USA Today - 11.11.2019

LIFE USA TODAY z MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2019 z 3D

It’s deadly business being a kid in a
Stephen King book (or one of his many
movie adaptations), dealing with de-
monic clowns, killer dogs and baddies
who want to suck children’s psychic
powers from their souls.
Danny Torrance, the boy from Stan-
ley Kubrick’s 1980 film “The Shining”
who survived his father Jack trying to
kill him and his mom in a nightmarish
hotel, is at the center of the follow-up
“Doctor Sleep” (now in theaters) and
still trying to get over the experience.
After abusing drugs and alcohol most of
his adult life to suppress his extrasenso-
ry powers (what he calls “shine”),
grown-up Dan (Ewan McGregor) is now
sober but has to help another youngster
with abilities, Abra Stone (KylieghCur-
ran), after she’s hunted by villains who
consume children’s psychic essences to
remain immortal.
King’s “Shining” book and Kubrick’s
movie are both horror classics, so “Doc-
tor Sleep” is a highly anticipated next
chapter for scary-film fans. Writer/di-
rector Mike Flanagan and his cast tackle
the most burning questions about the
sequel:

What’s little Danny been
up to all this time?

The beginning of “Doctor Sleep”
continues the “Shining” story, with
Danny and mom Wendy hightailing it
to Florida after their horrifying experi-
ence at the snowy Overlook Hotel.
Danny still is haunted by the ghastly
phantoms of the Overlook wanting to
possess him, though the ghost of his
friend Dick (Carl Lumbly) teaches Dan-
ny a way to keep them locked up in his
mind.
Years later, the nightmares haven’t
subsided “and he tries very hard to keep
everything at bay by being drunk all the
time,” McGregor says. After hitting rock
bottom, he sobers up and gets a job at a
New Hampshire hospice, using his
shine to help terminal patients die
peacefully. After suppressing his “psy-
chic life,” McGregor adds, Dan’s now
“accepting that it’s there and starting to
use it for good.”

Who’s the major antagonist

this time around?

The True Knot is a band of psychic

vampires led by the cool, charismatic

and seriously murderous Rose the Hat

(Rebecca Ferguson). She’s definitely

bad news but only for those outside her

family – Rose is maternal when it comes

to the True Knot, who kill kids for their

psychic “steam.” Otherwise, “they will

die. They have to work against time –

they have to work with deadlines,” says

Ferguson.

“Asking someone to have sympathy

for the devil is one of the most powerful

kind of narrative tools you can lean

into,” Flanagan adds. But Rose thinks

she’s the good guy. “The monsters of the

movie for her are Dan and Abra, who

show up and try to kill her people. She’s

charming in a way that the best villains

are, in the way that cult leaders are. You

like her, you just hate what she does

(and) that rationalization is what makes

her so chilling.”

But wait, King disliked

Kubrick’s ‘The Shining.’

How does that play out?

The horror author famously dis-

agreed with the many changes Kubrick

made – for example, the Overlook goes

up in flames at the end of the book but is

left standing in the movie’s finale – so

much so that King wrote a 1997 “Shin-

ing” TV miniseries himself. The new

movie satisfies both camps, McGregor

says, “making slight changes to Stephen

King’s novel with his blessing.”

Flanagan calls King “my hero” and

grew up loving the “Shining” film, and

making peace with both “is what kept

me up every night throughout the whole

process,” the director says.

The first step for him was admitting

to himself he’s not Kubrick. “So if I can

try to anticipate the things that I would

criticize about someone else if they were

making the film, then I thought maybe

that was the only way through the

woods.”

Are we all going back

to the Overlook?

You bet! And all the same creepers

are back, from old naked Mrs. Massey in

the tub to the spooky Grady twins. “In

the way that these ghosts live in these

boxes in Dan’s mind, they live in our

minds, too. Being able to stare at your

own nightmares, who gets a chance to

do that? It’s really pretty awesome,”

says Flanagan, who used Kubrick’s

blueprint to re-create his Overlook’s ar-

chitecture and environment.

“The typewriter, the paper, the ax,

the corridor, they’re all characters in

themselves and you feel that you have to

be quite respectful towards them,” Fer-

guson adds.

There was also fun to be had – Flana-

gan brought an adult big wheel tricycle

to the set like little Danny rode in the

movie – though McGregor acknowl-

edges that he tried not to look through

open doors and spoil things for himself.

“When we walked on there, it was really

stunning. It really felt like Jack Nichol-

son might just have walked off set to go

to his trailer quickly and he’d be back

any minute.”

So, is Jack Nicholson in it?

While the original “Shining” actor

doesn’t show up in “Doctor Sleep,” there

are shades of his character Jack Tor-

rance in his adult son. Plus, Dan’s still

coming to grips with what happened so

many years ago. “Can you imagine living

through that and then losing your father

at such an early age and so horribly vio-

lently?” McGregor says. “Obviously

Jack’s character at the beginning of ‘The

Shining’ is an alcoholic and he broke his

son’s arm in a drunken moment. That’s

when he goes to get the job at the Over-

look Hotel, he’s trying to get sober, he’s

trying to get clean.”

McGregor concedes that Dan is

“probably scared that he’ll become his

dad,” though “he’s already lost that bat-

tle because he is living the life of full-

blown alcoholism. But through his re-

covery, he’s looking for his dad’s love.”

MOVIES

‘Doctor Sleep’ awakens nightmares

Brian Truitt
USA TODAY

A grown-up Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) helps fellow psychic Abra Stone

(Kyliegh Curran) in “The Shining” follow-up “Doctor Sleep.”JESSICA MIGLIO

Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) leads

a traveling band of kid-killing psychic

vampires in “Doctor Sleep.”

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

but the breakdown of the hybrid formu-
la used by “Dancing”never has been ex-
plained by ABC or the show’s producers,
even after periodic elimination contro-
versies.
This season’s change, designed to
prevent fan votes from propelling weak
celebrity dancers to victory, gives the
judges authority to pick each episode’s
departing pair from the two teams with
the lowest combination of judge scores
and viewer votes.
But the change is meaningless if a
weak dancer gets so many votes that
they overwhelm low judging scores and
leave them out of the bottom two.

That’s exactly what’s happened with

Spicer, as the president in recent weeks

has urged his 66 million Twitter follow-

ers to vote.

This season’s voting rulesalso have

been criticized for their time limitation.

Voting ends during the last commercial

break in broadcasts in the Eastern/Cen-

tral time zone broadcast, before viewers

in California and other Western states

have seen any of the competition.

And if Trump supporters or even

those delighting in perceived liberal

outrage at Spicer’s survival teamup to

back him, their votes go further these

days.

This season, “Dancing” is averaging

just 7.9 million viewers within seven

days, its lowest-rated turnout and a far

cry from the 20-million-plus viewers

that watched during the veteran compe-

tition’s heyday.

The judges’ frustration was appar-

ent Monday, when they had to choose

between singer Ally Brooke and her

pro partner, Sasha Farber, and actress

Kate Flannery and partner Pasha

Pashkov.

Both couples received higher scores

from the judges than Spicer and his

partner, Jenna Johnson. Flannery

even beat Spicer in a dance-off.

“I just want to say it’s confusing for

me at this point why these are the bot-

tom two. I’m just a little confused and a

little irritated,” said Inaba, as the stu-

dio audience applauded and Tonioli

nodded approvingly.

Flannery and Pashkov, who per-

formed solidly over the season, were

eliminated.

Contributing: Bryan Alexander

“Dancing With the Stars” competitors Sasha Farber and Ally Brooke, left, and Kate Flannery and Pasha Pashkov, right,
onstage with hosts Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews, faced elimination in last week's episode. KELSEY MCNEAL/ABC

Dancing

Continued from Page 1D

have been plucked from any grab bag

of empty platitudes.

Some diversions work: “The Chase”

is a throwback to guitar-strumming,

Sheryl Crow-style adult alternative,

and deftly captures what it’s like to

have someone running through your

mind.

And Dion’s rich, throaty voice is

perfectly suited to “How Did You Get

Here,” a slinky doo-wop ballad co-pro-

duced by Bruno Mars hitmakers The

Stereotypes (”That’s What I Like,” “Fi-

nesse”).

But “Courage” truly soars when the

five-time Grammy winner strips back

the theatrics and gets personal, as she

does on the album’s poignant title

track. “There’s no replacing the way

you touched me, I still feel the rush,”

Dion sings over a soft piano. “Some-

times it drowns me until I can’t

breathe, thinking it’s only in our mem-

ories.”

The emotional ballad captures the

confusion and emptiness one feels af-

ter losing a loved one, as she describes

the conversations and plans that will

never happen and clings to courage to

keep going (”I’m staring in the face of

something new, you’re all I got to hold

on to”).

Other tracks paint bracing portraits

of grief and uncertainty, wondering

how and whether to let another person

into one’s heart. “Remember the good

times, let go of the pain,” Dion coos on

the gentle “Say Yes,” reminding her-

self, “You deserve to feel that rush

again.”

And with “I Will Be Stronger,” she

delivers a rousing torch song that al-

ready feels like a karaoke classic, belt-

ing: “Sometimes love must die to be

born again. One step up this road, it’s

not the end.”

Honest, grandiose and endearingly

messy, “Courage” is Dion throwing ev-

erything at the wall to see what sticks.

There’s plenty here for new and long-

time fans to latch onto, the most im-

portant takeaway being that after a

trying few years, the ever-resilient

Queen Celine will be OK.

Dion

Continued from Page 1D