Shadow of the Dark Tower

Yes, this is the best one in the series. No, I don't only post pictures of half-naked women. Just mostly.

I don’t know how many of you have read Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, but it is one of the more amazing collections in literature.  King is a master craftsman (yes, not everything he churns out is gold) and The Dark Tower is his master work.  I haven’t gotten into the graphic novels as of yet, but I’ve heard they are fantastic as well.  I doubted that anyone could ever properly make the Dark Tower into the masterpiece that it should be and was skeptical when I heard that Ron Howard was moving ahead with the project.  The series is so long and it is all so critical to the story that you could never leave anything out.  Could they make seven movies like they did successfully with Harry Potter?  Sure, they could conceivably, but the Dark Tower does not have the type of following that HP does (sadly) and in order to make this the right way the movies would all probably be 3 hours and extremely budget heavy.  My thought was always that in order to be made right, it had to be a mini-series.  As weird as it is to say, the major TV networks have always done a pretty decent job of their King mini-series and their version of The Stand remains one of my favorite things ever put on celluloid.  The more and more I thought about it though, the thought that kept coming back to me was that it would make the perfect HBO series.  There is plenty of material in the series and graphic novels (if you wanted to go there) to fill years of episodes and if you’re being honest, only the pay channels can do it properly.  ABC is fine, but you cannot make The Dark Tower and cut out the violence or any of the other “not fit for TV” parts that make it what it is.

It seems now that Howard’s whole project is teetering on the edge of being called off altogether.  It’s too bad as it seemed like they actually had a decent idea.  The books were going to span two full movies from Universal and two mini-series from NBC, all starring Javier Bardem who might just be one of the most perfect characters to play Roland unless Christopher Lloyd is able to travel back 30 years and bring us a 40 year old Clint Eastwood.  “Marty!  He shot me Marty and then lit his cigar from my boot.  He left me there to die Marty and stole the Delorian!!!!!!  What will happen to your kids?”  Aaaaaaaaaaaand we’re back.  In any event, there are conflicting reports all over the web about the project’s status, but AICN is usually pretty accurate when it comes to this kind of stuff.  We’ll just have to stay tuned and see.  Personally, I am still rooting for an HBO series.  I would rather they never make it at all than make it half-assed.  Bob out.

AICN and The Dark Tower

And then there’s this . . .

AMC is doing things that most studios/channels are not.  They are producing original content at an extremely high level, one that cannot be duplicated with the possible exception of HBO or perhaps YouPorn.  I have never gotten into Mad Men, but from all reports it is groundbreaking.  I did get into The Walking Dead which I thought was excellent, though I was somewhat disappointed with the finale.  From all reports Frank Darabont is keeping an even closer eye on the scripts for season 2.  Currently AMC is airing season 1 of The Killing and it might be my new favorite show on TV.  The Killing deserves its own blog post, but that is for another day.  I saw the below link/trailer for the new AMC show Hell on Wheels.  This is the first I’ve heard of the show, but it looks fantastic.  Right now I am looking forward to it almost as much as I am Franklin and Bash.

Here’s to AMC, the anti-MTV!

Hell on Wheels

That's how he smiles