comment #1

Josh Massey says ...

I will never, ever understand the hate for Signs. I loved that movie.

comment #2

corey3rd says ...

I'm ready for M. Night Shymalan's Tyler Perry.

comment #3

dre says ...

I didn't think Signs was so hated. I thought most people pretty much dug the hell out of that one...

comment #4

le corbeau says ...

I think Shmyalan badly needs a partner who can tell him when his ideas are full of crap, he's made one good movie, one 3/4 good movie, one 1/2 good movie, and The Village and Lady in the Water, which went unseen by me but suggest a decline.

Still, he's trying, he's aiming high, he's exactly what we want a commercial filmmaker to be which is trying to do more than he's capable of, rather than obviously doing much less, and it's kind of sick that the same people who bitch about how crappy movies are also take glee in pulling down one of the crabs who's almost out of the bucket. It's like how the press went gunning for Coppola and Cimino when they had both gone way over budget on epics in the late 70s; that really turned out well for the art form, didn't it?

comment #5

ScottMendelson says ...

Mgmax - Do yourself a favor and see The Village. Know going in that it is not a thriller or a horror film. I can't guarantee you'll like it, but it has a lot to offer. Solid performances, some interesting ideas on the current political situation, and an absolutely beautiful score by James Newton Howard. It's much more interesting than its reputation suggests. It's not a masterpiece, but it's definitely worth seeing.

comment #6

Edward says ...

I really enjoyed Wide Awake, Sixth Sense and especially Unbreakable. I was very disappointed with Signs and haven't seen the newer ones. Still I'm hopefull for The Happening. Even if the title makes me think of the drug-fueled 60's.

comment #7

D.Z. says ...

Mgmax: "It's like how the press went gunning for Coppola and Cimino when they had both gone way over budget on epics in the late 70s; that really turned out well for the art form, didn't it?"

Well, we got Lynch in their place, so I guess that's not to bad a trade-off.

comment #8

dre says ...

Scott's dead-on regarding The Village's score and performances. Interesting themes going on in that movie too. The last act has some problems but people blew that movie's problems out of proportion.

comment #9

Fien Print says ...

I'm only going to speak for myself here, but my problem with Shyamalan has always been his ego and hubris, which were there dating back to Wide Awake. There are some filmmakers who would have admitted that The Village had serious problems, that Lady in the Water was a tone-deaf, self-indulgent whack-off. They might have said, "Yes, those films had serious problems, but I'm learning from them I'm trying to get better." Shyamalan's attitude has always been "Critics didn't get those movies and they crucified me for their own intellectual failings."

I know that there are defenders for "The Village" and even for "Lady in the Water," but does anybody want to make the argument that Shyamalan is growing as a filmmaker since "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable"? That he's learning from his mistakes? That would be difficult, since he doesn't believe he's ever made a mistake.

This is a guy who started his career as a screenwriter -- Hi, Stuart Little! -- and has evolved into a decent visual stylist seemingly incapable of writing a good script. That's a unique arc...

comment #10

Major Calloway says ...

The last act has some problems...

MNS is probably getting used to hearing this. He seriously needs a writing partner who can help elevate his ideas to something more than just audience-tweaking.

Caveat 1: Absolutely love his direction, of which I think his material is totally unworthy. I groove on the tone and handling of SIXTH SENSE, SIGNS and UNBREAKABLE as much as I thought they were all silly as hell.

Caveat 2: Haven't seen LADY IN THE WATER, which, given what I expect from him, looked fairly promising.

comment #11

dre says ...

I think he's always made the films he wanted to make, so it's going to be hard for him to admit mistakes in that sense. I don't have a problem with him saying, "I get this. This works for me. It doesn't work for you. I think you're wrong."

comment #12

actionman says ...

He's made one truly bad film (Lady in the Water).

I have enjoyed the rest of his work. Really loved Unbreakable; that's his best I think.

Calling him a "decent visual stylist" is underselling his amazing visual style and technique. He needs to get better with his writing but he's a damn fine director and certainly a first-rate stylist. Working with Tak Fujimoto, Roger Deakins, Chris Doyle and Eduardo Serra doesn't hurt, either.

I hope The Happening is a nasty horror movie.

comment #13

scooterzz says ...

shyamalan shot himself in the foot by giving michael bamberger an all-access pass to the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing of 'lady in the water'.....it was an act of pure hubris and came back to bite him in the butt....
his whacky behavior now eclipses his work in the mind of anyone who's read the book.....
just my opinion......

comment #14

Richard_Stone says ...

I never understood the consensus about The Sixth Sense being a great movie. I consider the whole movie to be one of the most glaring scenaristic fraud perpetrated on an audience. I don't mind a Twilight Zone twist here and there, but this one doesn't resist to scrutiny. In a similar genre, The Others at least made some sense.

I haven't watched the movie in years, but to support my claim, I'll recall a scene that opens with Bruce Willis sitting silently in front of the boy's mother. We are first meant to assume the silence is due to a difficult conversation that took place just the movie cut to the scene, but we later realize that Bruce just sat there in silence in some sort sort of hazy confusion because of his recent death.

Maybe I'm too much of a litteralist, but this stuff doesn't fly with me. Even in this fantasy world, it seems to me that a guy would realize quickly no one reacts to him and figure something's up. Just because you come up with clever ways to show brief cherry-picked moments that give illusions of interactions where there are none and make up rules for an alternate universe doesn't make this any less of a fraud, especially when the journey to the pay-off is so boring and flat.

comment #15

cinefan says ...

I agree with you, richard_stone, completely about the wildly overpraised ending of the Sixth Sense, which I think is a good film but the ending gets too much credit: we're supposed to believe that this very intelligent psychiatrist couldn't figure out what was going on a lot sooner? Didn't he attempt, at least once, to have a conversation with anyone other than his wife or Haley Joel Osment?

comment #16

Fien Print says ...

dre- I understand the "I get this. This works for me. It doesn't work for you. I think you're wrong." sentiment. But I think there are still smart ways to say similar things.

I talked to Tarsem about The Fall and his read was: Look, this was a movie I had to make. It's the movie I wanted to make. If you like it, great. If you don't, I understand completely and maybe you'll like the next one more.

I didn't like The Fall at all, but I came away from talking to Tarsem feeling much more kindly to the movie because of the way he sold it. I didn't like Lady in the Water at all, but I came away from talking to Shyamalan feeling actively hostile toward it just because of his attitude.

And I don't dislike him because he cast himself as Jesus and made the film critic character into skrunt-bait. Plenty of filmmakers have either cast themselves as misunderstood geniuses or cast their proxies as misunderstood geniuses. And if you do those things in a good movie, it's all gravy. Then you're Fellini. Or Truffaut. Or Woody Allen.

If you do it in a bad movie...

comment #17

le corbeau says ...

You know, he's a ghost. That'll screw your perceptions up. You might as well ask what Lloyd the Bartender does for fun when his shift is over. Really, I think asking why he didn't approach the experience more logically and practically is kind of missing the whole thing about being a ghost in a horror movie (of a sort).

comment #18

Jimmycrackcorn says ...

"You might as well ask what Lloyd the Bartender does for fun when his shift is over."

Some days you're a dick, but thank you for making me laugh today.

comment #19

Richardson says ...

I like the Max in this thread a lot. He said what I was going to say much better.

I had a good response here, but then I got signed out somehow and lost it. Let me sum up.

I think the Internet hatred for M.Night is a lot like the hatred for Lucas. A lot of people -- a LOT -- saw promise in their early works and was passionate about their breakthrough movies, and then, when they have all this power in Hollywood and money, they choose to just sit in the shallow end of the pool. I'm not sure there's much value placed in being a "visionary auteur" type guy if your vision basically resembles a Hollywood blockbuster product, but tweaked a little bit. People who were so passionate about them can often get disappointed if they don't feel the person is doing anything new [like Paul Thomas Anderson who, say what you like about him, really does run off in different directions every movie and create unique things]. If M.Night (or Lucas) really wanted to expand his horizons, he'd make a romantic comedy. That would be out of his comfort zone! (Especially because the "jokes" in his movies always fall flat.)

They are also both lazy, if not shitty writers who had early success as writers with scripts that went through numerous drafts when they were still willing to re-write and take notes from people, but now write one or two drafts that nobody is allowed to read until they're finished. And nobody questions their vision, and the result is "Lady in the Water".

Max - you should see 'Lady in the Water'. It is pretty well directed, but amazingly poorly conceived. It might change your opinion on him a little bit.

comment #20

Richardson says ...

"Plenty of filmmakers have either cast themselves as misunderstood geniuses or cast their proxies as misunderstood geniuses. "

That's a good point. And it also reminded me of the scene where M.Night's character describes "The Cookbook". I realize what he was going for, but the vagueness of it is just amazingly terrible. I can't even do it justice, but my memory is that it's something like this:

"So, this book you're writing that's going to have so much important influence, what's it about?"
"Oh, just, you know, how things could be better, politics, stuff."

And then I think back on the fact that Disney told him there was too much exposition coming from Young-Soon Choi to Cleveland Heap, so his solution to the note was to create a Korean grandmother for Young-Soon Choi so that the grandmother would deliver the exposition in Korean and then Young-Soon would translate it all to English... which led to a shot in the movie which is five minutes long of just Paul Giamatti on the phone listening to them have an argument in Korean.

To M. Night's credit, he made a movie that is genuinely memorably bad, which is hard to do as well as he did.

comment #21

actionman says ...

The Fall is EASILY the best film I've seen this year. Easily.

comment #22

Richard_Stone says ...

MgMax: Lloyd knows he's a ghost, and so does the audience from pretty much the first frame he appears in.

And suspension of disbelief aside, Shining had some great moments on its way to the conclusion. The elevator, the twin sisters, the labyrinth, the typewriter, the mountains, etc. I pretty much remember nothing from The Sixth Sense apart from its conclusion. Again, I haven't seen the movie in years and I don't intend to do so, but what are the great memorable scenes in Sixth Sense, apart from its twist?

comment #23

cinefan says ...

"Really, I think asking why he didn't approach the experience more logically and practically is kind of missing the whole thing about being a ghost in a horror movie (of a sort)."

Willis' character thinks that he is still alive and so wouldn't he carry out the normal routines of his daily life? What happened to him when he went to buy a cup of coffee or sat down to have lunch in a restaurant, for example? Wouldn't he think that something was up when everyone he tried to talk to completely ignored him (there have been several twilight zone episodes where characters face that very scenario)? My point is that the plot to Sixth Sense falls apart when you break it down and analyze it logically - Owen Gleiberman is spot on when he calls the film's plot smoke and mirrors.

comment #24

Richardson says ...

"but what are the great memorable scenes in Sixth Sense, apart from its twist?"

Say what you want about the movie, but it's pretty difficult to argue that the scene where the kid meets Bruce Willis isn't iconic, if only for "I see dead people."

The scene in the car, towards the end, with him and his mom where he's telling her about grandma stands out in my memory as pretty strong (and pretty iconic, at least at the time).

Was it John Ford who said "Three great scenes and no bad ones"?

comment #25

Richardson says ...

"Willis' character thinks that he is still alive and so wouldn't he carry out the normal routines of his daily life? What happened to him when he went to buy a cup of coffee or sat down to have lunch in a restaurant, for example?"

So, instead of making a movie that creates its own unique rules for how ghosts interact with reality and deal with death, you'd rather he made a movie that conformed to previous tropes and things you'd seen before on 'The Twilight Zone'?

That seems like weak sauce. But to each their own.

I should say, I haven't seen the movie but once, in the theater, so it's certainly possible that it doesn't apply its own rules consistently, I don't really know. That's a valid criticism for this sort of thing. But saying that the ghosts aren't enough like ghosts you've seen in other movies doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

comment #26

le corbeau says ...

"Willis' character thinks that he is still alive and so wouldn't he carry out the normal routines of his daily life? What happened to him when he went to buy a cup of coffee or sat down to have lunch in a restaurant, for example?"

You're assuming that he experiences life as we the living do-- that there's a whole life outside of what we see on screen in which he goes to work, goes to the grocery store, renews his driver's license, whatever. Yet other ghosts in the movie are clearly caught in a kind of "tape loop," repeating key points in their lives over and over, unaware that they are ghosts. We're seeing the loops in his life, as he sees the loops in the life of the kid who played with his dad's gun or whatever.

I mean, it's make-believe, so you tell me how being a ghost is supposed to work, but I wouldn't assume that Willis experiences anything besides what we see on screen, and he's in a sort of confused fugue state of the dead trying to make sense of it all.

comment #27

le corbeau says ...

"MgMax: Lloyd knows he's a ghost, and so does the audience from pretty much the first frame he appears in."

Jack Torrance is a ghost too, but he doesn't know it until the end, if ever.

comment #28

York "Budd" Durden says ...

Mgmax, I know I have busted your chops on this board before for this and that, but I have to say your remarks in this thread have been spot-on regarding this film. Thanks.

comment #29

le corbeau says ...

Bush will not only be remembered as our greatest president, but as the greatest human being who ever lived, after John Wayne.

There, I've restored the balance of the board.

comment #30

Richardson says ...

seconded.

This thread reminds me why this site is fun.

comment #31

Richardson says ...

Better than Reagan?? YOU CRAZY!

comment #32

Richard_Stone says ...

I'll confess I don't really get your latest point about Jack Torrance being a ghost, Mg.

But anyways, these two movies are different beasts altogether. If I have a problem with the suspension of disbelief and logical thinking in Sixth Sense, it's that the movie appears to have been conceived logically and practically around Bruce Willis being a ghost in denial or limbo first, and all the rules of this world are built to fit that idea second. Of course, I have no way to read M Night's mind, but that's the way I interpretated the conception of the movie.

comment #33

Richardson says ...

The movie itself was conceived before the ending, and then he got the ending after months of writers block, but I'm sure that probably he re-wrote the rules for ghosts (and certain scenes) around the fact that he needed it to end a certain way.

But so what? Doesn't that mean that it's logically consistent with itself? I'm not sure what the complaint is there.

comment #34

cinefan says ...

"You're assuming that he experiences life as we the living do-- that there's a whole life outside of what we see on screen in which he goes to work, goes to the grocery store, renews his driver's license, whatever. Yet other ghosts in the movie are clearly caught in a kind of "tape loop," repeating key points in their lives over and over, unaware that they are ghosts. We're seeing the loops in his life, as he sees the loops in the life of the kid who played with his dad's gun or whatever."

My argument isn't that he experiences life as we the living do - my argument is that he himself still thinks he is experiencing life as we the living do. He is not aware that he is dead and is still behaving as if he were alive (how else do you explain the scene in the restaurant where he is attempting to have a conversation with his wife and he is unhappy that she is ignoring him? - there's no "tape loop" there whatsoever). I'm not particularly impressed with Sense's ending because I think that Shymalan came up with the ending first and molded the rest of the film to fit his preconceived ending (that seems to be what he does with most of his films).

comment #35

Richard_Stone says ...

My point is that it's a logical invention by the writer that sustains itself by arbitrary logical rules built around it, yet it doesn't resist further logical examination by the audience. It's basically a deus ex machina that pats itself on the back for being so clever.

I like MgMax's explanation that all the ghosts are reliving loops of their existence without realizing what is going on, but (speaking again from memories of seeing the movie when it came out on video a long time ago) we are led to believe that Bruce Willis is conducting a new case and is living an original existence.

I understand a subjective depiction of a character in denial or limbo implies that the audience must be in limbo as well, but in the case of the Sixth Sense, I find it crosses the line from audience manipulation to audience cheating.

comment #36

Richardson says ...

"My argument isn't that he experiences life as we the living do - my argument is that he himself still thinks he is experiencing life as we the living do. He is not aware that he is dead and is still behaving as if he were alive"

You're saying that he should be experiencing life linearly as alive people do, and therefore should notice the gaps and, because he notices the gaps, should realize he's dead.

The point is, it's a spirit; there's no reason to assume he is experiencing life linearly as alive people do, so he neccessarily wouldn't notice the gaps. He's appearing in places he thinks he's supposed to be, fading in and out in between the same way that every other ghost in the movie appears and then disappears.

I confess that, if the movie were really just about Willis being a ghost, it would be flimsy, but that's just the cinematic twist aspect; the movie is more about the kid who sees ghosts.

comment #37

Richard_Stone says ...

What cinefan said. I'm too slow crafting my little posts.

comment #38

Richardson says ...

"I like MgMax's explanation that all the ghosts are reliving loops of their existence without realizing what is going on, but (speaking again from memories of seeing the movie when it came out on video a long time ago) we are led to believe that Bruce Willis is conducting a new case and is living an original existence."

Some of the ghosts seem to be reliving previous traumatic moments, especially if they had a very traumatic death, but others are clearly doing new things (like the girl who tells him her stepfather murdered her, or something like that).

But they do disappear; none of them is shown to exist 24/7.

comment #39

Richardson says ...

"I understand a subjective depiction of a character in denial or limbo implies that the audience must be in limbo as well, but in the case of the Sixth Sense, I find it crosses the line from audience manipulation to audience cheating."

Hit "post" too soon; meant to say, that's fair enough -- even though I don't feel it for 'Sixth Sense', I know the feeling, I've felt it for other movies, and I do think it's a reasonable complaint. That was more or less my big beef with 'Fight Club'.

comment #40

EDouglas says ...

It's already biased critics like Lou Lumenick who post early reviews on their blogs and newspapers why more studios are enforcing the opening day embargo, but I'm not even remotely surprised that FOX and Night don't want a lot of spoilers for the movie out before opening day.

In fact, Night DID try to embrace the internet with his last movie mostly thanks to Warner Bros. who have a stronger interactive dept. than any other studio. Myself, Devin from CHUD, Mike Sampson from Joblo, the late Dan Epstein and a couple others were given a chance to see Lady in the Water nearly two months before release which is quite a counterpoint to "The Village" which wasn't screened for online at all beforehand. Either way, embracing the internet for Lady in the Water did nothing to help it. Personally, it's still my favorite film of his despite the usual critiques of his egotism in casting himself as the writer, etc... I just thought it was a very original movie, funny at times, scary at others... just everything I was hoping for (and I laughed my ass off when that one character was killed)

comment #41

Jeffrey Kunze says ...

This thread became more and more ridiculous the further down I read, but that said, I place myself in the group in agreement with MgMax. You can expect a ghost to exist in a world based on actual-living reality. They obviously must be in some other mode of conscious/subconscious thinking.

Of course, I'm not exactly an expect on the subject, but who is...

comment #42

Richard_Stone says ...

"Hit "post" too soon; meant to say, that's fair enough -- even though I don't feel it for 'Sixth Sense', I know the feeling, I've felt it for other movies, and I do think it's a reasonable complaint. That was more or less my big beef with 'Fight Club'."

I agree. Fight Club undermined its already potent satirical and philosophical points by topping it with basically a B-movie psychological thriller device.

But not to beat a dead horse, but I liked the first two-thirds of Fight Club a hell of a lot more than the first two-thirds of Sixth Sense. It's got way more memorable stuff in there. And ridiculousness and preposterity of the final twist aside, the final fight between Tyler and the narrator is cinematically and visually engaging on some level. Isn't the reveal in Sixth Sense just a talking heads scene with some flashbacks? Is it really a cinematically interesting scene by itself? To be honest, I don't remember it much in detail.

comment #43

le corbeau says ...

I don't know, seems to me part of the point of Fight Club was that it WAS that batshit crazy. Otherwise you're left with taking it totally seriously, in which case it's an al-Qaeda recruiting film about destroying the decadent West. I prefer to think of it as a black comedy about yuppie self-loathing than as a movie recommending a course of action.

comment #44

cinefan says ...

"You're saying that he should be experiencing life linearly as alive people do, and therefore should notice the gaps and, because he notices the gaps, should realize he's dead.
The point is, it's a spirit; there's no reason to assume he is experiencing life linearly as alive people do, so he neccessarily wouldn't notice the gaps. He's appearing in places he thinks he's supposed to be, fading in and out in between the same way that every other ghost in the movie appears and then disappears."

I think your explanation of the film's plot is very eloquent and your "fading in and out" argument would have a lot of validity if Willis only appeared in scenes that featured Osment but, again, I turn to the scene between Willis and his wife at the restaurant. That scene indicates to me that Willis does experience life linearly like a living human being and does have the ability to initiate conversations with people when he wants to. I would argue, though, that the film would be better without that scene because Shymalan seems to have inserted it just to keep the audience off guard and make them believe that Willis survived the gunshot wound and is having marital troubles with his wife after the shooting.

comment #45

Richard_Stone says ...

MgMax: I'll confess I did take parts of Fight Club seriously back then. The course of action recommended in its second third is pretty much batshit crazy, and perhaps the twist at the end helps to refute it, but some of its observations early on and chiefly in the discussion scene in the bar were pretty spot on, or at least they were to my impressionable young mind back then. It led me to reconsider some of my values, and I'm sure I was not the only one.

I still liked the slick Hollywood action thriller rest of the movie enough to really care about the treatment of those few early ideas, but I think you could play with them in many different sorts of movies, without using the b-movie psychological thriller twist device.

comment #46

Richard_Stone says ...

... enough to NOT really care, of course.

comment #47

Yuval says ...

"think your explanation of the film's plot is very eloquent and your "fading in and out" argument would have a lot of validity if Willis only appeared in scenes that featured Osment but, again, I turn to the scene between Willis and his wife at the restaurant. That scene indicates to me that Willis does experience life linearly like a living human being and does have the ability to initiate conversations with people when he wants to"

Willis has two issues he needs to resolve, his failure as a therapist and his relationship with his wife. That's why we only see him in scenes with Osment and his wife.
Mgmax's comment about the special way the ghosts feel the world around them isn't a theory conceived to keep the crumbling plot together, it is established early on by Osment - "They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead."
His wife knows he's dead all along, and she never talks to him during their scenes together. He can't initiate a conversation with her, only with Osment (the exception may be the last scene, when she's dreaming). When he's yelling at her new love prospect, you can see he doesn't respond at all, even though he was right next to him. Willis sees what he wants to see, because he's not ready to move on. People lying to themselves in order to live their lives (or their deaths) is a recurring them in Shyamalan's movies.

The last lines of the movie: "I think I can go now. Just needed to do a couple of things. I needed to help someone; I think I did. And I needed to tell you something: You were never second, ever. I love you. You sleep now. Everything will be different in the morning."

comment #48

Howlingman says ...

I remember back in high school a heated argument in class about ANIMAL FARM -- one student's big beef with the final scene was that it was unrealistic because there was no way a pig could hold a hand of playing cards.

Good back and forth going on here -- as long as nobody ruins it by interjecting logic into a fantasy.

comment #49

le corbeau says ...

Richard_Stone-- That's exactly how I feel about it too. You don't really have to believe everything needs blowing up to feel disgust at knowing what a duvet is...

comment #50

thorsen1nk says ...

What a twist!

comment #51

dinther says ...

I always believed that the Sixth Sense was derivative of the much, much better, "Jacob's Ladder."

It seems that Shamalan (and everyone else) should relax about the criticism. OK, he makes movies that (for the most part) stray from the typical Hollywood narrative - lacking the peaks and valleys that pace most films. I don't find this particularly engaging or annoying, but whatever. If he believes this is part of his unique vision, he shouldn't care what the Saturday popcorn crowd thinks. He will never rise to being a great - or better, a remembered - director trying to please the masses. I don't remember Fincher complaining about the lack of buzz for "Zodiac" yet he has built up a body of work that is memorable and distinct from his contemporaries.

comment #52

Richardson says ...

"But not to beat a dead horse, but I liked the first two-thirds of Fight Club a hell of a lot more than the first two-thirds of Sixth Sense. It's got way more memorable stuff in there."

Honestly, I saw them both once, in theaters, in '99. In addition to the three scenes I mentioned before, and the part where we the audience assume Willis has been talking to the mother, and the part with the wife, I also remember a lot about the stuff with the little girl, and the scene at the school with the hanging ghost who hung himself because he stuttered...

Whereas, I saw a trailer for 'Fight Club' a few weeks back at a midnight show, and I realized I didn't remember any of the stuff in the trailer (well, except the Ikea shot). All I remember about 'Fight Club' is crappy CGI camera moves and an hour and a half of "We've got to take Fight Club to the next level." "No, we can't take Fight Club to the next level." "No, we've got to take Fight Club to the next level." "Okay." And then they do, and whatever happens in that scene, the next scene is, "Okay, now we've got to take Fight Club to the next level."

I'm sure my memory is exaggerated, but, for me, 'Sixth Sense' was much more memorable. 'Fight Club' is just muddled by the fact that everybody thought the script was genius. (Very well acted, though.)

comment #53

LexG says ...

FIGHT CLUB OWNS YOUR ASS.

BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME.

BE A MAN.

comment #54

CinemaPhreek says ...

As to M. Night, he seems to be attempting to do every story idea he has ever had, regardless if they work or not, while refusing to consider that perhaps the projects might GREATLY benefit from bringing another writer. Its amusingly gratifying to read these posts about his egotistical comments because the evidence that his ego outstrips his writing talent was clear long ago.

It's a shame, because ironically if he wasn't trying so hard to top Spielberg (by writing all of his films) he would by now most likely be considered the "New Spielberg" director. He has immense talent, but the immense ego that goes holds him back.

As far as FIGHT CLUB: - the whole episode seemed more like over educated smarty-pants first read too much into it, then tried to cover up their self-delusion by blaming the filmmakers for making a film that wasn't as deep as it was allegedly supposed to be.

But that's just for the detractors, because you know, the first rule of......

comment #55

Arizona Joe says ...

I think Mgmax is correct, Shyamalan needs a partner. He lives outside of Philadelphia to avoid Hollywood, but newspaper reports portray him as the soul of the pretentious arteur.

Shyamalan strikes me as a person of limited aesthetics, taste, and a full understanding of human nature. That's not unusual, he is still a relatively young man.

A partner, or partners, of some sort would reinvigorate his talent. For example, Hitchcock was not a solitary guy. He was the captain of a ship, delegating responsibilities to others, and doing the job of a director.

Night should just loosen up, put his early success in perspective, and listen - to other points of view, to other genres, to the universe.

Or in the alternative, drop acid.

Everyone is helpful, everyone is kind
On the road to Shyamalan
Everyone is lucky, everyone is so kind
On the road to Shyamalan

comment #56

Richardson says ...

"the whole episode seemed more like over educated smarty-pants first read too much into it, then tried to cover up their self-delusion by blaming the filmmakers for making a film that wasn't as deep as it was allegedly supposed to be."

You don't think that Fincher, Norton, and Pitt think the movie is deep?

comment #57

frankbooth says ...

Speaking of behavior that doesn't make sense in retrospect, I still want to know how Norton's character became Fight Club guru as a result of rolling around a parking lot, punching himself in the face.

"Hey, that guy's really cool! Let's make him our leader."

comment #58

cinefan says ...

That was my main gripe with the film too, frankbooth. If a group of guys see someone in a parking lot beating the crap out of himself, rather than call the police to help the guy, their reaction would, of course, be to say," Wow, that looks really cool! Let's hang out with him!"

comment #59

Richardson says ...

My problem was when he was knocked unconscious in a car wreck, so Pitt drags him out. That was the "stretching credibility too far" moment for me since, as far as I know, they were still sharing the same brain, so if one was knocked unconscious, they both should've been unconscious.

I'm really, really hoping that The Hulk is just a figment of Norton's imagination. That would be a great end to the movie.

comment #60

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