Book Review: Fairy Tale

 

Fairy Tale is a novel published in 2022 and written by the prolific horror author, Stephen King.  I would not say that this is a horror story per-se, but there are certainly some scary elements to the story. The book starts out as a story about a high-school kid who befriends the local grumpy old guy who lives up the street from him, then it becomes a story to save a dog, and then the story ends with a battle to save a strange fairy-tale-like land from an evil that threatens to destroy it. As disparate as those plot points sound, Kimg ties it all together into a story that, while strange at times, makes sense.

The book is relatively long, at just under 600 pages (for the hardcover version), but it is a pretty fast read and it is hard to put down once you get started. I read very fast and was able to get through it in a couple of days. And, it really only took me that long because I read at night before bed. There were no obvious easter eggs to King's other work that I noticed. Although, I will be the first to admit, I am not a King aficionado, so there may be something I missed. He does manage to get a dig in at the orange genital wart even though the book is set before agent orange's presidency. I'd honestly give the book 10 stars if I could. It is absolutely worth reading if you are even a casual fan of King and/or are into the Fantasy genre.

4k-UHD/Movie Review: It - Chapter 1

 

This is the updated 2017 live-action adaptation of Stephen King's novel, It, directed by Andy Muschietti. The movie is subtitled Chapter 1, as it is the first of two movies one which will focus on the members of the "Loser's Club" as kids, and the second one which focuses on them as adults (much like what was done in the 1990s miniseries. This, as you would expect, is the movie that tells the story of the heroes as kids. 

The movie stars Jaeden Lieberher as the main protagonist Bill Denbrough, whose brother Georgie is killed by a monster at the beginning of the movie, setting Bill on a quest for revenge, and Bill Skarsgard as It/Pennywise, the ancient evil that terrorizes the town of Derry Maine every 27 years. The rest of the main cast includes Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Nicholas Hamilton. 

There are several differences between the movie and the book, one of the main differences being that the Children's part of the story is set in the late 1980s as opposed to the 1950s. Also, the book jumps back and forth between the story with the group as kids and as adults, which makes it very hard to follow, so the movie is much more streamlined in the storytelling. And, even by splitting the story into two movies, they could not include every element that was included in the book, so there are parts of the story that the movie takes out. The book has a lot of exposition and backstory that is honestly not needed in the movie, so I do not think anything that is left out of the movie is really missed. And, the movie does change the most controversial part of the book from something that could never be filmed to something that could.

For those who get the 4K set, there are two discs, the UHD disc with just the movie itself, and the regular blu-ray which has the movie and the extra. The A/V quality of the UHD disc is fine, but not great. The movie was shot in 2k, so it is upscaled to 4k, and honestly does not look much different than the video quality of the regular blu-ray. The extras include trailers, about 15 minutes of deleted scenes, and three different behind-the-scenes featurettes, one on Pennywise, one on the cast of kids, and then one in which Stephen King is interviewed about this latest adaptation of the book.

Overall, the movie is very good. It is scarier than I remember the mini-series being, but that makes sense given that this is a movie and the mini-series aired on broadcast television. It is still not overly gory, but it does get a bit gory toward the end. Still, it is more of a psychological thriller than a blood-and-guts horror movie. The acting is very good, which given the cast was made up of young, mostly unknown actors (Finn Wolfhard was probably the most well-known of the child actors), is kind of surprising. Bill Skarsgard is great as Pennywise, who is definitely the main attraction. He can switch from innocent, to creepy, to scary at the drop of a hat. Even if you are not a huge fan of the book, this is still worth watching, as it is one of the few times where I have found a movie to be better and more entertaining than the book. It is definitely a must-watch if you like horror movies.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Firestarter

 

Firestarter was the other movie made in 1984 starring a young Drew Barrymore (Irreconcilable Differences, being the other one) who was two-years removed from her breakout role in E.T. and just being her third movie as a child star. This movie was adapted from one of Stephen King's novels. While King is known for the Horror genre, I would classify this movie more as a thriller than a horror movie. The basic plot involves a young girl named Charlie (played by Barrymore) whose parents participated in what they thought was a drug trial when they were in college. The drug they were given gave Charlie's mother, Vicky (played by Heather Locklear) the ability to read minds, and her father, Andy (played by David Keith) the ability to control people's actions. And Charlie developed the ability to start fires with her mind. They are pursued by a shadowy government agency called the Department of Scientific Intelligence (or "The Shop"), led by Martin Sheen's character Captain Hollister. The department wants to capture Charlie so that they can study and weaponize her power. The other central character in the movie is John Rainbird, played by George C. Scott, who is a member of The Shop that pretends to befriend Charlie and encourages her to use her powers. 

For those who get the blu-ray, the A/V quality is okay, but it is not an extremely high-quality transfer. Given the age of the movie, I think that the transfer looks good and it is probably better that the look of the movie was not messed with too much. For extras, there is a commentary track on the movie by the director, Mark Lester, a 52-minute making-of documentary that includes new interviews with some of the minor cast members and members of the crew, along with some archival footage. Then there is a 17-minute featurette on the music of the movie, and a stills gallery. It would have been nice if they could have got Barrymore and Sheen to participate in the new interviews or be included on the commentary track (George C. Scott had already passed away by the time the new material was shot), but the material is still good if you like watching the extras.

Overall, the movie is good, but I don't think it is the best movie adaptation of King's work. Barrymore definitely carries the movie, which is something given that she was just 8 or 9 when it was filmed. Certainly, in the action scenes, she just has to stare intensely and cry, but in the scenes that required her to act, she does a really good job and had great chemistry with George C. Scott. They did make a curious choice of having Scott portray a Native American character as opposed to rewriting the part, but that is really just a minor point. So, while it is not as good as movies like The Shining, Christine, or It that were adapted from King's novels, it is still worth watching and holds up well even after almost 40 years.

Book Review: Billy Summers

 

This is a crime/thriller novel by Stephen King about a hitman named Billy Summers, who only kills "bad" people, and takes one last job (which he is apprehensive about) to get a final payday and live out his life with a good nest egg. Believing that something is not right, he deviates from the plan, at which point things go sideways. I will not spoil the plot of the book, but it is basically three parts, the leadup to the hit where Billy dons a fake identity as a writer to set himself up in a position to make the hit, the aftermath in which he is waiting for things to cool down, and then a revenge story. There are some twists along the way that take the story in a couple of different directions, but that is the crux of it.

Unlike some of his other novels, this one does not have any supernatural elements in it, save one possible sighting of the Overlook Hotel, the haunted hotel from "The Shining" and "Doctor Sleep" (which by this point had burned down) when Billy is in Colorado. I would say that the story is more like the 11/22/63 novel (without the time travel of course) than it is to books like The Shining, The Stand, etc. The story is set in 2019 and 2020, and yes, King does mention the former guy (and, if you follow King on social media, you know he is clearly not a fan). However, unlike what the bitchy, whiny little MAGAts on Amazon would have you believe, King does not trash him on every other page. In reality, King only mentions his name a handful of times. When he does so, it is mainly in reference to characters in the book being supporters of the former guy, or characters whom Billy guesses (because of how they look and act) would be one of his supporters (usually because they are stupid and/or racist). But, if that is enough to trigger you (and probably says a lot about you), then you definitely want to steer clear of this.

I am not a hardcore devotee of King. I have read a few of his novels, some of which I really like (e.g., 11/22/63) and some I am lukewarm about (e.g., It). This is definitely in the category of one that I like. It has very good pacing and is a fairly easy read. It is just over 500 pages long but, if you are a fairly quick reader, depending on how much time you can devote to reading) you can get through it fairly quickly. I was able to get through it in less than a week reading between a half hour and an hour before bed each night. While the action in the book is pretty spread out, King does a great job of character development and setting up the action scenes so that the story does not lag too much or get too boring. I definitely recommend it.

Book Review: 11/22/63

 

11/22/63 is a book that is about trying to stop the assassination of JFK. In it, the main character, Jake Epping is told of a portal that can transport the traveler to the past. He learns of the portal from the owner of a diner he frequents who seems to mysteriously age every time Jake sees him. Al, the owner of the diner tells Jake the rules for traveling through the portal, namely that the portal sends the person back to September 9th, 1958 and if the person returns from the past through the portal they come back two minutes in time after they left, with whatever changes made in the past taking hold. Going back through the portal again wipes out anything that was previously changed and returns the person back to September 9th, 1958. Al tells Jake that he was trying to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy, and tries to get Jake to take up the mission. The "main" aspect of the novel is that the past can be changed, but the larger the event someone tries to change, the more the "past" pushes back and tries to prevent the change from happening. As you can expect, Jake does go into the past and tries to figure out how to stop the assassination while also having to live his life in the late 1950s in the south coming from living in Maine in 2011, and dealing with the fact that nearly everything he does, large or small, potentially changes something in the past.

While I would not say I am an aficionado of King's works (I have read a couple of his books and seen some of the movie adaptations of his works) I really liked this book. Even though it is pretty long (over 800 pages) it is a fairly easy read with a reasonable amount of characters in it and good character development. So, I was able to get through it fairly quickly (in about a week and a half) despite the size. The book was based on the premise that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK and did not get into the various conspiracy hypotheses, although in the afterward, King did say that while he does not believe in a massive conspiracy, he does concede the possibility that more people than just Oswald were involved, but he chose to approach the story on the belief that there was none and that Oswald was a lone wolf. I cannot say that everyone who is a fan of King's other works will like this book, and cannot say how similar or different it is from his other novels, but I found the book to be a great read with an engaging story and definitely recommend it.