Cheap Stephen King's The Shining (Video) (Steven Weber, Rebecca De Mornay) (Mick Garris) Price

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Customer Reviews of Stephen King's The Shining

This Version Shines!
Yes the Kubrick version was very good but so was this mini-series remake! I personally like both versions but I like the mini-series better because it follows the fantastic Stephen King book more closely. Jack Nicholson was excellant as Jack Torrance but so was Steven Weber, and Rebecca Demornay was also very good as Wendy and I also liked Courtland Meade as Danny and I liked that Tony was seen the way he was susposed to be seen and not as a talking finger and I liked that they showed things in this mini-series that were left out of the theatrical movie like the hedge animals and the wasps. Yes the ending was a little lame but there are so many good things in this version that make up for it and personally I found this version just as scary as Kubricks and I highly recommend it. I purchased the DVD set which has two discs with part one on the A side and part two on the B side and the second disc has only part three which is the last part of the mini-series and I also recently bought the Stanley Kubrick version on DVD.

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Stephan King's The Shining (1997)
I recently had the opportunity to view Stephan King's screenplay version of his classic horror novel. It is mostly true to the story line in the book; however, there are some disappointing aspects of the miniseries verson in comparison to Kubrick's 1980 classic.
The music in the original was more erie, and as the movie progressed it got all the more intense as you could get the feeling that things were begining to unravel at the Overlook. I didn't feel that same effect while viewing the King version.

When you compare the part of Jack Torrance first played by Jack Nicholson then later by Weber, I find that Jack Nicholson is a far more convincing Jack Torrance. Let's face it, after starring in "One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest" the part of Jack Torrance was perfect for him. Perhaps I expected too much from Steven Weber(he had some really big shoes to fill after Nicholson Play the part earlier), but give Weber his due. He did a great job late in the movie battling his demons.

Rebecca DeMornay does a fine job as Wendy, and compared to the Wendy played by Shelly Duvall in the original,she comes through with a strong performance. There is much more mother-son interaction in the King version, and DeMorney plays a quite forceful character in comparison.
The hedge animals coming to life just didn't hit it in this movie. In fact, I thought it to be quite cheesy. When I read the novel many years ago, I imagined those hedge animals to be very scary, but even the special effects were ineffective and actually comical.
The scene at the end of the film was unnecessary. The spirit of Jack coming to Danny's graduation was an add-on, it was not in the novel. I appreciated the fact that they ended the movie true to the book (the boiler), where in the original it ended with Jack in the hedge maze.
I'd say this six hour screenplay should be a part of every Stephen King fan's video or DVD collection, because both the classic and the newer version offer great entertainment-even if the newer version is a bit lumbering and not as scary.

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The Shining an Eloquent piece of cinema
A beautiful movie that focuses on family relationships and the breakdown of the human psyche, __The Shining__ is not for the faint of heart. Though it does not have the raw horror of the original _Shining_, it does have the sadness down pat. The movie is well worth it once one sees the ending, which is the best and saddest part. What strikes the viewer as most sad in the movie is that the father is always somehow there, unlike in the original, and he always wants to come back but can't. He does things to his wife and son that he does not want to do and then he has to die for it.
The story follows a family of three. The couple and their son go down to the Overlook Hotel to caretake for the place which has had a few hairy incidents over the past year. The son knows that something will happen because he is psychic. However he knows he cannot do anything to stop it because he is so little. What makes this movie a nailbiter is the fact that so many things could have been stopped or prevented. On a whole this movie is one of the best horror dramas ever crafted.