"Doctor Sleep": behind the scenes

Here's a nifty behind-the-scenes look at "Doctor Sleep":

There's a sense in which "Ready Player One" ruined the experience for me. You'll recall that, in Spielberg's film, there's an incredible scene with a fantastically rebuilt set of the Overlook Hotel. I honestly couldn't tell how much of that scene was CGI and how much was real and practical. I can say, though, that the scene had a visceral impact on me; it was literally breathtaking—as in, my breath actually caught in my chest while I witnessed that moment. I've seen a ton of movies in my fifty-plus years, and it's hard to impress me these days, but that moment in Spielberg's film blew me away.

Along comes "Doctor Sleep," which features not only flashbacks to the Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, but also new scenes of the hotel forty years later, now dilapidated and creepily undead, still haunted and angry. Alas, the Spielberg film wowed me so deeply that I don't think I was able to appreciate the hard work that the crew of "Doctor Sleep" must have done to make their own re-creation. That's unfortunate; set design was a key component of "Doctor Sleep"—an aspect of the film that I left out of my review.

Well, however much Spielberg's film stole the fire from Mike Flanagan's movie, I'm glad someone made a little documentary to pay tribute to the cast and crew's hard work on "Doctor Sleep," a movie that worked hard to strike a balance between its two predecessors: Stephen King's iconic novel and Stanley Kubrick's iconic film.