I'm not going to take this opportunity to say that I always believed M. Night Shyamalan is a hack. Sure, I never bought into the hype that he was the next Spielberg or Hitchcock, but I do like one of his films (Unbreakable) and I think he has some brilliant scenes in two others (The Sixth Sense and Signs). After two flops, though, he seems to be running out of good ideas and out of loyal defenders. Of course, he's still a talented director of suspenseful scenes, and he's still pretty young.

In a post about the biggest flops of last year, I wrote that it is probably a good time for Shyamalan to try directing someone else's script. And maybe he was reading (I doubt it), because two weeks later the announcement came that he was, yes, directing someone else's script. Or, at least adapting someone else's idea and then directing that. However, it now appears he's still trying his luck (and his own ideas). Insiders told TMZ recently that Shyamalan is shopping his latest original script around Hollywood, and so far he isn't seeing a lot of interest.

Man, it must be terrible to be a 12-year-old child superstar and realize you can't rest on your laurels, but instead, must think about the future when your looks start to go and you just aren't the cutest thing around anymore. What's a pre-teen actor to do when this kind of problem inevitably arises? Thus is the current issue apparently confronting the precocious Dakota Fanning who was asked, according to a recent AP story, what she might want to do when she grows up. Her answer? Are you sitting down? Good. She wants to direct.

According to the article, Fanning was asked about her future career plans during an interview for Time Magazine promoting her upcoming films Charlotte's Web and the indie-drama Hound Dog. "I would love to direct someday," Fanning told the magazine. "I've learned a lot from watching directors I've worked with, like Steven Spielberg and Gary Winick, whom I worked with on Charlotte's Web. I would love to have that relationship with another actor." Well, I guess if you've spent that much time with talented directors like those, something is bound to rub off, right? What a great way to learn.

Besides, there are many directors working today who started out as actors -- the most successful probably being Ron Howard. But there's also, of course, Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, Danny De Vito and one of my personal heroes Orson Welles. I'm sure I missed a bunch more. To be honest, Dakota Fanning is one of the few child actors who doesn't bug me when I watch her films -- I especially liked her in Man on Fire. Maybe its her or more the directors or actors she works with. Whatever the reason, if I had to bet on someone making a successful transition from actor to director I would have to bet on her. Plus, she's just so darn cute -- and that never hurts either.

Well, this is weird. For the bulk of my 30+ years on this planet, there's been no such thing as a "televised horror awards" presentation, and now, not 15 minutes removed from geeking out over the newly-announced Fangoria Chainsaw Awards nominations -- I come across the Spike TV Scream Awards nominations! Cool!

Now, with all due respect to Spike TV and their cool new concept, I gotta say the Fango Chainsaw noms are just a little bit cooler. But hey, there's no law that says the horror freaks can't hang their hat on TWO new awards presentations. Frankly I think we could use a few more enthusiastic celebrations of juicy genre filmmaking.

Anyway, the Screams seem to run a lot like the Chainsaws do: Check out all the categories and nominees (after the jump) and then head on over to SpikeTV.com and cast your own votes! This is particularly amusing for the horror nuts -- because we're nothing if not passionately opinionated on which horror flicks rock and which ones suck the proverbial egg. Spike TV broadcasts their Scream Awards on the evening of October 10th.

It's not too often you hear news of a lawsuit over a property that's in the public domain, but here we go: Pendragon Pictures, the folks who put together this movie version of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is filing suit against Dark Horse Comics. The moviemakers claim that the comicmakers have cribbed a whole lot of visuals from their flick, and they've even gone so far as to set up this website to illustrate their arguments.

So what do you think: Is it a simple coincidence borne from the fact that both works are based on a common source? Or did the Dark Horse artists actually sit down and copy from Tim Hines' overwhelmingly "faithful" Wells adaptation? Either way it's good press for the Pendragon flick, a film which I'll not share my opinion of at this time ...

Ask your average hardcore horror geek if they're familiar with "The Asylum," and watch a bemused grin crack across their melon. Production house, distributor and loony bin all wrapped into one (hence the name), The Asylum has recently grown into somewhat of a production-line outfit, which only serves to make the studio feel a whole lot like the big Hollywood boys. The Asylum inmates are simply a little more forthcoming with their schlock, and they wear their cinematic influences (not to mention affections) on their frequently gore-soaked sleeve.

I had a chance to pick the brain of Mr. David Michael Latt, currently the head crazy over at The Asylum. As old buddies, we shot the breeze in laid-back and movie-geek style, focusing mainly on the indie studio's more recent crop of "blockbuster piggy-backs" -- some of which are actually more entertaining than their big-budget brethren. Some.

It would be such easy marketing for a Fantastic Four movie to open on the 4th of July. The original even had it down at first: Four on Four! It was the easiest release date to remember since Independence Day. Ok, so last year the 4th was a Monday and no films opened, and ID4 opened on the 3rd of July back in 1995. Sometimes it is just the general neighborhood of time that studios need us to remember. Still, F4 didn't get to open close enough to the holiday last year to seem appropriate, because War of the Worlds took control of the big date and pushed the little comic book blockbuster out of the way to the 8th.

Now, as you know, 20th Century Fox is making a sequel (which said out-loud sounds like a Hitchhiker's Guide reference) and seemed to be hoping for a July 4th, 2007 opening, as the date is on a Wednesday and therefore ripe for releasing. Unfortunately, the franchise is still too weak to claim the big-league day as its own. With the Michael Bay-directed Transformers scheduled to come out on the 4th, Fantastic Four 2 has once again been shoved to the side, this time two weeks earlier (June 15th). So, now Fox might want to do a little planning. The next time the holiday falls on a release day is 2012. I'm not sure they should wait for Part 3 or just keep it going up until then, but either way, they need to take siege now. And if any other films attempt another bit of bullying, I say its clobberin' time!

Movie fans and Showtime subscribers looking for a change of pace are taking to -- and some, toking to -- the network's new comedy, Weeds. In it, Mary-Louise Parker of Saved! plays Nancy, a suburban housewife and mother of two who turns to dealing pot to survive after her husband suddenly dies and leaves her and the boys with next to nothing. In a recent episode, Parker is discussing the spike in demand with a teenage dealer, played by Justin Chatwin, who played Tom Cruise's son in War Of The Worlds.  "They've been playing Winged Migration for the midnight show all week, wiped me out," he explains. "Shit hasn't gone this fast since Passion of the Christ." Nancy, amazed, replies, "People got stoned for The Passion of the Christ? That's...disturbing." "It's not as disturbing as it is if you're not stoned," the teen answers, nonchalantly. "It's a straight up snuff film!"

In this modern society dependent on sound bites and single-sentence synopses, it was only a matter of time before someone thought to apply (albeit very loosely) the ancient Japanese poetic 5/7/5 syllable form of haiku to film criticism. Here are a few recent movies, reduced to their essence through super-economic choice of words. Feel free to submit your own haiku reviews of movies you saw this summer (one per post please).

WAR OF THE WORLDS [PG-13]
Advanced aliens?
Traversing the galaxy
No penicillin?

THE ISLAND [PG-13]
Michael Bay, learning,
By Serlingesque irony,
Leaden turds don't float.

FANTASTIC FOUR [PG-13]
Stan Lee, comic god
Fallen, but not as far as
Affleck's DareDevil.

How hard is Nicole Kidman working to outdo her ex? According to John Sutherland, the driving motivation behind each of Kidman's choices is to top Tom Cruise. Evidence: "He makes the big-budget paranormal thriller Minority Report: she makes the delicately nuanced paranormal puzzle-piece, The Others. He does a ludicrously OTT* War of the Worlds: she revisits the subtlest film in the invasion genre. Anything he can do, she can do better." It's obvious that Kidman's carer just skyrocketed after the couple's divorce, but that seemed to me to have more to do with back-to-back Oscar nominations (and a win for The Hours) than any conscious desire on her part to take down the (adoptive) father of her kids. What do you think?

*We think this means "over the top" -- ed.

It's the Los Angeles Times' turn to sit in the box-office-slump hand-wringing circle, and this week they're bringing one new (well, maybe not "new", but seldom discussed) platter to the party: us! John Horn and Rachel Abramowitz point out that even if a studio dumps kabillions on marketing to get the easily-led flock into the theaters, "bad buzz ... can now be passed with viral speed on the Internet."

So essentially, you little scamps start running your mouths (er, fingers), and no matter how much a pre-ordained blockbuster makes on Friday night, you (and me, we, us) have the ability to throw a wrench in first-weekend grosses. After that, it's all over. The article quotes Lucy Fisher, who produced Bewitched: "Now at midnight on Friday evening, you're dead or alive. However long it took to make the movie, by Friday night, except for Academy[-Award-type] movies, your fate gets cast."

Horn and Abramowitz conclude with an ominous bit of gloom-mongering: War of the Worlds may be the summer box office's last, great hope, but still, "it would need to be almost a Titanic-size hit to make up the lost ground." Is it a surprise, then, that they're doing virtually zero pre-screening?