Sunday, August 06, 2006

What do M. Night Shyamalan + Trump have in common?


(Update on the Trump building.)
Apparently, they are both quite full of themselves.
At least - that seems to be the complaint about Shyamalan and part of why his new movie, Lady in the Water stinks. I saw the movie this weekend. It was really not what I expected, but I really enjoyed it. It was more of a fairy tale than a horror movie - which is what I thought it would be based on the previews. It was a story about a journey and finding your calling in life, yet managed to be not cheesy. The movie didn't follow the typical formula that other movies do (meet the characters, conflict, some dangerous chase, resolution of the problem and hero/ine prevails), and I really appreciated that. One note: I agree that it was pretty arrogant to put himself in the movie, especially as a character who is supposedly critical to the world and subsequent political change. Overall, though, is a character driven story and, despite complaints that there were too many characters, they were realistic and enjoyable.
I did see some themes repeated from some of this other films that Shyamalan seems to be fascinated with - his main character is usually a broken man because of a past tragedy involving his family, water as significant to health, and wolves must be really scary to him. All in all, I really enjoyed it and thought it was a good story.

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