Ask questions to The Digital Bits team (Bill Hunt, Jeff Kleist et.al.)

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The thing that drove me the most crazy bout lOTR were the people who complained about spoilers

The books were written 60 years prior, and they're sitting at your local bookstore

Weird. I didnt know they made books out of those movies!

[Vincent Pereira]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

...
If someone did a truly faithful movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand it would be rated NC-17...

You think? I haven't read that book in a few years, but as bleak as some of it is, I think it could be pulled off with a "hard" R-rating. The real problem with the TV miniseries is just how damn boring it is, plus King made a major mistake IMO by minimising the character of Joe, the feral kid, in his adaptation of the book to miniseries. Joe was one of my favorite characters in the book, and he's barely in the 6-hour miniseries version.

If ever a King adaptation was worthy of a proper remake, this is the one. I'd love to see it as 2 seperate movies, each around 3-hours long, and filmed in 65mm. Hey Chris Nolan, anything on your plate after BATMAN 3?

Vincent

[Jeff Kleist]

The Stand could be pulled off on a PG-13 if you cut down the swearing easily. Given that King wrote the screenplay for the miniseries, I doubt you can get much more "proper" than that

You only need to do a hard R if you want to appeal to the gore crowd that cant get enough kayro syrup and red food coloring

Honestly, I'm going to make a disc that;s just a fire hose spraying the stuff, "BLOODIEST DVD EVER!" and make a fortune It goes right next to my "Naked Girls on Trampolines"

[Vincent Pereira]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The Stand could be pulled off on a PG-13 if you cut down the swearing easily. Given that King wrote the screenplay for the miniseries, I doubt you can get much more "proper" than that...

I dunno, I think he made some bad choices myself, i.e. minimizing the Joe character, and making the overall pacing of the whole thing so damn slow (although that could be blamed on director Mick Garris I suppose). I know he wrote the book and all, but that doesn't mean he automatically knows what will work in a movie. There's a reason novels are "adapted" when made into films- novels are a completely different medium than motion pictures, and novelists, God bless 'em, are not necessarily always right when it comes to what choices need to be made in adapting their novel to the visual/aural medium of film. I loved the novel THE SHINING, but when I watched the "faithful" miniseries adaptation (which like THE STAND, was also scripted by King), all I kept thinking was, "Kubrick was right to make all those changes for his film." Not to say the novel was bad, but I think a lot of what was in that novel was never going to work as a movie, and the miniseries remake, for me at least, confirmed that.*

"Faithful" does not always = good IMO. A movie is a different beast than a book- and besides, in the case of THE STAND, I'm actually arguing that it should have been closer to the book, at least in the case of the character of the feral kid Joe.

Vincent

* I'm also reminded of a bit from the BLADE RUNNER documentary where, I think, David Peoples recounts being brought back to rewrite some of Hampton Fancher's voice-overs and was told, "Hampton's stuff works well on the page, but..."

[SOA]

Jeff with all of these lawsuits that Terminator 4 has will we see a release of T4 by the end of the year?

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

If someone did a truly faithful movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand it would be rated NC-17. If someone accurately adapted Brave New World not only would the movie be rated NC-17, the movie's crew might get arrested.

Same with King's IT.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by Knight-Errant

Same with King's IT.

Very much so.

[Jeff Kleist]

dunno, I think he made some bad choices myself, i.e. minimizing the Joe character, and making the overall pacing of the whole thing so damn slow (although that could be blamed on director Mick Garris I suppose). I know he wrote the book and all, but that doesn't mean he automatically knows what will work in a movie. There's a reason novels are "adapted" when made into films- novels are a completely different medium than motion pictures, and novelists, God bless 'em, are not necessarily always right when it comes to what choices need to be made in adapting their novel to the visual/aural medium of film. I loved the novel THE SHINING, but when I watched the "faithful" miniseries adaptation (which like THE STAND, was also scripted by King), all I kept thinking was, "Kubrick was right to make all those changes for his film." Not to say the novel was bad, but I think a lot of what was in that novel was never going to work as a movie, and the miniseries remake, for me at least, confirmed that.*

Pretty much nothing can be worse than a Kubrick movie in my book. Seriously, 2001 is a 50 minute CBS special stretched out to 2:20 because Kubrick refuses to hire an editor Frankly I thought the Shining was boring as hell in all its forms anyway. Except the Simpsons. Kubrick may have been a great composer of his shots, but the problem was that when it came to direction and pacing he was ass.

The cuts to The Stand were probably more for runtime than anything else. "it must fit in 3 90min blocks" essentially. Removed from 10min acts and those artificial constraints, stuff like Joe could breathe more.

Jeff with all of these lawsuits that Terminator 4 has will we see a release of T4 by the end of the year?

All the Terminator lawsuits I'm aware of are based on the rights to the franchise (as in future installments), and not the movie. All that will potentially change is who WB writes the check to

Same with King's IT.

Again, easily be made PG-13 if you don't appease the gorehounds.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Pretty much nothing can be worse than a Kubrick movie in my book. Seriously, 2001 is a 50 minute CBS special stretched out to 2:20 because Kubrick refuses to hire an editor Frankly I thought the Shining was boring as hell in all its forms anyway. Except the Simpsons. Kubrick may have been a great composer of his shots, but the problem was that when it came to direction and pacing he was ass.

Oh, Jeff... where to begin?

[Jeff Kleist]

By demonstrating 2001 loses nothing by investing the time to cut it down to 50 min ?

It's not hard, just cutting the acid trip to 20 seconds get me under 2 hours right there

[Blu Titan]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Pretty much nothing can be worse than a Kubrick movie in my book. Seriously, 2001 is a 50 minute CBS special stretched out to 2:20 because Kubrick refuses to hire an editor Frankly I thought the Shining was boring as hell in all its forms anyway. Except the Simpsons. Kubrick may have been a great composer of his shots, but the problem was that when it came to direction and pacing he was ass.

The cuts to The Stand were probably more for runtime than anything else. "it must fit in 3 90min blocks" essentially. Removed from 10min acts and those artificial constraints, stuff like Joe could breathe more.



All the Terminator lawsuits I'm aware of are based on the rights to the franchise (as in future installments), and not the movie. All that will potentially change is who WB writes the check to



Again, easily be made PG-13 if you don't appease the gorehounds.

No way no how. One of the best directors ever and his movies are perfect. Maybe you prefer movies like "Crank" and "Shoot Em Up"? To call Kubrick an "ass" is really off the wall.

[Jeff Kleist]

Crank was awful, Shoot 'em up was a masterpiece of farce

On the contrary, I love David Lean and Akira Kurosawa. My collection is filled with long winded epics. Kubrick is the only one of the "classics" that I can't stand. I also didn't call him an ass, I called his work "ass"

I'd remake 2010 as well mind you, if only to re-instate all the important bits that were left out. The last two books.....are probably better left alone

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

By demonstrating 2001 loses nothing by investing the time to cut it down to 50 min ?

Just because you get nothing from it, it does not necessarily follow that it contains nothing.

You keep the Avatar trailer, I'll keep 2001. Deal?

[Doctorossi]

Meanwhile, I'm pleased to see that The Exorcist is indeed receiving a "both-cuts" release, but a little dismayed to see that It's A Wonderful Life is, as well.

[Robert Siegel]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Pretty much nothing can be worse than a Kubrick movie in my book. Seriously, 2001 is a 50 minute CBS special stretched out to 2:20 because Kubrick refuses to hire an editor Frankly I thought the Shining was boring as hell in all its forms anyway. Except the Simpsons. Kubrick may have been a great composer of his shots, but the problem was that when it came to direction and pacing he was ass.

With all due respect to his fans, and there are many, I totally agree with you Jeff. I don't have one of his movies in my collection except Dr. Strangelove, which is to me the exception.

[Jeff Kleist]

I fail to see how, for example frank poole spinning for 5 minutes, or 10 minutes of beauty shots of a space station set to a piece of stock music improve the film. There needs to be plot, dialog, character development. As it is, the film can be summed up thusly:

Heywood Floyd spends 45 minutes sitting on two planes, having a short conversation, and holding his head.

A few space repairmen spend an eternity replacing a part, their kid locks them out, so they spank him and drop acid and take the car out to celebrate



You have to read the book to get any meat out of it. Which I enjoy greatly I might add.

He also has a huge jumpcut after the spinning where there's zero explaination. All of asudden Discovery is at Jupiter and Bowman cruises toward the monolith. The book contains a gigantic amount of material between the two events.

You keep the Avatar trailer, I'll keep 2001. Deal?

I wasn't that thrilled with Avatar's trailer. It's screaming Phantom Menace to me. A talented filmmaker given no limits and too many toys

I pray I'm wrong, but those blue things are screaming Jar-Jar flashbacks

[DenonCI]

Jeff, I agree with you about Kubrick....I don't like his films either. 2001 put me to sleep and don't even get me started on Eye's Wide Shut --a perfect title for the film since that's exactly what happened to me before the end of the first act!

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

It's screaming Phantom Menace to me.

Well, we certainly agree there.

[Batman1980]

TBH guys I adore Phantom Menace for what it was, a lighter Star Wars movie that revived a franchise that had been dormant for 19 years. While easily the weakest SW film to date, it did what it was meant to do and gave us SW again. I don't think I've had a theatrical experience that beats seeing SW on the big screen for the first time.

[Jeff Kleist]

I don't think I've ever had more fun than the countdown to Phantom Menace, I'll give you that. One of the reasons I liked Fanboys so much