Top 10 Stephen King Novels

I'm a Stephen King fan and though I haven't read nearly all of his work, I took the liberty of making a list of my 10 favorites and providing short reviews.

10. Misery (1987)
Misery is the story of Paul Sheldon, renowned author of the Misery series, who finds himself in a horrible and crippling car accident from which he is saved by former nurse Annie Wilkes. Initially with intent to nurse him back to health, she reads his latest novel and sees that Misery has been killed, and decides to hold Sheldon captive and force him to write another novel.

It's a really interesting and scary concept and you root for Sheldon the entire way. On top of that, more and more is revealed about Wilkes, making her possibly the best King villain.

The ending was a bit of a disappointment and it's bogged down by the passages from Sheldon's new novel, but overall it's quite good.

9. Under the Dome (2009)
This is one of the recent overlong King novels that has a plot that makes little to no sense. The plot is that an invisible dome appears over a small town, kind of like in The Simpsons Movie, and then everybody more or less goes crazy.

There are some ridiculous twists involving meth labs and the supernatural but these are for the most part acceptable because it's a highly entertaining and compelling satirical work of fiction. There are some really good characters here. Of course, this follows the frequently-occuring King philosophy that one in five people is a sociopathic killer. I guess that's a bit of a problem.

8. Carrie (1974)
Carrie is Stephen King's debut novel and one of the strongest debuts of the latter half of the twentieth century. It's told mostly through letters and newspaper clippings, much like Bram Stoker's Dracula, which no doubt had an influence on Stephen King.

As a reader, you want to cheer for Carrie because she is victimized horribly. She's bullied, she has a cruel reactionary mother, etc. But in the end she releases terrible horror on everyone. Definitely worth a read, a very effective horror novel.

7. It (1986)
I argue that It could have been the greatest horror novel ever written. Its story and creepy details make it maybe the scariest work in King's canon, but it's undeniably overlong and self-indulgent. Of course, self-indulgent Stephen King is still better than most writers.

It tells two narratives at once, one from the late-'50s and one from the mid-'80s. It doesn't pull this off flawlessly but I can't imagine it being done much better.

The plot is hard to describe. There's a horribly evil entity known as It that terrorizes Castle Rock, Maine, at its most basic level. But to explain further, there is a group of friends known as the Losers who live in Castle Rock in the fifties and fight It and successfully stop It until It comes back in the eighties but by that time due to It's powers they've forgotten almost everything so they are trying to remember how they fought it to begin with but on top of that they didn't even stop It completely to begin with. It's horribly complicated but also quite interesting.

The ending is a disappointment and it's another one of those novels that follows the philosophy that one in five people is a sociopathic murderer but overall it's very good.

6. The Stand (1978)
Many argue The Stand as Stephen King's magnum opus. It is a complicated fantasy/sci-fi/horror/adventure post-apocalyptic epic that really should be read.

I'll have trouble describing this because I don't remember it all too well. Nonetheless it's a post-apocalyptic society, and basically a story of good versus evil, the good being overwhelming underdogs. There are lots of characters, lots of subplots, and lots of creepy things going on.

Definitely worth a read and I plan on re-reading it this summer myself. I believe that would make it the first Stephen King novel I've reread.

5. The Green Mile (1996)
With the possible exception of The Stand, this is King's most emotionally-powerful novel. It's the story of a gentle black man (basically giant) on death row for the alleged murder of two little girls. The main prison guard, telling the story years later, begins to see that this man is incapable of committing murder.

Coffey is shown to be basically a Jesus-like figure with his healing powers, but he's also reminiscent of Lennie Small in his naivety. This is a powerful story of justice and guilt and certainly worth a read. As with Carrie, I am yet to see the movie.

4. Cell (2006)
Cell is a lot like The Stand, but a much shorter version. Having read this first, I enjoyed it a lot more. It's an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic story of cell phones turning people into vicious monsters. It sounds ridiculous but it works quite well.

It's both a satirical statement on our reliance on cell phones, and an interesting post-9/11 novel. On top of that, it has some really strong characters. It's very dark and pessimistic, and the tone does nothing but draw you in to the story. Like some of the best of King's works, it is horribly and graphically violent.

For a while this was my favorite King novel. Though it no longer is, I can do nothing but recommend it strongly.

3. 11/22/63 (2011)
I actually reviewed this like a week ago in detail. I'm not going to waste my time now.

2. The Shining (1977)
Perhaps the greatest horror novel of the 20th century, The Shining is the tale of Jack Torrance, a man driven insane by isolation in a haunted hotel.

Everything about this is so wonderfully creepy. Some of the images and situations it conjures up are reminiscent of a real nightmare, perhaps the best attempt at capturing dreams on paper this side of Finnegans Wake. I still argue this as the most frightening book I've read as well, and I'm usually not scared very easily by books.

1. The Dead Zone (1978)
The Dead Zone is great. It focuses more on chills rather than scares and violence and it works very well because the characters are great.

I actually say that King's characters have never been stronger. Johnny Smith recovers from a five-year coma and finds that he has a strange power to look into people's lives, sometimes into the future. While he initially uses this power to help find a serial killer and do other stuff like that, he eventually focuses his attention on preventing a powerful candidate from being elected to public office, knowing that something awful is going to happen.

The characters are what make this great, but the plot itself is very interesting as well.

Biggest Academy Award Best Picture Injustices

This is a list of the 10 biggest mistakes in the history of the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film will only be judged against those that were nominated (for instance, I'm not going to argue that Vertigo should have on Best Picture even though you damn well know it should have).

1. 1941 - How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is probably the greatest movie ever made. I love John Ford but what the hell was this?

2. 1952 - The Greatest Show on Earth over High Noon
Everyone who knows anything about the history of the Oscars says this was more or less a lifetime achievement award for Cecil B. DeMille, but did it have to come at the cost of one of the greatest westerns and movies ever made?

3. 1980 - Ordinary People over Raging Bull
Raging Bull is frequently cited as the greatest movie of the decade and perhaps Scorsese's and De Niro's greatest film. Ordinary People, though no doubt a good film, has not aged nearly as well as this.

4. 1964 - My Fair Lady over Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Strangelove is cited by many as the greatest comedy ever made. Enough said.

5. 1998 - Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan
This one just shocks me. Emphasizing the randomness of this pick, Spielberg won the Oscar for Best Director for "Ryan," an award that 9 times out of 10 goes to the Best Picture winner.

6. 1982 - Gandhi over E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
I argue that if this were to come out now, when Spielberg was thought of more as the master that he is rather than mostly just an action director, this would have been a runaway.

7. 1990 - Dances with Wolves over Goodfellas
I like Dances with Wolves a lot, I really do think it's a great movie. But Goodfellas is Goodfellas, probably the greatest movie of the '90s after Schindler's List.

8. 1979 - Kramer vs. Kramer over Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a film that's importance has grown with time. We can now see it as Coppola's and Brando's final masterpiece and one of the greatest war films ever made. Kramer vs. Kramer is a movie from that time period that is still talked about but just not nearly as great.

9. 1944 - Going My Way over Double Indemnity
Whether or not Going My Way is a good movie, Double Indemnity is by many standers the quintessential film noir and easily one of the greatest films ever made.

10. 2001 - A Beautiful Mind over The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The unfortunate thing about The Lord of the Rings as that it was difficult to look at as one film. Once the trilogy was done, notice how Return of the King won 11 Oscars, even though Fellowship is probably the best of the series. Maybe Fellowship didn't deserve 11, but it was snubbed here.

My film submitted to Campus Movie Fest. It did not make the top 16, quite possibly because editing was a nightmare. After having directed and edited this, I think it's safe to say I'm back to just writing and acting. Special thanks to everyone involved; it was a lot of fun but also a lot of work to make.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRxpR6g8SKU

Best Athletes Whose Jerseys I at One Time Owned

This is based on their careers, not just how good they were when I had their jerseys. And those t-shirts with numbers and names don't count.

1. Michael Jordan (Chicago Bulls)
2. Roberto Clemente (Pittsburgh Pirates)
3. Peyton Manning (Indianapolis Colts)
4. LaDainian Tomlinson (San Diego Chargers)
5. Derek Jeter (New York Yankees)
6. Randy Moss (Minnesota Vikings)
7. Curtis Martin (New York Jets)
8. Paul Pierce (Boston Celtics)
9. Vince Carter  (Toronto Raptors)
10. Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay Packers)
11. Tracy McGrady (Orlando Magic)
12. Michael Vick (Atlanta Falcons)
13. Mark Brunell (Jacksonville Jaguars)
14. Sam Cassell (Phoenix Suns)
15. Jevon Kearse (Tennessee Titans)
16. Javon Walker (Green Bay Packers)
17. Robert Brooks (Green Bay Packers)
18. Marcus Robinson (Chicago Bears)

Top 10 Hitchcock Would-Be Perfect Murders

Alfred Hitchcock’s films appeal to the inner murderer in all of us. Why wouldn’t they? They’re suspenseful films filled with unpredictable plot twists, horrifyingly realistic villains, and a dark sense of humor towards anything dealing with death. A huge part of the appeal to these films is their complexity; many of his films feature a would-be perfect murder. This is a list of the best of those. It should be stated that I have not seen all of Hitchcock’s films, not near half to be honest, but I have seen many of his masterpieces and loved nearly every one.

10. North by Northwest (1959) – the murder at the UN

            The ingenuity of this film lies in its humor. Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is on the run from the beginning, wrongfully believed to be a spy. Of course, when a UN ambassador dies in his arms from a perfectly thrown blade, everyone has reason to believe he’s a spy. This is one of the great cases of framing in Hitchcock’s canon, as Thornhill may or may not been about to discover the truth, but instead dozens of people see a man die in his arms and him have the knife in his hand.

9. The 39 Steps (1935)

            This film is extremely similar to North by Northwest, but its dramatic hook of a murder happens very quickly. Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) meets an attractive female spy in his home and she is murdered late at night. Hannay is now the only one who knew the secrets (or anything about them) so he must run. And naturally, running makes him look guilty of the murder.

8. The Lady Vanishes (1938)

            No one is actually murdered in this film, but it’s implied that the titular woman would have been. A woman disappears on a train and only one other woman seems to recall her presence. This works because a great deal of the passengers didn’t speak English, but all the English-speaking ones had some other reasons not to care. The rest of the film is the main character trying to prove to the passengers that there was indeed a woman, and then to find her.

7. Lifeboat (1944)

            Lifeboat begins with the deaths of many, as a passenger ship is sunk by a German ship, but little by little, opportunity for murder begins to present itself. Is there ever a better place to get away with murder than in the middle of an ocean on a lifeboat? Of course, not everything ends up working out.

6. Rear Window (1954)

            It is apparent that Lars Thorwald had carefully planned out the murder of his wife, probably for months. Everything was so perfect about his murder—her about to leave on vacation, etc—except there’s wheelchair-ridden Jimmy Stewart to account of. This is my second favorite Hitchcock film as just about everything in it is magnificent.

5. Psycho (1960) – the first murder

            This was a crime of passion but ended up being nearly perfect. Why? Well because of the actions of Marion Crane. She stole a bunch of money and was on the run, so her disappearing doesn’t necessarily mean she’s dead. And she even used a fake name. While the murderer didn’t know any of this, one can consider this an accidentally perfect murder, a perfect example of this film’s brilliance. In addition to that, the murder scene was cleaned up nearly flawlessly and her body was hidden well in a swamp.

4. Dial M for Murder (1954)

            Dial M for Murder is one of the finest examples of a film being a mystery for the characters but not the viewer. We see early in the film a husband hire someone who he hasn’t seen in years to kill his beautiful wife. Now I don’t know why anyone would ever want to kill Grace Kelly if they were married to her but that’s the premise for this perfect murder. A man who has never met Margot Mary Wendice is to kill her while the husband is away, seemingly incapable of committing the murder. It’s a great concept but was even better executed in another film. This one takes an interesting twist.

3. Rope (1948)

            In addition to this more or less being a perfect murder morally (while this is debatable of course) the two murderers are so clever about it that they have a bunch of guests at the scene of the crime and where the body has been hidden and no one is able to notice anything. Of course, pride breeds the tyrant and they eventually are found out, but that’s out of guilt as much as it’s out of evidence.

2. Vertigo (1958)

            While implausible to a degree and requiring so much coincidence, how it went down is just about perfect. I could easily see this being described as the perfect perfect murder. It’s complexity is astounding. Hitchcock takes the whole lookalike theme from The Wrong Man and uses it here to make a murder look like a suicide, and it works incredibly well. Of course, this would have gone on unsolved had it not been for love.

1. Strangers on a Train (1951)

            This is a lot like Dial M for Murder in a sense. Two strangers meet on a train and they both have someone in their lives they could do without. Bruno Antony (Robert Armstrong) proposes that they “swap murders,” and that’s exactly what he does. He’s also very careful about it. While the husband is the natural suspect, he was nowhere near the wife at the time of the murder and there is nothing more than circumstantial evidence against him. Add some blackmail to the mix and you’ve got more or less a perfect murder, and coincidentally, a perfect film.

11 Greatest Moments in the History of the NBA

I wanted to only have 10 but I couldn't resist with #11, one of my personal favorites.

Top 11 Greatest Moments in the NBA’s History:

11. Joakim Noah calls Kevin Garnett “mean.” This is classic. Now Kevin Garnett is one competitive guy and he may very well be an asshole, but so what? Well Joakim Noah was disappointed to find out that his childhood idol was a little rude, and coincidentally comes off as nothing more than a big baby who hasn’t showered in years.

10. Ron Artest applied for a job at a Circuit City in order to get an employee discount. I really don’t know what to say about this.

9. Jason Kidd upon being drafted by the lowly Dallas Mavericks: “We’re going to turn this team around 360 degrees.” And this man went to Berkley.

8. In a post-game interview, Shaq says “fuck” on national television and when told they’re live, he responds: “I don’t give a shit.” Shaq’s always been great for some interviews and stuff but this one always sticks out to me because I saw it on live TV.

7. Ron Artest asks management for a month off due to his fatigue from promoting an R&B album. The first of multiple Ron Artest moments, no doubt.

6. Ron Artest admits that he drank Hennessy at halftimes when he was with the Chicago Bulls. I find this to be hilarious, quite frankly, and a beautiful indication of the man who would be the next Dennis Rodman.

5. Ron Artest pulls down Paul Pierce’s shorts before a free throw. I love this one because I literally see no reason for it. This was the season in which Artest broke the record of most technical fouls in a season and I remember seeing this when I was in Hawaii.

4. Allen Iverson’s practice interview. Everyone’s seen it and heard it but it is flat-out classic. The embodiment of a Georgetown education right there.

3. Gilbert Arenas stores a gun in his Washington locker room. This was a huge deal back in 2009, as Arenas had broken out as one of the league’s stars. This is another one where you have to ask the question “why?” Perhaps only outdone by Plaxico Burress.

2. Latrell Sprewell turns down a $14.6 million offer because he “has a family to feed.” This is the greatest quote of all time and it’s made so much better because he was completely serious.

1. The Pacers/Pistons brawl. You knew this was coming. We didn’t hear the end of this for the entire season. Yet another Ron Artest involvement. My favorite instance is when Ron Artest tried to justify it in an interview, saying he went after the fan who threw a cup at him because that could have easily blinded him.

Seminar on Broadway - A Review

I got the pleasure of seeing Seminar as my first Broadway play and it was a lot of fun. It has been running on Broadway for some time now and has gotten pretty good reviews, being called things like "the funniest show on Broadway." I got to see Jeff Goldblum, one of my favorite actors, play the lead.

It's about four young writers living in New York City paying for a seminar run by an older man, Leonard (Goldblum) who's been published plenty of times. Needless to say, Leonard is a complete asshole and he cuts everyone down, making it hilarious.

The other characters were pretty good, too. I was surprised that Justin Long, who's character of Martin probably had the most lines, could actually act. He was really good. So was Zoe Lister-Jones as Kate. Leonard, Martin, and Kate all had a lot of depth to them for a relatively short play at under two hours. It was nice to see that and it worked as a great compliment to the comedy.

This was a very well-written play. I looked at the playwright's previous credits and it was nothing I recognized, though Theresa Rebeck had been a finalist for a Pulitzer as a co-writer. The director, too, I had never heard of (how could I? This was my first Broadway play) and this appeared to be a very easy play to direct.

The energy of the play was one thing that stood out. Although nearly all of it was just the five characters talking, there was a certain edge to every line of dialogue, delivered rapidly in many instances. I laughed out loud many times and it more than kept my interest.

I'd certainly recommend it. Unfortunately I can't compare it to anything else out there on Broadway and I'm sure there are better ones, but I'm also sure you could easily find worse comedy plays out there.