the village Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you thought M. Night Shyamalan's career was over after The Happening, you were wrong. And, uh, not very bright. But I do have to admit that I was among those who thought that his planned adaptation of the Nickelodeon "American anime" Avatar: The Last Airbender would never actually come together: it just seemed too bizarre a combination of filmmaker and material, and James Cameron already had an Avatar in the pipeline. But the movie, written by Shyamalan and renamed The Last Airbender to steer clear of this winter's 3D behemoth, has begun filming in rural Pennsylvania, for a July 2010 release.

This Reading Eagle article has quite a few details on the project, including some set photos that are too boring for me to transplant here. One of its insights is a worrisome explanation for what attracted Shyamalan to the project:

"'The film is very spiritual,' said [Shyamalan's long-time producer Jose Rodriguez]. 'The storytelling is more layered (than on the series). There's a Shakespearean quality about it: a ruthless king destroying a peaceful world. I think it's fair to say it has an almost operatic power.'"

He goes by "Night," but it's hard to dispute his sunny disposition. Just a few minutes into a conversation with M. Night Shyamalan in a New York City hotel room yesterday, it was obvious to me that the director has managed to occupy such a unique niche in the Hollywood landscape because he's immediately likable. Of course, a little movie released in 1999 called The Sixth Sense didn't hurt, either.

After landing two Oscar nominations and international acclaim for his masterful ghost story, Shyamalan continued to market himself as a brand. Since then, the results have been mixed. Signs was an indisputable hit. Unbreakable has its supporters. Lady in the Water? Not so much. But that failure hasn't prevented the filmmaker from dealing with audacious material: His latest movie, The Happening, finds a married couple (Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel) thrust into a world where people inexplicably become suicidal after getting struck by an ominous, unseen toxin. Forces of evil usually remain unseen in Shyamalan's films, and The Happening is no exception to that rule. I spoke to the 37-year-old Philadelphia resident about the personal philosophies guiding his career choices, the polarized reactions to his work, and what the future will bring.

In the wake of Sacha Baron Cohen's alter-ego Borat trying to gain access to the White House, MTV has listed ten other publicity stunts for films -- including Kevin Smith's truly grovel-worthy MySpace friends-for-a-movie-credit exchange. Although probably most disturbing on the list is the 1988 film Mac and Me which was partially financed by Coca-Cola and McDonalds, and features a musical number that finds Mac dancing with Ronald McDonald. Holy hour and a half long commercial, Batman!

However, I'm reminded of several stunts that didn't make the list. Remember when Clue was released in theaters, and they featured three different endings, so people would go see it more than once? What a fiasco, as finding out which theater was showing what ending proved to be too much work. Don't forget about the "unauthorized" documentary about M. Night Shyamalan that aired on the Sci-Fi channel. It turned out to be a fake created to get more viewers in to see The Village. Of course, the most memorable publicity stunt, real or fake (the jury is still out) has been Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah's couch. Although given Tom's downward slide lately, that one appears to have backfired on him as well. Of course, leave it to MTV themselves to have Steve-O going number one on the carpet at the premiere to promote Jackass: Number Two. They just seem to be getting classier, don't they?

What do you think about publicity stunts? Do they make you want to see the movie or avoid it like the plague? Do you have any personal favorites that didn't make the list?

I consider myself a fan of M. Night Shyamalan's films, and it's not just because we're both Philly guys. Despite the popular backlash, I still think The Sixth Sense is a pretty darn good movie. I also feel that Unbreakable is borderline brilliant and that Signs works well enough, even if it doesn't exactly stand up to repeat viewings. I'm also of the opinion that The Village is an indulgent mess, and it's the first M. Night movie that I actively disliked. I've not yet seen Lady in the Water, so obviously I cannot even venture an opinion on the flick ... but I've spoken to a lot of film critics (Shyama-fans and non-fans alike) and they assure me it's pretty darn terrible. (It's currently wooing a 19% approval rate at Rotten Tomatoes, and neither Kim nor Ryan was all that thrilled with the flick.)

So I thought I'd transplant one of my recent geeky phone conversations into blog form and pose the following query: Is M. Night Shyamalan a fine filmmaker who's currently going through a rough spot in his career ... or is he a one-trick pony -- an emperor, as they say, with no clothes?

One of the most common opinions regarding the guy's last two films is a pretty logical one: That the filmmaker became so popular and so powerful so fast that now he's working in a virtual vacuum, a one-man filmmaking machine that's become insular, isolated, and beholden to no one -- and that includes the producers and studio execs who just might be able to contribute something important to the process. Or is M. Night a brilliant renegade of a big-budget filmmaker, a guy who tells the exact stories he wants to tell, and damn it all if the audiences and/or critics don't "get it"?

So what do you think? Are we dealing with a filmmaker who's "hit the wall," creatively-speaking? Did the guy only have two or three good movies in him? Or will he bounce back from the criticisms of The Village and Lady in the Water and deliver another movie that recaptures some of that Sixth Sense magic? And by "magic," I don't just mean the $293 million in domestic box office.

A good parody is hard to spin beyond the here and now. Take "Weird Al" Yankovic, for example. The pop-music jokester has put out 11 regular albums since 1983, when the accordian-playing nice guy's spoof of The Knack's "My Sharona" (titled "My Bologna" and recorded in the men's room of his college radio station) started his career as a musician, comedic icon and food fetishist when it blew up on The Dr. Demento Show. However, every hilarious and unforgettable cut like "Eat It", "Like A Surgeon" and "Smells Like Nirvana" that hit was matched by fade-away tracks like the New Kids jape "The White Stuff" (an ode to Oreos), the Rocky III goof "Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser)" or the misjudgment "Taco Grande" (a riff on Latin rough-boy Gerardo's only hit, "Rico Suave"). The secret to a successful parody is complex, involving a careful balance of picking a song that is big enough, worthy of a good-natured dressing down and most important, funny. The same is true with movies, and the latest in the popular Scary Movie series is a great example of what can go right and wrong with such an attempt.