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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 2956
Released: January 7, 2003 |
| Our Price: $6.79 |
| Used Price: $5.45 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Jack Torrance and his family move into the sprawling, vacant Overlook Hotel to get away from it all. Away from the alcoholism that derails Jack's writing career. Away from the violent outbursts that mar Jack's past. But Jack's young son Danny knows better. He possesses a psychic gift called the shining. - a gift the hotel's vile spirits desperately want.
DVD Features:
Additional Scenes:11 additional scenes
Audio Commentary:Feature-length commentary by Stephen King, cast members Steven Weber and Cynthia Garris, Director Mick Garris and select crew
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Description of Stephen King's The Shining (Two Disc Special Edition):
Stephen King's The Shining is a new adaptation from the author himself, made for television, that bears very little resemblance to the 1980 Stanley Kubrick version. That's not surprising since Kubrick threw out most of King's novel and presented his own version of the story. Here King redresses the balance in a miniseries that follows his original almost to the letter, and manages to be effectively creepy despite the budget and censorship limitations of the TV format.
Stephen Weber takes over the role of Jack Torrance, the caretaker who slowly descends into madness in the haunted Overlook Hotel. His performance is as far from Jack Nicholson as you could get, with his insanity building slowly and menacingly rather than being virtually mad from the get-go. Rebecca De Mornay is superb as Wendy Torrance, struggling to hold her fragile family together amid the spooky goings-on. Young Courtland Mead plays Danny, whose unique gifts give the story its title, as one of those infuriating TV brats who overacts left, right, and center. Fortunately, there are enough creepy moments and a number of frights to hold the whole thing together, the woman-in-the-bathtub scene being a standout shocker. Sure, there is nothing quite like Nicholson's "Here's Johnny!" moment, but this is the story King wanted to tell and it still shines brighter than most of the other recent screen adaptations of his work. --Jonathan Weir
Stephen King's The Shining (Two Disc Special Edition) Reviews:
Very true to the book written by Stephen King! 
2008-08-30 - This is a great movie if you are the type of person who likes a movie about a book to be true to the book. In The Shining that was done by Stanley Kubrick, it was his "interpretation" of the book by Stephen King. And although it was a great movie on its own, it was not at all very true to the book. In this movie, which was a 3 night mini-series on ABC, Stephen King was allowed to make it almost exactly like the book he wrote, simply because there was enough time to! The book was amazing, and this movie will creep you out at times, and entertain you to the max! It is a great story. You will not regret buying this dvd!
If You Want a Version Closer to the Book...This is It 
2008-08-18 - This TV miniseries is much closer to King's book than the Kubrick enigma. The story is about a recovering alcoholic named Jack Torrance who is put in charge of a winter resort known as the Outlook Hotel. The hotel was often a haven for severely immoral guests who now spiritually inhabit the hotel as ghosts in sort of a hotel purgatory. Torrance's young son, Danny, has a sort of an ESP described as "the shining" by the hotel's chef who shares this mental gift. The ghosts in the hotel manipulate the hot tempered and emotionally unstable Jack Torrance to get him to attempt to kill his son Danny beacause once dead, Danny would reside with the ghosts who would use his special ability to strengthen their manifestations.
Unlike the miniseries, the story delves into the background of the characters more substantially. We learn a lot about Jack's childhood, employment failures, struggles with alcohol and rocky marriage to his wife Wendy. By fleshing out the character of Jack Torrance we can sympathize with his transformation from merely a man with major problems to a crazed man possessed by evil. We also learn of the deep love for his wife and son which, though buried beneath his darker side, is still powerful enough to help him attempt to overcome the evil spirits. In the end we view Jack as a tortured soul who we feel sorry for.
The movie is certainly not without faults and it can drag at times but it is worth seeing.
King's flop makes Kubrick's masterpiece shine 
2008-07-22 - Stanley Kubrick was a film artist. I am not sure what Stephen King is when it comes to film, but I do not believe it is respecting it as an art form.
Kubrick's film is rich in themes and motifs: Doubling, repetition, lights, mazes, mirroring, Indians, Europeans, white settlers, the American flag. King's films, by comparison, are all what-you-see-is-what-you-get.
This one is no different. Everything is pointed out and spelled out as if the audience is too dumb to discern anything that isn't. To be sure, with Kubrick's version there have been connections made and meanings inferred that were merely the result of accident or continuity error, but I would rather watch a movie that gives me a reason to wonder about something that may or may not be there than a movie that leaves me with nothing to wonder about at all.
Kubrick's Shining is terrifying and a straight descent into madness. King's Shining is a soap opera. It's Leave It To Beaver meets Casper The Unfriendly Ghost.
The Timberline Lodge, which Kubrick used for the exterior of his hotel, looks like a place where a madman might dwell and seems remote and isolated long before the snow has begun to fall. King's pretty white hotel is a picture on a postcard.
Kubrick's elevator gushes a torrent of reddish-black blood. King's elevator gushes confetti and underwear.
217 v. 237. This scene scared me about as badly as taking my child shopping at the Halloween Superstore in October. And how hard is it to scare a child? Film Bathtub Woman scared the s--- out of an axe-murderer! Series Jack leaned against the wall and rattled an aspirin bottle. Did she give him a headache?
The hedge animals in King's movie could have been effective. Did they just move? Maybe they did or maybe they didn't. Maybe the hotel is starting to get to Jack and he imagined it all. But the scene is spoiled by playground objects that do come to life while you're watching them.
Assuming we live in a world where psychics exist, part of the intrigue for non-psychics is in imagining what it is like to experience psychic phenomenon, not knowing what it is like. Now I know; it's someone shouting inside your head. How original. Dick jumps around like he is being tasered, his nose bleeds, and bystanders fuss over him. Compare these antics with the look of sheer terror that spreads slowly over Crothers' face; it is the horror of the hotel that Crothers reacts to, not what Danny says or how loudly he says it.
Weber comes across like a bad comedian for most of the movie. It is painful to watch a B-actor trying to be scary and failing miserably at it. At times this looks more like a parody of a horror movie: i.e., Series Jack making "bonking" noises as he pretends to hit himself in the side of the head with the mallet and then joking about Dick being "a publisher's clearing house winner."
We are told that De Mornay's Wendy is a Strong Womyn of the 90s. So how does that help the movie? If she's tough and she can take care of herself and her son, then why I am supposed to be afraid for her? De Mornay said of her role that Wendy "is a woman of power and intelligence." The implication apparently being that Duvall's Wendy was weak and stupid. De Mornay broke a bottle on Jack's head, kicked him in the nuts, and sliced his hand with a razor blade. Duvall hit Jack in the head with a baseball bat, sent him tumbling head over heels down the stairs, sprained his ankle, and sliced his hand with a kitchen knife. I'd say they're even. To boot, Duvall found her son and got them both into the snow cat and away from the hotel to safety, and she did it without anyone's help. De Mornay had only a wooden mallet to worry about and she needed Dick O'Halloren to rescue her. So I don't get how De Mornay supposedly topped Duvall. Plus, Duvall actually looked SCARED during in her role whereas De Mornay did not.
De Mornay yells, threatens, accuses, and nags almost the entire length of the movie. "Daddy finally got tired of her spiteful, cowardly nagging and decided to take her to school..." Can you blame him?
King's Danny is also unsympathetic. Courtland Mead, despite being repeatedly hollered at by his dry-drunk father and warned by Tony who conveniently pops up in front of him, busts into Ullman's office, steals the keys and bullheadedly goes where he knows he is not supposed to go. "I'll go in here if I want! Go away! Leave me alone!" alternating with daddy-daddy-snivel-scenes thrown in to make Weber look like an ogre.
And why is it that King takes one cheesy line and makes the actors repeat it over and over and over? Get down here and take your medicine! Damn nosey little pup! Kissin', kissin, that's what I've been missin'! Just like pictures in a book! In film Shining Danny Lloyd said "just like pictures in a book" one time. Once. And that was enough. Zero times would have been enough for others. And zero would have been enough times for this remake to be done.
Just like the book
2008-06-24 - I loved this movie! I had read the book 3 times and was always disappointed the the Stanley Kubrick's version strayed so far from the the book. I was happy when this version came out because it was truly like seeing the book come to life. It is quite a long movie (approx 3 hrs, 2 discs) but I have watched multiple times and enjoy it every time. I actually got to go to the hotel where it was filmed in Estes Park, CO and take the ghost tour and see where Stephen King thought up this chilling story.
The movie is about a recovering alcoholic that takes a job as a caretaker of the Outlook Hotel (truly known as The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, CO) with his family over the winter. The hotel has its secrets that the son has a intuition about and can "see" the visions of them. They call the visions "the shining". The resident ghosts start to make their presence known through the father as they prey on his weakness as a recovering alcoholic and sort of make him go crazy and want to kill his family. Due to the fact that it is winter time the family cannot escape easily so it truly becomes a hide and seek game.
I would recommend this movie to anyone who loves a chilling ghost story.
Fantastic remake of an already great movie
2008-05-29 - The original with Jack Nicholson was very good, this remake has so many extra goodies I love watching it over and over. It was well worth buying for my collection. Even though I liked the original, this one seemed to be more intense and edge of the seat. The characters are more alive and active in this one.
