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ONE THOUSAND M. NIGHT

post #1 of 18
10/21/10 at 10:50am
Thread Starter 
Shyamalan to direct sci-fi movie One Thousand AE.

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post #2 of 18
10/21/10 at 10:52am
I've heard numerous people say, "Shyamalan may be a terrible writer, but boy is he a great director..."

Am I the only one who is not particularly fond of Night's style? Sure, he can get some lovely shots, but his style as a whole isn't nearly as interesting as, say, Michael Gondry's. Plus, directing is much more than making a movie that looks gorgeous but fails utterly in every other aspect of filmmaking. After The Last Airbender, which had some of the worst cinematography of any film I've seen this year (it features the return of Night's inexplicable close-up shots) I'm convinced that he's not even able to remain interesting with the technical aspects of directing.
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post #3 of 18
10/21/10 at 10:56am
To be fair to Shyamalan, his directing seems to get weaker with each film. His first couple movies show a man with a really strong, almost Hitchcockian, grasp of cinema and atmosphere. I have no idea what happened to him.
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post #4 of 18
10/21/10 at 10:57am
He was indeed a great director of terrible material right up until THE HAPPENING. Now, between that masterpiece/hatecrime and AIR BENDER, he seems to have lost that particular skill as well. I mean, LADY IN THE WATER was aggressively stupid and egocentric, but it looked gorgeous and was superbly put together.
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post #5 of 18
10/21/10 at 10:59am
Sure, I'll grant that. Despite its faults, I enjoyed the basement scene in Signs.

However, The Happening features literally none of that slow-burning, careful approach, in my opinion. Lady in the Water was slightly more successful, but instead of making the approach engaging, it simply became...well, rather boring. Shyamalan seems to be losing his grasp on his visual language as a filmmaker.
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post #6 of 18
10/21/10 at 11:06am
I think he still had it in both THE VILLAGE and LITW, which are terrible, terrible films on the conceptual level but which are beautiful to look at. After the incredibly personal lambasting he got after LITW I think his massive ego disintegrated and now he's second-guessing himself every time he steps behind a camera. THE HAPPENING feels like it was shot by a guy who was absolutely terrified of doing anything but the most basic of stuff.
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post #7 of 18
10/21/10 at 11:13am
Even though it's a conceptual trainwreck, The Happening still features some surprisingly effective moments, such as a ground level shot of people killing themselves on the street with the same gun, but I agree that Night's visual communication of the concept is strangely weak outside of those standout bits. It's not just a rare slip-up, either, because I think that The Last Airbender, save for a few standout moments, suffers from surprisingly awkward, inconsistent camerawork that just about any hack could manage.

And, for two films in a row, he seemingly can't get decent performances out of his actors. First he casts Mark Wahlberg, and then he proceeds to cast Aasif Mandvi from the Daily Show as a villain.
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post #8 of 18
10/21/10 at 12:10pm
Keeping Shyamalan away from the script is definitely a step in the right direction, but its still kind of baffling that hes going back to sci-fi / fantasy. Like Merriweather said - M. Night doesn't have that confidence he used to. He needs to get back to familiar territory - although I never got around to seeing it, it seems like Devil might have been something good for him to direct.

And yeah, as dumb as The Village ends up being, its a gorgeous movie. Of course, the Roger Deakins cinematography goes a long way.
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post #9 of 18
10/21/10 at 12:15pm
He needs something like BURIED - genius high-concept with little room for narrative extravangance.
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post #10 of 18
10/21/10 at 12:24pm
Truth be told, I simply didn't like Devil because, much like Signs, I found its theology far too heavy-handed and obvious. Once the Catholic narrator tells you that it's the Devil at work, there's no clever effort by the storyline to counter this assumption to play with the expectations of the audience and so it simply becomes a race to the inevitable when what you think will happen does indeed happen.

It had some hints of BURIED, but unlike that movie's tight coffin, we leave the elevator several times.
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post #11 of 18
10/21/10 at 12:37pm
James Newton Howard and a talented DP (Deakins, Tak Fujimoto, Eduardo Serra) did a very good job as hiding M Night's failings for some time.
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post #12 of 18
10/21/10 at 12:58pm
I wonder how Howard feels about all of this? From M. Night's comments, they supposedly share a very close relationship, but their last two collaborations have been for films that took a real critical beating. Howard was nominated for an Oscar for The Village's score, yes, but since then he hasn't really gotten any serious recognition.
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post #13 of 18
10/21/10 at 2:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Draco Senior View Post
I wonder how Howard feels about all of this? From M. Night's comments, they supposedly share a very close relationship, but their last two collaborations have been for films that took a real critical beating. Howard was nominated for an Oscar for The Village's score, yes, but since then he hasn't really gotten any serious recognition.
There is no chance in hell for it to be nominated, but his Last Airbender score kicks all kinds of ass. It is really sad listening to it on its own, wishing it could have been used in a better movie.
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post #14 of 18
10/21/10 at 3:32pm
To be perfectly honest, his score for Airbender is some of his worst work yet, in my opinion. It lacks the whimsy and experimental feel of the music for the show from the Track Team (their tsungi horn theme for the Blue Spirit episode is so much more memorable than Howard's bombastic, Star Wars-esque music), and its Asian elements feel either very generic or annoyingly superficial. It was like listening to Star Wars combined with Pirates of the Caribbean, which is interesting but not Avatar.

Plus, it was utterly lacking in any real, recurring themes.
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post #15 of 18
10/21/10 at 3:48pm
Comment #3 (Posted by that fucking guy) Fuck this guy, fuck his family and fuck his piece of shit movies.

This guy makes a strong point.
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post #16 of 18
10/21/10 at 3:54pm
Maybe he's a former Shyamalan fan who became deranged after The Last Airbender?

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post #17 of 18
10/21/10 at 5:07pm
Even with Bruce Willy and Gwenyth Paltrow attached, the studios turned down M. Nights top secret film. My how his stock has fallen, I wonder if his Night Chronicles will get cut too.
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post #18 of 18
10/30/10 at 1:23pm
Assuming AE means "after earth", I'll end up seeing it. I like films that show humanity in dire peril of going extinct. I have no confidence in Night, but since he's not writing, it shouldn't be too bad. I just hope he can manage to do some sort of justice to the concept. After movies like THE ROAD (which is essentially 10 AE), he has stiff competition.
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