The second offering in Different Seasons is 'Apt Pupil'.
This story is set in the fictional suburb of 'Santo Donato', in San Diego. The main character is thirteen year old Todd Bowden. After discovering an old World War II magazine in his friend's garage Todd becomes interested in Nazi Germany, in particular concentration camps. He is really taken by this one photo of a German camp officer and realizes that the reason why he is captured by it is that it is actually a photo of one of his neighbours.
The rest of the story takes place over a period of 4 years and follows the relationship that develops between him and his 'wanted for war crimes' neighbour.
Everyone can talk all they want about how scary Stephen King books with vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and the like are, but nothing is more scary than the human capacity for inhumane acts on humanity. I found this story disturbing when I read it - I actually lost sleep over it with nightmares. Give me a good vampire story any time.
With that being said, I still enjoyed the story (even though I did lose sleep over it).
This story was also made into a movie by the same name. I found the movie to be alright, and it stuck to the original story fairly well, but I found it less disturbing than the print story.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Different Seasons - Part 2: Apt Pupil
Penned by 4ever3 at Tuesday, November 27, 2007 0 comments
Labels: Apt Pupil, Different Seasons, Movies, Skeleton Crew, Stephen King
The Mist Movie Trailer
Penned by 4ever3 at Tuesday, November 27, 2007 0 comments
Labels: Movies, Skeleton Crew, Stephen King, The Mist
Friday, November 23, 2007
Different Seasons - Part 1: Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption
I'm going to do a four parter on the Stephen King book entitled "Different Seasons". The book itself is made of 4 novellas, each dealing with certain aspects of humanity and human nature.
The first offering in the book is "Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption".
This story is truly a gripping tale of an innocent man's, Andy Dufresne, incarceration in Shawshank Prison. The longer Andy stays in prison the more hope becomes harder to hold on to, especially after proof of his innocence emerges and later disappears by those who run the prison because Andy has become a valuable commodity to his incarcerators.
This is clearly my favourite story in the book, as the story is powerful and is written in a first person narrative from another prisoner's, Red, point of view. Stephen's character development in this story is wonderful. King has you wrapped up and caring about these prisoners - murderers some of them - so quickly that it is truly hard to put the book down.
This story was also turned into a movie simply called "The Shawshank Redemption" and aside for a few plot changes to make the story better suited for the 'big screen', the movie sticks exceptionally well to it's origins.
The movie itself is also one of my most favourite movies of all time. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are each awesome in their roles as Andy and Red. They somehow managed to get the characters from the book and put them on screen virtually unchanged.
Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption is clearly one of the best reads you'll have in a long time, and not only that but the movie is probably also one of the best movies you'll ever get a chance of seeing.
Penned by 4ever3 at Friday, November 23, 2007 2 comments
Labels: Different Seasons, Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Stephen King Sizes Up Who's Cool ... And Who's Not
Penned by 4ever3 at Thursday, November 22, 2007 0 comments
Labels: Cool, Dale Jr, Joe Cool, Stephen King
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The Mist
We are all the sum of our own experiences, and reading it again so many years later I was able to identify with the main character, David, differently than I did in the past. I am now married and have kids of my own so I can better understand what David was going through.
Penned by 4ever3 at Wednesday, November 21, 2007 2 comments
Labels: Dark Tower, Movies, Skeleton Crew, Stephen King, The Mist
Feast of Fear
Penned by 4ever3 at Wednesday, November 21, 2007 0 comments
Labels: Books, Movies, Novellas, Novels, Stephen King