On her Risky Biz blog, Anne Thompson is reporting how director M. Night Shyamalan “mauls a nasty film critic named Harry Farber (played by Bob Balaban) in Lady in the Water. Is it veteran critic Manny Farber? Or the still-reviewing Stephen Farber? ‘It’s one person’s concept of what a film critic is like,” said one critic who saw an early Lady in the Water screening. ‘It’s a funny character, and it dovetails with the popular conception of effete snide film critics.’ According to Farber, who hasn’t seen the film, ‘I don’t think I ever wrote much about his movies, except to say that Unbreakable was actually more interesting than The Sixth Sense up until the absurd ending. I was comparing the endings of the two movies. I never wrote about Signs and never even saw The Village. So if I am the target of his ire, I’d hate to think where that would put critics who actually slammed those two movies!'” Does anyone remember the “General Kael” character in George Lucas‘s Willow?