Rating: 
Summary: Not Bad, But Not Good
Review: First off, I'm biased; I loved the book and all the detail 1000-plus pages brings to it. No movie or mini series, however great the production values or director, was going to capture the book.
Gary Sinese was a good choice. Rob Lowe not so much. Ray Walston enlivened his character. Parker Lewis didn't (yes I know that's not his real name, but honestly: where else do YOU know him from?). Molly Ringwald wasn't the right choice for Frannie either.The FX were not thought out well; the same money could have been put to better use. Overall, it had the feel of a miniseries, and that dooms it for me. Read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: The director tract made this worth owning
Review: Not the best movie production of a Stephen King work, but
certainly not the worst. And by far his best novel. A collectors
must.
Rating: 
Summary: 'The Stand' actually works well on TV
Review: For those who didn't think King's awesome book 'The Stand' couldn't be filmed, here it is. Sure, the effects are TV cheesy and many characters and events have been chopped out, but for the most part this mini-series stayed true to the source material, and was interesting even if you hadn't read it before. The disc also comes with a small featurette, but it's nothing to care about really. Definately a good mini-series though.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book, but butchered in the movie
Review: I've read the long version of The Stand well over 20 times. It's always been one of my favorites. I was highly disappointed in the movie, however. I felt there was too much changed from the book. Little things made such big gaps in the story line. I watch the movie often, but each time, it makes me so angry I have to go back and read the book. Molly Ringwald didn't fit well as Fran. Harold Lauder's character was poorly done. Nadie just wasn't Nadine. The only 3 characters that were well suited, I think, were Stuart Redman, Nick Andros and Tom Cullen. Someday, I would love to see this one redone in the manner in which the book carries it.
Rating:
Summary: MY FAVORITE BOOK AND ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES
Review: I have read the book four times, twice the uncut version, and it is the best book I have ever read. The movie is really good. Six hours may sound like a long time, but after I watched it I wished it was longer. Watching all six hours together is the only way to watch it. If you don't buy any other DVD or VHS, but this one. Most of the actors are really great in their rolls. I loved Gary Sinise in it! I thought a different actor should have played Randall Flagg, I agree with the other review that Christopher Walken would have been perfect. I, also, didn't care for the actress playing Nadine Cross. Not attractive enough and I didn't care for the way they did the color in her hair. In the book Nadine Cross was really beautiful with dark, almost black hair, that was getting more and more white in it, until the end where Nadine Cross had all white hair. In the movie, it was dark with gray in it. At least it looked gray to me. Not very attractive, where in the book the black with white in it was very attractive. This is a small thing though.
Rating:
Summary: Read The Book First
Review: Read the book first, then see the movie. There are some subtle differences between the two, but the screen version stays true to the idea of the book as a whole. Mr. King did an excellant job of crossing this story over to T.V. , and the changes from the book are only there to move the story along. Six hours of watching does fly, but if you are like me, once you start it, you are committed for the full six.
The only reason I give it four stars instead of five is that some of the acting is sub-par. Maybe another reason is that I would have cast some of the characters differently. I think that the character of Randall Flagg has Christopher Walken written all over it. I always pictured Robert Duvall as Glen Bateman. But when I saw the characters of Tom Cullen and Nadine Cross, they were exactly as how I pictured them in the book. Gary Sinese was the perfect call for Stu Redman, but Molly Ringwald as Frannie, no way!
All in all, the movie was great. It was made for T.V. , so they could'nt spend the cash needed for the big name actors. With that in mind, the story carries this movie, and this DVD is a must buy for any avid collector. The extras are kind of lame, but like I said, this was no Hollywood blockbuster.
Rating:
Summary: One of My Favorite Movies
Review: I won't get into the plot, since every review has covered it. The only pick I had was the corpses. If you watch closely, you will find one poor guy sitting in a laundromat in Boulder, his mouth a gaping maw. Then I see him again in Idaho, sitting in a cafe, along with a corpse I had seen in the church (also in Boulder). These corpse had a bad case of wanderlust, it seems. I enjoyed the movie so much that I spent $100 for the VHS set when it first came out. The actors and actresses of the major characters held a great performance. The cinematography of the southwest, especially Utah, was beautiful. You receive the same quality on the DVD, which also includes the Behind-the-Scenes and Make-Up Effects, plus Storyboard Comparisons.
The DVD comes in Fullscreen, 2.0 Dolby Surround. I wasn't able to take advantage of the Surround, since my player didn't come with speakers. Despite that, the sound was better than the VHS. Also included is a trivia booklet. That, I found, was no big deal. The rest, I continue to enjoy. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A great, engrossing movie!
Review: This movie is one of the few Stephen King films that stays true to the novel on which it is based. It is a long film, but it has a lot of story to cover.
If you're unfamiliar with the story, in a nutshell, there is a horrible disease that spreads throughout America, and presumably the world (although that isn't made clear in either the book or the film), and basically everyone dies. Only 1 percent of the population survives, and over time they meet up. It soon becomes a battle of good versus evil.
This is a particularly poignant film now, given the recent events of September 11th, and the anthrax scare. It gives the viewer much to think about how they would handle themselves in the same situation- a possibility made all the more real in our new world at war.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good movie considering the limitations...
Review: Since this movie is based on a novel that is over a 1000 pages long in paperback, so they had to cut quite a few scenes, characters and situations from it. This movie is pretty long as it is... some of the cuts made were predictable, such as Stu's group encounter with the 'zoo' (if you're wondering what that is - read the book!). But as it is, we don't get to see all the characters develop as they are in the book. Larry's character in the bppk, for instance, had changed from being a selfish young man who had only thought about himself, to a responsible adult. The movie doesn't give us a reason to understand why Larry was chosen over many other, seemingly equal people, to serve in the Free Zone committee, but in the book, even though we don't see him lead his group to Boluder, we hear enough to understand that he has leadership qualities in him. Another example would be Harold's character - he was a fat geek that was laughed at in school and treated as an outcast even by his parents, who obviously loved his sister Amy much better. Add to that the fact that Amy was Frannie's best friend and both were part of the popular crowd, and you see a much stronger motivation for Harold for wanting to impress Frannie, and having her for himself. This isn't a crush, as the movie tries to portray, but for Harold Frannie is a symbol of all he was missing before the plague, and now that things have changed, he wants to get. In the book, you get a much better sense of why Harold is so angry and eventually turns against the zone. When he finally seems to have a chance to change things - he's gotten Frannie's attention and appreciation for the way he handles the post - plague world - Stu and Glen come in, and he's no longer the center of things. This is how he feels about not being included in the Free Zone committee - after proving his resourcefulness on the trip to Boulder. Only before he dies does the book version Harold realize that he had a potential place as an important figure in the community if he hadn't 'turned bad'. This brings me to the 2nd reason for disliking this movie: Molly Ringwald as Frannie. Her shoulder length black dyed hair is awful, especially since the book version Frannie is a read head, just like Molly... But this is a minor detail compared to what she did with Frannie: instead of a resourceful young woman, we get a stupid, silly girl who only cares about chasing Stu and wearing pretty clothes (that are not very practicall for a long trip on a motorcycle, by the way). When she reacts to Mother Abagail's request that the 4 men walk to Las Vegas, we see the reaction of a spoiled child, not the reaction of a strong minded young woman who is about to have a baby, and wants her loved one around then. We don't see her changing attitudes towards Harold: from thinking of him as a rude & dirty minded geek in the pre plague days to admiring his resourcefullness, then to fearing his reaction to her & Stu's relationship, then to a creepy feeling when she sees how he deals with it... These are only some examples of many things that Frannie goes through, but Molly Ringwald doesn't portray very well well. All other actors and actresses had to deal with the limitations of the cut script, but luckily for us viewers, only Molly Ringwald had a problem dealing with her character... Another feminine mis portrayed character is Nadine Cross, even though the casting for her was perfrct. Actually, the movie version Nadine was a combination of 2 characters in the book: the sophisticated New Yorker Rita Blakemoore,who eventually 'ran out' on Larry by ODing on pills (and this being a turning point for Larry), and Nadine Cross, a woman he had met on the way. Since the book version of Nadine was not commited to being the sophisticated New Yorker, we are introduced to her as a quiet & good woman (she's the one who found Joe, and took care of him at first, not Lucy), but then learn she's haunted by the Dark Man since childhood, and is slowly being drawn to him. We understand her dislike for going to Nebraska and her death a lot better in this light... I had a huge problem with the commentary. It's obvious that it's been done in a few sessions, because a few of the stories (especially Ruby Dee's husband getting the role of Judge Ferris) were repeated over and over again. Also, towards the end, a few of the scenes had any commentary in them, and the little there was to say was over discussed and over analyzed. I understand it's hard to do a commentary for such a long movie, so maybe they should have had another 'extra' of commentary on certain scenes or characters instead of having one over the whole movie. Another problem, common to quite a lot of DVD commentaries that are done by more than one person is the constant babble of how great everyone was, etc. There were very few enlightening bits of information, such as Rob Lowe's explanation of how he prepared for the role of Nick.
Rating:
Summary: BUMP-de-BUMP-de-BUMP-de-BUMP...
Review: This is probably the only good made-for-TV movie that I have ever seen, especially for a SK adaption. I'm just a little biased because I read the Complete and Uncut edition of the book, which rocked beyond belief, but aside from the scenes before everybody gets sick and dies, I haven't found much fault with the flick; the acting was mostly great, the book-to-film conversion was handled very well...my younger brother watched the film with me and started habitually to chant Trashcan Man's trademark phrase (see title). For the acting, Gary Sinise and Rob Lowe were great, and the guys who played Larry, Glen, Tom Cullen, Lloyd, Randall Flagg, and Mother Abagail were truly talented. I enjoyed Kathy Bates' short cameo as the disc jockey that has a disagreement with the U.S. Marine Corps, which leads, sadly, to her untimely demise; speaking of cameos, Stephen King takes a shot at acting as one of the residents of Boulder, Colorado. He wasn't as annoying as some people say he was, but the Southern-hick accent was WAY overdone-- isn't he a Maine resident? However, there were some characters that I could not put up with at all- on top of the list was Molly Ringwald with her hair dyed black, miscast as Frannie Goldsmith. When I read the book, I invisioned Fran as a natural leader, not a dumb blonde without blond hair (Personally, I think that there should be a federal law that limits movie casts to only ONE former brat-pack member). Others that I didn't especially like were Nadine and Harold, namely because Nadine was portrayed accurately but just so freaking creepy. Harold was kind of miscast, and in the movie is just a tall, skinny kid that is insecure and easily manipulated. In the book, Harold was the apotheosis of nerdiness; he was fat, his face was bathed in acne, he talked like an arrogant prick, he thought that everyone else was dumber than him...and then, when he falls under Nadine's influence and all these detriments are erased, he writes his growingly psycotic thoughts in his ledger. As he lies dying by the side of the road, he writes an extended essay about the reasons for the things he has done. In the movie, he writes "Sorry I was misled" on a piece of paper and sticks it to his chest. I realize that lots of stuff had to be left out of the movie, but Harold's devious intentions were not explained well enough. As for the extras, particularily Stu's late neighbors and the scientists at the Stovington's Center for Disease... well, I think that in terms of acting, the film had two opposing camps: the good actors, which all survive the plague to a point, and the ones that suck, which, with the exception of Molly Ringwald, die off so that the director doesn't have to worry about them. As for the setting, I thought that the scenery was really great, except for the fact that during the bleak, dark scenes in which dead bodies lay strewn about the streets, more often than not the sun is shining brightly, which detracts from the mood. I expected to see cityscapes ravaged by fires and explosions caused by the dying victims of the plague, but I only saw New York City burning from a distance as Larry Underwood watches...in broad, happy daylight. However, I loved the part where Stu, Larry, Ralph, and Glen are crossing the countryside to Las Vegas; the mountains and the fields they see on the way are filmed beautifully. ...Jeez, this is kind of a long review. Bottom Line: The Stand is superb. Don't be afraid to see it just because it is a Stephen King adaptation.
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