Fans of Stephen King – and Steven Spielberg – have reason to celebrate today, as CBS announced a straight-to-series order of a show based on King’s novel Under the Dome. CBS’s studio will produce in association with Spielberg’s Amblin Television. While the project had been in development at Showtime for some time now, it has shifted over to sister-network CBS and is being prepared for 13 episode run this upcoming summer.

For those of you not familiar with the novel, Under the Dome chronicles the story of a small town in Maine suddenly and mysteriously cut off from the outside world by an invisible yet deadly dome-shaped force field. Fully enclosed and separated from external help and “influence,” the already dicey small town politics take a turn for the worse when the sheriff dies investigating the phenomenon. UtD is an interesting piece of work by King, as it includes an expansive cast – not dissimilar to The Stand – but manages to create a microcosm of what a smaller post-apocalyptic society could look like.

It is not surprising that Dome is coming to the small screen. Showtime has been working on (what was thought to be) a mini-series adaptation for some time now. I always believed it would fit well on premium cable; while not necessarily as graphic as something like Dexter or Game of Thrones, it’s a deep text that would require the time to explore the nuances. Plus, networks like HBO and Showtime have proven successful with taking chances on unique stories and story structures.

Considering that, I was taken back by CBS’s announcement today for several reasons. A heavily serialized story like this is about as far from CBS’s wheelhouse as a show can be. Fortunately, there’s all the cross-platform upside to incentivize the network sticking with the show: CBS Corp. owns the network, studio and the novel’s publisher. Also, while I’m excited that the networks are focusing more on Summer programming – as cable has proved that there is a viable audience during that time period – this is a big undertaking to get on the air by Summer 2013. Having ordered the project straight to series, they’ll at least skip the pilot review stage and hit the ground running.

Perhaps my biggest concern is the decision to make the project a real series, eschewing the idea of a 13-episode mini-series to tell the whole story. Apparently that was screenwriter Brian K. Vaughan’s intent dating back to when Under the Dome was being developed at Showtime. For the multi-season concept to work, the ending the series has to be jettisoned – though I think the story would benefit from dumping the ending no matter how the series is structured (No spoilers, but I’ll just say that I wasn’t a big fan of how the story was resolved). The novel comes to a definitive end – as out of the box as it may be – so significant changes to the narrative will have to be made to expand past the end of the first season.

Despite these reservations, I’m pretty excited about the announcement. Hell, even if I hated the book, the pairing of King and Spielberg alone would be enough to get me to commit to 13 episodes. I would imagine that production is going to have to ramp up fairly quickly, and we’ll be seeing casting announcements and the like starting around the first of the year, if not sooner. When I first read Under the Dome, the setting and scope definitely lent itself to dream casting the characters in my head. The most natural fit for me was always Ed Harris as Big Jim. Who would you like to see in the cast?

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It’s funny … the last film I reviewed was Flight, and I implied in the title of that review that the film likely wasn’t about what audiences thought it was going to be. In many ways, I had the same reaction after watching Lincoln. The film is not a life history of the nation’s 16^th President; in fact, the story largely stays within the final months of the Civil War. While the film does spend a great deal of time trying to explore Abraham Lincoln as a cinematic character, Lincoln the story is much more about the passage of the 13^th Amendment – at least in the House of Representatives.

Since the film is named Lincoln, I’ve got to start there; Daniel Day-Lewis was phenomenal. His was truly one of those performances where the actor disappears into the character. Day-Lewis plays the President as a great man with a great many burdens laid upon him. Independent of the fact that he is struggling to hold the country together with spit and baling wire, he had difficulties interacting with members of his family. His wife Mary struggled considerably with the deaths of their two sons Edward and William – though the latter’s was much more impactful in the timespan of the story. Lincoln’s eldest son Robert – Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a mostly wasted role — fought to join the military, despite the protestations of his father and the potential impact to Mary’s sanity. Day-Lewis’ Lincoln seems to physically carry each of these problems with him as he manages the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13^th Amendment. This President always has a smile and a story for the troops – one that often, if not always, seems to have little to do with the situation at hand – but is certainly a man whose time in office had a great impact on him physically and emotionally.

Much of the time however, the personal moments with Lincoln seemed tacked on and mixed in between the much-better political story. Watching the President’s proxies, including the always-great David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward and James Spader’s party operative William Bilboe, work with tenuous allies — like Tommy Lee Jones’ “radical” Republican leader Thaddeus Stevens – and desperate enemies was a great deal of fun. For a former political junkie like myself, watching how differently the House of Representatives operated back then (in a loud, confrontational way not unlike the House of Commons in the UK) was fascinating. The backroom dealing – both above and below board – that Seward and Bilboe and then later the President himself participated in, speak to a time when a divided country could still work together.

Lincoln probably has one of the biggest, most talented casts in a film I’ve ever seen. The IMDB listing for the full cast is an embarrassment of riches. There were several incredibly talented actors (the film was surprisingly short of female characters as Sally Field’s Mary Lincoln and Gloria Ruben were the only actresses with large-ish roles) many of whom I didn’t recognize the first three or four times they were on-screen – and one or two I didn’t catch until the end credits … I’m looking at you, Lee Pace.

I didn’t expect to walk away from Lincoln so split on the separate parts that made the whole. As I prepared my thoughts for this review, I believe my subconscious was negotiating my opinions: “Sitting through the Lincoln stuff was worth it to get to the politics.” It’s odd; as good as Day-Lewis’ performance was, anytime we moved far enough away from the 13th Amendment fight, I wanted to go back. It probably has less to do with the actor and more the way the film placed the character on a pedestal. In some ways, I believe that this film will likely become a historical text in and of itself, but I was already aware that Abraham Lincoln was a man responsible for many great deeds. There were so many shots of the character in profile, or upshot to make him feel bigger, to subtly remind audiences that this was a “great” man. Heck, there were several scenes that ended with seemingly 10-15 second shots of Lincoln slowly walking out of the room. Lincoln took the “show, don’t tell” axiom of filmmaking several steps too far for my tastes.

When you factor that in with a nearly two and a half hour running time, the film can be a lot to swallow (I’m not saying the person sitting next to me fell asleep and snored loudly four times … OK, yeah, I guess I am). It’s a shame that a film that is as great as it is for long stretches of time is burdened by all of this extra “stuff” that’s probably the real reason audiences are going to be coming out in the first place. The good news is because Day-Lewis is so great, I don’t think audiences will really notice the first time around. But on the multiple viewings that a great historical text like Lincoln will become, the dichotomy between the “13^th Amendment” movie and that of the President will become all too apparent.

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