I'm so sorry for this tremendous loss, Annie!  You and your family are deeply in my thoughts.  You are such a sweet, kind, loving, wonderful person and every time you post here you bring sunshine to all of us.

Gerard

I'll be interesting to watch.  I loved Darabond's 2007 cinematic version (not too thrilled with the ending) and it stayed pretty faithful to King's novella.  King stated he was inspired by The Outer Limits episode "The Feasibility Study," one of the creepiest episodes of the series.  Of course, many of the performers in Darabond's version moved over to his The Walking Dead.  I'm just wondering how long they can extend the happenings in King's novella into something more than a two-hour movie.

Gerard

Roxanne:  "Please, brother dear, I already have a religion!"

Gerard

A truly fantastic list.  Of course, if anyone here still hasn't seen The Innocents, for obvious reasons do so soon.

Gerard

I thought it would be dioramas, no matter how primitive, of the scenes.  I did better with my Legos. 

Gerard

For my birthday, friends bought me a new laptop computer (my old one, on it's last legs, is over 15 years old with a tower).  I'm having a heck of a time trying to figure this new gadget out.  The "new" outlook is simply unworkable. 

Anyway, Gothics post reminds me of an episode of one of the latest versions of The Outer Limits.  It's called "Stream of Consciousness."  "Information" gadgetry  has come to its ultimate conclusion:  all humans have a chip implanted in their brains to stream and load "information."  Want to read "War and Peace?"  It streams and downloads in seconds.  You can't "read" it - you "stream" it.  Want to order a home-delivery pizza?  "Think" Domino's with what you want, pay for it with "streaming" and - voila! - your doorbell rings, hot and ready.  The entire world is revolutionized and an apparent Utopia.  Only 3-or-so% can't have the chip because of some brain damage and they are looked down upon.  The hero of the episode is one of them who has to use out-dated books to read (which others can't - there's no longer a need for printed words; to them, is just a bunch of squiggly markings).  To make a long story short, something goes wrong with the streaming and people begin to die.  He has to shutdown the "stream" to save humanity and when he does, suddenly 97% of the human race is illiterate.  The 3% rise to the top to reeducate the populace.  The final seen is of all different people, from waiters to doctors, sitting in schools, reading slowly:  "See John run.  Run, John, run."

I work as a substitute teacher.  Kids are not being taught (with some exceptions) how to write cursive anymore.  Even in kindergarten, computers are used; no need to learn how to spell or compose proper grammar - spell-check and grammar-check will take care of that.  Math?  Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division?  That's what calculators are for, even in advanced high school calculus and trigonometry classes.  Punch in the figures and get the facts.

Gerard

Barnabas was originally, indeed, a villain.  Supposedly, it was to be a thirteen-or-so-week arc.  Barnabas was to bring terror and Dr. Julia (originally "Julian" - a man) Hoffman would find out what he was and the battle was on.  At the climax, both characters would die and on to the next monster.  Jonathan Frid, ready to move to the west coast to teach acting as a university, was told by his agent that the gig would be three months and giving him extra cash, so he delayed his move for the ca-ching.  But the ratings kept skyrocketing and the original plot was altered to extend it and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Gerard