When I saw Superman Returns, one of the previews which flickered onto the screen was for M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water. People openly mocked it. Not just a couple disaffected teen slackers sitting too close to the screen, no, all types of people all over the theater. They were laughing, making jokes about it. As expected, that didn’t bode well for the film’s popularity. Perhaps you can gauge how not well by Shyamalan’s latest film being described as “by the director of The Sixth Sense and Signs.” (Films from 1999 and 2002 respectively, which ought to tell you something right there.)

I knew then things weren’t looking good for Shyamalan’s career. His latest film The Happening also isn’t out yet, and already the mocking has begun, as evidenced by this poster, defaced by anonymous wits in NYC:

(photo by wellohorld)

Or, as this review of The Happening by Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club states:

M. Night Shyamalan used to have a vast army of fans. Now he has a dwindling network of apologists. The former frightmaster’s descent from wunderkind to embarrassment has been unusually dramatic and public…

Why? Well, first his films are bad. The only (supposedly) good thing about The Sixth Sense is the ending — and I figured it out from the previews. (Really, have you people never read a ghost story that you couldn’t see that coming?) They all feel the same: soaked in dread, self-important, and more ponderously paced than a 36-hour child birth. It doesn’t help that like his films, the man himself is dreadfully self-important, strutting around as if he’s God’s gift to film. About the only good thing I can say about M. Night Shyamalan is he has some skill at crafting a story, but he comes up short in practically every other area I can think of.

I’ve thought for years the best thing Shyamalan could do is stop his two years between films nonsense, stop trying to be the next Alfred Hitchcock, and make several different genres of films in one year. The man needs to make a musical, a slapstick comedy, maybe a crime drama. It would go a long way to expanding his abilities and informing his other films’ outlook. As it is, he just keeps recycling the same crap over and over and audiences have been onto him for the better part of a decade. I don’t even bother watching his films anymore. I just look at spoilers to confirm I once again correctly guessed the ending.

But I’m not holding my breath for any self-discovery out of “Night,” as he likes to be called. He’d first have to acknowledge that perhaps he’s not the genius mommy always told him he was.

Yes, people are so over M. Night Shyamalan. Too bad he’ll never be over himself.

Tags: Entertainment, Film, M. Night Shyamalan, Movies, The Happening
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The other day I wrote that John McCain had (inadvertently?) called President Bush “a fool or a fraud” in a recent campaign ad, when he said, “Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.”

I concluded that article by writing:

…can you deny George “I can hardly be bothered to show up for National Guard duty” Bush talks tough about war? If you do deny that you’re beyond hope. If you can’t deny it, which is he: fool, fraud, or both?

Wednesday, President Bush gave an interview to the Times of London expressing regret over his “tough” talk. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric,” he reportedly said. He further said that such remarks as “bring them on” and “dead or alive” could have wrongly “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace.”

You can, “you know,” imagine my blank, dumbfounded stare at that last one.

So, I only have two questions: Did Bush take McCain’s backhanded rebuke to heart? And how many wars do you get to start and still be considered “a man of peace?”

Tags: Current Events, George W. Bush, John McCain, Times of London
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I love the conspiracy theories flying over Big Brown not only losing the final leg of the Triple Crown but coming in dead last. He was supposed to win, don’t you know?! Obviously if he lost there must be some dark secret behind it!

Some of the theories I’ve heard:

• Gamblers had the fix in so they could win.
• Bookies had the fix in so they wouldn’t lose big.
• The other jockeys conspired to box out Big Brown, not caring who won so long as it wasn’t him.
• The horse was suddenly taken off steroids, thus explaining away both his previous good performances and his last dreadful one.
• The horse just didn’t give a f**k.

On and on it goes.

Come here, I’m going to tell you the real reason Big Brown lost. Get close, I need to whisper, we wouldn’t want the conspiracy theorists to know the real reason, would we?

Big Brown lost because… he lost.

Simple, isn’t it? There’s a saying in football that on any given Sunday anyone can win. What that means is, it doesn’t matter who is supposed to win, it doesn’t matter who is better on paper, on any given Sunday it is up for grabs and anyone can walk away with it.

Big Brown lost because… any given Sunday, baby. Any given Sunday.

You need to understand: There is no such thing as a sure thing. Nothing is absolutely, 100% guaranteed.

If Big Brown had been the only horse running the Belmont Stakes, a Triple Crown win still could not be guaranteed. Even a horse running without any competition could break its leg right out of the gate, its heart could explode half way around, it could suddenly develop agoraphobia and refuse to set hoof on the track. Even in that seemingly guaranteed situation, there is still the element of doubt, no matter how slight, that the horse will never get to the finish line.

Though something seems 99.9999% locked up and assured, there’s still that .0001% likelihood of it not happening, and sometimes that .0001% will hit. Playing the percentages just means you’re likely to win, it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to win. There’s no such animal. Take it from someone who’s seen that .0001% come up more times than would seem possible.

Any given Sunday, baby. Any given Sunday.

Tags: Belmont Stakes, Big Brown, Gambling, Sports, Sports Betting, Success, Triple Crown
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“No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.” — Henry Adams

 
After spending the last four years crawling up W’s backside to be declared his heir apparent (seems you don’t have to fool all the people all the time, just enough to get yourself nominated), John McCain has this to say about cowboy politics in one of his latest campaign ads:

“Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.”

Okay, he’s trying to position himself as being knowledgeable about war in a time of war, but who is this ad directed against? It’s not damaging Obama; Barack’s not swaggering around with the proverbial “big stick” or waxing rhapsodic about dodging bullets in Bosnia. Hillary “I’ll level Iran” Clinton isn’t a legit target. Is he trying to distance himself from the president? A little late for that. Even intimations of “God told me to make war!” won’t get him to reject that fundie endorsement.

“Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.”

Pretty strong denouncement from someone who wants to spend another 100 years in Iraq. “That was taken out of context!” Yeah, right. McCain might not be wearing boots, but he’s got a “Yee-ha!” in his heart.

About all I can imagine is he was looking in a mirror when he said this, a little tear drop in his eye, a lot of self-loathing in his gut. It’s obviously a cry of self denouncement. “I’m a fraud! I’m a fool! Don’t vote for me!”

If that’s the case, give the man what he wants. Vote Obama.

I’m being facetious. What I think he’s trying to get across is, “I know about war and how to make it, but I also know enough not to be foolhardy about it. I’m the guy we need right now, without any worries of starting wars everywhere.” But it is poorly phrased, and not well thought out. At its heart is the idea he won’t make “unnecessary” wars, but G.W. didn’t think any of his saber rattling or wars were unnecessary either.

Sorry, John, no amount of appeasing words to pacify skittish voters can wipe the stink of Iraq or George W. Bush off you.

And to those who might take exception to the title of this article (including possibly Sen. McCain himself, who apparently can’t see meanings in his words beyond his initial intent), can you deny George “I can hardly be bothered to show up for National Guard duty” Bush talks tough about war? If you do deny that you’re beyond hope. If you can’t deny it, which is he: fool, fraud, or both? Because…

 
“Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.”

Tags: candidates, Current Events, elections, George Bush, George W. Bush, gop, John McCain, political ads, Politics, presidential election, Republicans
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I hate it when they do a bad job of recasting voice talent.

The current voice of Ernie the Keebler elf sets my ears on edge every time I hear him. Worse, it’s been so long since I’ve heard the original guy, I’ve forgotten what he sounded like. But I still know it’s seriously off.

Not quite so bad but still annoyingly different from the original is the current Geico gecko. (It’s very bad in how different it is from the original — perhaps more so than Ernie — but it doesn’t grate on me as much.) Note to Warren Buffett: not all English accents are the same. The latest Geico switch is like going from Alistair Cooke to Dick Van Dyke’s Mary Poppins cock-eyed “cockney.”

And the second guy to do Fred Flintstone never sounded anything like Fred Flintstone to me. I could never stand to watch the newer cartoons.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Disney does a very good job of keeping the characters sounding the same despite many decades and many actors.

Not quite as good, but still laudable, are the casting directors of the Peanuts franchise. They’ve bungled it on the Geico gecko level a few times, but for the most part their ears have been surprisingly accurate, especially given that using real kids practically forces them to recast every time they make a new cartoon.

Tags: animation, cartoon, cartoons, casting, Entertainment, voice, voice casting, voice overs
Comments: 1