Oh man, it’s like he’s not even trying.
I apologise for inserting a trivial question, but can anyone enlighten me as to how M Night Shyamalan is pronounced?
As far as I know, Shaw/Ma/Lawn. I may be wrong though.
(My cats name is M Night Shaymeowlan.)
Wikipedia says “/'ʃæ.mæ.lɔːn/”, but I have no idea how that’s pronounced either beyond being able to tell that my guess, shy-uh-mah-lun, was wrong.
I can’t wait.
Neither are you. What do you mean? It looks very interesting to me from the trailer. Not saying it might not suck. It is afterall just a short teaser trailer. But nothing about the trailer says “not even trying” to me.
FYI, this link goes directly to a soundfile.
That was my thought. How much mileage are we gonna squeeze out of 28 Days Later? First we get I Am Legend, and then this third remake in, what, less than 5 years? Gets old people.
M. Night Shyamalan bothers me. He’s a talented director and writer who can set up scenes and draw you in. But he invariably does something – usually hanging the entire plot on assumptionsd so gut-stupid as to be absurd – that invariably send me away groaning, as if reacting to an extremely bad pun. It has gotten to the point where I didn’t even want to go see Lady in the Water. I didn’t even watch the whole thing when it showed up on my cable channel.
This has nothing to do with being “highbrow”, or my expectations from earlier films, or my looking for a “twist”. I would’ve groaned at “Signs” and “The Village” even if The Sixth Sense had never existed.
What I think would serve him well would be to direct someone else’s script. This worked fantastically, for me at least, when Spike Lee directed Inside Man. Would ease expectations of the “twist”, let Shyamalan create the visuals, atmosphere and pacing which he does well, and leave the story, for the most part, alone, except for the way it is told.
Who was right all along!
I’ve un-zombified due to the new red-band trailer they’ve been showing.
My guess is that Marketing is upping the gore appeal to distract from what at first seems the most idiotic premise evah (which was reported in this thread and supported by this review of an earlier spec script which matches the trailer note for note; WARNING: many, many spoilers!):
Plants and trees emit a toxic gas which causes humans to commit suicide
Now, OK, that sounds completely :rolleyes:, but I am starting to think that it is not necessarily a deal-breaker. Especially if you don’t think of it as a “twist” so much as the set-up for the end of Act I. I mean, the real story is how this group of people (specifically Wahlberg, estranged wife, and various redshirts) manage to deal with an un-fightable enemy. In other words, there is hope for a bloodier, potentially less silly Signs.
Sure, I’m very :dubious:, but I have to say the trailers are…intriguing.
That’s still young, damnit!! 37 or 38 is still young!!
I like M Night for two main reasons:
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He crafts and builds suspense flawlessly. Even using the silly premise of mermaids pursued by invisible dogs in bland apartment complexes, he has me on the edge of my seat. He is a master of only showing enough details to scare and tantalize, while letting the audience’s imaginations scare itself with the unknowns.
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He always gets wonderfully immersive performances out of his actors, his actors genuinely portray convincing characters, instead of becoming “Samuel L doing Samuel L again”. Clint Eastwood is the only other director I know of that gets such high results from his actors.
Ronald Reagan was right!
As I said in this thread, many months ago: pretty good director, but his scripts have gotten shittier and shittier. Everybody who has seen the movie, in test screenings and such, says the premise you’ve spoilered is just incredibly, incredibly stupid. Basically, it’sthe revenge of the plant kingdomand nobody has been able to take it seriously.
Question about the bolded part.
Can someone please explain to me how or why or what the parable is to Signs? I thought it an ok movie good enough to entertain me for a couple of hours but I don’t see a parable thing going on.
I guess I should add something about the topic. The Happening looks like it could be a good movie, yes I’ve read the spoilers which makes it more interesting to me, and I will definitely be seeing it.
Here’s the theory as I understand it.
The real story is a man’s path toward redemption. Confronting the turmoil inside him, learning life’s lesson, and coming out of it a better man.
The aliens are essentially a McGuffin. It could have been a flood, tornado hit the farm, kid dies of Scarlet Fever, whatever. The movie is not *about * the aliens, they just serve to drive the main characters’ actions which lead toward the abovementioned redemption.
Ok, that makes sense. Thanks for the quick reply.
You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s really that lame? Great, and my SO is going to drag me to it. Ah well, at least I’ll get my revenge beforehand by making him go see Sex and the City.