Bestselling horror novelist Stephen King recently helped out his fellow Mainers by holding a contest through his Bangor-based radio station: however much money listeners donated, King would match. The money would then be donated to lower-income Mainers to help pay for heat this winter.

King raised $242,370. Not too shabby. Clearly, this is a commendable and gracious effort on the part of King. It says a lot about his character. But when you bring it into context with past King quotes and his overall liberalism, it brings up an interesting hypocrisy in what famous liberals and 1 percent types do and say.

In the past, King has stated that he thinks people who make as much as he does should be taxed as much as 50 percent. Why? Has King fully thought about a world where 50 percent of his money is taken by Big Government and then they decide where it goes? Just because it goes to the government with the “best intentions” does not mean it will help heat fellow Mainers’ homes. Yet liberal entertainers like King continue to beg Obama to tax them more when they are fully capable as individuals who have found financial success to use their disposable income anyway they see fit, including helping those they see as needy.

How Stephen King has not connected his actions with his beliefs is really quite amazing.

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“Stephen King’s Bag of Bones,” a two-part miniseries beginning at 9 p.m. EST tonight on A&E, embodies the horror author’s unrelenting vision. Based on his bestselling novel of the same name, the miniseries stars Pierce Brosnan as Mike Noonan, a bestselling author suffering from writer’s block after the tragic death of his wife, Jo (Annabeth Gish). Mike’s grief is compounded by the loss of his wife’s baby, which he wasn’t aware she was carrying until after her death. Since he believed himself to be sterile, his first inclination is that she was cheating on him. Her frequent visits to their lakeside cabin in the months before her death suddenly seem less innocent.

Mike’s boozing self-medication is interrupted when his agent asks for another book. Mike decides to visit the lake house in the town of Dark Score, hoping for inspiration and, perhaps, an answer as to why his wife hadn’t told him about her pregnancy.

In typical King fashion, chaos and terror strike soon after Mike arrives in Dark Score. First, after finding a little girl named Kyra (Caitlin Carmichael) wandering in the middle of the road, Mike unwittingly finds himself involved in a custody battle over the girl between a young woman named Mattie (Melissa George) and her sinister father-in-law Max (William Schallert).

At the same time, Mike’s nights at the cabin are haunted by twisted dreams, and his days are interrupted by the paranormal as ghosts – both friendly and not – pulling him into a decades-old mystery surrounding the disappearance of a blues singer and a number of child drownings. Brosnan’s ability to shift between mourning husband, tentative detective and celebrity writer provides the right tone for each scene.
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Camelot theory is predicated on what might have been. Director Oliver Stone feverishly asserts that President John F. Kennedy would have ended the Cold War, especially in Vietnam (where he would withdrawn all advisers) – as do Kennedy cabinet members Kenneth O’Donnell and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

In Stephen King’s new novel, “11/22/1963,” the author has Kennedy living beyond Dealey Plaza and rejects the wishful thinking of mythifiers. In King’s alternate history, Kennedy doesn’t get the romantic aura death grants him; whatever glow he still has will wear off because of Vietnam and Civil Rights. In contrast to Lyndon B. Johnson, who was by far the more effective politician (few of Kennedy’s programs made it past Congress), JFK barely beats the GOP standard bearer Barry Goldwater.

Rather than fulfill the wishes of Stone, Kennedy doesn’t withdraw the troops but situates them protectively around Saigon, and thus all but assures an earlier Teht offensive. Not even the ungodly amounts of money Kennedy sends into Saigon prevents it collapse, well before 1975.

(Spoilers ahead!)

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If there was one matter on which Richard Nixon and Bobby Kennedy could agree it was their initial belief that a right winger killed President John F. Kennedy.

Nixon phoned FBI director J. Edgar Hoover asking if “one of the rightwing nuts did it;” Kennedy phoned the CIA asking if one of their anti-Castro exiles fired the shots. Both calmed down, and to some degree accepted that the assassin was a far leftist. But their immediate reactions spread to the populace. The Draft Goldwater Headquarters received so many death threats that they had to shut down. Goldwater supporter and Texas Sen. John Tower had to hide his family in a hotel

Even after Oswald was in custody, the media blamed the right for creating the climate that killed Kennedy. These beliefs had consequences. As Rick Perlstein, in his study of the Goldwater movement in 1964 stated, “Lee Harvey Oswald had cut down Goldwater’s chances as surely as he did John Kennedy.” And conspiracy nuts began their search for a more politically satisfying sniper.

To his credit, author Stephen King does accept that Oswald did it alone.  But in a recent interview with Camelot merchant Chris Matthews on MSNBC, King reverted to the media’s “blame the Right first” school of assassination theories.

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Not all horror films are created equal.

That’s an understatement in a genre teeming with impoverished acting, stale dialogue and atrocious direction. For every classic like ‘The Shining’ or ‘The Omen,’ there’s a dozen ‘Saw’ sequels to make horror fans want to run and hide.

AMC is currently running its second annual Fearfest programming, a horror movie marathon meant to scare us silly right through Halloween. It’s a wonderful gimmick, but you’ll need to be wary of the clunkers littering the lineup.

So, here’s a handy guide to help you make the most of this grisly movie marathon. Treats are always better than tricks this time of the year:

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MGM’S ‘RED DAWN’ REMAKE LIKELY TO HIT THEATRES BY FALL OF 2012

Another year?

My heart goes out to the remake producers and filmmakers in a big way. I’ve spoken to them, they’ve written for us and while they’ve handled this tortured situation with class and without complaining, what started out as a well-intentioned project to update a beloved film for an under-served audience became a mess when the butt of some of the worst human rights violators on the planet was kissed by those who want to do business with them.

The Left ruins everything.            

NETFLIX STOCKS PLUMMET — RIPE FOR TAKEOVER? 

Securing the rights to Dreamworks films should help some, but unless Netflix makes a serious move quickly, the hemorrhaging from these self-inflicted wounds is likely to continue. And what I mean by a serious move is a new CEO, reversing the decision to split by-mail and streaming, or both.

In a way, the Dreamworks deal adds to Netflix’s problems. It’s a STREAMING deal; a deal that says STREAMING is the future. Translation: Yet another reason to drop the by-mail service.

STEPHEN KING WORKING ON ‘SHINING’ SEQUEL

King promised us he would retire. And now he’s so not-retired the Stephen King who lost his mojo a decade ago is now going to bastardize the classics his better self wrote.

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–FINAL CHAPTER OF ANDREW KLAVAN’S HOMELANDERS’ QUADROLOGY RELEASED TODAY–

A very well-written, page-turning adventure series for the kids. God, country and values are treated as good things. On the other hand, terrorism and narcissism are treated as bad things. I think the word we’re searching for in this upside day and age is: Iconoclastic.

You can order the book here. I recommend all four. Klavan’s an amazing talent who also happens to be on our side. What more could you possibly ask for. Did you just say a film based on the series?  Done.

Klavan blogs here and here.

–KEVIN COSTNER UP FOR VILLAIN ROLE IN NEW TARANTINO FLICK–

I’ve always liked Kevin Costner and was sorry to see his career all but derail 15 years ago with the triple-punch of the underrated “Waterworld,” the truly dreadful “Postman” (which even Tom Petty couldn’t save) and the stillborn “Wyatt Earp.”

Costner’s masculine, has a genuinely likable screen persona, and seems like a decent guy in real life — and in the right role he’s a very, very good actor. Try to picture someone else in “Field of Dreams,” “The Untouchables” or “Dances with Wolves.” You can argue he’s no Olivier ( I would counter with his unforgettable work in “A Perfect World), but at the same time he’s always managed to hold his own on screen with some powerful actors: James Earl Jones, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman, Sean Connery, etc — which is a talent all on its own.

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And on the way down here I drove and I heard about this guy in Wisconsin, his name was Walker and apparently he wanted to stop collective bargaining. That’s supposed to balance the budget. That’s the magic bullet. So you’ve got [Republican Governor] LePage in Maine, Walker in Wisconsin, you got [Republican Governor] Scott in Florida. It’s Larry, Curly and Moe. That’s what we got right here.

Now you might say, what are you doing up there? Aren’t you rich? The answer is: thank God, yes. Because I grew up poor. I lived in a family where my mother asked donated commodities from a Republican administration and got turned down. That’s where I came from. And you know what, as a rich person I pay 28% tax. What I want to ask you is why am I not paying fifty? Why isn’t anybody in my bracket paying fifty? …

Because [politicians opposed to raising taxes] come from the party of Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, who one year put down on his taxes that he gave $10,000 to charity. Well, my wife and I … we try to make up the difference, the shortfall, that 22% we don’t pay, by giving it away. But you know what, I haven’t seen a lot of that going around.

Doesn’t Stephen King kind of answer his own question here? Yes, his elitist, holier-than-thou and arrogantly mistaken belief that a whole lot of people in the most charitable country in the world aren’t as charitable as he is, is off-putting in the extreme. But that he’s able to give that 22% of his income not swallowed up by the blackhole of the government directly to the causes he believes in is a beautiful thing. This is exactly why raising taxes is a terrible idea. Regardless of what people do with their money, whatever they do with it is better for this economy than what the government does with it. Obama’s failed stimulus settled that argument, especially when you compare the results of that to the roaring economy that resulted from Reagan’s huge tax cuts.

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#20: Salem’s Lot (1979)

Whatever you do, avoid at all costs the shortened versions that remove anywhere from a half hour to a full hour from the original 180-minute television miniseries. But if you have three hours to kill and are in the mood to settle into an extremely well-paced vampire/haunted house tale, the uncut adaptation of Stephen King’s second novel (his most addictive page-turner after “The Stand”) unfolds beautifully over the course of a brisk October evening. And because it’s a television film, you can invite the whole family in for Tobe Hooper’s impressively directed story of a small town dealing with an unwelcome vampire infestation.

David Soul plays Ben Mears, a widowed novelist drawn back to his childhood home to write about the Marsten place, the local haunted house with a brand new resident – Richard Straker (an unforgettable James Mason) – a cultivated antiques dealer who wields charm as a weapon as he sets up shop for his employer, Mr. Barlow, who’s out on a buying tour in Europe and due to return any day now.

Or so we’re told.

Mears settles into Eva Miller’s (Marie Windsor) rooming house, gets re-acquainted with his former teacher and mentor Jason Burke (Lew Ayres), and fires up a romance with local girl Susan Norton (Bonnie Bedelia). In the center of it all, high on a hill overlooking everything is Marsten House, which Mears sees as some kind of beacon of evil that corrosively corrupts the idyllic charm of his old home town. And right he is. Soon children start to disappear and adults suffer untimely deaths. The problem is, they don’t stay dead very long. (more…)

Via the indispensable NewsBusters:

Best-selling novelist Stephen King slammed Glenn Beck as a “crazy” “nutcase” and Rush Limbaugh as a cynical huckster in his August 6, 2010 Entertainment Weekly column. The horror author derided Limbaugh as having “no conviction in that sonorous, slightly flabby voice.”

King attacked the radio star for supposedly not being sympathetic enough to the plight of Lindsay Lohan’s drug problem. Yet, he provided no quotes or real examples, just a vague summary. The liberal writer complained of Limbaugh, “There’s a hollowness there, and a patronizing undertone when he interacts with callers (who are called Dittoheads for a reason).”

Again, offering no transcript, King opined: (more…)

Betrayed by Liberal Hollywood

Psychologists say that a parent’s grief over the death of a child is “the most difficult loss to endure and surely among the most difficult to integrate into one’s life” because our children are an enormous part of our legacy, and “in their deaths, a large part of our own future dies.”  The natural order of our lives has been turned upside down, bringing on an emotional chaos.

For the parents of military men and women who have died after volunteering to serve their country and walking into the face of death in the 21^st century’s war on terror, this grief and chaos has been exponentially multiplied by liberal Hollywood.  But one has to actually walk this path to understand it.  The anti-war sentiment and films that have spewed from liberal actors, producers, and directors have burdened our hearts unspeakably as they have served only to aide the greatest enemy our country has ever faced and to deface and demoralize the greatest ambassadors our country has: the men and women who wear the uniforms of the United States military. (more…)

Note: This is the second part of a two-part interview. Part one can be found here.

Big Hollywood:  Where did the idea for “The Last Thing I Remember” come from? I know there’s an evolution to a good story, well told. How did this evolve from that first spark to final draft?

Andrew Klavan: Some of it in this case was a matter of putting my money where my mouth is.  For years, I’ve been complaining that there are no books with real boys in them, that when we want to write about manhood or patriotism or battling evil, we suddenly have to write about fantasy lands and dragons or Gotham City or whatever.  There’s real evil in the world, real people who do real evil, and they need to be fought and there’s no appeasing them.  So I started from that point of view.  Let me just speak plainly about what we’re fighting for, what kind of people do the fighting and what they believe that empowers them and why.  And I guess it started from that.

BH:  I know the secret to your success is having your wife read everything first. Are you like me? Do you get angry at her criticism, especially when she’s right?

AK: LOL.  I know your wife, you have the sweetest wife on earth and shame on you for getting mad at that good, good woman when she’s only trying to help.  But yeah, I do exactly the same thing.  You know how it is.  We pour our hearts and souls into these things and at the point when we show them to our wives, we’re still raw with it, the wound is still bleeding.  And she says, “This is the greatest novel I’ve ever read but on page 116, you misspelled whirligig,” and you’re, like, “How dare you, you harridan!  Don’t you realize I’m an ARTIST???  I meant to spell it that way!!!”  Luckily, my wife knows I worship the ground she walks on.  (more…)