|
Recently Released In Theaters Reviews
2008 FALL MOVIE PREVIEW Blindness How to Lose Friends & Alienate People Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist Flash of Genius Beverly Hills Chihuahua Forever Strong Eagle Eye Miracle at St. Anna Choke Nights in Rodanthe My Best Friends Girl Lakeview Terrace Battle in Seattle Igor Recently Added Spotlights Clark Gregg Sean Faris Charlize Theron Stuart Townsend Justin Hartley Samuel L. Jackson Patrick Wilson Kerry Washington Meg Ryan Jada Pinkett Smith Eva Mendes Debi Mazar Alan Ball Nicolas Cage Anna Faris |
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
|
 As it happens, The Mist had a special place in King’s heart before Darabont decided to direct it – prior to first writing it, in the late ‘70s, King found himself with a tough bout of writer’s block. “A friend of mind, Kirby McCauley, was putting an anthology together called Dark Forces,” he says. “He wanted all these original stories from people in the genre. I said, ‘You know, Kirby, I don’t think I can do that ‘cause I’m blocked,’ and I was. I hadn’t written anything. There were three books: there was Carrie, there was Salem’s Lot, there was Night Shift, and I was kind of stuck, really. “Later on, I happened to be in the local market, a lot of people were shopping, it was a little town market. I looked at the front windows, and I thought, you know if something bad happened, those windows would all blow in.” King grins sheepishly: “‘Cause that’s the way I think,” he says with a shrug. “It’s not necessarily a good thing, but it’s been a profitable thing over the years.” Apparently, that one idea did the trick: “I thought about it and mulled it over, and this story came out of it. So I’ve always been grateful to The Mist, because it broke me out of a place where I couldn’t think of anything, or do anything.” The story itself chronicles the aftermath of a harsh storm in a small New England town. A father (Thomas Jane), his young son, and sixty-odd other people are buying groceries in the supermarket when a heavy mist floods the town, and inside it, strange somethings that don’t seem to let anyone who ventures into the mist survive. The brilliance of the story – and this is where Darabont’s high-pedigree writing and directing skills come in handy – is the sharp characterizations of the townsfolk trapped in the store and the portrait of what fear can do to each of us. Most chilling is Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), a strange, lonely woman who starts preaching Old Testament-style that the mist signals the End Times – and gaining a gaggle of frightened followers. Because of Mrs. Carmody’s role in the story and the man vs. man themes, many see the film as an allegory of current events and an attack on fundamentalism or evangelism. King, however, resists making parallels. “Well, Mrs. Carmody was there back then [in 1980]. And the Mrs. Carmody in Frank’s movie is very much the Mrs. Carmody that was in the story,” he says. “I don’t want to go out and make political statements. I’m a storyteller, and Frank’s a storyteller, and that’s what we do. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: ... |
|
|||||||||
