Videogum » M. Night Shyamalan

The Happening Is A Reality! Everybody Panic!

Kelly — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 19:30:26 +0000

We don’t have time for a long movie history lesson here but just to get everyone caught up a bit, in 2008 M. Night Shyamalan released a film called The Happening that received seemingly endless praise from critics, normal viewers, and also the Academy. Everybody loved it so much and it was so good. No one had any problems with either the actors, or the things they said, or how the film was directed, or the plot of the film in general. Everybody loved it. Are you with me? Jesus Christ we don’t have time for this! IT WAS A SMASH HIT, END OF STORY. Well, I’m sorry for the spoiler here, but the spoiler in the movie was that all the plants were releasing a deadly toxin that made humans kill themselves because plants sometimes can release chemicals to defend themselves from threats, and humans are a threat because of how they kill the Earth all the time. It wasn’t a bad plot, actually, for that kind of movie! I don’t even know why I’m saying actually because we’ve already gone over how the movie was very well received, CAN WE PLEASE CONTINUE? Anyway, it is happening in real life! In Cambodia! From the Phnom Penh Post:

A day after 136 students collapsed at a Kompong Cham high school while standing at attention as punishment for not showing deference to the national flag, the local police chief offered a unique explanation for the mass fainting – trees.
Read More...

What Will The Inevitable, Lame, And Obvious Twist Be In The Upcoming Will Smith/Jaden Smith M. Night Shyamalan Movie?

Gabe — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:30:35 +0000

It was reported yesterday that Will and Jaden Smith have both signed on for the next M. Night Shyamalan project. Oh boy. Jaden Smith AND M. Night Shyamalan working on the same movie? This is our generation’s Heat! From Hitfix:

Will Smith and son Jaden Smith will co-star in an untitled sci-fi adventure movie to be directed by M. Night Shyamalan (“The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable”) for Sony Pictures.

The script was co-written by Shyamalan and Gary Whitta (“The Book of Eli”). It takes place 1,000 years in the future, where a boy (Jaden Smith) and his father (Will Smith) travel across a desolate, post-apocalyptic Earth looking for hope after their ship crash-landed there.

Shyamalan added, “The chance to make a scary, science-fiction film starring Jaden and Will is my dream project.”

Haha. Ugh. Aren’t your consistently terrible movies and fake name that you have admitted you just made up bad enough, M. Night Shyamalan, without also being A LIAR? Making a scary science-fiction movie with Jadan Smith is not your dream project. You are a grown man! He is 7-years-old. You did not even know he existed until two years ago. Stupid old liar. ANYWAY, since M. Night Shyamalan wrote this movie you just know it’s going to have a lame and obvious twist in it. So. WHAT’S IN THE HATCH? Here are some possible SPOILERS:

Quote Of The Day

Gabe — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 21:45:28 +0000

“We’re reading the script right now. I don’t want to give it away because that wouldn’t be tight, but it’s set in the future and it’s about a journey.” (Jaden Smith on M. Night Shyamalan’s One Thousand A.E.)

The Unfortunate Return Of The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time

Gabe — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:45:37 +0000

We all make mistakes. Some of us more than others. In fact, some of us seem to make nothing BUT mistakes. And so, here we are, at the precipice of an enormous crossroads, our clammy hands shoved deeply into our pockets, staring out over the vast wasteland stretching endlessly before us and knowing that there is nothing to do but cross it, no matter how long it takes, no matter that it wears our feet off of our ankles and we are now just hobbling on raw bloody stumps, falling again and again onto our FACES. Yes, the Hunt for the Worst Movie of All Time returns! Oh man, how nice was it to take a break from the Hunt for the Worst Movie of All Time? The nicest. When I am on my deathbed (soon!), I will look back on this brief respite as the one time in my life when I knew peace. And then I will go to heaven and this nightmare will be over. But for now: NO PEACE AT ALL!

For the next round of movies, I will be choosing exclusively from the thread on this post. People have sent in plenty of email suggestions, which is great (is it, though?), but for the time being, let’s keep it streamlined and simple. If you have a nominee, put it here. As always, ANYTHING can be nominated. That’s the whole point, you guys. Nominate Chinatown if you want. Chinatown is an incredible movie, and as we know, incredible movies are the most dangerous game of all. Actually, don’t nominate Chinatown, because that was just an example chosen to illustrate a point, and I’m not going to do Chinatown, so don’t waste everyone’s time. But you get the point. People are always complaining that a movie they like got nominated as if somehow their personal taste in movies had anything to do with anything anyway, much less anything to do with this, and to those people I say PAY ATTENTION!

And since it’s been awhile, let’s review the Official Rules:

M. Night Shyamalan Stinks Round-Up

Gabe — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:01:31 +0000

M. Night Shyamalan stinks. His movies stink. The things he says stink. His chokers stink. Everything. We know that. But there has been a lot of BREAKING M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN STINKS NEWS lately. Between the release of The Last Airbender two weeks ago (stinks) and the recent debut of the trailer for the new movie he wrote, Devil (stinks), it has been hard to keep up with all of the new developments in the world of M. Night Shyamalan stinking. After the jump, a round-up of some of this week’s most recent new examples of the ways in which M. Night Shyamalan stinks and/or people express their feelings about M. Night Shyamalan, in which those feelings are that he stinks.

So Just To Clarify: “From The Mind Of” Means “Garbage”, Right?

Gabe — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:56:31 +0000

Last fall, in the exciting run-up to the Academy Award (and MTV’s “Best Kiss”) winning film, Jennifer’s Body, the trailers advertised the movie as being “from the mind of Diablo Cody.” Even at the time, this seemed egregious. After the movie performed disappointingly at the box office (sorry for all the SHOP TALK), “from the mind of” seemed to be an even more hilarious (read: stupid) way to describe the project. Fast forward to today, and another trailer has been released for another movie that looks “great”. This one is called Devil (trailer after the jump) and it is about a group of people who get stuck in an elevator…wait for it…WITH THE DEVIL. Oh good grief. The movie should be called LOL. I mean, to the best of my understanding, horror movies are supposed to be an outlet for our collective fears, but COME ON. Also, it is, like, five people. You don’t have to be Anna Paquin to figure out whodunnit. But the best part of this movie is not the exciting and interesting plot, but the fact that it comes “from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan.” Perfect. He didn’t direct Devil, he just wrote it, because that makes sense. The problem with M. Night Shyamalan’s movies has definitely never been the way they are so horribly written it’s ridiculous.

But so, just to clarify, “from the mind of” means “this is going to be garbage,” right?

Goodbye, M. Night Shyamalan

Gabe — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:00:27 +0000

M. Night Shyamalan’s newest movie, The Last Airbender, opens today. It is the first movie that he has directed that is not entirely his conceptually, although he did write the screenplay (because if there is one thing we all know, it is how good M. Night Shyamalan is at writing screenplays?). In the grand M. Night Shyamalan tradition, the movie is getting terrible reviews. It currently has a 9% on RottenTomatoes, which is actually up from 4% yesterday. Here is a sample quote from a review:

A soul-crushing disaster made worse by unnecessary, counterproductive 3-D, The Last Airbender fails to immediately qualify as the worst film of the summer only by virtue of the year’s abundance of other candidates.

And here is another one:

The current national priorities should be as follows: reduce carbon emissions and stop funding the films of M. Night Shyamalan.

Agreed! Perhaps, at long last, after years of foisting his personalized garbage on our faces, perhaps with his meat-fisted destruction of a franchise that some people actually LIKED before he came along, this will be the end of M. Night Shyamalan. He can move back to his Philadelphia farm house, hug his movies, and think about what he’s done. I have no idea why Hollywood continues to give this man tens of millions of dollars to do a job that he has proven time and again he is incapable of doing. It is like hiring someone to pump gas, and having them pour the gas all over your car, and then setting your car on fire, and in response, you buy a new car, and go back to do it all over again. And here’s the thing: SPOILER ALERT: he was never any good. Ever. Not even once.

From The Mind Of M. Night Shyamalan

Gabe — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:15:17 +0000

The director of The Happening is shopping a new movie around Hollywood. It is so weird and disheartening that he even has to do that. Someone with his pedigree? Shouldn’t a movie studio buy it sight unseen? And throw it directly into the garbage can?

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Blogs: The 9 Funniest Things In The Happening

Gabe — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:39:36 +0000

(This week, we’re highlighting some of our favorite Videogum posts / video-related moments of 2008. So that’s why things look different, and are old, this week. And Happy Almost New Year!)

Originally posted on Videogum on June 16, 2008.

Lindsay and I went to see M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening yesterday. It was truly an epic FAIL, although to be fair, the people who turned around in their seats and yelled at us “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING AT, THIS ISN’T A COMEDY. SO RUDE” had a point. What the fuck were we laughing at when we should have been crying. “Why haven’t you welcomed us to heaven before this movie was released, God?” Oh wait, I remember what we were laughing at. Everything, you dumb idiots who were in front of us. You were so dumb.

There has already been plenty written about this movie. After the jump, we offer the 9 funniest things from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening that we could put together using a Google image search. It will probably only make sense if you have seen the movie. We’re professionals at writing things that everyone can enjoy. Also SPOILER ALERT. But if you have seen the movie LAUGHS ALERT.

To Quote Barack Obama, “Enough!”

Gabe — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:21:20 +0000

Here are three more of those “famous directors made ads for John McCain” spoofs. Diablo Cody/Jason Reitman, David Lynch, and M. Night Shyamalan this time. You know, I want change and everything, but this is getting exhausting. If I post this we’re done, right? Sarah Palin is President and we can all go home to our apartments heated with subsidized gasoline to sleep the sleep of the just on a bed of wolf paws.

OK, the over-expository opening line in the M. Night Shyamalan one was funny. Because of how he’s the worst. But we’re still done, right? That was the deal.