all this "Lady in the Water" backlash is retarded

[Qdrop]

all the critics and magazines reviews are slashing it...
it bombed in the box office....

people are saying M.Night is losing it...falling off...blah blah...


yes, is was a rather self-absorbed movie (it was his own bedtime story for his daughters)....
and yes, the "doomed movie critic" character was a little self-indulgent...

but this was still a solid and very ORIGINAL movie...something lacking in Hollywood today...

i think critics are just stuck on M.Nights ripping of them with "doomed movie critic"...
jeesh, get over yourselves...

[beastiegirrl101]

I think people were expecting a surprise ending, I took the movie for what it was, and really enjoyed it.

[b i o n i c]

that harold & kumar go to white castle movie of his was aight

[enree erzweglle]

I think people were expecting a surprise ending, I took the movie for what it was, and really enjoyed it.I think his movies have suffered for that sort of expectation. People expect another Sixth-Sense-style surprise and it falls flat for them when he fails to deliver.

[Rock]

After seeing the village i have no interest in ever seeing any of his movies again.

the sixth sense - (n)
signs - (y)
unbreakable - ehhhhh it had its moments.
the village - (n)

this new one.....most likely..... - (n)

but you are right...at least there is something original about it and it isn't based off of a tv show or a remake of another movie or a book to movie thing (at least not that i know of).

fuck a m night shajamsldgfhgioasdmfle.gsdgfjo. I think he is/was waaay overrated.

[beastiegirrl101]

(it was his own bedtime story for his daughters)....


can you elaborate a little more on this...or link me.

[enree erzweglle]

I liked Unbreakable a lot.

Signs was so-so.

I hated The Village for being such a reach.

[bigblu89]

I never saw 6th sense, and once the "suprise" was ruined, I never had a desire to see it. I didn't like Signs all that much, hated The Village, but for some reason LOVED Unbreakable.

Good movie or not, one thing you have to give him credit for is that all of his movies are original.

That's rare nowadays.

[Qdrop]

can you elaborate a little more on this...or link me.
the story is literally a bedtime story he told his daughters, that got a little more elaborate eveytime he told it.

that's pretty much it.
it's very fantastical and kid-like in it's premace..

kinda like Hook...

[hpdrifter]

My sister saw it and loved it. She thought the same as you, Q. That its original and creative. I wasn't going to see if before, but after her review I probably will.

[cosmo105]

HOW DARE YOU COMPARE ONE OF HIS PILES OF SHIT TO THE MASTERPIECE THAT IS HOOK

[Qdrop]

HOW DARE YOU COMPARE ONE OF HIS PILES OF SHIT TO THE MASTERPIECE THAT IS HOOK

actually, Entertainment Weekly did it first...

and THEY actually did so to compare M.Nights "worst", to Speilberg's "worst".


not that i agree....i loved hook.

i will say that lady in the water is probably the weekest of HIS movies...but still better than much of the shit out there now.

[wrongwayandugg]

that harold & kumar go to white castle movie of his was aight

i agree.

critics can suck my ass.

[kleptomaniac]

kinda like Hook...

hook's awesome, can't get enough of it :)
(yeah, let's watch it together sometime haha)



lady in the water still doesn't appeal to me anymore, but oh well.
maybe the next movie...

[kaiser soze]

After seeing the village i have no interest in ever seeing any of his movies again.

the sixth sense - (n)
signs - (y)
unbreakable - ehhhhh it had its moments.
the village - (n)

this new one.....most likely..... - (n)

but you are right...at least there is something original about it and it isn't based off of a tv show or a remake of another movie or a book to movie thing (at least not that i know of).

fuck a m night shajamsldgfhgioasdmfle.gsdgfjo. I think he is/was waaay overrated.


concerning the surprise endings, The Sixth Sense had the best one (if you didn't know Bruce Willis was dead).

Signs blew...aliens that can be hurt from water invading a planet that is 80%
water?

Unbreakable.....really bad

The Village, bleh

I'll rent this, it has caught my attention

[beastiegirrl101]

ok so I have seen all his films but it's been a while...someone refresh my memory on unbreakable....it was comic book related right? He was some sort of super hero?

[kaiser soze]

all you need to know is it was stupid

[wrongwayandugg]

oof. i like the way it sucks. :eek:

[Auton]

maybe there's a "backlash" because the movie is genuinely terrible and stupid.



unbreakable was better than the 6th sense

[Qdrop]

maybe there's a "backlash" because the movie is genuinely terrible and stupid.
wrong.



unbreakable was better than the 6th sense
correct.

[abcdefz]

unbreakable was better than the 6th sense



(y)

[kaiser soze]

yeah whatever, ghosts are cooler than fragile black guys

[Qdrop]

yeah whatever, ghosts are cooler than fragile black guys

THEY CALLED HIM MR. GLASS!!

[abcdefz]

yeah whatever, ghosts are cooler than fragile black guys



Obviously you have met my dear friend Terry. He wrote a poem for you.

[kaiser soze]

sorry, I don't listen to Rap music

:rolleyes:

[Mr Films]

Seeing Lady made me do a total 180 on Shyamalaflimflam.

The only one I don't like so much is Village.

Unbreakable is criminally underrated.

[kaiser soze]

If you want to see a superhero movie may I suggest The Punisher with Dolph Lundgren

shit is hot

[Deep_Sea_Rain]

I thought Lady In The Water was excellent, as it's already been said, people just expect another 6th Sense. Get real.

[Auton]

that would have been a good excuse with unbreakable, but saying that now makes no sense.

[wrongwayandugg]

If you want to see a superhero movie may I suggest The Punisher with Dolph Lundgren

shit is hot

yeah. the bitch with earrings.

[Qdrop]

that would have been a good excuse with unbreakable, but saying that now makes no sense.

no, dude...as stupid as it is...people STILL expect another "6th sense" with a CRAAAAAZZY super AWWWWWESOME twist....and anything less is "M.Night falling off and sucking and stuff..."

[kaiser soze]

yeah word awesome and dominating level 20 dragon scale shield and shit

[JimmyTheScumbag]

I'm still waiting for my man to follow up Sixth Sense with a good movie.

[Deep_Sea_Rain]

The possibility also exists that people were so disappointed with the ending of The Village, that they refuse to see, or automatically dismiss any of his other work. I've seen this happen. (n)

[Qdrop]

The possibility also exists that people were so disappointed with the ending of The Village, that they refuse to see, or automatically dismiss any of his other work. I've seen this happen. (n)

yeah, i don't get it...what the fuck was so bad about the Village ending?

i found rather clever and satisfying.

people are too fucking fickle....

and retarded....many of them are retarded.

[fucktopgirl]

The possibility also exists that people were so disappointed with the ending of The Village, that they refuse to see, or automatically dismiss any of his other work. I've seen this happen. (n)

to tell you the truth, the village was good, i was into it till i find out that the people in the village where fucking insane and living in a national park !

[Deep_Sea_Rain]

The first time I saw The Village, I hated it. I really did, and I'm a big fan of Shyamalan. But watch it a couple more times, and you pick up on more things, suttle things you missed, and it really becomes an amazing flick. It boils down to the fact that the average view is an immature child, and wanted those....well, you know, to exist.

[kaiser soze]

yeah, i don't get it...what the fuck was so bad about the Village ending?

i found rather clever and satisfying.

people are too fucking fickle....

and retarded....many of them are retarded.

I had so many better ideas about how that movie could've been executed than Yoda got force style

[HotAndWet]

M night BLOWS. He thinks he's the next hitchcock or something.

[Deep_Sea_Rain]

M night BLOWS. He thinks he's the next hitchcock or something.

He very well could be. The man is only in his early 30's, hardly fair to judge a career that's only begun...

[na§tee]

i had the, uh.. priviledge of seeing lady in the water last weekend and i just remembered about this thread from way back so i thought i would pass my judgement here. please don't hurt me qdrop, wherever you are;

what poop!
man. TOTAL GASH.
and this is coming from a girl who normally adores his films.
god! badly acted, contrived, aesthetically and technically amateurish, predictable, and, well.. boring. just dull. dulldulldull.
no wonder disney didn't give it any money!
(n)

[na§tee]

that i dug up post-rape of my senses:

M Night Shyamalan's Lady In The Water is the final instalment of the trilogy Before You Die, You See Monsters That Won't Scare You. The series kicked off four years ago with Signs, a goofy science-fiction film in which a famous Australian anti-semite, his family, and indeed the rest of humanity are menaced by loping extraterrestrials disguised as animatronic asparagus stalks. Next up was The Village, a charmingly idiotic fairy tale in which a blind girl (Bryce Dallas Howard) is pursued by a creature who looks like the Big Bad Massachusetts Wolf maladroitly camouflaged as a bird of prey. Now comes Lady In The Water, in which a meek maintenance man with a severe speech impediment (Paul Giamatti) must do battle with a gigantic piece of topiary shaped like a snarling wolf - or else something very bad will happen to mankind. The bad thing that will happen to mankind is never made completely clear, but one theory is that it involves M Night Shyamalan's obtaining financing to make another movie.

A generation ago, a pretentious young director named Michael Cimino took the world by storm with a film called The Deer Hunter, which launched the careers of both Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken. Alas, fame and fortune immediately went to Cimino's head, culminating in him directing Heaven's Gate, a film so pretentious, so expensive, so catastrophically awful that it actually destroyed a studio. Shyamalan's creative arc seems to be following a similar trajectory; he got off to a rip-roaring start with the authentically creepy The Sixth Sense, but since then has made nothing but oafish duds weighted down by his juvenile attempts at mythologising. Worse, this annoying one-hit wonder has developed a weird reputation in Hollywood as a self-promoter so aggressive and relentless that even aggressive, relentless self-promoters are getting sick of him. You could hear the cackling from Santa Monica to Martha's Vineyard when Lady In The Water began to sink without a trace.

Lady In The Water is the most fabulously idiotic film to come along in some time. Derived from a fairy tale Shyamalan used to tell his kids, perhaps as retribution for some prank, the film revolves around a spectral, pasty-faced water nymph (technically known as a "Narf") named Story who has just surfaced from beneath the swimming pool in an ethnically-mixed Philadelphia apartment complex. (Shyamalan is apparently unaware that in gritty, racially stratified cities, there is no such thing as an apartment complex embracing all races, ethnic groups and economic classes. Moreover, Philadelphia is the last place on earth a Narf would choose to stage an appearance.)

Giamatti plays a physician who traded in his stethoscope for a toilet plunger years ago after a family tragedy darkened his spirits. Adept at diagnostics, he quickly decides that he is The Guardian his visitor is desperately seeking, though he could also be The Interpreter, The Symbolist, or The Healer, positions previously held by Dick Cheney and the Gallagher Brothers. Giamatti learns that Story (Bryce Dallas Howard again) has emerged from the subterranean "Blue World" to bring tidings of good joy to mankind, but is now trapped inside his apartment because the aforementioned piece of predatory topiary (technically known as a "strunt") is stalking her. The good news she brings mankind is that a novel being written by the character played by Shyamalan himself will change the course of history. It's title? The Cookbook. Gee, honey, thanks for the visit! Stop by anytime!

Story the Narf, who has mysteriously acquired the ability to speak like Heap Big Chief Running Water - "Your words are very beautiful. Your heart is very big" - is now waiting for a gigantic bird to supervise her return trip to the Blue World, or, barring that, a full-service visit from a trio of supernatural monkeys who have always protected Narfs from Strunts, but who inexplicably take long leaves of absences when the rough stuff starts. The film raises the possibility that Story may be an angel, but anyone familiar with the city of brotherly love's forlorn plumbing system will probably conclude that she is merely a neurotic bather who got lost. Lady In The Water is the kind of film where you already know that a child oracle will eventually read the back of a cereal box in order to obtain directions for saving Story the Narf, because what would a myth be without a child to lead us out of The Darkness and into The Blue World? In addition to its inane plot, the film is sheer, visceral torment, because of its gloomy lighting, and because Giamatti, who is not much fun to look at in the best of times, is even less fun to listen to when freighted with a stutter.

... (continues with stuff about other films) ...

the actual one-star review, not that reviews are the be all and end all, but i found it super funny:

My mind began to boggle audibly during M Night Shyamalan's excruciating new movie: a solemn fantasy-fable about a water nymph called Story, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who swims up into an apartment-complex communal swimming pool, with a mission to make contact with the building's janitor, played by that king of über-ordinariness, Paul Giamatti. She's there to spread healing and love among the humans - but then requires them to put aside their scepticism and spiritually join hands, as it were, the better to help her return to her own domain and protect her against the vicious wolf-creatures or scrunts, who wish her no end of harm.

Shyamalan's most remarkable character, conceived with heartfelt and deeply un-humorous intensity, is a meanie film critic living in the building called Farber, played by Bob Balaban. Farber is a ghastly specimen of loathsome appearance and abysmal pettiness. His mean-minded and destructive cynicism, together with an obvious inability to open his mind or his heart, are in terrible contrast to those around him, who are coming to appreciate the childlike wonder of Story and her story. Unforgivably, he actually endangers Story's chances of getting home.

As the film continued, I personally began to bow my head in humility and self-knowledge. My pen slipped from my nerveless fingers and hot teardrops fell on my notepad, like a pure and cleansing rain, blurring the vindictive remarks I had scribbled. I was ashamed ... ashamed ... that I had ever given this incredible idiot M Night Shyamalan anything approaching a good review.

Yet it was me, and thousands of journalists like me all over the world, with our rave notices for his first two films, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, who encouraged him to believe in his own conceited pseudo-visions, culminating in this close encounter of the extremely rubbish kind. We pumped up his ego so that you would now have to knock down an entire flank wall of the cinema to get it out.

Like his previous film The Village, Lady in the Water is stuck with a laborious homemade mythology with no convincing inner life: a flimsy fantasy system that the director seems to be making up as he goes along. It's especially unconvincing now that a new generation of cinema-goers is being introduced to the complex and confident inventions of Tolkien and CS Lewis - and very poor compared to the Spielberg masterpiece from which its central idea has been uncomprehendingly pinched.

Total babe Bryce Dallas innocently wears nothing but a man's shirt over her demure nakedness. "Cover yourself up," says Giamatti, with a decent, fatherly gruffness - yeah, right. Despite the agonisingly pedantic explanations for her existence that protract almost every scene, Shyamalan's cosmology of morally superior water-beings still has to be explained in a special prologue, before the movie begins, accompanied by a series of cod cave drawings. It's something I strongly suspect was forced on the director by glum studio executives at Warner Brothers after the Disney Corporation passed on Shyamalan's script. And the story doesn't even have a twist-in-the-tail to give the gibberish some sort of retrospective interest.

In his first four films, the director had playfully awarded himself Hitchcockian cameos, escalating worryingly into a tiny speaking role in Signs. Now he actually gives himself a big speaking part and all the hints he had previously given of being no good at acting have been resoundingly confirmed. He is pure tropical hardwood. And he unblushingly makes his character responsible for nothing less than saving the world: he is a writer and Story the nymph says the book of homespun philosophy he is working on, entitled The Cookbook, will inspire great leaders of the future! Thankfully, we don't have to find out about the contents.

I fear a mix of Paulo Coelho and Ayn Rand was what the director had in mind. Shyamalan seems to be someone whose initial distinctiveness and talent encouraged him not to develop but regress: raiding his bottom drawers further and further down for script ideas that his clout in Hollywood could now get made. My theory is that Lady in the Water was an English-class creative composition he wrote when he was about 12 years old and thought: hmm, yeah, good idea. And now we are actually expected to pay money and sit through this wittering nonsense. The definitive comment comes from that excellent critic Farber. His opinion on some unfortunate's new film is a crisp monosyllable: "sucked". That'll do here, too.

[Drederick Tatum]

I saw it last week. evil tree monkeys who are so evil they killed their parents after they were born? whatever.

[Drederick Tatum]

did anyone else laugh when there was that shot of the one-sided body builder staring down that 'scrunt' in the pouring rain?

[Drederick Tatum]

scrunts? lol. hyenas with grass on their backs for extra hidiness.

[na§tee]

did anyone else laugh when there was that shot of the one-sided body builder staring down that 'scrunt' in the pouring rain?
haha. yes. yes i did.
i would expect better from six feet under alumni.