What's new

Kingdom Hospital ongoing thread (renamed) (1 Viewer)

Andres Munoz

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 21, 1999
Messages
2,489

LOL. So true. But to me that's not a bad thing. I love Stephen King and I will give this show some time to develop. It was fairly interesting IMO.

Question: What's this about the "special needs" actors being a Greek chorus? Did I miss something?
 

Rich Malloy

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2000
Messages
3,998
That's a Lars von Trier trope. See "Riget". See "The Idiots".

(And, seriously, see the original version of this miniseries if you haven't yet. It was a fantastic, damn near brilliant series, and I believe is still the highest rated program ever on Danish TV... all before King presumably sucked the life out of it for yet another failed attempt at pop culture relevance. Frickin' hack can't even stop at ripping off his own work anymore...)
 

Mikel_Cooperman

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2001
Messages
4,183
Real Name
Mikey
It did well in the ratings but if the opinions here are any indication, I dont think it will be doing as good this week.
I was going to give it a try but with the Horrible reviews I read on Wednesday in various magazines I decided to give it a pass.
Kings movies(and now series) that he has written for Television have been lackluster and boring.
Never cared for Kings writing and I did love a few of the movies based on his work but he usually had nothing to do with them.
Why cant they give a much better writer Dean Kontz a miniseries?

I hope they release the original on DVD. Now that I would like to see.
 

Rich Malloy

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2000
Messages
3,998
If you're looking to find out what a "greek chorus" is (and it's purpose), simply look it up. It's basically a theatrical method utilized by the Greek poets allowing for commentary on the action of the play, sorta like an early method of voice-over narration, but sung in unison. It's used all the time, either directly as in Woody Allen's "Mighty Aphrodite", or more indirectly as in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" (the three guys on the sidewalk). Even the Log Lady in "Twin Peaks" is something of a solo "greek chorus", though she primarily serves the purposes of exposition (not simply commentary).

In "Riget", Von Trier gives this voice to the Down's Syndrome dishwashers who seem to live in the bowels of the Kingdom and who comment cryptically/knowingly on the action. Though these are the only characters I recall that really function as a "greek chorus" in von Trier's films, he typically uses the simple-minded, mentally-retarded, or "holy fool" character to represent or voice "truth", certainly in Riget, but very notably in each entry of his "Golden Heart Trilogy", taken to its philosophical extreme in "The Idiots".
 

TheLongshot

Senior HTF Member
Joined
May 12, 2000
Messages
4,118
Real Name
Jason
Well, I did notice that Von Trier's name was on the pilot as a producer, so he probably had some involvement in this. How much is a good question.


Well, I still think "The Stand" was excellent...

Jason
 

Steve Schaffer

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 15, 1999
Messages
3,756
Real Name
Steve Schaffer
I couldn't agree more about The Stand. It's imhho the single best adaptation of any Stephen King book I've ever seen--helps that it was also one of his best books.
 

Jeff Kohn

Supporting Actor
Joined
Dec 29, 2001
Messages
680
I thought Kingdom Hospital started out interesting though the first two hours were obviously just setup. We'll have to see where it goes from here; whether they can keep it interesting on a week-to-week basis and find the right pace as far as the overall story remains to be seen. It's just too bad that it's on ABC, with their 5-6 minute commercial breaks and lead-outs that show what's "coming up". Extremely annoying.

FWIW I liked the mini-series versions of The Stand, and The Shining. I also Storm of the Century. Red Rose started out interesting but failed to deliver in the end, and the miniseries version of It was pretty disappointing.
 

TheLongshot

Senior HTF Member
Joined
May 12, 2000
Messages
4,118
Real Name
Jason
Well, only turned in because L&O is a repeat this week. Again, an hour passes and not much happens. It would be nice if I felt like some progress was being made...

Jason
 

Jasmine Meathe

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Nov 20, 2003
Messages
89
It wasn't the most action packed hour but I feel the series is progressing nicely. We learned more about the Hook and Stagman relationship and also Druse played a larger role in this one.

Is that anteater some kind of guardian angle for the artist?
 

ChuckSolo

Screenwriter
Joined
Jun 26, 2003
Messages
1,160
Well, I tuned it again last night and here are my observations........YAWN!!!! That sums it up nicely. Another thing I found was that for every 7-8 minutes of actual show, there were 3-4 minutes of commercials. I actually timed this. The longest the show went without commercials was 9 minutes, and then there were 6 minutes of commercials!!! The total break down was 41 minutes of actual show, 17 minutes of commercials and give or take 2 minutes of transition time. And, no, I don't have too much time on my hands, I was just curious because last week there seemed to be soooo many commercials.
 

SarahG

Second Unit
Joined
Jun 6, 2003
Messages
494
'


Thats something I have not thought of...but definately makes sense. The ant eater role is one of the things that makes me want to go back. As someone else said...wait for the show to develope. I think thats totally true. A lot has been set up in these first two episodes and I think that things are just about to break loose. I mean...the end of the last one was pretty damn good if you ask me.
 

ColeKR

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Feb 15, 2003
Messages
91
This reminds me of the people, including myself, who said Carnivale wasn't going anywhere and decide to stop watching. I'm not going to make the same mistake and tune out like I did with carnivale.
 

Dave Gorman

Supporting Actor
Joined
Jul 22, 1999
Messages
538
I'd probably agree, although I don't think that's saying much. I had 2 major problems with The Stand miniseries: 1) The casting was horrible. The actors for Tom Cullen, Nick Andros, and Mother Abigail were good choices. Aside from them, the casting ranged from mediocre to downright awful. 2) Also, while the mini-series was faithful to the story of The Stand, it was quite weak on presenting the characters (which was the strength of the book -- after reading the book the characters were like real people that you actually felt like you knew), although that's at least in part a limitation of the medium.

As for Kingdom Hospital, I'm not really impressed yet, but I'll give it another chance or two. It doesn't take that long to watch when the commercials are fast-forwarded!
 

Rakesh.S

Second Unit
Joined
Oct 17, 2002
Messages
455
disappointed with this show after two episodes(all the nielsen families seem to agree)..really boring

let me echo others' sentiments..they canceled Miracles for this?

what a joke..
 

Rex Bachmann

Screenwriter
Joined
Nov 10, 2001
Messages
1,972
Real Name
Rex Bachmann
Can somebody explain the meaning and/or purpose of the pop music numbers in this "horror story"? Is this the curse of Allie McBeal, or what?!?
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Latest Articles

Forum statistics

Threads
356,815
Messages
5,123,851
Members
144,184
Latest member
H-508
Recent bookmarks
0
Top