

I would have liked to have seen a doucumentary about King and that's certainly not here. The producers should have thought of a way to get King involved somehow.

Stephen King - Master of the Macabre (Full) - YouTube

That'll have to do.

I'm sure it never occurred to them to try that...

[BudBaxter]

Originally Posted by Nitroes

Overall a load of crap for me because the films mentioned (I didn't watch all of it) have one thing in common: they're NOT "Stephen King" films.

What exactly did you expect? It's a documentary about the adaptations of his works, not the man himself. Sure, it would have been great to have his input in the doc (especially as his face is slapped on the box cover), but he's had very little to do with most of the movie adaptations of his novels.

By your justification, are the only things you'd classify as 'Stephen King' films Maximum Overdrive, Silver Bullet, Cat's Eye, Creepshow & his TV output?

[Nitroes]

The only Stephen King film is Maximum Overdrive as he was the director. That's a real horror of a film.

Kubrick's The Shining certainly ain't a Stephen King Film. Rob Reiner's beautiful Stand By Me has virtually nothing to do with the novella The Body.


It doesn't really matter what the documentary was supposed to be what matters is it was done badly.

[BudBaxter]

[The Mole]

Originally Posted by Nitroes

The only Stephen King film is Maximum Overdrive as he was the director. That's a real horror of a film.

Kubrick's The Shining certainly ain't a Stephen King Film. Rob Reiner's beautiful Stand By Me has virtually nothing to do with the novella The Body.


It doesn't really matter what the documentary was supposed to be what matters is it was done badly.

So you don't even count the films he wrote the (original) screenplays for, acted as executive producer or has an appearance as an actor? That's a very... limited view.

[Nitroes]

Well, case by case I suppose.

This seems to be his screenplays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catego...y_Stephen_King

Cat's Eye [I liked it but it's a dog's breakfast]
Cell [not sure I've seen it]
Creepshow [I liked it but it's a dog's breakfast]
Stephen King's Desperation [it sounds like it]
A Good Marriage [never heard of it]
Maximum Overdrive [unwatchable]
Michael Jackson's Ghosts [a classic of late twentieth century western cinema I heard]
Pet Sematary [never liked it it's maybe a little bit better than the remake]
The Shining (miniseries) [obviously not the classic Kubrick]
Silver Bullet [I liked it]
Sleepwalkers [awful]
The Stand [awful]

I liked Silver Bullet a lot. And Creepshow but that had a lot of fingers in the pie. Cat's Eyes was just him fulfilling his contract with Dino De Laurentiis who raped the tagline STEPHEN KING'S... for years especially on mediocre films that needed it.

So, I don't see many classics there.

He definitely writes interesting books with amazing stories and characters.

I was talking about films though.

If the documentary was actually about Stephen King it could have been great but when you have some talented directors but mostly people who make films where their title ends with 2 or 3 talking about films he had nothing really to do with it's a guaranteed failure.

[dallywhitty]

Okay.

[ravenus]

Originally Posted by Nitroes

Rob Reiner's beautiful Stand By Me has virtually nothing to do with the novella The Body.

Eh, what? It was definitely based on The Body. All the characters and and most of the sequences in the film were taken directly from the novella, so not sure why you're saying this.