Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #232

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

It’s hot. Oh, so hot. Ever so effing hot. As many of you probably know, I live in Texas. Some years we get by without a single day with a temperature above 100°. This year, we’ve been “blessed” with almost nothing but triple-digit days, with “feels like temps” over 110°. It’s relentless.

So, while the world is melting down, what else should a person do but stay inside, with the A/C turned up high, reading and writing and watching television?
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Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #231

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a safe and pleasant holiday season. I know a lot of people had travel issues, so I hope none of you are still stuck in an airport somewhere (if you are, Mr. King and I have an anthology to help you pass the time) or trying to track down your luggage.

Will 2023 be a good year? Hard to say, but I know one thing for sure: we have a new King book to look forward to in September and a movie adaptation that has the studio’s confidence.
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Bev Vincent reviews Billy Summers

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

“A Garbage Man with a Gun”

The first time Billy Summers killed a man, he was barely twelve. By the time he’s eighteen, he’s a sniper with the Marines in Iraq, where he notches up another two dozen kills. Instead of re-upping, he tries to find work back in the States. One of his former Marine friends asks him to kill someone. Thus begins Billy’s career as an elite hitman. His only condition is that his victims have to be demonstrably bad men. He’s not a sociopath driven to kill — he’s just good with a gun. He can hit targets from an incredible distance and then vanish like Houdini without being identified or caught. Now, at the ripe old age of 44, he’s looking to retire. One last job and he’s done.Continue Reading

Bev Vincent reviews Doctor Sleep

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

“The World Will Shine Again”

I know, I’m seriously late in reviewing the latest big screen adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Hopefully better late than never! I finally got a chance to see Mike Flanagan’s tour-de-force film this week and I am so glad I got to see it on the big screen. And I can’t wait to see it again, although that may have to wait, because I don’t think it’s going to be in theaters much longer.
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Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #206

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

Sometimes it’s hard to stay on top of everything that’s going on in the Stephen King Universe. There are so many projects underway or about to get underway or that could possibly some day get underway that it boggles the mind. This is a new Golden Age for King, especially when it comes to the various adaptations of his work to screens large and small, silver and otherwise. I’m here to help you keep track!
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Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #204

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

The Year in Review and a 2018 Preview

Last year was been a banner year in the Stephen King Universe, particularly with respect to the diverse cinematic adaptations of his novels. Let’s take a look back at the various treats we received during 2017, and a peek ahead to what we can look forward to in 2018.
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Bev Vincent reviews Gerald’s Game

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

The Moonlight Man

There’s a lot to like in Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Gerald’s Game, a book long thought to be unfilmable since so much of it consists of internal dialog, with the main character handcuffed to a bed for much of it.Continue Reading

7 Movies You Must Watch While Reading ‘The Dark Tower’

Well. Yeah. That headline is a little misleading. A little clickbaity. Sue me. These definitely aren’t films you must watch while you’re reading the Dark Tower series.

But still, hunker down and let us palaver for a secondContinue Reading

Review: ‘The Dark Tower: The Art of the Film’

The Dark Tower: The Art of the Film text by Daniel Wallace
Scribner (July 2017)
208 pages; $27.19 hardcover
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand

Some might view books like The Dark Tower: The Art of the Film as big, expensive brochures for upcoming movies, but for me they’ve always provided a fascinating glimpse into the process of bringing these large-scale extravaganzas to our screens. Even when they come from the kind of rich source material of, say, an eight-book series written by Stephen King, there’s a lot of designing and refining that goes into the look of a movie like The Dark Tower. This volume gives us a glimpse of that, but I’ll confess that it left me wanting much, much more.Continue Reading

Bev Vincent reviews ‘The Dark Tower’

I was fortunate enough to see The Dark Tower on Tuesday evening at the Bangor Mall Cinemas 10, an event sponsored by Zone Radio. The audience was filled with people who won tickets from the station. In addition to getting a chance to see the film early, attendees also won some King-related merchandise as door prizes, including Dark Tower novel sets, audio books and signed ARCs of the final three volumes in the series. Dark Tower t-shirts were flung into the audience, too.Continue Reading

Robin Furth and the Comic Side of The Dark Tower

Robin Furth doesn’t live in Mid-World, but it could be argued she knows it better than the characters themselves. After working as Stephen King’s research assistant, Furth published Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Concordance, has written the graphic novel adaptations of The Dark Tower series for Marvel Comics, and is a consultant for the new film The Dark Tower and the TV series that will follow. As an avid folklorist, a fan of comics and King’s own go-to expert on all things Roland Deschain, Furth is the perfect person for all these jobs. She spoke to Cemetery Dance Online about her books, graphic fiction as a medium, and what she thinks about the upcoming movie and Idris Elba as the lead.Continue Reading

An Interview with ‘The Dark Tower’ Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman

In March, 2012, while I was writing The Dark Tower Companion, I spoke with Akiva Goldsman about his plans to adapt the Dark Tower series with Ron Howard. Clearly things have changed significantly in the past five years, but his thoughts at the time show where he was coming from and might indicate where the adaptations could be headed. As we anticipate this week’s release of The Dark Tower, enjoy this excerpt from that interview.Continue Reading

Ka Like a Wheel, Time Like a Circle

Ka Like a Wheel, Time Like a Circle
by Kevin Quigley

The notion of circular time is ancient. Hebrew interpretation of the Bible forwards the concept of “cycles,” of time moving in a loop like the orbits of the planets or the sweep of the hands of a clock. The Rolling Stones mention the concept in their song “Sway,” from the album Sticky Fingers: “Did you ever wake up to find / A day that broke up your mind / Destroyed your notion of circular time / It’s just that demon life has got you in its sway.”Continue Reading

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #198

Stephen King News From the Dead ZoneThe Dark Tower trailer we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. Let’s get that out of the way straight off:

However, before the trailer showed up at 9:19 am Keystone Earth Time today, we were treated yesterday to some Twitter banter between Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey as they laid the groundwork for a couple of teaser trailers that contain some footage not found in the official trailer.Continue Reading

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #197

Stephen King News From the Dead ZoneThere’s been so much news lately, I hardly know where to begin. What merits top billing? Let’s start with that trailer for It. First we had a teaser for the trailer, that stirred up interest. And then we got the 2-½ minute trailer itself, and boy what a beauty that was. In its first 24 hours, it racked up an astonishing 197 million views around the world, smashing all previous records. That speaks a lot to anticipation for this movie.Continue Reading