Plenty of options as you look ahead to another year of staying in. Adapted by: Benjamin Cavell from the book by Stephen King. One might try desperately to tie Randall Flagg to Donald Trump, his desert denizens to the "deplorables" and the whole show into a reflection on American ideological fragmentation in 2020. The Stand Season 1 Episode 2 takes on new characters, and the pattern of moving through the timeline is again on the menu. How are so many people immune to the virus, and aren’t they (or the writers of The Stand) curious to understand why? While there are some genuinely effective attempts to generate suspense, those sequences stand beside some of the wildest and most off-the-mark sections of the series, which take place in Las Vegas, dubbed “New Vegas.” That’s where Randall presides over a modern-day Gomorrah in which survivors, dressed in cyberpunk couture, engage in constant orgies and violence. The few survivors, united in groups, establish a new social system and engage in confrontation with each other. Streaming brings the chance to … Protest stream. The show has little to say about how we're living today. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets Terms of Use | The answer is that it rarely feels overly connected to anything in the real world and I'll leave it for you to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing. This scrawny teenager is one of the many tasked with tossing those bodies into massive graves. | Do Not Sell My Personal Information Before Cristin Milioti and John Magaro Were Breakout Stars, There Was This Ad …. Occupying the moral middle ground, Teague and Heard are decently conflicted even if they aren't playing the Harold or Nadine from the book. Zayn’s Solo Career Still Makes No Sense, Yet the Intrigue Remains Earned. Harold dashes out of the building, sickened by what he sees. A beautiful, bittersweet documentary from Romania. The Stand In (2020) User Reviews Review this title 29 Reviews. Those parallels are hard to ignore in this new series, but only in the first one or two episodes. Yet it's hard not to feel that in a story designed as a broad allegory, the opportunity for some sort of grounded resonance has been lost and replaced by almost nothing. Marsden has a square-jawed Gary Cooper-swagger and he seems to be enjoying playing a character who is actually fundamentally decent. See All. The Stand Review: The CBS All Access Adaptation Captures Stephen King's War of Good vs. Drains the source material of all momentum. Ping continues to make progressive improvements to its flagship Hoofer stand bag. He only kicks a moderate amount of ass in this one. The Stand is a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy novel written by American author Stephen King and first published in 1978 by Doubleday.The plot centers on a pandemic of a weaponized strain of influenza that kills almost the entire world population. The Stand Abridged: 5 Stars The Stand Unabridged: 3.5 to 4 Stars I hope that Goodreads lets both of my star ratings of this book go through as I already rated The Stand Abridged years ago, but in case it doesn’t, I am combining my review of the two into one. first Skarsgård to play a villain in a Stephen King adaptation. The Stand: CBS All Access Reveals December 2020 Premiere Date "None of us could have imagined that Stephen King’s 40-year-old masterpiece about a … Young has a perfect mixture of pluck and vulnerability as Frannie. But then Miller shows up in the sixth episode, the last sent to critics, and he's channeling Quasimodo by way of the Jurassic Park raptors by way of Renfield from Dracula and the only reasonable reaction is, "Man, they were so grateful to have Ezra Miller that nobody wanted to tell him to turn it down a notch.". The Stand is a book that has sat on my bookshelf for years, untouched and waiting for that day when I'm ready to tackle it. But no matter how ready it seems to peel out onto the road, it isn't going anywhere. The stars of two of 2020’s best movies explain how a certain Coke commercial got us here. All rights reserved. Share. Even with more than twice as many episodes as the early-’90s miniseries, this The Stand still leaves some significant gaps in its storytelling and some unanswered questions, at least after six episodes. It’s just one more thing that doesn’t make sense in a 2020 that’s been full of them. If You Guessed Elizabeth Smart Was the Moth on, Soup Is Objectively Funny to Annabel and Sabina Meschke. | California Privacy Rights Elsewhere, Stu Redman (James Marsden) of Arnette, Texas, where the outbreak of the virus first began, is taken into custody by federal researchers who determine that he is immune to an illness that is practically instantly fatal in others. This adaptation begins in medias res in Boulder, Colorado, with a team of volunteers clearing bodies out of a church — bodies crawling with maggots and grotesquely bloated in the face and neck. Marsden, Young, Kinnear, and especially Adepo, cast cannily given his role on The Leftovers, deliver natural, restrained performances, which is especially important since several of the actors — Teague, Skarsgård, Nat Wolff as Flagg’s righthand man, Ezra Miller as the unhinged Trashcan Man — play characters whose behavior is deliberately over-the-top. The Stand, which completed the bulk of its production in March, before the COVID-caused shutdowns, is a big, sprawling piece of work, and the way this version is structured makes it unwieldy. Designed for lighter weight riders, this 10ft 2in board is a real statement with an eye … Harold, still bitter about being rejected by Fran, settles in Colorado as well, as does Nadine (Amber Heard), a woman whose loyalties and ethics are malleable enough to bend into a question mark. Evil By Keith Phipps Dec 14, 2020 8:46 AM EST When The Stand arrived in … But we have lived and continue to live during a pandemic. Dec. 17, 2020 6 AM As a story of a world-gutting flu pandemic, Stephen King’s “The Stand,” whose second, superior miniseries adaptation begins Thursday on … All of these figures, plus dozens and dozens more, have been having dreams of joining the ageless Mother Abigail (Whoopi Goldberg), a mystical force for good. This timeline is generally clear enough for viewers to follow, but there are definitely scenes that make one question, for at least a few seconds, where and when the show is in place and time. In Maine, we meet quintessential girl-next-door Frannie (Odessa Young) and vaguely repellent narcissist Harold Lauder (Owen Teague), who has an unrequited crush on her (she is his former babysitter). And how about the flu and how it plays in our COVID-19-infused reality? Log in or link your magazine subscription, Cardi B Lands Her First Lead Movie Role in Comedy, Ray Fisher Confirms That He’s Been Removed From the Cast of, The Academy Bumps Best International Feature Shortlist Up to 15. Cavell has at least rendered King's overwhelmingly white ensemble much more inclusive, whether it's making Larry Underwood — a character chided in the book for sounding Black on the radio — actually Black, or transforming Ralph Brentner from a good ol' boy farmer into an intense Native American woman. Netflix Original Stand-up Specials: 2020 Review. It should be noted that it takes six of nine hour-long episodes to get to all of these characters and that they represent only the start of the vast ensemble, perhaps the biggest reason why this has proven such a complicated book to bring to the screen. From there, The Stand launches back to five months prior in Ogunquit, Maine, where Harold is living in normal times, which, for him, involves spying on his former babysitter Fran Goldsmith (Odessa Young) and being bullied. I am blinded by the red flags as Em probably should be blinded by the sun she has been shouting at all afternoon. This moment seems, on the surface, like the timeliest moment possible to unveil a new adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand. While King’s story, adapted here by Josh Boone and showrunner Benjamin Cavell, is an exaggerated work of dystopian fiction, there are obvious parallels between its version of America and the one in which we have lived during the past 12 months. Drew Barrymore 2 Not Enough to Make The Stand In Stand Out. by Kasey Moore @kasey__moore on December 31, 2020, 8:52 am EST Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. But if there's a mystical force for good in a Stephen King universe, there's inevitably going to be a balancing force of darkness, in this case Alexander Skarsgard's Randall Flagg. Cast: James Marsden, Odessa Young, Jovan Adepo, Amber Heard, Owen Teague, Henry Saga, Brad William Henke, Irene Bedard, Nat Wolff, Ezra Miller and Greg Kinnear. After the world is in ruins, due to a man-made plague, a battle of Biblical proportions ensues between the survivors. The original 1994 version of "The Stand" is rightfully ranked among the best Stephen King miniseries, admittedly not an inordinately high bar. I'll watch the last three episodes, especially to see the new coda written by King himself, but too much of this new attempt to tackle The Stand is full of coughing and mucous, signifying nothing. That discordance doesn’t provide a form of escapism at the end of this wretched year. “The Stand In” is both one of the biggest disappointments of 2020 and a feature that may one day be remembered as being emblematic of a year filled with waste and pain. At a hillbilly bar somewhere, we meet deaf-mute Nick (Henry Zaga), who crosses paths with Tom Cullen (Brad William Henke), who is developmentally disabled. This episode covers the gray views. As it was written and filmed before the pandemic, one can easily understand why Cavell and company didn't want to steer into our all-too-unpleasant year. Please note that the review below includes mild spoilers for the second episode of The Stand. Synopsis:Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. Who’s Been Lie Lie Lying? … AdChoices An Investigation into Joshua Bassett’s “Lie Lie Lie”, What does “Lie Lie Lie” tell us about the current. Within a short period of time, all of them and the rest of the town’s residents are dead, with only Harold and Fran surviving and, eventually, hitting the road. Stu, too, will eventually head to Boulder, where he and four others — Fran, sociology professor Glen Bateman (Greg Kinnear), musician Larry Underwood (Jovan Adepo), and Nick Andros (Henry Zaga), who is a nonspeaking deaf person — will function as the five overseers of the community, a role that Mother Abagail declares they are destined to serve. FACEBOOK Lady Rico of House Nasty Performs ‘OHFR?’ on. With the exception of one visceral early scene in a New York City emergency room, the pandemic here has more in common with whatever happened to civilization on The Walking Dead than anything experienced in real life in the past 10 months. The Stand is described as "King's apocalyptic vision of a world decimated by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil. Roxana Hadadi Latest. Harold’s mother and his sister are, notably, ill. … On the cusp of musical stardom in New York City, singer Larry Underwood (Jovan Adepo) begins a cross-country migration, one that will eventually bring him together with Nadine (Amber Heard) and the mysterious child they call Joe (Gordon Cormier). Share Tweet Pin Netflix has released the fewest amount of Netflix Original stand-up specials since 2016 but there were plenty of highlights from the year. After all, it's 2020, and entertainment value counts for a lot. You\'ll receive the next newsletter in your inbox. © 2021 Vox Media, LLC. The Stand is now streaming on CBS All Access, with new episodes releasing weekly on … Ethan Hawke to Play the Villain to Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight in Marvel Series. A couple of weeks ago, that day came and do I wish I had read it sooner, laws yes, M-O-O-N that spells sooner. Why chat with one comedian on Instagram Live when you can chat with two? We get to spend several episodes watching Wolff hamming it up and you think he's as over-the-top as this universe can sustain. There's a draining of the story's inexorable gravity and tension, especially when you know which characters are already in Boulder and therefore which instantly recognizable character actors are there as flu fodder. It's inevitable that character introductions will be rushed in this format — the correct way to adapt The Stand was almost certainly as a three-season, 30-episode series — but the introduction of new confusion is a problem. *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. Hide Spoilers. It looks great. This is where The Stand’s relevance becomes a bit of a liability. It's a respiratory ailment that you know is about to decimate the population because every time there's a group scene in the flashbacks, somebody edited in a handful of dry coughs just for ambiance. On the page, Stephen King's The Stand (1978) is a study in horrifying momentum. Adepo, continuing the slow progress until Hollywood can no longer deny that he's a burgeoning star, has enough charisma to make you believe Larry as a potential rock god, though the show has no real idea who Larry is as a character. After an on-set drunken meltdown culminates in a horrific eye injury to a fellow actress (Ellie Kemper) goes viral, Hollywood A-list comedian Candy Black’s (Drew Barrymore) career face-plants into the gutter. CBS All Access caps off our COVID-dominated 2020 with the premiere of a new miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's post-pandemic allegory about good and evil. I didn't buy Goldberg as Mother Abigail for a second, though that's a product of Mother Abigail being a ridiculous character (and of Ruby Dee being the only perfectly cast part of the previous miniseries). The Stand First Reviews: New Take On Stephen King’s Viral Apocalypse Is Entertaining, If Uneven. What that looks like in real life vs. what it looks like in an adaptation of a Stephen King novel are not the same. Though episode one covers the start of the super flu and downfall of man, it also covered more hopeful viewpoints. Nobody who hasn't read the book is going to be able to make an iota of sense out of Frannie's pregnancy, out of Larry's odd interlude with a woman named Rita (Heather Graham) or the logic in somebody volunteering Tom for a key mission after the character has been introduced in literally only one prior scene. Streaming/TV; Streaming/TV Reviews; THE STAND (2020) Review. If you glance under the hood, you can see all of the work that's been done on the engine. All rights reserved. Initially in Texas, we meet Stu Redman (James Marsden), survivor of a shocking accident pivotal to the proliferation of Captain Trips. The fate of mankind rests on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail and a handful of survivors. 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