(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.usatoday.net%2Flife%2F_photos%2F2009%2F05%2F22%2Fairbender-ringerx-large.jpg&hash=ca764ee725bdea232dc349ee4eb827e3745809fb)
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.usatoday.net%2Flife%2F_photos%2F2009%2F05%2F22%2Fairbender-patelx-topper-medium.jpg&hash=a1bd9a8097e162b4515f3a7753596ed851ada51b)
First Look: Actors put up a real fight in 'Airbender'
By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
For years, Noah Ringer went by the nickname "Avatar" because he looked so much like the lead in the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. Now he gets to act like the character, too.
Ringer, 12, makes his feature-film debut opposite Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel in M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, a live-action version of the show that opens July 2, 2010.
Ringer didn't need to alter much to play Aang, who uses martial arts to manipulate the weather. Like Aang, Ringer keeps his head shaved and is an expert in martial arts. "It keeps me cool when I'm doing tae kwon do," says Ringer, a Texas native with a black belt who landed the role after sending a homemade DVD of him practicing the sport. "It's so cool to get the part."
Patel, too, seems suited for the film, the first of a planned trilogy. He earned his black belt in tae kwon do before he turned to acting and discovered the television show while filming Millionaire. "I started watching it in my trailer in India," says Patel, who plays the villain Zuko, a "firebender" (he manipulates flames). "I see why the fan base is so big. It's got action but a lot of moral messages."
Though they square off on the big screen, don't expect any exhibition matches between the actors. Patel, seven years older and a foot taller, says it wouldn't be close: "Noah would knock me flat on my back. "
my boss has kids who love this show and i've found myself kind of addicted to it. i'm actually interested and a little excited. This (of all things) could make me appreciate Shamalamadingdong again. Him handling a kids show seems appropriate considering the absolute childish (amateurish, terrible) direction in the happening.
nobody in the action/ second unit department has done anything extremely stunning. man. such a good opportunity too.
What's it about?
Teaser Trailer here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_HnnBw-JCk)
Now that's a good teaser trailer. Consider me interested.
Yep it looks pretty cool
kid sure knows how to cut costs on air conditioning.
I can't see someone doing martial arts with a staff anymore without Star Wars Kid coming to mind. Quite frankly, I'd rather just watch Star Wars Kid for two hours.
approved for "appropriate audiences"? the fuck?
this is m. night trying to make alot of money... and he will prolly succeed.
i guess im calling myself out with this but did anyone else think that this movie was what avatar was
^I kept mixing them up for over a year.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmoviesmedia.ign.com%2Fmovies%2Fimage%2Farticle%2F106%2F1063790%2Fthe-last-airbender-20100126022200501_640w.jpg&hash=fd20c7462cf2b80243d22ce54e142c49e7d8864c)
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmoviesmedia.ign.com%2Fmovies%2Fimage%2Farticle%2F106%2F1063790%2Fthe-last-airbender-20100126022201798_640w.jpg&hash=cd01220f04f2319a2137f2cc63157081c4507641)
The title sounds like a euphemism for "fart".
Super Bowl ad here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E7NG-c3lmo)
New Trailer here. (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810071569/video/18070297)
M. Night Shyamalan says 'Airbender' rises above race issues: 'That's what's so beautiful about anime'
Source: Los Angeles Times
M. Night Shyamalan has a massive plan in mind for "The Last Airbender" -- a patient film trilogy that presents a fantasy epic and also grows progressively darker as its young characters (and actors) mature in front of moviegoers.
That brings to mind both "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the "Harry Potter" franchise, and, as you might imagine, that has stirred excitement among executives at Paramount Pictures who would love to have a magical franchise that pulls in billions of dollars at the box office. But because the stakes are so high, there has also been considerable behind-the-scenes hand-wringing because of a nasty fan backlash on a touchy subject -- race and casting.
Check the venting and venom we heard in more than 100 comments that followed an "Airbender" post in January. Here's how one reader summed it up: "I am one of the many who is seriously disappointed that characters who are non-white have been cast with white actors. Only the villain is allowed to be played by a person of color. I expected better of Mr. Shyamalan."
Shyamalan has responded to the threat of revolt. In a breakfast meeting with a circle of journalists and bloggers, the director said he has always cast his films with an open spirit, and that anime, such as the source material for "Airbender," is about blurring the race boundaries of the real world and embracing something more uplifting.
Here, for instance, is how he was quoted by Meredith Woerner at io9.com in a lengthy post that goes deep into topic of the planned mythology and clearly reveals the filmmaker's passion for the property:
"Here's the thing. The great thing about anime is that it's ambiguous. The features of the characters are an intentional mix of all features. It's intended to be ambiguous. That is completely its point. So when we watch Katara, my oldest daughter is literally a photo double of Katara in the cartoon. So that means that Katara is Indian, correct? No, that's just in our house. And her friends who watch it, they see themselves in it. And that's what's so beautiful about anime."
He also says:
When I was doing "Sixth Sense," if you literally read the script he [Cole Sear] has dark hair, black eyes. I always pictured the kid from "Searching For Bobby Fisher" as the lead for "Sixth Sense." And I said, "We are not hiring any blond L.A. kids, OK? Don't even bring them in." Then Haley [Joel Osment] came in and I said, "You've got the part." How can you not have him play this part?
That's always been my lean. I have hopes of what I want them to be, my hope was that the movie would be incredibly diverse. That when we look back on all three movies, that it is one of the most diverse movies of all times. And that is the case when you watch the movies. And it's not an agenda, like when you see a picture of a kid's school and they have everybody on the swings. It's not like that.
'Last Airbender' heading to 3D
Paramount upgrading M. Night Shyamalan pic
Source: Variety
Paramount is looking to ignite the July 4th box office with bigger fireworks by converting M. Night Shyamalan's kid pic "The Last Airbender" to 3D. Studio is keeping the same release date of July 2.
Across Hollywood, studio toppers are furiously working to see what films they can convert. Only hours before Par's announcement, Sony announced it was converting "Green Hornet" and pushing the film's release back from Dec. 22 to Jan. 14.
It turns out Par has been quietly working with a company called Stereo D for more than a year on conversion testing, including on library titles. Three months ago, Stereo D -- which did some work on "Avatar" -- began showing Shyamalan converted footage of "Airbender."
Shyamalan was ultimately satisfied, and signed onto the conversion, which cost between $5 million and $10 million, according to insiders.
"We thought their work was compelling. When was saw how the 'Airbender' tests were developing, we said, 'now let's see if you can impress Night.' That's why we don't have to make any changes to the schedule. We just wanted to make sure we could deliver a great experience before we made the commitment," Paramount vice chair Rob Moore said.
Moore said converting 2D films to 3D is a challenge, and that Par has "found its team" in Stereo D.
From a competitive standpoint, "Airbender" is the only new 3D title to play over the lucrative July 4 frame. "Airbender" opens two weeks after Disney/Pixar's "Toy Story 3" bows on June 18.
Conversion continues to raise controversy, with some contending that a glut of converted titles could cheapen the new technology.
Yeah, well, M. Night is kind of a hack, so this is expected.
Angry M. Night Shyamalan denies Airbender racism
Source: SciFi Wire
Director M. Night Shyamalan's upcoming movie, The Last Airbender (based on the animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender), has been a focus of controversy ever since its cast was announced, with Shyamalan being accused of racism in some quarters for casting Caucasian actors as the heroes in what were originally Asian roles while leaving the story's villains as Asians.
Shyamalan addresses that question in an interview posted at Indie Movies Online with a lengthy answer that starts out in very strange fashion:
"Well, you caught me. I'm the face of racism. I'm always surprised at the level of misunderstanding, the sensitivities that exist. As an Asian-American, it bothers me when people take all of their passion and rightful indignation about the subject and then misplace it. Here's the reality: first of all, the Uncle Iroh character is the Yoda character in the movie, and it would be like saying that Yoda was a villain. So he's Persian."
Shyamalan then adds:
"And Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) is the actual hero of the series, and he's Indian, OK? The whole point of the movie is that there isn't any bad or good. The irony is that I'm playing on the exact prejudices that the people who are claiming I'm racist are doing. They immediately assume that everyone with dark skin is a villain. That was an incredibly racist assumption which as it turns out is completely incorrect."
The director then gives a detailed breakdown of how he determined the ethnicity of each of the story's Four Nations, giving the Air nomads a mixed background, making the Fire Nation darker, defining the Earth kingdom as being primarily East Asian and having the Water tribe end up European/Caucasian.
Calling Airbender the "most culturally diverse movie series of all time," Shyamalan later sounds an angrier tone as he says,
"You're coming at me, the one Asian filmmaker who has the right to cast anybody I want, and I'm casting this entire movie in this color blind way where everyone is represented. I even had one section of the Earth kingdom as African American, which obviously isn't in the show, but I wanted to represent them, too!"
Shyamalan goes on quite a bit more, claiming he fought for the correct pronunciation of names in the movie and saying that the original anime artwork itself is racially ambiguous, among other things. What seems clear that he's either tired of talking about this or all the talk itself has made him particularly sensitive to these allegations.
The Last Airbender is a huge risk for the filmmaker. He's coming off two box-office flops (Lady in the Water and The Happening) and has gotten Paramount to cough up a huge amount of money—$280 million in production and marketing costs, according to the Los Angeles Times—for a big-screen, 3-D adaptation of an animated series for children. We're sure that the last thing he wants to hear right now is accusations of racism.
Quote from: MacGuffin on June 29, 2010, 03:49:27 PM
"You're coming at me, the one Asian filmmaker who has the right to cast anybody I want, and I'm casting this entire movie in this color blind way where everyone is represented. I even had one section of the Earth kingdom as African American, which obviously isn't in the show, but I wanted to represent them, too!"
Somewhere, in a large but tasteful house in the Hollywood Hills, Paul Haggis is nodding in approval.
6% (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/last_airbender/)
i almost, ALLlLLLmost feel sorry for M Night at this point.
but no.
^ Its at 5% now. Was at 7% when I first checked it.
Has anyone ever fallen from critical grace to the extent of Shyamalan?
The curse of not making Unbreakable 2, continues.
He should have made The Seventh Sense.
even gizmodo is calling it bukkake.
M. Night Shyamalon Finally Made A Comedy (http://io9.com/5576076/m-night-shyamalan-finally-made-a-comedy)
That review is amazing.
I'm just glad someone finally made the M. Night to bukkake connection.
Quote from: Reinhold on July 01, 2010, 02:13:55 PM
even gizmodo is calling it bukkake.
M. Night Shyamalon Finally Made A Comedy (http://io9.com/5576076/m-night-shyamalan-finally-made-a-comedy)
Quote from: polkablues on July 01, 2010, 02:29:05 PM
That review is amazing.
yeah, his argument is so convincing and backed up with so much evidence i almost, ALLlLLLmost, want to think it's true.
wow. i didn't think this movie would end up being the worst film of all time.. it just came out of nowhere didn't it? who even knew it was coming out so soon (not here). one thing that's missing from every Shyamalan film is his reaction to the abysmal critical reception. that's what i'd really like to see.. after every film he releases i would like to know how he gets the balls to think he could or should ever make a movie again.
and who would let him??? it's not even a joke anymore. the dude makes absolute SHIT movies. his record is so thoroughly damning that we need to reasses even his marginal successes. The Sixth Sense has its haters but maybe it really was the worst film of all time.. Unbreakable struck me as odd cos Bruce Willis doesn't know how to make good movies any more than than M Night does. how can M Douche keep convincing ppl to give him millions of dollars to make his movies which seriously NOT ONE PERSON IN THE WORLD likes or wants to see?
it's not that he's fallen from grace it's that ppl were fooled twice.. and signs was fucking boring and got by solely on wishful thinking by everyone that it would be OK so don't even bring it up.. i take back my weak defense of The Village, it was only a reaction to Bryce Dallas Cutie.. this is beyond cute red heads. i actually saw Lady in the Water cos i thought Bryce might be alright but jesus christ.. there is no doubt at all anymore.. no one can possibly deny it.. even studio heads MUST realise.. M Night Shyamalan is the worst director in the history of cinema.
i love that review so hard. the final paragraphs about the inverted hero's journey make me need to see this movie.
i've been thinking about m night's amazing career arc.. how perfect is it that he has managed to make every movie critically less well received than the one directly before it?? i never would have thought he could go lower than the happening but he's done the impossible. if he manages another crack at directing he's going to have to make a zero-percenter. and then what? maybe you just go back to 100... anyways i've come to the realization that perhaps the most crucial, overlooked piece of the puzzle in his journey to the bottom is that he ripped off an episode of are you afraid of the dark to make the sixth sense. now i'm not saying that all the good in sixth sense comes from the bare premise, but it is a GREAT premise, and it's not his own.
Quote from: P on July 01, 2010, 10:13:53 PM
wow. i didn't think this movie would end up being the worst film of all time.. it just came out of nowhere didn't it? who even knew it was coming out so soon (not here). one thing that's missing from every Shyamalan film is his reaction to the abysmal critical reception. that's what i'd really like to see.. after every film he releases i would like to know how he gets the balls to think he could or should ever make a movie again.
The film looked meh, but I didn't think it would get this bad of a critical reception. Now I kind of want to see it.
But who decided to give The Last Airbender to Shyamalan of all people?
first (and def shouldn't be the last) "are you afraid of the dark" reference on xixax.
how old are we?
old enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4iWw6GVvrc
@30 seconds: watch M. Night awkwardly brag about not paying attention to his daughter!
I still maintain Unbreakable was the best film he made. I actually enjoyed Sixth Sense as well but Unbreakable just felt like his most genuine work. Everything after that was one train wreck after another. His little "SURPRISE!!" moments at the end of films got preeeetty old fast.
unbreakable is a masterpiece. i love that film so much.
not sure what happened to him since. just bad movie after bad movie.... i've never seen someone fall so hard from grace.
Quote from: P on July 01, 2010, 10:13:53 PMone thing that's missing from every Shyamalan film is his reaction to the abysmal critical reception. that's what i'd really like to see.. after every film he releases i would like to know how he gets the balls to think he could or should ever make a movie again.
Shyamalan OK with Airbender critics 'up my ass all the time'Source: SciFi Wire
OK, here it is, the final word, for now anyway, on the casting controversy and racism accusations surrounding M. Night Shyamalan and his upcoming film The Last Airbender.
"It's a compliment when everybody is up my ass all the time, it really is," Shyamalan told a small group of reporters, including one from SCI FI Wire, during an interview yesterday in New York. "You've got to look at it as, if they dismissed you, they weren't paying any attention to you. They're trying to dissect you to show you why you're not that great, which is wonderful thing for them to try to do for my entire life. My job is to just keep making movies. It'll go away, or I'll prove them right or wrong, right? So time will tell. I'm fine with that. Your critics are ... you want your hard teachers to tell you, 'You're no good, you're no good because of this and this,' even if they secretly believe the opposite. It's good to be tough on yourself."
Shyamalan, moments earlier, had gone into tremendous detail about his casting choices, reiterating points that he made in a story that ran earlier on SCI FI Wire. He did so frankly, but without any of the anger or frustration that characterized that earlier conversation.
He argued that the subject matter borrows from all cultures, including Indian, Thai, Japanese, etc., and insisted that it's a "small group" of about "5,000 to 7,000 people" that are "very, very vocal" about the fact that he "didn't cast the correct Asians in it."
However, he said, "Anime is based on ambiguous facial features. It's part of the art form. You got a problem with that? Talk to the dudes who invented anime. It's not my issue, OK? That girl [Katara] looks like my daughter. That boy [Aang] looks like Noah [Ringer]. There is no Inuit that looks like Katara. It's not true. It's just not true. She looks like my daughter. My daughter is a dupe of Katara. Our family saw ourselves in it. A Hispanic family saw themselves in it. My daughter's best friend is Hispanic. She saw it, and their whole family thinks they're all Hispanic, and that's true. That's the beauty of anime, [that] we all see ourselves as incredibly ambiguous and diverse. I wanted to be diverse. I wanted to be more diverse. I had to [build upon] whoever came in, the cultures that came in. This wasn't an agenda for me. It was just very open to me."
During the editing process on The Last Airbender, Shyamalan trimmed several scenes set on the Earth kingdom and cut out the entire storyline of the character Suki, played by Jessica Andres. The Earth sequences included stops in a Mongolian town, a Korean town and an African-American town, but the scenes were dropped in part because much of the proposed second Last Airbender film—Shyamalan and Paramount are envisioning a trilogy—would be set in the Earth kingdom.
"I think when we're done with these three movies it will be, without even a second place, the most culturally diverse movies ever made by Hollywood," Shyamalan said. "So the irony for me is if you look at me and say I am a problem, that I am the poster child for racism in Hollywood. ... You look at the movie poster and you have Noah and Dev [Patel, who plays Zuko] back to back, and my name over it, and this is your issue with the state of Hollywood? I'm satisfied."
His next movie is going to be a revenge film in which a misunderstood genius (played by himself) systematically slaughters every critic who gives him a bad review. Either that or that's what's actually going to happen in real life. Regardless, M. Night Shyamalan is just one stiff breeze away from snapping.
Vulture Breaks the News to M. Night Shyamalan About The Last Airbender's Reviews
Source: NY Mag
M. Night Shyamalan returns to theaters today with The Last Airbender, his live-action adaptation of the beloved Nickelodeon cartoon, about a magic 12-year-old named Aang and his dealings with the evil Fire Lord. Vulture spoke with Shyamalan by phone this morning about making his first epic, the chances of a sequel, and the film's conversion to 3-D. We also discussed the reviews.
This is your biggest-ever movie in terms of scope, budget, effects, and just about everything else. How much more work was it than your other films?
It's so much more stress. I didn't realize quite how much a toll this was all going to take. My normal cycle for movies is eighteen months and each part is separate. But with this movie, everything was overlapped. While I'm writing, we're doing preproduction — looks, locations, costumes, CGI. And then preproduction, the amount of things that had to be decided made it more like production. And of course the production is insane. What would be a 40-day shoot [on a smaller movie] — and I would be out dead at the end of that — is like 75 days of intensity and you're just overwhelmed. And then when post starts, you have an incredible time clock of pressure to hand over shots. It's nonstop and it goes on for three years. I think I really underestimated what I would feel like today.
I met Chris Nolan once, and he knew I was doing this, and he just said, "Pace yourself" and it was a sweet thing for him to give me the advice. I fully understand what he's talking about. I'm surprised Peter Jackson is alive at this point. I don't know how he did those three [Lord of the Rings] movies and spent seven years like that.
Were you scared of the time commitment required for a franchise with the potential to turn into a trilogy?
I always tell my kid, "You should spend your life mastering something." It doesn't matter what it is. I chose film to spend my life learning. There's something about when every eighteen months it's something different — it's wonderful in some capacities. But sometimes you want to just study something. Instead of a bachelor's, you want a PhD.
How far into planning the sequels are you?
I wrote the first draft of the second movie, and I was really happy with it. Usually the first drafts I hate, I want to just kill myself, but it came out really strong. That's as far as I've gone. I haven't really thought about how I would construct the third [movie] too much.
When will we know if a second Airbender movie is happening?
In the next few months we'll be able to know whether we have that opportunity or not. It should be an awesome moment.
The movie was shot in two dimensions and converted to 3-D later, like Clash of the Titans was. Some have said that it dims the image and doesn't add much to the experience. What would you say to that?
Really, it's impossible to separate the effect of the CGI and the effect of 3-D in our movie. Every CGI thing is placed at a certain depth in 3-D and has a combination of effects, so when they say the CGI in the movie is amazing, they're actually talking about a combination of the two. It's really just got a bad rap for no reason. It makes the movie more immersive and it has to be handled with great delicacy so that it is invisible. A lot of music is invisible and then sometimes it stands on top of the movie and you really feel the emotion of the music. The combination of the CGI, 3-D, and sound effects, it's just impossible to separate them. It gives you a more immersive experience, and I prefer that.
Airbender's running time is only 104 minutes, which isn't very long considering that it's an adaptation of the twenty-episode first season of the cartoon. Was it hard to pack everything in there?
I'm dying to make a two-hour movie, I just haven't earned it yet. I'm really tough in cutting and I have a style that creates a certain pace, and a way of writing where I try to get nuances in one scene that help other scenes; it creates a very similar pacing in every movie. Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and I believe The Village were all the exact same length. So it's very bizarre. I guess also when I'm constructing the story in the script form, it must be that there's just an inherent kind of "I need to be at this place in the story" driving me. So maybe that's where it's coming from.
Have you read the reviews for Last Airbender?
No, I haven't.
Well, are you aware of the reviews?
No, actually.
Well, for the most part, critics have not been kind. Are you just ignoring them? Will you read them this weekend? Have you just not had time?
Are you saying that in general they didn't dig it?
In general, no. Roger Ebert, who liked The Happening, did not. The first line of his review is, "The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category that I can think of and others still waiting to be invented." How do you react to something like that?
I don't know what to say to that stuff. I bring as much integrity to the table as humanly possible. It must be a language thing, in terms of a particular accent, a storytelling accent. I can only see it this certain way and I don't know how to think in another language. I think these are exactly the visions that are in my head, so I don't know how to adjust it without being me. It would be like asking a painter to change to a completely different style. I don't know.
Critics haven't been kind to your last couple of films. Do you still worry about reviews?
I think of it as an art form. So it's something I approach as sort of immovable integrity within each of the stages. So if you walk through the process with me, there's not a moment where I won't treat with great respect. So it's sacred to me, the whole process of making a movie. I would hope that some people see that I approach this field with that kind of respect, and that it's not a job.
Were you trying to please critics with this film? Did you have an audience in mind while you were making it?
For everybody, actually. It's just a very cool, spiritual, action-y, family film — a family adventure.
Do you know what your next movie will be?
I don't know right now. I'm still trying to figure it all out, excited about a little bit not knowing. Just seeing how the world lays out for the next couple of years. There'll be a lot of exciting things, I'm sure.
Quote from: MacGuffin on July 03, 2010, 06:01:26 PM
Have you read the reviews for Last Airbender?
No, I haven't.
Well, are you aware of the reviews?
No, actually.
Well, for the most part, critics have not been kind. Are you just ignoring them? Will you read them this weekend? Have you just not had time?
Are you saying that in general they didn't dig it?
not only has he become a shitty filmmaker, he's a lying little bitch.
Good christ. This piece of shit still made $52 million this weekend. I hate everyone.
Quote from: ©brad on July 04, 2010, 04:16:46 PM
Good christ. This piece of shit still made $52 million this weekend. I hate everyone.
..yeah, one day someone needs to write a great article about the dumbing down of Hollywood as Americans seemingly get more and more retarded with their taste in movies.
Quote from: ©brad on July 04, 2010, 04:16:46 PM
Good christ. This piece of shit still made $52 million this weekend. I hate everyone.
No competition. Apparently people who hate Twilight just had to see some new release.
Quote from: Myxo on July 04, 2010, 08:13:49 PM
Quote from: ©brad on July 04, 2010, 04:16:46 PM
Good christ. This piece of shit still made $52 million this weekend. I hate everyone.
..yeah, one day someone needs to write a great article about the dumbing down of Hollywood as Americans seemingly get more and more retarded with their taste in movies.
True that.
Wait, isn't this a kids' movie? Based on a proven kids' TV show? Of course it was going to make money, no matter how shit it is.