| Author | Message | ||
     Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.96.248 |
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080612/REVIEWS/54592 9629 I love Ebert. I've been reading negative reviews all week, but this sounds the right one - one in tune with me. | ||
| Tom English (Deadletterpress) Username: Deadletterpress Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.54.92.149 |
Good review. I've always liked the leisurely pace of Shyamalan's films. I definitely want to see this one. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.35.85 |
I hope it is good - all I've seen is bad review after bad review. I almost saw it on Friday, but I was alone and the cinema was so packed with people that I ended up going home instead. Hoping to see it this coming week. Anyone seen the new Hulk film? I'm hoping to see that too this week - I usually like Edward Norton. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.96.248 |
That's getting mostly bad write-ups. Apparently the thoughtful Ed Nortonisms have been largely scratched out. Yeah, Shyamalan is a tricky one; I don't think he fits in with today's cinema. He has an odd, strangely spiritual voice that is at odds with these days. I can't wait to see it. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.227.114 |
A poster at imdb wrote... ...the best way I feel that I can describe this is "a very bad version of The Birds."... Paging Michael Bay!  | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
Wasn't THE HAPPENING a song by Cutting Crew? | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
The soft rock pop group, not various hairdressing salons across the country. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
No, it wasn't. It was THE SCATTERING. Sorry. Just talking to myself. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.147.50.180 |
There was a song by Diana Ross called that, though. Wonder if it'll play out over the credits? | ||
| John (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.4.67 |
And one by The Pixies too. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.182.42 |
About aliens, no less. ;-) | ||
| Adriana (Adriana) Username: Adriana Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 65.95.96.214 |
I'm looking forward to it. (Though no nothing about it.) Wanted to go last Friday the 13th, but I threw my back out and had to be very very still. And vertical. | ||
| John (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.4.67 |
A lot of reviewers (critics is far too lofty a term for most of them these days) simply don't like Shyamalan. He seems to come off as a bit aloof and arrogant and I think that this, along with the fact that he put a movie critic character in his last film and killed them off, has a lot to do with the negative press he's been getting. I'm personally find his films neither here nor there. The Sixth Sense was well enough done, but Unbreakable was horribly tedious. Likewise, The Village was a nice idea boringly executed. The only one I actively dislike is Signs. Some nice touches, but the Christian subtext was laughable. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
A filmmaker friend of mine told me he loved it today. I will end up seeing this in the theatre this week. I liked Signs despite the hoky bits. Fantastic score. Someone should just give him a good screenplay to work with. He is clearly an immensly talented filmmaker and he still knows where to place the camera. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
"Wanted to go last Friday the 13th, but I threw my back out and had to be very very still. And vertical." Eh? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.16.85.233 |
SIXTH SENSE - meh UNBREAKABLE - liked the best, but not saying much SIGNS - hated THE VILLAGE - hated even more LADY IN THE WATER - or whatever it was called, refused to watch, and won't THE HAPPENING - will watch, better be good, or I'm going to tear my hair out. It's just one hair, but it's the symbolism I'm going after.... | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.191.225 |
I liked The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, thought Signs and The Village both had some good things going on but were disappointing overall. Lady in the Water was just plain awful. I think Shyamalan is a skillful director - the problem is his films are getting increasingly stupid. Maybe it's the writing? There is some really clunky dialogue in his films. He seems very limited as a storyteller (although you get the sense that he believes he is a master storyteller with profound things to say). I also think he lacks discipline and restraint - there's an awful lot of syrupy sentimentality that his films would be better off without. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
I found out a couple of weeks ago that my brother thinks Lady in the Water is a really good film!!! Have I found the only person in England who likes it? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.100.43 |
No. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
who's the other one? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.100.43 |
P. Sunny Shyamalan. No relation. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
Watched it. I am going to restrain myself and NOT comment on this...(That someone actually greenlit this project means that there is lots and lots of crack in the movie business- truck loads- vast towering mountains to darken...) Wait I'm not supposed to be commenting on this! | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.178.170 |
Nice review, Karim! I think that tells us all we need to know... Having said that, I'll still see it, if only to see whether it was possible to make a film worse than Lady in the Water. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.16.86.99 |
I have but one question, Karim: I've heard this (admittedly, long before it came out) compared to a "zombie" pic. Does it fall into that genre...? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.100.43 |
I've just seen it tonight. I can't say it's a bad film, but it is certainly an odd one. The tone of it is what strikes you above everything else; all the people feel unreal, autistic even. It's like the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers aliens won and then went and had this happen to them. I liked a lot of it, but then felt a sort of disinterest in it the more this odd tone persisted. Weird jokes kept popping up in it, ones that made me laugh they were so out of synch with the plot. The film has a real atmosphere of dread in places but then it goes off in odd directions, like this review. There are times when it is so basically directed it feels like a childrens Film foundation film, and in that way it is even quite sweet. This is a tough one... In some ways it's not as good as Lady in the Water, which felt like it had normal humans in it for the most part, and in some ways it's better. If you didn't like Lady then stay away, but if you did, and still want to see what Nightie is up to, then it's probably worth a look. To me it felt like the end of a cycle; it did feel sort of tired and familiar, and i feel that in that way probably heralds a change of direction. I still like Nightie, but it is getting a little trickier to say that. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.100.43 |
No, not a zombie movie, though it has aspects. That might be a problem; imagine a zombie film where the zombies mean you no harm (well, apart from one, that is). | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
'In some ways it's not as good as Lady in the Water' That should be the all encompassing warning. Yes it has some sublime moments of quiet horror, and two or three good ideas, but overall I'm quite puzzled by the whole thing. It has the weakest direction of any of his films. This would have worked much better as a twilight zone episode perhaps. And no zombies. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.100.43 |
At least Lady felt considered; not very well considered I admit, but it had something, a modicum of craft. It makes me sad to say this but this was almost pedestrian, a bread-and-butter film. I really half expected the message to be 'Autistic people will inherit the Earth', I really, really did. In fact if it had gone there it would have all made sense, been better. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.100.43 |
Didn't you think the nuts old woman was a zombie? | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
Tony she was one of the better moments of the pic. I never considered this to be a zombie flick. I just miss his intelligent placement of the camera and his creative direction. Remember how he shot Unbreakable, just wonderful camerawork. I still look at that picture to learn from his craft. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.100.43 |
I remember shyamaln mentioning what made him get into horror; it was he and his family getting back to their house one night when he was a kid to find the front door open. His dad said 'There might be a crazy woman in there.' This totally freaked him out. I wonder if this was his crazy woman picture? I hope not - I want one better than this. But the woman - she was a bit zombie-ish, no? Yeah, a let-down. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
Well he has certainly worked in the horror / dark fantastic genres from the beginning. His use of landscape in this picture is often excellent, but after a time it wears on the narrative and then becomes silly unfortunatly. Funny thing is I would much rather have read this as a novella, instead of seeing it on film, where this really didn't work. | ||
| Adriana (Adriana) Username: Adriana Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.230.239.233 |
"I also think he lacks discipline and restraint - there's an awful lot of syrupy sentimentality that his films would be better off without." I agree on the former, but not the latter. It's a funny thing, his sentimentality -- often I think it leads him astray, but at the same time it's sometimes what (for me) saves his films -- that sentimentality is what gives his films the otherwise missing human factor - and frankly a heart that makes you want to go along for the ride... It's precisely this element that I think makes his work resonate rather then seem gimicky to me. And The HAPPENING is no exception. I'd say it's his MOST heartfelt film, in a way. Thinner then most of the others, but more streamlined and contained for sure, which after The Lady In The Water, was frankly a relief. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
You know Marie just showed me some film of our kids walking round a wheatfield that was by a cabin we stayed at recently. She took it on our little digi camera. Believe me when I say it was as good as anything I have seen in cinema. I'm flabbergasted. It looked better than The Happening, actually, and has made me realise anyone can now truly make a movie. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.176.12 |
I often think that if a group of us got together, with a bit of funding we could get a decent little indie-style film made. We have the imagination and the taste, if not the experience -- and for that we can call on the services of Adriana, Karim and Craig. ;-) When you watch 'making-of' featurettes on DVDs, you see just how mundane shooting a film can seem compared to the final product that you see on the screen. I have no experience whatsoever in filmmaking, so I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me an awful lot of what makes a film look good and convincing comes after the actual filming, with editing, touching up and polishing, adding sound effects, and so on. Obviously, you need to have fairly decent acting and dialogue, good camera skills and directing, and so on... Adriana, when I brought up sentimentality in Shyamalan's work I was thinking more of the syrupy scenes in SIGNS with those horrible Spielberg-type kids. I hate it when a director has kids behave in a false manner in an attempt to make them seem cute. Ugh! | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
Huw- bring on the screenplay ;-) What you say is of course true, but it depends on what life you want for the film after it is done. Anyone can shoot and edit a digital film etc, upload it on youtube and it will have a life. Problem is when you are aiming for some kind of theatrical distribution...You know Lynch's Indland Empire was a very hands on digital film, and relativly low budget for a film that got a limited theatrical release... |