I love stephen king, particularly the Dark Tower books. Unfortunately, you're almost right about a lot of it, but you failed to mention a major problem, how bad his writing's gotten since the accident. Not that it wasn't slipping before, but jesus h. christ, he couldn'd have phoned in dreamcatcher to a greater degree if, literally, he phoned it in word for word.

I think the rambling style's alright if done properly, but King lets it sprawl far, far too much, and only because he knows he can get away with it. I agree his short stories are usually put together better but only because the format doesn't allow for a 10,000 word incidental tangent on a particular character who's going to die anyway.

The Stand is, deservedly a seminal vision of post-apocalypse fiction, even if it is a bit dated by today's standards. But King had to add 100,000 words to the original and come out with an expanded edition, I haven't read the original version but people tell me it was a lot more focused, and I can believe them.

As far as the movies, I would only blame King for the one he's directed (Maximum Overdrive, I think was the only one, and I think they took away his director's hat after that), the problem with King movies is so much of his stories take place on a psychological and mental level that they don't trranslate properly. The same problem happens with movies based on H.P. Lovecraft- people forget that the two are completely different mediums and rarely transfer well from one to the other, and the style of the writer is critical as to whether this can be pulled off. I think it's sometimes succeeded, though. The Shining was fine, as was IT and the Stand miniseries.