Friday, July 23, 2010

Dead in the Water

I'm not gonna trash M. Night Shyamalan at length here, but I have to admit the guy's plummeting career trajectory fascinates me like the best (or worst) of celebrity trainwrecks. Has he become the Michael Jackson of filmmaking? It seems like whatever he says or does these days is ammo for derision, though not undeservedly so. His latest blockbuster The Last Airbender, a big-budget, CGI-laden adaptation of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon series, is one of the worst reviewed films of the year, even worse than his last film, The Happening, which was already bloody awful. The steady promise he showed with his earlier work, such as The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, has all but evaporated - check out this graph put together by Marginal Revolution from ratings sourced from Rotten Tomatoes:

It's hard to see his name getting anyone excited anymore. Will "from the director of The Sixth Sense" still put bums on seats? (I doubt anyone will rush out to see Airbender because it's another M. Night movie...)

A couple other related things...

Shyamalan trying to defend his career at a press conference:



Trailer for Devil, an upcoming high concept thriller he's produced:

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