i almost forgot. i saw the teaser for Lady In The Water before Harry Potter. it looks...different.
Spoiler:
it aint water and that aint no lady...
in all seriousness though, i really fuckin hope this has a straight ending...if theres a fuckin twist, im gonna throw such a shit. theres no way he'd even think about doing another one, is there...
I forgot where I read this, but yeah, it is going to have a twist ending.
*shit thrown
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Teaser Trailer here. (http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/ladyinthewater/)
Release Date: July 21st, 2006 (wide)
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Freddy Rodriguez, Jeffrey Wright, Bob Balaban, Sarita Choudhury, Mary Beth Hurt, Cindy Cheung, Joe Reitman.
Director: M. Night Shyamalan (The Village, The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable)
Screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan
Premise: In Lady in the water, a story originally conceived by Shyamalan for his children, a modest building manager named Cleveland Heep rescues a mysterious young woman from danger and discovers she is actually a narf, a character from a bedtime story who is trying to make the treacherous journey from our world back to hers. Cleveland and his fellow tenants start to realize that they are also characters in this bedtime story. As Cleveland falls deeper and deeper in love with the woman, he works together with the tenants to protect his new fragile friend from the deadly creatures that reside in this fable and are determined to prevent her from returning home.
oscar for giamatti.
and i'd like to propose that teasers are today's greatest art form.
Quote from: MacGuffin on November 21, 2005, 11:31:20 PM
a story originally conceived by Shyamalan for his children
At least it wasn't written
by his children...
The Good: Paul Giamatti
The Bad: The typeface! My god, the typeface!
The winner: Chris Doyle.
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That poster offends me because I have flat feet, and when my feet are wet, there is no semicircular indentation like these water footprints.
that poster offends me because i don't find women's feet attractive, especially wet feet, they stink.
The poster offends me because it says M. Night Shyamalan.
Quote from: Pubrick on December 14, 2005, 10:54:25 PM
that poster offends me because i don't find women's feet attractive, especially wet feet, they stink.
But she's the LADY IN THE WATER!!! Obviously she has a supernatural thing going for her, perhaps in which her feet don't smell, with or without being wet.
Anyway, some people somewhere are definitely getting off on that poster.
wait a minute, wait a minute, isn't the lady in the water a mermaid?
those must be giamatti's footprints...unless that's what these are:
http://crazyinlove340.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/bigfoot.jpg.w300h327.jpg
Quote from: Ultrahip on December 15, 2005, 11:26:25 AM
wait a minute, wait a minute, isn't the lady in the water a mermaid?
no dude the twist is she's one of them reverse mermaids. u know, where for once the fishy part of a woman is found ABOVE the waist.
AM I RIGHT PEOPLE??
They seem to be awfully large feet. Thurmans not in this, is she?
I'm still pretty intrigued by this. Mostly because of the refreshing pacing of the trailer and the drifting out of focus shot of Giamatti standing up to look outside his poolside window. My main concern is that this is all setting the film up for some kind of big reveal (like signs) which will be extremely hard to be anything other than dissapointing.
edit: Bryce Dallas Howard might be able to pull it off, though.
Quote from: Pubrick on December 15, 2005, 11:45:54 AM
Quote from: Ultrahip on December 15, 2005, 11:26:25 AM
wait a minute, wait a minute, isn't the lady in the water a mermaid?
no dude the twist is she's one of them reverse mermaids. u know, where for once the fishy part of a woman is found ABOVE the waist.
AM I RIGHT PEOPLE??
but that means woman part is below the waist, ie we have vag, people. at least she's not a reverse vampire.
New poster:
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A less than favorable review from AICN was posted a while back. It has since then been deleted from the site, but I was able to find it again. I wouldn't put much stock in it since the reviewer saw a very early screening and many changes will probably be made to the film. But at any rate, here it is...
http://www.geocities.com/kernel_crunch/litwreview.htm
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Ron Howard's finest work to date.
It's that Night vision
Shyamalan remains cryptic about the characters in "Lady in the Water." But please don't call her a mermaid; she's all narf.
Source: Los Angeles Times
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"It's not a mermaid story, " says spookmeister M. Night Shyamalan, debunking a widespread myth that his upcoming "Lady in the Water" would involve anything as prosaic as a Daryl Hannah wannabe. "A mermaid is just one story of hundreds of stories of creatures that lived in the water. There have been stories of entities that lived in the water since the time of Babylon. In some of these stories from earlier times, these entities would lure boats to the rocks and crash them. They were a [reflection] of the psychosis of being out at sea for so long. Mine is an entirely made-up version of the sea nymph story."
As he scrambles to finish editing the film, the 35-year-old India-born, Pennsylvania-bred, Catholic school-educated director says the film, made for a reported $75 million, began life three years ago as an epic serial that he'd tell his daughters as they drifted off to sleep every night. The film, now officially billed a "bedtime story" on the poster, tells the tale of lonely apartment building superintendent Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), who discovers a mysterious young woman (Bryce Dallas Howard) swimming at night in the pool of his building.
"He comes to believe or suspect that she's a character in an old bedtime story," says Shyamalan, a so-called narf who's being menaced by evil creatures called scrunts. Heep, in turn, tries to explain to other inhabitants of the apartment building their destined role in the narf's story. "At first they feel very silly, a lot of them," says the director. "It's ultimately about finding one's own childlike innocence, opening yourself up to the absurd, and being rewarded for that."
If Shyamalan sounds cryptic, that's his intention. This is a man who's scrupulous about maintaining the mystery before a film's release. In fact, he describes his latest venture using only references to his own films.
"It's an evolution of the things I've been doing. It has kind of an oddity about it — that can be related to 'Unbreakable,' in it's odd childlike nature. In its optimism and spirituality — that would probably be related to 'Signs.' But there's also a kind of deep philosophical thing going on, more in the realm of 'The Village.' It was made in the similar time period of 'The Village' and borrows from all the stuff that I learned."
"Lady in the Water," which opens July 21, features the director's long, long takes and his sense of eeriness but no twist ending, which is his signature. "I do tell the kids stories with twist endings," he admits. "This wasn't one of those. This was a beautiful straight fairy tale."
This film caused a break with Shyamalan's long-term corporate benefactor — the Walt Disney Co., which had released all of his films since "The Sixth Sense." Disney did offer him $50 million to make the film, but it was apparent that neither production president Nina Jacobson nor Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook really gravitated to the more fanciful material.
"I needed to have people around me who believed 1,000%. I just kept thinking I wasn't going to be good otherwise," says Shyamalan. "This movie, for me and Warner Bros., is this kind of vision of faith." Drawing an analogy between himself and his film's hero, he says, "It's believing in something that is absurd at first and then becomes something of true meaning to you. "
With what seems like an existential shrug he adds: "I make really precise, original movies. Not all of them are going to be right for everybody."
'It's about finding one's own childlike innocence, opening yourself up to the absurd, and being rewarded for that.'
— M. Night Shyamalan
New Trailer here. (http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1428606&sdm=web&qtw=480&qth=300)
wake me up when they're about to reveal that everything wasn't as expected.
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i'm starting to think posters are not bryce's forte.
that poster is the chronicles of narnia plus sleepy hollow plus giant fucking face.
Neverending Story 33 1/3
Quote from: Hedwig on May 15, 2006, 11:41:40 PM
that poster is the chronicles of narnia plus sleepy hollow plus giant fucking face.
you made me laugh, but then i got scared... its creepy
Harry Knowles's interview with M. Night:
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23478
H: Well I know a little bit about the film because I got to speak with Paul on the phone for a couple hours a few weeks ago and it certainly does seem like it's a different type of movie for you, from the ones you did over at Disney.
M: Yeah. You know there's a kind of very independent spirit about the movie. You know, we are in the mix right now and I'm watching it and I'm like, "God, this is like a Coen brothers movie or something."
Quote from: MacGuffin on June 08, 2006, 11:23:08 AM
I'm watching it and I'm like, "God, this is like a Coen brothers movie or something."
that doesn't mean what it used to. :yabbse-sad:
New Trailer here. (http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/ladyinthewater/trailer3/)
"When was the last time we had a great fantasy film to watch? M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water is the best film of its kind since The Princess Bride, another fantasy movie that also begins with a bedtime story and deals with many of the same themes."-- Mike Sampson on JoBlo.com. In the Shyamalan annals, Sampson also claims it's "one of his best."
At least he didn't give himself an actual cameo in that trailer. I was waiting for it, though.
Saw the new trailer before Superman. I was very impressed, almost excited. I like the idea of bad creatures being linked with the mermaid, but we'll see how it works. It had the best parts of Shyamalan's mood and tone all over it.
saw trailer before superman. thought it was a ridiculous reversal of tone from the first trailer. you can see the fingerprints all over it of nervous suits going 'uhh, nobody wants to see 'a bedtime story', lets MAKE SURE THEY KNOW who made it and promise it'll scare the shit out of em and shake the money out of their pockets!' it seemed spoilerful. atleast probably more than he would want you to see. i will see it anyhow. did not get the goddamn spiderman trailer i held out all day for!
I think each trailer for this looks worse and worse. The more they show of this, the more most people start to realize how bad and unimportant it will be.
Quote from: RegularKarate on June 29, 2006, 02:28:39 PM
I think each trailer for this looks worse and worse. The more they show of this, the more most people start to realize how bad and unimportant it will be.
So the less money it makes, the more likely it will wind up on a few of our top ten lists for the year.
Quote from: hackspaced on June 29, 2006, 02:37:47 PM
So the less money it makes, the more likely it will wind up on a few of our top ten lists for the year.
haha... true... I meant "people" like my parents though... regular movie goers who I've spoken to have expressed that they're tired of Shamalamadzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
M. Night-Vision
Source: ComingSoon.net
There isn't much that can be said about filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan that he hasn't said about himself, and as he begins a new era in filmmaking, releasing his first movie with Warner Bros. after a number of hits at Disney's Touchstone Pictures, he also takes his greatest risk with Lady in the Water. Mixing fantasy, fable and fairy tales, Shyamalan has created something decidedly unconventional, but still in the realm of what we've come to expect from his creative mind.
Unlike previous movies that explored aliens, ghosts and superheroics, Lady in the Water is a completely original real world fairy tale, starring Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep, the superintendent of an apartment building who discovers a mysterious young woman named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) living underneath the swimming pool. Where Shyamalan takes that simple premise is something that only he could possibly do.
ComingSoon.net recently spoke to Night about a number of subjects, but mostly about his most daring and challenging film yet.
ComingSoon.net: This was originally a fairy tale you told your kids, but then it evolved into something a little darker and scarier. How did this evolution take place in terms of how dark or scary you wanted to make it?
M. NightShyamalan: Well, when it was back at Disney... (laughter) They were so stringent about what had the Disney label on it, so at that point, I didn't know, to the point that it hurt the piece, because I wasn't allowing it to be visceral, because I was so worried about those kinds of things. When that didn't happen over there, it really freed me up to do it. Now, when I was shooting the movie, I was starting to lose some kids. It was getting scarier and scarier and scarier, so for me it stops at around 8 years old, and for 7 year olds, it probably will be too much for.
CS: Where in your subconscious did this movie spring from? Was it your knowledge of movies, your South-Asian background, reading Joseph Campbell?
Shyamalan: All of the above. There's always some hook that gets me, like the idea of what if someone was living under your pool. Why would they be there? Then why would they be there spawns a whole story that comes from that.
CS: Can you talk about casting Bryce Dallas Howard--your second time using her--and Paul Giamatti?
Shyamalan: [Bryce] has a regalness, an unusual otherworldly quality about her. She doesn't have normal 24-year-old actress affects. She doesn't think that way, it's odd. Whether it's how unusual her parents brought her up, she has strong dogma. Her belief system is really like a monk. She believes in things like that, to the point where you're like, "Come on, just be a human being! Just chill out!" But she's like that and that would be perfect for Story, that she doesn't have to pretend to be otherworldly. There's a really kinda ethereal quality inherently about her, that's great. And Paul's kind of everyman brilliance is just great against the two of them. They both give off such different vibes, even as human beings, they do.
CS: How was it working with Jeffrey Wright? Was he at all as difficult as some people believe him to be?
Shyamalan: Oh, man. I've heard those stories, too, but he was a joy, an absolute joy for me. I've had a lot of actors in my movies who have supposedly been difficult, and when they know that someone's driving the bus, when they truly believe that, they don't even think about taking the wheel. They want to ride the bus and go in that direction, you know what I mean? They'll check and see "Are you driving?" and they 100% believe that. At the read-through for "Lady" which was really magical, because my movies are a lot like plays, a lot of dialogue in rooms. I hire only theatrical actors, especially on this one, and they did it like a play, and they were amazing. The table was in awe, because we had two Jedis at the table. We had Paul and Geoffrey, like you were just, "Wow" watching the two. When we did scenes like the bathroom scene where they're reading the crossword puzzle, the group was just in awe of these two guys who could basically do anything. Jeffrey just twitches a muscle and you're like, "Whoah!" They're limitless talents, those two.
CS: You also brought on cinematographer extraordinaire Christopher Doyle for this one. What did he bring to the table?
Shyamalan: Yeah, Chris Doyle is the greatest. He's insane. You know, again it's that feeling of being very raw and doing things very viscerally that you weren't entirely in control of what was going to happen, but you felt that something good was going to come out of it.
CS: From the number of Bob Dylan songs used in the movie, it would seem that you have a fascination with the singer.
Shyamalan: This sense of revolution that he obviously didn't want to take on his own shoulders, that wasn't his intention. But for me, his music was a time of "We can change things, it's in our hands, community, group becoming together" all those feelings of traditional, let's do it the folk way. Also, the storytelling in his songs, this sense that he was a storyteller, that he told these stories that are very moving and metaphorical, so in every way, he was an inspiration when I was writing it. I was literally writing it listening to Dylan songs. Kind of what if you had a fictional group of people at a time of trouble in the world, and there was a lot of fighting going on around the world, and this community realized that they could make a difference, that they were part of a beginning of a change?
CS: You also play a larger part in the movie, a character who is going to change the world. Does that imply that you think writing or making a film can change the world?
Shyamalan: Let me answer the first part of the question. This is my seventh film. In the first movie "Praying With Anger", I was the lead in that, and that was a very tiny movie in India, then "Wide Awake" I wasn't in that at all. Then "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" I had very small parts, because I was learning to make movies in the big studio system, and then "Signs" I had a big part. There was only like five characters in it, and I was the fifth character. For me, it was an important part emotionally, and this was more like that for me. Those two movies had characters that I wrote that I was like, "I really need to say that emotionally, that means something to me."
Now with regards to the character in "Lady," the idea of Harriet Beecher Stowe was the idea that really caught me. This idea that you write a book and somebody like Lincoln reads the book and other people in that time period read that book and you're creating change. Then someone who can make a difference decides to do something about it. Harriet Beecher Stowe didn't know she was doing all that, she was just writing a book, but it actually opened minds and created point of views. The power of the writer is the wish that an angel would come in and say, "You think that that sucks right now? You should do it because down the line, the 80th person that's going to read it is going to cause this [to happen] and you'll be part of a chain that you can't possibly know. It's very important that you keep acting, that you be proactive. That you believe you have a purpose." The link in the chain, that if any one of us doesn't do our little link in the chain, the eventuality doesn't happen. If we're all just a group of people who don't believe in ourselves, don't believe in our purpose, we can't build off each other. How do we know what part we're going to play in the chain? Just positive energy, empowering positive energy moving forward will create an incredible network of things. How many people don't believe in that, that they're part of that inevitable change of things. My babysitter once just left a book by mistake that she was reading about how people are having a hard time making ends meet, because their cost of living is so high and they're not saving anything, so they're always renting. It's called "Nickel and Dime" this book, so I went and I bought a bunch of low income houses and built them up and gave them to families in Philadelphia, because my babysitter was reading it, because her teacher had assigned it to her, because the teacher was moved by this lady. Look at that chain of events. All part of it, all from writers, but all a chain of events. It's a beautiful thing and an empowering thing to be able to hear, if you could, the beauty of the spiral of things that happen. If God could tell you when you die, "This is what you did," it would be so cool
CS: Does any of that come from your South-Asian influences, like the principles of karma?
Shyamalan: Yeah, I'm definitely big in the Buddhist thing, I'm all over that, and hearing about the story being told, when I was hearing it in my head, I was like, "Wow, it's more like an Asian philosophy." I don't know why I felt that. They believe in the storytelling, whether it's the Hindu philosophy or whether it has a million stories, and we know they're all metaphorical, but you believe them, not as literally that each of those Gods--Vishnu and all those--actually exist, but still, the reverence for them is extraordinary.
CS: One of the funniest characters in the movie is a rather smarmy know-it-all movie critic played by Bob Balaban. Were you trying to say something to your critics through him?
Shyamalan: I was in a very raw mood when I wrote the movie, so it came out very heightened and parody-like. The movie had an eccentricity about it, like "Princess Bride" I loved that movie. Those characters commenting on the story, as the story's going on, that you're commenting on a structure of stories, how stories are told, are they important, do you believe in them? All the elements are talking about storytellers, storytelling, and he's a part of a world where everyone is realizing their potential of what they're about, but he's stopped learning. My favorite thing about "Lady" is that it changes and blossoms into a different thing in showing what it is. And obviously Farber is one of those moments where it kind of just starts going on right on the edge of mania, and then starts unfolding in a way, where you're not sure what's going to happen. That's a really cool moment.
CS: Did Bob Balaban enjoy the idea of playing a movie critic?
Shyamalan: He loved it! We met and I said, "I'm going to say to you what I never said to another actor... I want you to start three-dimensional and become two-dimensional, so it becomes more of a parody" and he was like, "I'm totally into that." I wish I kept his answering machine message, because I gave him the script, and I didn't tell him what the part was. I just said "You're the part of Farber" and he called and left me this message, it was so funny, I wish I kept it.
CS: Were you thinking of any particular critics when you wrote that part?
Shyamalan: I was thinking of putting a list. "Inspired by..." (laughter) No, it's just goofing around.
CS: Do you ever read what critics say about your movies?
Shyamalan: You know, I get a general vibe. If you get caught up in too much in this, you lose your mind, because it's all a momentary perception thing that happens, and it's so clouded by the other movies or the expectations, that it can be damaging to you as an artist when you're just crippled like that, so I get a general sense. What you think may be the critical response to my movies is very different than the reality. Like say, for example, what is my best-reviewed movie? (Someone guesses "Sixth Sense") Wrong. "Signs" is my best-reviewed movie, next is "Unbreakable," and then next is "Sixth Sense" and then next is "The Village" and that's the order of the reviews. Also, "Signs" is my most popcorn movie so the least aspiring to a higher thing. It's that aspiring to something higher that always gets everyone going "Oh, yeah, motherf**ker?" That gets everybody all riled up. So it's interesting, but also the perceived realities are very different as you move on. If everything was re-reviewed now, it probably would be a different group of reviews that would come out.
CS: Do you get involved in the marketing of your movies these days?
Shyamalan: Yeah, I definitely do. There's a certain integrity to them [trailers, commercials] that I wouldn't want them to cross, so I'm involved with that, and I give them ideas that "you can try this angle or that angle and this is where I was coming from" but this time I just gave them my thoughts and took off to France.
CS: Since you basically do everything, do you have time to write or come up with ideas for your next movie while finishing up the one you're working on or do you wait until after it's done?
Shyamalan: I wrote this one simultaneous with "The Village," most of it was. I have a full notebook of ideas, you know, about everyone realizing their parts and there's this weird story and they all might be characters in it, and one character that doesn't believe he's a character in it. I was like either this guy has to be a lawyer or a critic. He's one of those. (laughs)
CS: But do you actually have time to do any writing while you're making movies?
Shyamalan: I have notebooks of ideas. It's dangerous, because you may burn a great idea if you do it too early. Like all during "Lady," I had this great notebook of ideas about this movie that I was certain was going to be my next movie. As soon as I finished "Lady" I was like, "Dammit!" I dated that one... too long. I didn't commit, and now I feel like I've been there already. I got another idea that has so much power, and it's new and it's fresh. It's very dangerous to explore, it's a dance between holding off the next idea as much as you can, you know?
CS: Is there anything you can tell us about your next project?
Shyamalan: Well, the one I think I'm going to do is going to have a big star in it. (laughter)
CS: Are you going to star in it as well?
Shyamalan: You never know, you never know, it wouldn't be any bigger part than this. In fact, I feel a little bit more comfortable if it was like 15-20% less, so that the balance is just right for the directing, cause it's difficult to do both because you want to just walk on the set and totally be that guy. We'll see what happens but if they're going "Are these curtains good?" you're like, "Hold on a sec. No, they're terrible!" That's a tricky balance, but we spend a lot of time rehearsing, I think it was like two weeks, so that made it like a troupe of actors, which was really great for us.
M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water opens on Friday, July 21. Check back on Monday for an exclusive interview with its star Paul Giamatti and another one later in the week with Bryce Dallas Howard.
Shyamalan takes leap of faith for latest movie
M. Night Shyamalan left Disney when the studio refused to make his new movie "Lady in the Water," based on his own fairytale. Now the director of "The Sixth Sense" is risking his reputation on the movie, and some critics are scratching their heads and wondering why.
"Lady in the Water," to be released on Friday by Warner Bros., is based on a bedtime story Shyamalan made up for his two young daughters. But his fairy tale, also published as a children's book, has already cost him dearly.
When the 35-year-old director presented his vision to Disney, which produced his four previous films, the studio said the story was too confusing.
Disney executives also questioned Shyamalan's decision to act in a pivotal supporting role rather than take his usual Hitchcockian cameo. But Shyamalan refused to compromise his vision, instead parting with a studio which grossed more than $1.5 billion on his last four films.
Disney has downplayed the split, saying in a statement: "We have a terrific relationship with Night, and although we didn't agree creatively on this particular project, we look forward to working with him in the future."
The breakup is recounted in a new book called "The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale." Shyamalan invited Sports Illustrated writer Michael Bamberger to chronicle the making of the film and tell his side of the story.
But The New York Times panned the book, calling it an "unintentionally riotous puff book," adding that while the director is not really to blame for the outcome, "his only serious misstep was allowing it to happen."
Britain's Guardian newspaper wrote the "off-screen drama" is getting nearly as much attention as the film itself.
MISSING MAGIC?
And adding to the film's problems are negative early reviews. Hollywood Reporter called the film "waterlogged."
"The magic that would transport you from reality into fantasy is missing. The particulars of the fairy tale are simply too sketchy and convoluted to inspire confidence in its mythology," the industry newspaper wrote.
Time magazine said bluntly: "Lady doesn't work. Although he detonates a few terrific frissons involving the (evil creatures), the stabs at comedy are lurching and arrant."
Despite all that, the India-born Shyamalan who was raised in a Philadelphia suburb, stressed in a recent interview how important this project was to him, both professionally and personally.
"Whatever happens, I've never gotten more joy out of a story," he told Reuters. "I don't know why."
But all the criticism appears to fuel Shyamalan's desire for "Lady in the Water" to succeed.
The director said he feels so strongly about his latest work, that he would trade all his earlier success for this film to succeed.
"This film represents more about things that are life and death to me ... more of a manifesto of my beliefs," he said.
"One day there will be that one (movie) that doesn't connect," Shyamalan said, adding that if he ever makes a movie, "that doesn't mean anything to the audience, I will have to go back and reflect on that."
The movie stars Paul Giamatti as a stuttering, lonely, building superintendent who becomes concerned someone is using the building's swimming pool after hours.
But even Giamatti -- who has shifted from supporting roles to leading roles in recent years thanks to the success of "American Splendor" and "Sideways" -- had some problems.
"There were times where I did not want to stutter and he really wanted me to because I thought 'People need to hear this really clearly,"' Giamatti said while promoting the film
Exclusive Profile: DIRECTOR M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN GETS IN DEEP WITH LADY IN THE WATER - PART 1
The creator of THE SIXTH SENSE and SIGNS creates and emotional fairy tale for his new movie
Source: iF Magazine
Director M. Night Shyamalan has thrilled audiences with his pictures since the debut of THE SIXTH SENSE and has become a sort of modern Hitchcock with his unique "twist" endings. However, his latest movie LADY IN THE WATER does not fit neatly into that category.
LADY was inspired by a story that the director has told his daughters time and again to put to them bed and it's resulted in a sort of a fairy tale more than anything, and Shyamalan risked everything with this picture after his recent divorce from his parent company of Walt Disney Studios in order to get it made.
"It's always like if you made $300 million they're like, 'You could've made $600 million,'" admits Shyamalan who admits no matter what a film makes at the boxoffice, it can be perceived as a failture if the right spin is put on it which is one of the reasons he split from Disney and set up shop at Warner Bros. with LADY IN THE WATER. "There is always that parental thing, and really it was coming from a little bit of a parental place. I appreciate that from them and we did kind of have like a parent child relationship in a great way, but sometimes you just want to go, 'I have to go to college and I have to do my thing. I'll be back. Don't worry. It's all going to be good.' And that's kind of where we went and there was also a person that I was going to make this movie for and that was Alan Horn and he was someone that's always been right there connected to my movies and so affected by my movies."
Each movie for Shyamalan is a personal journey that is torturous for him to undertake. There are stresses put on every aspect of his life, and he claims that his wife can more than attest to this fact. At the end of the day, the filmmaker just wants people to realize that making his movies is difficult because he is still trying to maintain a certain level of the quality of independent movies in a blockbuster movie framework.
"On every single movie there is a struggle," he admits. "It isn't so like, 'Oh, he does it. I see the name on the billboard and it makes a lot of money. F**k him.' It's so torturous. I mean, my wife is probably the one that knows it the most, but it is a torturous process to make personal movies with this weird thing that I'm doing. I'm making independent, personal movies released in a blockbuster capacity. That balancing act is a torturous balance and it's not one that I contrived. It is naturally the sum of the elements of how I think. So the supernatural elements and the personal elements, if they said to me, 'Go do whatever you want.' this is what I do. It's like that, that balance. So it is a struggle and that part of it is really nice that people can see that it's really f**king hard."
But what about his new "tell-all" book that is being released in response to his quitting Disney? Shyamalan claims that the book was started well before the Disney divorce, and originially was intended to be a "making of" LADY IN THE WATER.
"This was supposed to be a book about the fifth movie I did at Disney," says the director. "So this was months before any of that. He was actually more interested in how, I guess -- I don't know, you'd have to ask him -- the auteur and how they think and how they specifically orient things rather than being more general. It was that kind of thing. And then I remember calling him and going, 'You're not going to believe this.' I was really worried, but the movie, the book, all of that time period was really a huge giant act of faith for me. It was going, 'It's all going to be okay. Put yourself at great, great risk.' That's why I shook hands with him."
Not everyone was thrilled with the somewhat insane idea behind writing a scandalous book about corporate Disney, in fact it seemed that Shayamlan was turning rabid and biting the hand that had fed him over the last few years. Plus the idea of leaving Disney to find someone else to make LADY IN THE WATER seemed an equally impossible crazy notion.
"My lawyer called me up and screamed bloody f**king murder at me about this," recalls Shyamalan. "He said, 'No one does this. You're insane.' The reason was that he wrote me a very moving letter as a human being and sometimes you just really take those kinds of leaps of faith, and I'll get burnt many, many, many times on it, but this guy was true to the soul of the person that wrote that letter. So, LADY was that same way with a leap of faith where I went, 'You know what, I have to get up from the table and I'm going to go find someone. I think that someone is going to love this movie. I think that someone is going to believe in it in a way.'"
LADY IN THE WATER also features Shyamalan in his largest role that he has given himself yet, as a young tortured writer who has little or no faith in himself and needs a bit of magic to see the scope of what his works can achieve. He credits the character's source of inspiration to be the author of the famous UNCLE TOM'S CABIN novel by Harriett Beecher Stowe.
"It's this idea of Harriett Beecher Stowe - I'm spiraling off from this thing a bit - but Harriett Beecher Stowe was a big thing," says Shyamalan. "I love that whole thing that she wrote UNCLE TOM'S CABIN and then Lincoln read that and then started this movement, and she was just writing a story."
And Shyamalan doesn't kid himself about the journey ahead.
"Everyone has a part," he admits. "Everyone has a part in the play, which is fantastic, that link in the chain. But yet for me it's much more raw on a lot of levels and I love that. There is a lot of pain ahead of me, a lot of risk ahead and someone else asked what makes me tick, and I said it was danger. It's absolute, perilous danger, just putting yourself out there and hopefully over the course of time you will get very truthful things from me in that way."
How much of him is in the script and not just the movie? Well, according to Shyamalan the script and story are a kind of emotional catharsis for his to write.
"There's this kind of speech that she makes in the mail room and then the speech he makes, 'Your face, they remind me of God,'" he says. "I mean, it's all these things that you can't write in a summer blockbuster. 'Your faces remind me of God.' Those kinds of things you can't write unless it was coming from a genuinely raw, just a genuine place."
Much riding on Shyamalan's 'Lady' luck
By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
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CHESTER COUNTY, Pa. — M. Night Shyamalan settles into a chair in his dining room, examining the movie posters from a career defined by hits —The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village— and wonders whether he has lost his touch.
"Maybe I've had a disconnect with people," he says. "Maybe the wine and food I like isn't the wine and food everyone else likes now."
It's a remarkable admission for a man whose four big-studio pictures have taken in more than $2 billion in theaters and home video sales.
But it has been a remarkable 18 months for Shyamalan, 35. In just a year and a half, he has parted ways with Disney, the studio that distributed all of his big movies. He has cooperated with a new tell-all book, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale, that details the split and vilifies Disney executives.
But most disconcerting is a question that has been nagging at him for months: Has he made a movie no one wants to see?
Lady in the Water opens Friday with a lot of reputations at stake. Disney executives will be watching the film's performance to validate their decision to end the relationship with Shyamalan. Warner Bros. will be watching the same numbers to justify their decision to snap up the director and give him $70 million to make this film and, they hope, more under the Warner Bros. banner.
No one's credibility, though, is more on the line than Shyamalan's. Already some media outlets are blasting the director, whom they say has fallen prey to hubris. The New York Times called Voices "a full-length, unintentionally riotous puff book." Newsweek, which once put Shyamalan on its cover under the title "The Next Spielberg," is now calling for a "career intervention" to address his arrogance.
Lately, Shyamalan concedes, he has caught himself agreeing with the criticisms.
"In your darker moments, you worry that your tastes have rarefied," he says. "It's very possible that's what's happening. And in the event that Lady doesn't find its audience, that's going to be looming over me."
Yet for all the questions and self-doubt, Shyamalan says he has found an inner peace he rarely has known as a director.
"I've never gotten to this place this close to the opening where I felt as little anxiety as I feel right now," he says. "Even if it's a financial disaster, I know it's going to work out, because I got to make the movie I was dreaming to make."
Divorced from Disney
It was a movie he planned to make with Disney, which shepherded his last four films to a box office haul of $1.6 billion domestically and worldwide.
But tensions began to mount after 2004's The Village, about a blind girl who must enter woods she believes are haunted to save her fiancé. Although it took in $114 million domestically and $142 million overseas, the movie underperformed for a Shyamalan picture and was raked by critics.
The director knew Lady would be a hard sell. Born of a bedtime story he told his daughters, his newest film is a fantasy that stars Paul Giamatti as an apartment building superintendent who rescues a sea nymph, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, whom he finds in his swimming pool.
The movie proved the toughest since Sixth Sense to write. Shyamalan reworked the script six times.
"It's a modern-day fantasy," Shyamalan says from his office on a 40-acre horse farm that doubles as a family getaway.
Lady "has a female lead with no superstars in it," he says. "It isn't a traditional scary movie for me to sell. It doesn't have a twist ending. I expected it would send a lot of mixed signals to people who perceive me as a certain type of director."
What he didn't expect was the reaction he got from Disney executives.
When Shyamalan finishes an early cut of a movie, he screens it for two dozen of his closest friends. All must fill out a report card about what works and what doesn't.
Though he won't say what Lady scored, he says, "It did well. Better than I thought it would."
At a dinner at a Philadelphia hotel in February last year, however, it became clear that the movie had not scored well with Disney. Shyamalan met with Disney chairman Dick Cook, marketing chief Oren Aviv and Disney president Nina Jacobson.
Shyamalan says that when Jacobson rattled off a list of concerns she had about the movie, including his decision to give himself a meaty role and a scene in which a movie critic is mauled, he lost his composure. He left the restaurant vowing that he was through with Disney, even though Cook offered to produce the film with a $60 million budget and the freedom to make Lady any way he wanted.
Though Disney executives confirmed details of the dinner and offer, officials declined to elaborate on the split.
"We enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Night Shyamalan that lasted six years and yielded four wonderful movies," a press release from Disney says. "We wish him the best of luck with Lady in the Water and on all of his future endeavors."
Such divorces are rare in Hollywood because the marriages are even rarer. Most directors shop their scripts to the studio that bids highest.
Shyamalan says money had nothing to do with the split. Instead, he says, he felt Disney had lost faith in him.
"They didn't like the movie. They weren't saying 'Let's work it out.' They weren't saying 'Tell me how you're going to fix it.' It wasn't like that," he says.
"Warner Bros. loves the movie. That's important to me. Until they loved it, I wasn't happy."
Shyamalan has spent much of his life seeking approval. When he was admitted to New York University's film school, his father, he says, told him "It's not Princeton." When Newsweek put him on its cover, he says his father reminded him the magazine had a smaller circulation than Time.
Disney, Shyamalan says, "was very much a parent to me, one that I wanted to please. I thought I would make movies for Disney until I was an old man. But at some point, the child has to decide to go on his own."
Faith in his movies
Will audiences follow?
Gitesh Pandya of boxofficeguru.com says that Lady could be a hard sell "because it seems to fall somewhere in between a fairy tale and a horror movie. It's not well defined, at least in the ads."
He's quick to add, though, that "Shyamalan is still a director who attracts an audience by his name alone. There aren't many of those around."
There also aren't many filmmakers "who evoke such strong feelings, on both sides of the fence," says Howard, who also starred in The Village.
"His movies polarize people because they're so emotional," she says. "And he's uncompromising about the story he wants to tell. I think the feelings run the gamut from obsession to hatred for him.
"But whatever you're feeling, it's un-ignorable."
There was no ignoring his bolt from Disney, says Michael Bamberger, author of Voices.
"You can say that he's a crybaby for walking away from Disney's offer," says Bamberger, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. "And he does have an ego. He is obsessive. But he's not cynical. He believes in the movies. And he really was hurt that they didn't believe in a movie that's about faith."
Now Shyamalan must face whether moviegoers still believe in him. He admits that the question has been pressing of late.
"I don't know that I could be an independent filmmaker," he says. "I think there's something universal in the stories I try to tell. But trying to do that, you can torture yourself. The 'I (stink)' is a pretty powerful tool when I'm doing a movie."
In fact, Shyamalan has enjoyed making only one, Signs, a movie he says was made "for the Denny's crowd. I think that was fun because it was a popcorn movie. I was going for the masses."
His personal favorite, however, is Unbreakable, a movie he made his way, with the clout he earned from Sixth Sense's $672 million worldwide box office haul. Unbreakable did $95 million at the U.S. box office despite shots from critics that it was too dense and dark.
If Shyamalan prefers underdog movies, Lady may soon become his favorite. He concedes that the battle with Disney to make the film might have overshadowed his reason for making it.
"If this doesn't do well, maybe I'll realize that I was so worried about getting it made that I didn't realize I had something that doesn't reach audiences," he says.
There may even be something cathartic about the movie failing, he says. "Maybe what would really help is a complete disaster. Something that would clean the slate. People could trash me to oblivion, say I'm done. Then there are no great expectations. There's nowhere to go but up."
But this is one film for which he'll try to tune out the skeptics, the studio execs, the box office analysts.
"People may turn this into my disaster," he says. "But it won't be for me. This is the movie my kids wanted to see get made. It's the movie I wanted to make. No matter what happens, I love this movie."
Exclusive Profile: M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN DELIVERS EMOTIONS FOR ALL IN LADY IN THE WATER - PART 2
Director sings the praises of Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard for his latest film
Director M. Night Shyamalan is good at delivering scares and his unique "twist" endings. However, even though his latest film LADY IN THE WATER has its fair share of twists and shocks, it does not fit neatly into that category.
LADY was inspired by a story that the director has told his daughters time and again to put to them bed and it's resulted in a sort of a fairy tale more than anything, and Shyamalan risked everything with this picture after his recent divorce from his parent company of Walt Disney Studios in order to get it made.
"I just think that he [Paul Giamatti] is the greatest," says Shyamalan. "This dude is phenomenal. As a director I can't believe that every movie doesn't have him for their first choice. He can convey every emotion. He can do physical comedy. He can do drama. He can do everything. He can scare the s**t out of you if he wanted to. He can do anything."
For Shyamalan, Giamatti was his first choice for the lead role of Cleveland Heep. The reason for this certainty in casting is attributed to the actor's genuine and honest delivery.
"He is so pure," says the director. "His eyes are so pure. There are actors that you can watch that have great craft and you watch them and you go, 'Wow, they're really good actors.' And you're not feeling a thing because they're doing it all inside and they chose all these internal things and they do it and they get to a wonderful place, but you're watching them."
Shyamalan was just as certain about using Bryce Dallas Howard for the role of Story, the Lady in the Water. Howard was introduced to audiences in Shyamalan's film THE VILLAGE, and is the daughter of Director Ron Howard.
"Bryce is not normal and so she is a perfect choice to play not a normal person," says Shyamalan. "I don't know if you've met her yet, but she probably won't even let you in and so don't even worry about it. There is nothing in her makeup that's like a normal twenty four year old girl. There's not. She's just from another planet."
According to Shyamalan, the actress has grown leaps and bounds since THE VILLAGE and delivered a performance rivaling that of what Shyamalan expected.
"There was definitely a kid on THE VILLAGE and now there is a woman," says Shyamalan. "Definitely there is a change. There is an elegance, which I knew. There was a princess to be kind of quality about her and I mean that in a good way - a royalty about her. Now she's kind of attained that."
Shyamalan emphasizes that he created this film for a slightly different audience than some of his previous films.
"I would say anyone over eight," he adds. "That would be my thing. It's interesting. We had two screenings of the movie at the end when we were done with it and it was interesting to see the kid's reactions because they had never seen their dad's cry. So that was a really powerful thing that I kept hearing over and over. 'My dad was crying.' The whole family had their own powerful reaction to it. It was really cool, really cool."
Again in this picture Shyamalan returns to the screen as an actor in his own movie. This is the largest role that he has given himself to date, and feels that it was the ensemble cast that enabled him to reach the heights of his own acting abilities.
"This is as big a role as I'll ever play because there is a physical limit to it because I can't direct," says Shyamalan. "It's not because of this group of actors. They were just so giving, but I could see that if I was with another group of actors that needed more I would've had to pull back a bit more. In the end I think that I was like in twenty scenes out of a hundred and something. So that's the limit that it could be. It's more comfortable in the maybe fifteen-scene range."
Shyamalan admits that he is overly sensitive about his films and has issues with his perception of reality. His film UNBREAKABLE is popular amongst his fans, and people are constantly asking him if he will direct a sequel to the superhero movie, but he wasn't satisfied enough with the initial reception of the film to do a number two.
"I'm a little bit of an emotional guy and I was a little bit upset that people didn't immediately take to it," he says. "Like the way that they're reacting now is what I thought was going to happen, but again, that was my first understanding of the shadow and things and expectations and how the perceived reality works, what we're talking about, versus the reality."
And how does Shyamalan view the critic's response to films? He has friends that are critics, and welcomes banter with them even though in LADY IN THE WATER he has a film critic who ends up dead meat before it's over.
"I actually do have a lot of friends who are critics," says Shyamalan. "I had a big argument once at dinner table where I was like, 'If we're promoting art, there is almost like -' what happened to DA VINCI wasn't so nice for all of us. That's not helping any of us in the entertainment industry."
The director views critical opinion as gleeful destruction rather than constructive criticism, and expects more from the arts in the future.
"The way that was handled -- such glee, such joy to tear it down," he admits. "That's not kind in a way and it questions whether we're all thinking in the right way. Hey, I understand it because when I see something that I wanted to be great and it wasn't great I get really upset and all of that. But the promotion of art has kind of become this small little thing and I would love it to kind of expand more and be more of a celebration of the arts. I know that's a naive thing."
since i killed the letterman thread i'll mention it here.
bryce was lovely on the show the other nite. the whole time i kept thinking of manderlay and i wondered if letterman even knows about that movie. he thinks she's such a sweetheart, like a mini-julia roberts. anyway she's much more than that, also she's the only reason i'll be watching this and if the village is anything to go by, the only reason i'll end up defending it. oh but she's really pale in it.. :ponder:
TIME: Who do you make movies for?
M. NIGHT: The collective soul.
Click http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1214909,00.html for more.
Quote from: Pubrick on July 20, 2006, 01:26:57 AM
bryce was lovely on the show the other nite. the whole time i kept thinking of manderlay and i wondered if letterman even knows about that movie. he thinks she's such a sweetheart, like a mini-julia roberts. anyway she's much more than that, also she's the only reason i'll be watching this and if the village is anything to go by, the only reason i'll end up defending it. oh but she's really pale in it.. :ponder:
She literally paled in comparison to Conan last night.
Quote from: Ravi on July 20, 2006, 12:29:52 PM
She literally paled in comparison to Conan last night.
that screens tomoro here. well 4 hours ago but i will catch the repeat in 9 hours and report back. :salute: thanks for the heads up, i will go prepared 8)
Lady in the Water (2006)
Just what the hell is a "narf"?
1. an exclamation popularized by a dim-witted cartoon mouse with an Australian accent.
2. a Far Eastern bedtime story.
3. a sea nymph sent to rescue mankind from its own shortcomings.
M. Night Shyamalan goes with (2) and (3), selectively ignoring the precedent of "Pinky and the Brain" for Lady in the Water, his first foray in a while into filmmaking without the Big Reveal. This is the film Shyamalan supporters have been waiting for, in which he proves that he can actually make a film that doesn't depend on a twist or surprise at the end to knock the audience on its duff and keep it coming back for more. But when a film inadvertently tosses about an Animaniacs term in earnest, it indicates a slight ignorance that a film portending social relevance can little afford.
Bryce Dallas Howard plays the titular nymph who wanders about for most of the film in nothing but a man's dress shirt, as any well-bred (and sexy) sea nymph should. We learn in a protracted prologue sequence that sea folk from The Blue World are humankind's self-appointed advisors, protectors, and all around angels. Howard's character, Story, arrives at the Philadelphia apartment complex The Cove to inspire a writer who will change the world with a revolutionary, powder keg work—a work so incendiary, he's afraid to let even his sister read it.
Ladies and gentlemen, M. Night Shyamalan himself plays that Writer Who Will Change the World.
Lady in the Water fits comfortably into the groove laid down by his three previous features; fables about faith, loss, and the interconnectedness of life, the universe, and apartment tenants. The film is not without charm, and is, in fact, mildly pleasant in its own confident, sober blarney. Anchoring the watery yarn is one of my favorite sad-sack character actors (a special subdivision of character acting, I suspect; listed in the SAG rulebook somewhere), Paul Giamatti, now a viable leading man. Cleveland Heep is his name, and he's hiding from a horrid past behind the muddy green coveralls of a building superintendent. His primary duties seems to be collecting garbage, fixing sinks, and keeping ordinance-shuckers out of the pool after 7 p.m. Story saves him from drowning one night when he slips and falls into the deep end whilst investigating her splashes. She enlists Cleveland in finding The Writer and a cadre of protectors who will help her get back to her world.
The humans must figure out a way to keep the vicious scrunt—a wolflike monster made of grass—from attacking and killing the half-nude messiah. They are archetypes that live in the building, including a Guardian, a Symbolist, a Guild, and a Healer. They concoct elaborate plans to distract and scare the lawn-dwelling creature, when they could probably flush him out more easily by simply shutting off the sprinklers that saturate the yard every night.
Shyamalan indulges in some critic-baiting by including Bob Balaban as The Most Sardonic Critic in the Universe. His snooty, dismissive declarations lead Cleveland astray, and then get The Critic himself in trouble with the vicious scrunt. Though his hilarious scenes play with the conventions of a thriller/children's fantasy, the glee with which Shyamalan skewers the critical profession indicates some harbored resentment over the reception of The Village.
The fabulist quality of Shyamalan's recent output has played with genre conventions, but not in such a postmodern fashion. By making The Writer the martyr and The Critic the obligatory doomed minor character, Shyamalan is set up as Savior and anyone daring to criticize his vision as a scabrous Pharisee. Which boils down to a petty streak that severely undercuts the film's more beautiful moments (and there are several, courtesy largely of God Among Cinematographers, Christopher Doyle).
Giamatti is saddled with the unenviable task of centering a film with too many side characters and breathing chemistry into scenes shared with a character that is mostly silent and impenetrable. Howard has the countenance of an angel and plays Story with the tremulous unsurety of an innocent child, but that's not very engaging. I suspect that her character is intended to bring out the paternal/maternal instincts in the audience, and to that end, he is somewhat successful.
As a revolutionary, Shyamalan fails miserably. I appreciated the innocent purity of asserting that the world, in such deadly peril right now, can be saved by good ideas and good writing. But he doesn't present these ideas, just the idea of the ideas. Children will take comfort in this, but the adults will remain at a loss, because the ideas of good ideas do nothing. What good is speaking of water when you're thirsty? What good is praying to the idea of God when you could just pray to God and be done with it?
Entering the political arena, Shyamalan hedges his bets to avoid getting bruised, but doesn't succeed. As far as I can tell, he's simply not a political filmmaker. When The Writer speaks of people not liking his ideas and fearing that his life is endangered by giving them voice, it's not a Martyr I hear speaking—it's an oversensitive artist who doesn't want to get stung by critics calling him on his bluff.
He offers no concrete ideas, just a pantheistic cry of good cheer from the sidelines. We need change, but there's nothing in Lady in the Water besides simple inspiration. Nothing wrong with that. But feigning depth when one should embrace elegant simplicity is a greater crime than proudly pinning one's heart to a sleeve.
Whatever shred of reputation as a formative filmmaker Shyamalan has been clinging to in his past few films has completely vanished with this steaming pile of crap. I won't even bother explaining myself. All I'm going to say is, I got my money back.
"I just want to punch this movie right in the face."
- Don Cornelius
pre-emptive, unfair review review featuring spoils
from what i've been reading M. Night has written and directed and starred in his idea of his life. everyone (represented by stereotypes/simple people not as great as him whose mission it becomes to "protect and [nurture]" his ideas) is saved by his amazing ideas. and the movie itself sucks. that's amazing. it's almost as though he's trying to tell himself he's doing stupid things.
Exclusive Profile: BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD GIVES AN ETHERAL PERFORMANCE IN LADY IN THE WATER
Actress reunites with M. Night Shyamlan and does an entire movie with only a shirt to wear
Source: iF Magazine
Bryce Dallas Howard first came into the public's eye in M. Night Shyamalan's THE VILLAGE playing a blind girl who was the only hope for a community of people living in the woods. Now, years later Howard and Shyamalan are reunited for the director's latest picture which is a fairy tale and not a suspense thriller. Howard costars with Paul Giamatti, and she plays a water nymph trapped in our world to spread messages of love and acceptance through humanity.
The experience that Howard had work with Shyamalan was different this time starting with her lack of clothing throughout the duration of the shoot.
"I was partially naked this time," says Howard. "It was great. It was wonderful. I'll just start there. I'm a part of a theater company in New York and it was exactly what I had hoped it would be. Like with a company you're able to work with people over and over again and so you get past all of the small talk and you can really get to the essence of what we're trying to do and that's exactly what this is experience was like. With THE VILLAGE which was wonderful it was still like an introduction. We were introducing each other to each other and near the end of shooting we were just like, 'Oh, this is how you tick and this is how I tick.' And we were able to start from that place when we did LADY IN THE WATER and then get even deeper."
During several key scenes in the film, Howard has to be carried by costar Giamtti, and according to her the experience was interesting if for no other reason than, she and he are almost exactly the same size.
"I'm like the same size as Paul. I was thinner when I did that film because she was ill and I wanted to create that fragile look as much as my bone structure would allow it, but oh God," she admits. "We had to do so many takes of that and I think that we'd been doing that for a while and then we had to run, he had to run up these stairs and we had slick plywood that he would have to run on."
The experience tired both actors, but they were troopers and continued the intense physical scenes in a myriad of conditions.
"We were like, 'This is asinine. This is totally absurd,'" says Howard. "So he's carrying me over this plywood that's really slick from all the water, from the sprinklers, up these stairs and through the door and then finally one time he fell and held onto me and we slid across the entire room. We finally crashed into the wall and he was like, 'You okay.' 'Yeah. I'm all good.' He was so protective and he's very, very strong to be able to do that literally for fourteen hours."
Howard's character in the movie is not a mermaid as some have supposed. She is more of an ethereal creation, and Howard has her own method of explanation.
"The way that I describe her is that she's like a water nymph," says Howard. "That's what she is. It was a very freeing experience because Night created all of this mythology. He created this whole world and so at the beginning of the process I came in like, 'Oh, I'm going to be a good little actor and I'm going to do all this research about fairy tales and I'm going to have all these opinions and present it to him in a way that's diplomatic and wonderful.' "
Howard did have input into the creation of the character and worked closely with Shyamalan to create Story.
"He was of course listening and collaborating, but then as I started listening to him and not trying to be impressive, I realized, 'Oh, I just kind of have to show up and he's going to know what to tell me to do and that's going to be the best way that we should go through this process,'" says Howard. "It certainly was and I'm glad about that because this is all from his crazy, brilliant, wonderful mind. That's what I wanted to be for him, someone that was going to allow that vision to manifest itself."
Of course, one of the most daunting challenges for the actress was to wear a shirt, which was usually wet, as her only piece of costuming for the entire filming schedule.
"It was breezy," she says. "That was an interesting thing because I have a tendency just in my own personal life to dress very modestly and to be slightly inhibited physically and I was constantly trying to be like, 'Well, if I put on undergarments is that going to make me comfortable so that I won't be inhibited or do I just go there?' "
The talented actress not only has LADY IN THE WATER approaching theatres, but also AS YOU LIKE IT with Kenneth Branagh. In the picture, Howard is playing Rosalind.
"I did AS YOU LIKE IT right before I did this, but it hasn't come out yet," says the actress, not completely sure of when the film will be released, "I'm not sure. I actually don't even know. I was about to say that it was spring, but I think that I'm talking about something I don't know about."
Of course, the other big picture coming up for Howard is the superhero extravaganza SPIDER-MAN 3. In this new installment in the series, Howard plays Gwen Stacy, a new love interest for Peter Parker.
Howard had a great experience working on the film and in particular working with Sam Raimi.
"It was really fun on that because it was like, 'To be a part of this group - guys, lets all together tell this story,'" explains Howard, "And then Sam Raimi was there to guide us, to inspire us, and then of all the choices that we offered him to take the choices that were best for the story. That was a very empowering experience."
What does Howard have to say about her character in Spidey?
"Gwen Stacy? She's a pretty famous comic book character," adds Howard. "She's one of Peter Parker's first loves. In this film it's a love triangle between Mary Jane and Peter Parker and herself. She is young and she's kind of sexy. I don't want to reveal too much."
What should fans expect from this third installment of the SPIDER-MAN franchise? More of the same excellent caliber as the last two films? According to Howard this movie will be a very dramatic piece in the series, and to learn more people should watch the teaser.
"I would say in particular with this film, with SPIDER-MAN 3 it's a very, very dramatic film," she concludes. "I mean, you should check out the teaser if you can on the computer because the conflict is very high and the stakes are very high with these guys."
When it all comes down to the end of the day, does Howard have aspirations of being a celebrity or a movie star? According to the actress she just wants to do the best job she can possibly do.
" [Do I want to be] A movie star? I don't usually want for things that you can't control. I want to be the best actor that I can be. I want to be working in this business, absolutely. If that means being a movie star then okay, that's fine. But to me movie stars, celebrity mean something very different than beingan actor."
clerks 2 is going to blow this movie out of the water :shock:
24% at Rotten Tomatoes (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lady_in_the_water/). Is it really that bad or is it just Shyamalan backlash?
Quote from: Ravi on July 21, 2006, 11:51:31 AM
24% at Rotten Tomatoes (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lady_in_the_water/). Is it really that bad or is it just Shyamalan backlash?
It's really that bad, and I don't even dislike him all that much.
Quote from: pozeR on July 21, 2006, 11:15:35 AM
clerks 2 is going to blow this movie out of the water :shock:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452637/board/thread/48694466
Quote from: pozeR on July 21, 2006, 11:15:35 AM
clerks 2 is going to blow this movie lady out of the water :shock:
I'm not that interested in seeing this, but I'm interested in how it looks. Does the Doyle cinematography stand out, or is it not really his best work, or what?
it's not out in Taiwan yet (another week I think) but Doyle's studio stuff don't usually stand out too much. he works really fast, and in studio terms it usually means highkey TV-esque setup for the gaffers and their union boys. the james ivory production looked very okay, as did Psycho in Color and Liberty Heights. I also read a book by him that talked about his international adventures and he said similar things. Made looked pretty good though, so maybe this could be another Made.
Spoilers, probably...
There was nothing good about this movie. This surpassed any label like 'masturbatory' and/or 'self absorbed'.
How the fuck are you really going to cast yourself as a prophet whose message will inspire someone to be a revolutionary? How are you going to have a critic get mauled, not even metaphorically, by the monster in your movie as he narrates the predictability of the scene?
Beyond that...
What's the history of the wolf? Where did it come from? What's the history of the monkeys? Why do they protect? What's with the eagle? Why does anyone believe Giamatti? How does he breathe underwater for so long? Why should we give a fuck about Giamatti's past? What the hell was the loner talking about? Why did I go see this?
Quote from: Walrus on July 23, 2006, 02:33:27 AM
What's the history of the wolf? Where did it come from? What's the history of the monkeys? Why do they protect? What's with the eagle? Why does anyone believe Giamatti? How does he breathe underwater for so long? Why should we give a fuck about Giamatti's past? What the hell was the loner talking about? Why did I go see this?
So many weird things happening without explaing them, Sounds like Shyamalan's tried to do a Lynch movie, only it turned out terribly.
Fitting that this is called a "bedtime story" because I could see how some people could fall asleep while watching it.
*SOME SPOILERS*
I think the main problem was this was over-written. One of the themes of the story was that it was about writting and story (hell, even Howard's character's name is Story) but all of the talking and exposition really took it's toll that it kept Shyamalan from doing what he does best - his use of visuals and composition. Another serious problem was there were too many false story points. We're lead to believe that one person is one thing only to be told a mistake was made in a reading or a belief.
I've read that this was a very personal script for Night and it shows. The dialogue between Cleveland and Story felt it was like Night talking to Howard about being his muse, and then there's the outsider film critic who gets his due; it screams Night getting back at his critics. I liked the building's residents and especially the actors portraying them, but with such a stellar cast, they feel wasted. Not to mention too that there's no doubt in these characters; everyone is easy to believe the narf story that there's no conflict. It really played with the line of is this full-on fantasy or rooted in reality (like Unbreakable).
SPOILERS
Clearly, I don't have to point out how awful this movie is...
Quote from: MacGuffin on July 23, 2006, 09:33:31 PM
there's no doubt in these characters; everyone is easy to believe the narf story
This just goes along with how M assumes everyone's onboard with him at all times... he doesn't feel he has to work at anything, he assumes that his audience is blindly with him at all points, never asking questions.
It's pretty insulting to assume that the audience is as dumb or dumber than the characters. Once they get into the list of all the members of the gang that have to blah blah blah, it's IMMEDIATELY clear which characters fill which role... yet it takes the movie-folk at least another 45 minutes of screwing up before they figure it out in a scene that's just a miniature version of "THAT SCENE" that's in all his films.
The critic was probably the worst thing about it. The critic makes predictions about what will happen next based on what he already knows then what he predicted didn't come true... as if to say "I'm more clever than you, you think you know what's gonna happen, but you DON'T"... well, guess what? not only did I know, I didn't give one little shit.
I could point out the thousand plot holes in this movie (like the fact that she wasn't allowed to talk about "the blue world" until the shower scene and then she just yaps on and on about it and she said no one could watch her get picked up by the eagle then they all watch at the end), but it's pointless.. the movie sucked, plotholes or no.
only good thing about seeing this was the trailer for the fountain. and ive already seen the fountain.
Quote from: pozeR on July 23, 2006, 11:55:49 PM
only good thing about seeing this was the trailer for the fountain. and ive already seen the fountain.
yes, i was late for the show and nearly missed this.
if i had, my life would be meaningless.
I just remembered from The Twilight Zone thread...
Quote from: MacGuffin on July 05, 2006, 12:03:29 PMSomething else I realized: Remembering that The Villiage was a lot like A Hundred Yards Over The Rim, Lady In The Water feels like The Bewitchin' Pool.
I swear I saw Rod Serling's photo on the back of a book dust jacket that Mrs. Bubchik was holding.
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Call It ShyamaladenfreudeThe poor opening of M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady in the Water" has Hollywood gossiping about "The Man Who Heard Voices."By Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times
In Hollywood, a town where tales of self-immolation are passed along like hot new scripts, everyone has been frantically trying to score a copy of "The Man Who Heard Voices," Michael Bamberger's new book about M. Night Shyamalan and the making of "Lady in the Water." The fascination with the book has only been heightened by the poor opening of "Lady," which arrived practically dead in the water over the weekend, making a paltry $18.2 million, the filmmaker's worst opening ever.
As one wag put it, there's been an outbreak of Shyamaladenfreude.
If there is a recurrent theme in Bamberger's book, it's that Night is different from the rest of us. Like the mythic creatures who populate his new movie, he is not subject to the same mundane laws of gravity that keep us moored to the ground.
Early in the book, Night (everyone calls him by his second name) is at a meeting in his agent's office here when the conversation turns to basketball. "I believe if I had unlimited time to practice," he says, "after two years, I'd be able to shoot with any NBA player." After the meeting is over, his longtime agent, United Talent Agency partner Jeremy Zimmer, admonishes the scrawny filmmaker, who is, at best, a good Sunday morning pickup player. "You can't say stuff like that."
But "Voices" is full of stuff like that. Most of the buzz about the book, which was written with Night's cooperation, has focused on a disastrous meeting between the filmmaker and the top brass at Disney, where he'd made four straight hits. After Disney production chief Nina Jacobson bluntly dissected the "Lady" script's failings, Night opted to take the film to Warner Bros., in part because studio chief Alan Horn, after seeing "The Village," had called to say the movie really touched him.
This was the kind of truth Night wanted to hear. At the end of the calamitous Disney meeting, Zimmer, trying to smooth things over, says, "We're thankful for the truthful response you've given us." Night instantly retorts: "I don't agree. I don't think it was a truthful response." For all his insistence on being the least "Hollywood" of directors, living far away on his bucolic 75-acre farm in Pennsylvania, Night has a perfect grasp of movie-town insincerity. In Hollywood, where everyone is carefully trained to never tell a filmmaker what they really think about their movie — unless they actually loved it — the truth couldn't possibly be the truth if the truth hurts.
It wasn't just Night's story that bothered Jacobson. "Lady in the Water" is a fanciful fable about a stuttering motel manager (Paul Giamatti) who happens upon a willowy Narf (Bryce Dallas Howard) when she surfaces one night in the motel pool. She is followed by other strange, made-up creatures, including a snarling Scrunt and a prehistoric eagle who transports Narfs from the human realm to a watery Blue World. Jacobson worried that Night was asking for trouble by casting himself as a writer whose prophetic work ultimately helps change the world, and making the movie's least likable character a sourpuss film critic (who is dispatched by a nasty Scrunt).
Night has said that "Lady in the Water" began as a bedtime story he told his daughters. But it's Bamberger's book that has become a grim fairy tale, a bracing reminder of how many of our best filmmakers, having achieved success, wall themselves off from reality and succumb to childlike self-importance. Jacobson has emerged as a hero, especially after being fired from Disney last week in an especially callous way — getting the bad news after calling her boss from the hospital where her partner was having their baby. Though the book claims Night had "witnessed the decay of her creative vision," the opposite had happened. In a world of enablers, Jacobson had not only tried to protect Night from himself but also tried to preserve the U2-style emotional connection his films had with his audience.
What makes the book especially damaging, despite its relentlessly sycophantish portrayal of the filmmaker, is that Night violated Hollywood PR Law No. 1: Never let people see you as you really are. In an era when stars hide behind their handlers, who vet writers, limit their access and keep them miles away from any dirty laundry, Night let Bamberger see it all — straight, no chaser. If Night weren't so insufferable, his honesty would almost be charming. In one scene, he is put out that Jacobson is late arriving home from a children's birthday party to meet Night's assistant, who is delivering a closely guarded copy of the "Lady" script.
As Bamberger puts it, "Night felt the reading of his script shouldn't be considered work. It should add to the weekend's pleasure."
Night's supporters say that, despite his bad reaction to Jacobson's criticism, he was not unwilling to listen to advice. In fact, Warner Bros.' Horn says the filmmaker made a number of significant changes based on studio notes and research-screening reactions. "I found Night to be both collaborative and surprisingly humble," says Horn. "He wasn't arrogant at all. He was always willing to engage in dialogue with us. I like what he set out to do and what's inside him."
However, "The Man Who Heard Voices" depicts an artist who is controlling one minute, racked with insecurity the other. After an early script read-through, Warner's production chief Jeff Robinov tells Night, "Good job." Obviously meant as quiet encouragement, it sends the filmmaker into a tailspin of doubt.
"Maybe he really doesn't like it — maybe that's why he kicked up the project to Alan Horn," Night broods before going to sleep, according to the book. "Maybe there wasn't magic in the room — the one guy not hired by me says, 'Good job.' ... Maybe Nina was right."
Every artist has a different way of handling this crushing anxiety. Night takes solace in numbers. After a few loyalists read the script, their responses were turned into scores ranging from 1 to 10, then compared with the scores his other scripts had earned. When the Warner Bros. brass visit the film set, Night gave the visit a grade: B-plus.
If anything is clear from the book, it's that Night, like so many artists, has a desperate need for approval. Although he remains obsessed with Jacobson's lack of approval long after heading off to Warners, he has an equal longing for Horn's approval long after the studio chief has given him $70 million to make the movie. In one rambling monologue, Night tells Horn: "I was always going to be a child to Disney and you treated me like a man, but more than that, I just wanted them to show respect for me as an artist, as you did when you called me in Paris that time ... we were on a rowboat in the Seine and I had just lost a bracelet in the water, and then you called ... is this making any sense?"
Apparently accustomed to this sort of talk — a good studio chief often assumes the air of a soothing therapist — Horn responds: "Yes, of course."
Predictably, the knives have been out for the book and the film. Many have asked: Didn't anyone tell Night it was a bad idea to lay out his life in a book? Or to play the role of a martyred visionary in his own film? Or to kill off a critic in the picture? He didn't respond to my interview request, nor did Jacobson.
His agent, however, says he warned him. "I told Night, 'You're going to get killed doing this book,' " recalls Zimmer. "And he said, 'I'm getting killed already.' He feels the press has been consistently negative about his films. You have to understand that the book was meant as a primer about the moviemaking process, not a tell-all. When everything went weird with Disney, he could've stopped the book, but he let it go. He thought it would be a great experience to learn about himself."
Zimmer says he also counseled Night against playing the sensitive-writer role. "I told him this was dangerous — that the press will fixate on it. But he saw the movie with himself in it. And you know what? It's his vision. And if the business doesn't support it, he's not going to run away and say, 'Oh well, I'll do "Jumanji 3." ' You can say he's preachy or self-important, but who else is telling original stories out there? He should be applauded, not derided."
Scott Rudin, who produced "The Village," says Night's assurance is mistaken for arrogance. He simply has enormous confidence in his own instincts. "He plays for the upside," Rudin told me. "He doesn't know fear — he loves taking risks. He's not always going to be right, but he always has a certainty about his films. He has his own voice and the courage to listen to it."
For all his narcissism, Night does possess a stubborn integrity. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he has not put his muse to work doing sequels or remakes of old TV shows in a quest for a payday. What he has done with this book is let his hubris undermine his art. Night's unyielding certainty has resulted in something creepier than any of his movies: a strangely unsympathetic character who bears an uncanny resemblance to himself.
This movie is a like a giant beast that attacks you with scratches on your legs.
Critic Reed Sinks 'Lady in the Water'
As numerous critics have noted, M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water arrived pretty much dead in the water last weekend. Now, critic Rex Reed is administering a few flourishing kicks to the corpse. Writing in the New York Observer, Reed writes, "Hollywood cannot pollute the ozone with anything more idiotic, contrived, amateurish or sub-mental than Lady in the Water." That's the second sentence of his review. In his third sentence, he calls the movie, "this piece of pretentious, paralyzing twaddle." In his last sentence of the paragraph, he remarks, "In a war of wits, brains, imagination and talent, Mr. Shyamalan would be defenseless." One is left with the feeling that Reed didn't enjoy the movie.
http://www.observer.com/20060724/20060724_Rex_Reed_culture_rexreed.asp
Quote from: MacGuffin on July 25, 2006, 08:14:36 PM
Critic Reed Sinks 'Lady in the Water'
As numerous critics have noted, M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water arrived pretty much dead in the water last weekend. Now, critic Rex Reed is administering a few flourishing kicks to the corpse. Writing in the New York Observer, Reed writes, "Hollywood cannot pollute the ozone with anything more idiotic, contrived, amateurish or sub-mental than Lady in the Water." That's the second sentence of his review. In his third sentence, he calls the movie, "this piece of pretentious, paralyzing twaddle." In his last sentence of the paragraph, he remarks, "In a war of wits, brains, imagination and talent, Mr. Shyamalan would be defenseless." One is left with the feeling that Reed didn't enjoy the movie.
http://www.observer.com/20060724/20060724_Rex_Reed_culture_rexreed.asp
damn, rex......did you even see broken flowers?
Quote from: RegularKarate on July 23, 2006, 10:06:20 PM
SPOILERS
I could point out the thousand plot holes in this movie (like the fact that she wasn't allowed to talk about "the blue world" until the shower scene and then she just yaps on and on about it and she said no one could watch her get picked up by the eagle then they all watch at the end), but it's pointless.. the movie sucked, plotholes or no.
i respect your opinions about the movie, because of course theyre your opinions, but these two plotholes you mention arent really plot holes. In the shower scene she didnt TALK about the blue world at all, they asked questions, she touched parts of her body and indian girl interpreted it. Bending the rules b/c of lazy writing? Maybe, but not a plot hole. Also they mention that the only people who can watch her leave are the ones in the "Group" (the guild, simbolist, guardian, healer, etc.) and those were the only ones present when she was taken away.
it was lame either way as pointed out by rk.
More spoilers belowQuote from: ProgWRX on July 28, 2006, 08:34:07 AM
i respect your opinions about the movie, because of course theyre your opinions, but these two plotholes you mention arent really plot holes. In the shower scene she didnt TALK about the blue world at all, they asked questions, she touched parts of her body and indian girl interpreted it. Bending the rules b/c of lazy writing? Maybe, but not a plot hole. Also they mention that the only people who can watch her leave are the ones in the "Group" (the guild, simbolist, guardian, healer, etc.) and those were the only ones present when she was taken away.
I speaking about AFTER the shower scene... she just starts yappin to everyone about it, verbally, not rubbin her nipple or whatever... that's a plot hole where I come from.
I guess I missed the mention that the group could watch the giant retarded eagle fly her away for no good reason... why was the warrior allowed to watch the monkeys who've never been seen kill the plant dog?
I kind of like talking about the movie because it just proves how fucking lame it was.... SNARF!
If you guys keep talking about how bad it is, you'll lower my expectations to the point that I might not think it's that bad when I see it.
STOP! :yabbse-angry:
Quote from: hackspaced on July 28, 2006, 02:12:56 PM
If you guys keep talking about how bad it is, you'll lower my expectations to the point that I might not think it's that bad when I see it.
STOP! :yabbse-angry:
sorry... I LOVED THIS MOVIE... I like the part where Loel from Wings' friend from that movie where he fucked that fat chick meets the mexican from six feet under!
Quote from: RegularKarate on July 28, 2006, 01:19:21 PM
why was the warrior allowed to watch the monkeys who've never been seen kill the plant dog?
I can't think of any other supposedly serious movie whose plots can spawn a sentence that ridiculous.
holy smokes, maybe I SHOULD see this film....high
lady in the bong water
patent pending :yabbse-angry:
i thought this was horrible. it was like a big budget extended version of an Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode. it really bugged me the way Night was looking at Giamanti during the shower scene. the stuttering just didn't seem realistic to me and was very annoying. i could go on, but you get the picture.
it just felt like there wasn't enough there to even sustain the length so he had to have the characters talk to fill up that time. it might have been bareable as a 23 min AYAOTD? episode, but not a full length film.
M. Night Shyamalan On Lady In The Water
Exclusive: He didn't want his name on it
Source: Empire Online
After a revelatory ghost tale, a supernatural comic thriller, a crop-circling tale of invasion and a mystical, creature-infested village, M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie – Lady In The Water – has been noted as something of a departure from the Director/writer's more calculated "scary" storytelling efforts. Was this cartwheeling 'family' tale a deliberate attempt to confound the expectations of his audience? Speaking at a press conference in London today, the auteur discussed some of the ways he's tried to avoid being "put in a box".
"The Sixth Sense was the first one of my movies that everyone got to see and it was a scary film – that was part of the subject matter. So when Unbreakable came out, I felt like everyone thought it was a mistake, but it wasn't necessarily supposed to be scary...I didn't realise I had been set in that vein already. However, if I worried too much about that I wouldn't be able to write. I'd love it if everyone could look at Lady In The Water as a lyrical parable, but there will be people that won't get it because they are coming at it with a certain lexicon of what to expect already in place".
"So, I seriously thought about taking my name off [the film]. When I was thinking about doing Life Of Pi, I was very worried about putting my name on the project. It's an amazing book that has a twist ending, but if I put my name on it, it would immediately lose the balance of the novel. So it's something I struggle with. I said to my wife that 'Lady...' may have benefited from my name being removed. At least then it would have signaled to people to look at the movie with a new language in mind".
shut up Shyamalan... shut up forever.
Quote from: MacGuffin on August 09, 2006, 10:58:50 AM
"So, I seriously thought about taking my name off [the film]. When I was thinking about doing Life Of Pi, I was very worried about putting my name on the project. It's an amazing book that has a twist ending, but if I put my name on it, it would immediately lose the balance of the novel. So it's something I struggle with. I said to my wife that 'Lady...' may have benefited from my name being removed. At least then it would have signaled to people to look at the movie with a new language in mind".
Written and Directed by
Someone
starring Someone as the writer
Does he think for a second that removing his name would make the movie look interesting? In the current climate with all the shitty horror movies coming out (Pulse, Descent, etc.) Lady In the Water would just seem so masterfully crafted. People saw it because of his name, he needs to stop fellating himself.
the descent is not shitty.
thanks,
modage
Well, it was a horror movie title that is to come out that came to mind. I'll retract what I said about Descent since I haven't seen it.
read xixax next time. this will save you from seeing the odious clerks 2 and help you towards the descent next time.
thanks!
modage
this sucked, don't waste your money.
Quote from: Brazoliange on August 11, 2006, 08:04:40 PM
this sucked, don't waste your money.
Brazoliange, you're alright!
wow, possibly one of the worst movies i have ever seen. and I LIKE Shamalamadingdong! this movie fails on every level. it is so unbelievably bad that none of the bad reviews could prepare me for it. its almost impossible to believe he wrote like 17 drafts of this because the movie seems like it is being made up on the spot. every line of dialogue is so hideously expository and just wincingly bad i cannot believe it. the actors have nothing to work with, even the fricking camera placement/movement is terribly awkward. as has been mentioned many times, the critic and the prophet are just awful AWFUL. its a movie so bad that i'm not sure how he will ever make a good movie again. i didnt like the village but i own the 3 movies before that and this almost makes me want to go back and re-examine them. i feel bad because Paul Giamatti deserves better and he could've made a great modern day Dreyfus but this movie was putrid.