1408 Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Admittedly, I experienced Stephen King's N. under utterly ideal conditions, which might explain why I consider it such a marvelous short story – one of King's best. I was driving to northern California for a weekend of camping and whitewater rafting (the Cal Salmon river – just an hour or so south of Oregon). It got dark just as I left the highway and hit the winding, narrow country backroads; no headlights, no cars. I happened to be listening to King's recent Just After Sunset short story compilation, where N. – one of the longer pieces in the set – appears in the middle, taking up discs 8 and 9 in their entirety. The story started just as I hit a series of switchbacks going up a mountain. The twisty roads, the oppressive darkness, the (seemingly) complete emptiness, and Stephen King in his Lovecraftian unknowable-cosmic-terror mode... I'm probably lucky to be alive and not in a ravine somewhere.

Actually, King denies that Lovecraft was the inspiration for N. Instead, he cites Arthur Machen's classic horror story The Great God Pan, which you can (and should) read in its entirety right here. Either way, N. is terrifying – a story of unspeakable horrors lurking just beyond the thin veneer we know as reality. Better yet, it's not – like some of Lovecraft's tales were – all concept. King's got a couple of great hooks: first, the story is told through letters, journal entries and newspaper clippings, somehow amplifying the atmosphere of impending doom. Second, King provides a clever alternative explanation for obsessive-compulsive disorder. It seems that all that counting, touching, and insisting that things be arranged just so isn't mental illness, but an attempt to save the world: to keep the evil out.

This is a follow-up of sorts to my piece on Mikael Hafstrøm's adaptation of Stephen King's 1408. If you're interested, you should check that out. There, I half-marveled at and half-lamented the fact that the film managed to transform 1408 from a spectacularly scary, quasi-Lovecraftian horror tale into a personal, abstract meditation on grief and loss. In effect, the movie transplanted the story from the conceptual, hard-horror half of King's ouvre (think Cell and From a Buick 8) to the character-driven half (Lisey's Story, Bag of Bones). It was still a good film, but it needed someone who understood the existential terror that King is so good at evoking: a glimpse of something so alien, so divorced from the world we know, that it is simply beyond our comprehension. That's scary. Give me a movie like that.

At the time I wrote that post, such a film already existed. I suspected that this was the case, but I hadn't read the source material, and so couldn't validly make the comparison. Now I can: Frank Darabont's The Mist understands the sort of paralyzing, staring-into-the-abyss horror that King does so well. Even more impressive: not only does it brilliantly translate that aspect of the novella to the screen, it – like 1408 – fleshes out dimensions that the author barely implied. I knew I loved the film when I saw it, but only now do I understand how accomplished it really is.

Earlier today, Peter wrote up a piece on movie mogul Harvey Weinstein explaining how The Weinstein Company created their division Third Rail as a dumping ground for movies they feel have only "ancillary value." Harvey and his younger brother and business partner, Bob, have been under a bit of an attack since ditching Disney/Miramax for their own shingle back in 2005, with a lot of sharks swimming the waters surrounding them, just waiting for enough money to bleed through the Weinstein's fingers.

An article over at the Sunday Telegraph by Tom Teodorczuk goes into some fairly good detail about the troubles facing the beleagured brothers. You can read the full piece yourself to see his analysis; suffice it to say that the Weinsteins have yet to bring that old Miramax magic to their independent shingle, probably for a variety of reasons, not the least of which include the troubles facing the indie film world generally. As Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells, quoted in the piece, notes, "The Weinsteins have suffered from the same pressures affecting the indie film sector that everyone else faces. There is a glut of product owing to hedge fund firms now investing in films."

You know adaptations that don't merely modify the source material in details and plot mechanics but completely change its nature? Mikael Håfstrom's 1408 is like that. It's an interesting work, less in its own right than because it takes a virtuoso straight-ahead horror story and, in bringing it to the screen, turns it into a nuanced, downright surreal exploration of the protagonist's guilt and grief. You do not expect a film adaptation to tone down visceral thrills and flesh out emotional content. Nonetheless, here we are.

Stephen King's short story, part of the all-around-excellent Everything's Eventual collection (as well as the Blood and Smoke audiobook), is probably the scariest piece of fiction I've ever read. It begins in fairly conventional horror tones – a story about a haunted hotel room – but then moves on to something far more frightening. Ghosts can be scary enough, but you can at least understand them: they used to be like us, and in most cases they want something straightforward. What lived inside Room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel – King's version – was nothing like that. We don't get specifics, but that's because we wouldn't understand them: the force that inhabits that room is so utterly, terrifyingly alien as to be beyond human comprehension. What Mike Enslin encounters isn't, it turns out, a "haunted hotel room," but an unfathomable cosmic terror that would have made H.P. Lovecraft proud. King does more than give us a scary story – he takes us to the edge of an abyss.

I just got back from a brief Christmas holiday to the distant land of relatives and limited Internet access, so my column is just a tad late this week. Nevertheless, I'd like to pick up where I left off last week, in my celebration of those smaller films that lost their way in 2007, either misunderstood, or misjudged, or just never found.

I saw Hal Hartley's Fay Grim in May as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. It was a sequel to his 1998 film Henry Fool and it had one of those strange near-simultaneous releases in which it debuted on DVD just a few days after it opened in theaters. This technique didn't work at all for Steven Soderbergh's superb Bubble last year, so I can't imagine why anyone would try it again. I found Henry Fool too long with too much navel gazing to be of interest, but somehow Fay Grim worked for me. I felt it was all a huge, deadpan joke that these pathetic writer-types would now be involved in international intrigue. And who is better for a deadpan joke than Jeff Goldblum, with his glaring eyes and sharp delivery?

If you've ever seen a painting by Margaret Keane, you'll probably agree that Big Eyes is the only logical choice for the title of a biopic about the artist. Variety reports that Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have signed to direct their own script about the relationship between Margaret and her husband Walter. The story will focus on Keane struggling to succeed as an artist while her husband is taking credit for her work.

Walter was a strong businessman with a serious lack of artistic talent. Instead, he took advantage of his wife's abilities and made millions off her paintings of 'large-eyed waif's'. In 1965 the couple divorced and during a dramatic court case, both parties were put in front of an easel to prove who the real artist was -- Walter balked at the challenge and claimed he was suffering from a shoulder injury. After the divorce was granted, Margaret Keane moved to Hawaii where she continues to paint. Alexander told Variety, "Her rebellion coincided with the feminist movement, and when he began calling her his crazy ex-wife, she sued him."

Alexander and Karaszewski brokered the deal for Keane's life story with the artist herself. The filmmakers have been making some inroads into horror flicks lately, but they are probably best known as the writers for Ed Wood, Man on the Moon and The People vs. Larry Flynt. Nightclub mogul-turned producer, Andrew Meieran, told Variety, "We've looked through hundreds of scripts, but this felt like just the right project to launch a brand". Alexander and Karaszewski are already working on another fact based film, Ripley's Believe it or Not with Jim Carrey. They are also still attached to write the screenplay for Eli Roth's big screen version of Stephen King's Cell -- that's if Roth can bring himself to start working again.

Cinematical was lucky enough to receive the one-sheet for Martian Child (click on the image above for a larger version), starring John Cusack as a guy who adopts a 6-year-old boy following the death of his wife in an effort to create a family. Problem is, the kid is convinced he's from Mars. I'm not sure what it was about this film, but practically every Cinematical writer requested to review Martian Child. And that never happens. Of course, it could have something to do with the love for Cusack; his creepy thriller 1408 did very well at the box office this past summer and folks are talking Oscar with regards to his leading performance in Grace is Gone.

Martian Child sort of combines elements from both of those films; here, Cusack plays a science fiction writer (he played a paranormal expert/writer in 1408) who's struggling to move past the death of his wife (which also happens to be the central premise in Grace is Gone). A film that tugs at your heart-strings and freaks you out? Nice. Joan Cusack and Amanda Peet co-star in the film which was based off David Gerrold's award-winning short story. So it's like K-PAX ... with a kid. I dig it. Martian Child lands in theaters on November 2 -- check out the trailer here.

Sometimes I get an idea for a column and when I sit down to write it I find that there are no good examples to illustrate my point floating around in my less-than-400 screen domain. The topic currently burning in my brain requires a few films that are still playing in the upper reaches, so while I wait for them to tumble down to me, I've decided to write a few lines about actors I admire. The first name that pops up is John Cusack's, currently appearing in 1408 (218 screens). Though it's based on a Stephen King story and features some decent thrills and chills, it's the kind of one-man performance that runs the gamut and could earn Cusack his very first Oscar nomination.

It's odd to think of this veteran actor, a favorite for over 20 years, having never earned so much as a nomination. But then that factor also adds to Cusack's outlaw, outsider status. Cusack somehow managed to become an everyman to almost every man. He's a nerd, but he's not a hopeless nerd; he's unique enough to be cool at the same time. He's smart, but also appeals to jocks and dropouts. A typical Cusack character might be seen tossing a football around or failing a trigonometry quiz. Best of all, although he always has romantic troubles, he always has something cool to say to girls. At the same time, this interchangeable quality keeps him slightly on the edge; you can't ever pin him down

Confession time: Not only have I read (literally) every story ever written by Stephen King (some of 'em two or three times), but I've also seen (literally) every movie inspired by his books. Some of 'em four or five times. I discovered the man's work around the time I was 13 -- and I devoured his early paperbacks like a junkie devours his drug of choice. I was hooked. All through high school and college and "grown-up" life, if there was a new King paperback out there, I had to have it. Most I liked, some I truly did not, and I few I really went crazy for. And since I'm even more of a movie geek than I am a passionate reader, I'm always pretty excited to sit down with a new cinematic adaptation. (And no amount of Dreamcatchers will ever change that.)

It's been pretty well-documented over the past two decades: LOTS of the movies based on Stephen King stories are grade-A, bona-fide awful. Some of the turkeys had good intentions; some of 'em were low-rent knock 'em offs mounted solely to capitalize on the mega-author's name. But every once in a while ... you'd get something like The Dead Zone or Pet Sematary or Misery or The Shawshank Redemption or Dolores Claiborne or (choose your own favorites like I just did). So yes: this long and roundabout introduction is meant to lead you to the following assertion: The newest King flick is (most definitely) one of the good ones. Save for a few minor stumbles in Act III (and easily forgiven ones at that), Mikael Hafstrom's 1408 is actually one of the best Stephen King adaptations in quite some time.

Stephen King sure isn't shy about trashing some of the flicks that have been made from his stories. It's been pretty well-documented that he wasn't a big fan of Kubrick's rather liberal adaptation of The Shining ... so obviously the author is a pretty tough guy to please. So it must come as a relief to director Mikael Hafstrom to learn that The Horror King really dug his adaptation of 1408.

The haunted hotel thriller (which stars John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, a cool duo if ever there was one) hits theaters later this month, but Mr. Hafstrom informed Bloody-Disgusting.com that Stephen King really likes the movie: "King was very pleased with the film, I'm happy to say. When you are adapting an author, especially one who has been around like he has, it's very important that he approves. Even though the film contains more story, we are true to heart and soul of the short story." The author also doled out some specific praise for Cusack's performance.

Someone could write a really amusing book about the films made from the books and short stories of Stephen King. On one end of the scale you'd have The Shawshank Redemption, The Dead Zone and Carrie, but on the other end ... yikes. Stuff like The Mangler, Maximum Overdrive (which King directed himself!) and The Lawnmower Man. (Plus, what the hell was up with Dreamcatcher??) And out of respect for the author, I won't even get in to all the Children of the Corn sequels.

Coming Soon: Frank Darabont's take on King's awesomely spooky tale The Mist!