The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Questions: The Happening Edition

    By Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 2:32am | Arts & Entertainment, Potpourri, Personal

    Just got done watching The Happening, written, directed and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, and felt the need to do a question column on it. Yes, they are mostly rhetorical.

    1) The

    2) Absolute

    3) Worst

    4) Major

    5) Motion

    6) Picture

    7) In the

    8) History of

    9) American

    10) Filmmaking

    Topics: 
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    Potpourri
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    Questions

    Comments

    1) In the movie The Happening, the plants and trees feel threatened by humanity and release a toxin which convinces people to kill themselves (don't worry, if you haven't seen the movie and are heavily into self-inflicted torture, I'm not spoiling anything that won't be readily apparent within the first five minutes).

    Sounds a bit far-fetched, but I believe there may actually be a degenerative director toxin which convinces directors to create increasingly more atrocious films. People like to diss The Sixth Sense now, but that was a pretty good horror film, Unbreakable was decent, Signs was watchable, but since then, it's just been one bigger disaster after another. The Villiage, Lady in the Water, and now this claptrap.

    Do you know of any other movie makers, whose careers once started so promising, who seem to have been felled by this particular toxin?


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 2:42am

    2) Do you think that M. Night really thought this piece of shit was quality, or do you think that once you begin production on a big-budget film, you literally cannot shut it down and say 'This was a mistake. I am going to try and save my dignity and quite possibly the careers of all the other people involved in this production.'?


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 2:44am

    Chez has an interesting look at M Night here:

    http://www.deusexmalcontent.com/2008/06/short-attention-span-theater-welcome-to.html


    by Donal on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 9:44am

    thanks for the link, donal. it was interesting. tho i gotta say, i had never heard of chez before but i think he sounds like almost as much of a pompous ass as M. Night. it's amazing to me when someone so quick to judge others can't see when they share many of those same qualities.


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 5:34pm

    it's amazing to me when someone so quick to judge others can't see when they share many of those same qualities.

    According to recent discoveries in neuroscience, the self-critical part of the brain is in a completely different neural region from the pompous ass part.

    If it makes you feel better, Chez's blog gets only slightly more traffic than dagblog, despite the glowing (and prominently placed) review from Arianna Huffington.


    by Michael Wolraich on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 6:17pm

    He's certainly opinionated, but not really pompous. And he writes well.


    by Donal on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 8:43pm

    I will give you he writes well and is opinionated (opinions i almost universally found myself agreeing with by the way). but i stand by my pompous ass contention as well. (he could be that way because he knows its good for traffic or publicity or whatever, but it's not appealing to me)...

    i just read a few of his posts but these were some of the passages that make me think he's a jerk (he also is insanely defensive, bordering on cruel, when anyone attacks him in the comments section - again could just be his way of generating traffic/interest).

    if he understood anything at all about who he was talking to, he'd be too worried about leaving here on a stretcher to actually be taking this shit up with me.

    I was good at what I did; I had a voice and I wasn't the least bit afraid to use it, consequences be damned -- or not considered at all.

    For 16 years I've been a successful producer and manager of TV news, cranking out creative, occasionally daring content on good days and solid, no-frills material on the days in between. I've won several awards and for the most part can say that I'm proud of what I've done in the business...

    a popular blogger with an audience that was already large and was sure to grow much larger when news of his firing put him in the national spotlight.

    the power that I might wield as an average person with a brain, a computer, and an audience. The mainstream media doesn't believe that new media can embarrass them, hurt them or generally hold them accountable in any way, and they've never been more wrong ... I'm suddenly in a position to do all three, and I know now that this is what I've been working toward the last few years of my career.


    by Deadman on Sun, 01/04/2009 - 12:45am

    I'll second D. Chez seems to have an inflated opinion of himself, though I'm sure that it doesn't approach Shyamalan's. Was the preening self-promotion necessary for the story? A popular blogger with an audience that was already large and was sure to grow much larger when news of his firing put him in the national spotlight? Right. Prepare the national spotlight, folks.


    by Michael Wolraich on Sun, 01/04/2009 - 1:23am

    3) Can anyone look at Mark Wahlberg now and not picture him talking to animals? I never realized how dead-on Andy Samberg's SNL impression of Marky Mark was. "Say hi to your mother for me."

     


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 2:50am

    4) Whom exactly do I ask for the hour and a half of my life back? M. Night (I feel bad asking him since he already wasted two years of his life on this film)? Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, the co-producer and distributor of the film? Time Warner Cable, for making it available on demand? My girlfriend, who OKed the movie? Me, for actually purchasing the film?


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 2:55am

    I'm not sure, but when you figure it out, could you let me know? I'd like to get my 4 minutes and 50 seconds back from the preview you posted.

    by Orlando on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 9:20am

    yeah, i meant to post a warning alongside the video, but i just found m. night's commentary deliciously entertaining. much more entertaining than the actual clip, which believe it or not is not even that good of a proxy in terms of how silly and stupid the movie is (though its a resonable microcosm of the movie's blandness).

    anyway, O, i owe you 4 minutes and 50 seconds of life. I will pay you as soon as I find someone to comp me my hour and a half. sorry, but that's how these things work.


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 5:52pm

    5) Can a movie be so bad it's actually awesome? If this wasn't so boring, it could qualify. What was the best worst movie you've ever seen?


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 2:57am

    Crank. So bad, and yet I'll continue to watch it again and again for the overwhelming entertainment value.


    by Em (not verified) on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 12:50pm

    really? i kind of liked crank ... i mean, it was no fine work of art, and i get nauseous from all those quick cuts but it was kind of a compelling storyline.


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 5:57pm


    by Michael Wolraich on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 2:38pm

    ooooooh, this is a good one, g. wabbits are scawy!!!  it also reminded me of this movie we once accidentally rented as teenagers (it was mistakenly placed in the box of another movie - either that or some punk at blockbuster was having some fun with us) ... but it ended up being so awesomely bad that we rented it again several times. It was the perfect accompaniment to getting high. damn, i'm going to have to try and find someone who remembers the name of that movie.


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 6:05pm

    A mutual friend who occasionally comments as blogation once accidentally returned his bar mitzvah video in place of a rental movie. His mother got a call from their neighbors a few days later. The movie they'd rented was not what they had expected, but they really enjoyed watching the bar mitzvah.


    by Michael Wolraich on Sun, 01/04/2009 - 1:29am

    6) Did someone employed by the New York Times really write that The Happening is a '...divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent, moments of shivery and twitchy suspense and a solid lead performance from Mark Wahlberg."?


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 3:05am

    7,8,9,10) I'm not about to waste ten questions on this thing. But just one more: I mean, really, what the fuck????


    by Deadman on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 3:10am

    Actually The happenings is not a worth watching movie. I'm really sorry but an avid fan of horror movies here, happenings is the most boring and lausiest movie i'd ever watched! 90 minutes of boredom, it doesn't make any trill in my bones even in mah skin. Another crap movie next to rose of death! A big no no movie. sorry just mah opinion.


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 04/29/2009 - 6:15am