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My vote goes to Tales of the Black Freighter, the greatest pirate comic DC never published.

What great unwritten comic would you like to see?

(Tales of the Black Freighter is the fictional pirate comic Alan Moore created for Watchmen - a single "issue" and imaginary "history" of the comic are all that ever appeared, more's the pity)

I'd have to agree. Apart from a couple of fantastic sequences, the third section - the "Jump London" day - was nowhere near as good as I expected.

Part of this was due to the venues chosen, but a lot of it was down to the cutting of the footage - the jump from long shots taking in the moves in full - from build-up to completion - to extreme closeups helped to destroy their impact.

That said, it was a great introduction to le parkour/free-running, and I look forward to the discipline getting more exposure in the future.

*Bounce*

"Jump London" is on in about half-an-hour, right after celeb-wank "The Games". Enjoy :-)

Excellent - I'll keep an eye out for it. Thanks!

Anyone else going to watch "Jump London" when it screens on C4? If you are, could you let me know when it's on? C4 were supposed to be showing it tonight, but it's been rescheduled and I can't find out when it's been moved to.

For anyone wondering what le parkour is, it's the urban acrobatics you'll have seen in the BBC Radio ad, or possibly Global Frequency. Check out:

http://www.parkcore.net/
http://www.urbanfreeflow.com/
http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/ideas/leparkour.html

...for pics & info.

Thanks in advance...

Rotts:

I'm enjoying the tie-ins as well - I just hope King doesn't take it as far as some fans have suggested, linking *everything* into one "Dark Tower" mythos.

I'm looking forward to finding out what happened to the damned minister from 'Salem's Lot, especially with the revelation that:

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...he's been a vampire hunter since disappearing from the town.

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"Is he planning a longer version of The Stand?"

He's already written it: it was released in 1990 as "The Stand: Complete & Uncut. The original edition of The Stand was released in 1978 and weighed in at around 800 pages; the revised and expanded edition was about 300 pages longer. The revised edition is pretty much the definitive work, and I suspect - unless you read The Stand during the 80s - it'll be the version you've encountered.

" I'm pretty sure the new one is out this autumn, and the next one in the spring or something."

The hardback edition of Wolves of the Calla is due on Nov 4th, with illustrations by Berni Wrightson (hurrah!). Book six & seven should be out in summer & autumn 2004.

If any DT fans are looking for an interesting read, have a look for Stephen King's The Dark Tower: A Concordance. It's a reference to the DT series that King used while writing & it contains his notes on places, characters, plot points, history, language... think of it as his personal encyclopaedia of The Dark Tower.

"Without being arsed to go and check for myself- is it substantially different, or just a new introduction? Not that it matters either way- I tend to buy new King editions if they have so much as a word changed anyway."

Storywise, I believe there are only a few substantial changes, intended to correct what King thought were inconsistencies or to more closely link The Gunslinger in with the later novels.
As Pyroxian said, there's a new introduction that goes some way to explaining why King thought it necessary to revisit & revise the book.
The rest of the alterations change and correct some of the language used.

It's not an expanded edition on the scale of The Stand, but it's certainly worth a look, especially with the new novels coming soon.

"Excellent. Another King fan, I hope."

Oh, yes - I came to his writing late, but I made up for lost time *very* quickly.

I'd agree with your comments on his recent work; "From A Buick Eight" was a delight to read and I'm looking forward to having time free to read "Black House".

re: The Dark Tower

In the last interview I read with King, he was quoted as saying that the series was written. At the moment, only the fifth book - Wolves of the Calla - is ready for publication, but both book six - The Song of Susannah - and seven - The Dark Tower - are in the bag, ready for editing/rewriting and set for release within the next two years. I've yet to pick up the revised edition of "The Gunslinger" - have you read it?

Though I suspect the final books of The Dark Tower may be among his best, I hope he sticks around to prove me wrong - and given what he's said previously about his feeling toward writing, it may be that he's not able to call it quits!

I quite enjoyed From Dusk Til Dawn, but I have sympathy with people who found the second half quite out-of-place (or vice-versa). IMO, the film would have worked better with some cuts to the beginning of the movie, moving the action to the vamp bar with a bit more haste.

I don't know if you've ever read Stephen King talking about his writing, Steev, but he talks about the feeling of "slipping through the cracks" in his fiction, something I think applies to From Dusk...

Up until the grand unveiling, this is just another heist movie. It's when they sit down for celebratory drinks in the Titty Twister that everything takes a step sideways and the movie asks: "Well, what if the strange, threatening place you just walked into turned out to be *really* weird?"

*This* isn't the problem with the movie though - the problem is that the movie takes too damn long to get to this point and gives too much time to the setup (heist, kidnap etc...)
If you're going to tell a tale that asks "what if?", don't spend so bloody long getting to that point that you convince everyone you're actually telling another story!

re: Jeepers Creepers. I quite enjoyed this movie, and I had no problem when it became obvious that these kids had gotten mixed up with a *real* monster. My disappointment was more to do with the revealing of the creature - it just wasn't as good/terrifying as it had been built up to be.

That's always going to be a problem in a monster movie; at some point, you've got to unveil the creature and there's bound to be a feeling of "oh, it's only a ten-foot bug - I was expecting a *fifty-foot* bug" (to paraphrase badly :-)), but it was particularly damaging in Jeepers Creepers because the monster was, IMO, rather pedestrian.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough - time for coffee...

If there's a communal list going, whack Martin on there - a fantastic little Romero flick.

"Nah, there really isn't such a thing as "too much EC horror", at least not af far as I'm concerned, so I really liked Creepshow."

BTW - have you seen the gorgeous Cochran collections of the EC library? They've produced three 5-volume sets reprinting all of the Tales From The Crypt/Haunt of Fear/Vault of Horror issues, with colour inserts for each cover. Absolutely magnificent.

IIRC, there are similar volumes reprinting Saddle Justice, Gunfighter, Modern Romance, Crime Patrol, Frontline Combat etc...

They're about ?100 each, but well worth it if you're into EC.

Aah - I'd forgotten "Stand By Me", another one of the "Different Seasons" shorts (this book seems to have spawned most of the classy King adaptations)

I'd argue that Running Man isn't strictly an adaptation; after all, it ditches virtually everything about the Bachman/King original but the idea of the "hunters".

Children of the Corn is pretty faithful (though it ditches "He Who Walks Amongst The Rows", one of the more striking ideas in the original short story).

As for Maximum Overdrive, I'd say it makes my point about "two-dozen page stories stretched to two hours" perfectly, as well as standing as a shining example of why King shouldn't be let near adapting his own work.

I'm leaning toward the conclusion that there've been a decent number of King short stories adapted competently, but I can only pick one - Stand By Me/The Body - as being of a kind with Misery/Shawshank/Green Mile.

...And I'm glad someone else hates the King version of The Shining - faithful to the original novel, but heartless, overlong and utterly overshadowed by Kubrick's version (whatever the merits of that film). To be honest, King's appearance as leader of The Overlook house band was one of the few points that I really enjoyed :-)

BTW - what did you think of Creepshow? I thoroughly enjoyed the King/Wrightson comic, and I've got kind of a soft spot for the movie. Too much EC horror probably ;-)

Not sure about that Art - IMO, the best - that is, both faithful and good in their own right - King adaptations have been:

The Shawshank Redemption
The Green Mile
Misery

The only one of those that really qualifies as a short story - and even then, only by a stretch - is the Shawshank Redemption, which was adapted from King's "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption". King has had many of his short stories adapted ("The Night Flier", "The Langoliers", "The Ledge", "Quitting Inc." etc...) with varying degrees of success, but I can't think of one that I would put on a par with the three adaptations listed above.

I am, as always, open to a good argument otherwise... :-)