[Closed] Shawshank or the green mile?

I like happy endings.

Both massively overrated IMO! But Shawshank would have it.

Shawshank by a country mile (partly coz it is just a better film and largely because it doesn't have Tom ****ing Hanks in it).

cynic-al I feel like you just trod on mr jingles

Isn't Green Mile a fairy tale about a magic mouse? Nuff said.

Sorry Tim but if you come out with more like this I will be jumping on him!

That's a bit of a tough one but, yeah, shawshank I reckons

Shawshank for me, Green Mile too sad 😥

Shawshank. Infinitely better.

shawshank prolly

The botched electrocution in green mile is horrible and I don't remember the film being particularly hopeful.

shawshank by a league. Green Mile was overly sentimental and deliberately heart-tugging, may as well have had cute furry kittens being starved to death as a sub plot.

Neither are great films. If I had to watch one? Shawshank I guess

Shawshank is a superb film.

Green Mile's heavily over rated.

Shawshank.

Green Mile lays on the sentiment with a shovel and has Tom Hanks playing Tom Hanks.

brubaker or cool hand luke would be better

shawshank has one of the worst endings of any film I have ever seen and is the most over rated film in recent memory truly dreadfull smaltzy ending terrible (the film is mnot that bad but that ending is worse than the tacked on ending to Bladerunner)
Green Mile is just rubbish
If I had to watch either I am picking the shorter one.

Are people really putting those two in the same league? Shawshank without a shadow of a doubt.

Schindlers list! 😕

Both overrated, "The Usual Suspects" for me, will never forget the gasps of astonishment by the audience in the cinema at the end of the film!

Shawshank, plot, cast, acting and message.
Tim Robbins is so very underrated.

shankshaw for me. Read the book if you want to understand the story a bit better and get a bit more from the ending. Stephen King wrote it you know.

Shawshank..........but 'the usual suspects' before either.

[i]Del Toro in the line-up[/i] 😉

say in a morgan freeman accent "i'd like to tell you that Andy put up a good fight and the sisters let him be, i'd like to tell you that, but prison is no fairy tail"

Shawshank by more than a country mile, Green Mile had to rely on a supernatural story, Shawshank relies on a human story

Shawshank is bolx:

So this guy has a huge poster, which covers the slightly less huge hole he has carved out, with a teaspoon, to the outside world via various pipes and sewers.

Connecting an airless prison cell to the windy atmosphere outside would surely make the poster flap a bit? Create a bit of a draft in a cell which should be draft-free? Suck the poster backwards and forwards a bit in a manner suggestive that the wall behind it was less than solid, to any guards who might have been inspecting the cell?

And as for sympathetic portrayals of lifers!

Howzabout Shawshank 2, starring Kenneth Noye? Or Harold Shipman? Or Fred and Rosemary West? Or Myra Hyndley and Ian Brady?

hundreds of films before either IMO.

[i]So this guy has a huge poster, which covers the slightly less huge hole he has carved out, with a teaspoon, to the outside world via various pipes and sewers.[/i]

As I said, read the book but it's plain to see in the film. Not a teaspoon, a rock hammer. And it takes him years. And only the crazies get their cells searched, Andy played a quiet game and looked after the books and the prison guard accounts so they left him alone.
Once he's dropped down onto the sewer pipe, he has to break into it. Then he has to go a long way in the pipe, no wind coming back.

Three word film synopsis;

Shawshank: The brown mile.
Green Mile: Saw Hanks's redemption.

In response to the question, Shawshank. But I have never been a fan of either King's literature nor films adapted from it.

really????
Stand by me
The shining
Misery
It

Hes done some gooduns there surely?

Never heard of Shawshank but seen the Green Mile

He's not a very good writer, better than Dan Brown but not much. Good ideas and imagination which is why they translate to film quite well but mostly his books are overlong, overblown and indulgent. Try some Haruki Murikami or Kurt Vonnegut for some class.

I've stuck my head in the Shawshank tunnel up at the Mansfield Reformitory up in Ohio, where it was filmed. Its just made of papier mache and sits in a corridor, so not that impressive. Now, the massive mural of Lenin in the same place for some Harrison Ford vs. russians film was impressive.

Lucky to get in. Friends we were visiting (in town, not in prison [its been closed for years]) knew people in a youth group doing a service project there. Quite a cool afternoon.

[i]Try some Haruki Murikami or Kurt Vonnegut [/i]

Always looking for more books to read, any particular recommendations? Thanks.

Edit: I wouldn't class Dan Brown as a good writer at all, I have no idea why his books (or the film I've seen adapted from one), are rated and so popular. Complete pants IMO.

really????
Stand by me
The shining
Misery
It

Ok, Stand By Me I do like, I didn't know that was one of Kings. I stand corrected. The others mentioned, I can take or leave.

[i]Edit: I wouldn't class Dan Brown as a good writer at all, I have no idea why his books (or the film I've seen adapted from one), are rated and so popular.[/i]
Same reason as why the Sun/Mirror/Mail and things like Heat and Hello are. A lot of people either don't want to, or can't, use their brains.

Well Shawshank is rated no.1 in IMDB and The Green Mile no.111 - so both considered good films by the common person.... Those on here that saw Shawshank is rubbish have suspect ideas about what films should be IMO...!

I'm not sure Vonnegut has written anything bad, Slaughterhouse 5 is probably his best known but I liked Cat's Cradle a lot.

Murakami, I really liked Sputnik Sweetheart, Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance (sequel to Wild Sheep Chase), currently reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is a slow burn but getting better

Actually the story Shankshaw comes from one of King's best books (although I really like the dark half and IT).

Different Seasons has four mid length stories in it.

Apt Pupil which is the best one in my opinion but never made it to film.
The Body which went on to be made into Stand by me.
The Breathing Method which is rubbish
Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption which obviously became Shankshaw.

Get it, it's a very good book.

Shawshank.

Might give it a go, haven't read a King book since The Stand, that went on a bit.

ta, ordered slaughter house 5 and sputnik sweetheart, lets see how they go.

I can honestly say that anyone who claims The Shawshank Redemption is an over-rated film either has very, VERY high expectations from a film, doesn't like mainstream cinema or is simply trying to play the 'clevererer than thou' card.

You know - the sort that buys The Guardian every day but doesn't understand too much of what is said and still reads The Sun when no-one is looking...

Totally agree, and that's from someone who loved the Three Colours trilogy, Mullholland Drive and Donnie Darko 🙂

I shall give the book a go, might even wander over to Waterstones and grab a copy of it at lunchtime, if nothing else "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" is a great title.

can honestly say that anyone who claims The Shawshank Redemption is an over-rated film either has very, VERY high expectations from a film, doesn't like mainstream cinema or is simply trying to play the 'clevererer than thou' card.

It is over-rated. There is, like with so many Hollywood big budget films, little more than just plot. the Green Mile is worse: there is only plot.

I don't want to watch a film that only goes from A to B to C. I want to see into the minds and souls of the characters, and to suspend disbelief entirely.

But, then, I guess I'm spoiled in that I work just round the corner from one of the country's best cinemas: [url= http://www.cornerhouse.org/ ]The Cornerhouse, Manchester.[/url]

It is over-rated. There is, like with so many Hollywood big budget films, little more than just plot. the Green Mile is worse: there is only plot.

Shawshank is accessible and popular because it has a character driven story line, not a plot that drags everything behind it (have you actually watched it?)

Shawshank is a great film, I enjoyed green mile too, very much so but it is very sentimental and mushy (which I have a weakness for) but will accept that for most others its not a patch on shawshank.

I second M_Fs views on shawshank bashers*

*new euphamism? 😉

Shawshank bashers

That could equally be appropriate for those that hate it and those that really, REALLY enjoy watching it.... :-0

or shawshanker

sorry

I agree that Stephen King does seem to suffer from the mainstream, "hes popular, everyones heard of him, so I cant look arty reading one of his books on the tube" thing

I thought IT was wonderfull, ditto four seasons, read most of his others too.

In his best books his characters are involving and real, his reocurring Maine backdrops a nice touch, he tells a good story.

shawshanker

And as for SK as a writer... his early stuff was very good and he has a great sense of humour in his style. Thinner (written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) had one classic line about a cat on a fridge (you'll know it if you've read it 🙂 and as above, 'It' was a wonderful book - a great tapestry of a story.

Another great book by him was 'The Talisman' which he wrote with Peter Straub.

Of course he is no Steinbeck or Miller, but he knows he isn't and doesn't expect his readers to think he is either. But he can write a good novel. I tend not to agree with use of recurring references in his novels though (set in Maine, main character a writer) - I think he has done that one too many time.

samuri

there is a film of Apt Pupil

It was directed by Bryan Singer of Usual Suspects and X men fame - and stars Gandalf as the Nazi

can't really remember if it was much good or not

I liked both, but prefer Shawshank.