TDAOC MNS FTG Watch Y2K6: Alert Status Red: Stop the man before he twists again

Oh no.

I did not think it would come to this, but to this it has come: the implementation of emergency alert protocol TDAOC MNS FTG Watch Y2K6, in which we, like pedestrians drawn to watch the imminent and repeated crashing of fast cars into busses full of nuns, are drawn to watch M. Night Shyamalan (henceforth known as "MNS") aim his movies like full-throttle death-bullet VW Bugs directly at the exposed crotch of our dear American culture. Or something. My brain is quaking with rage and fear as I type these words, and my figurative language creation functions are on overload.

You see, here's the thing. In my previous post, I made an off-hand analogical comment regarding the levels of dismay we would all experience were MNS to release a new movie this year. As if to say that the release of a new MNS movie would make us all more stupid by a factor of six. It was meant in jest and humor, my brain telling me that there was no way MNS would release a new piece of dreck this year, the stench and stink of his most recent effort The Village still virtually clinging to our very pores, as it were.

But it turns out, the joke is on me. H. E. Eigler at Phantom Keyboard alerted me, almost immediately, to the IMDB entry for MNS's latest effort, titled Lady in the Water, due for release...on July 21.

My gasp of shock was only slightly muffled by the exclamation of hope that it had not yet come to pass and might not yet come to pass if I were to leap immediately to the Internet to start a petition beseeching the film studio to keep the damned movie to themselves and never unleash it upon the all too suspecting public, but then I realized that path could eventually require me to secure legal representation, and that just isn't happening because the ad dollars this blog reaps are barely enough to cover my weekly hooker-and-cocaine habit, and if you think I'm giving that habit up to save the world, you have obviously underestimated my commitment to depravity.

Now, see, the obvious problem with MNS is the way his movies fetishize the WHOA TWIST! ending. I mean, I'm slow, if not altogether stupid, and even I get it: hey, the world isn't all it appears to be. Or something like that. Whatever the point is, it's mundane and dumb and it gets laughably boring when it's pounded into your head every other summer.

But what really irks me is that the guy's got potential to not suck. He's got technical film-making chops, as it were. Signs was pretty breathtaking until I thought about it and my brain jumped out of my head to drown itself in my oversized Coke. You know I'm all for good mindless entertainment, but don't leave me feeling insulted if my brain accidentally turns on. There was some camera work and such in The Village that was thrilling. That one long shot of the girl walking across the field, the camera dipping down to the ground and pointing up at her and the sky, the sound going out until we reached the destination? The single take nature of the shot? The mad awesome bomb was dropped. Too bad it wasn't dropped into a good movie.

But then, why that's all nice preamble, the real problem is that I feel compelled to see his movies even though I know they'll make me angry. Let's not kid ourselves: MNS isn't a film-maker, but a vacuum technician. He creates not movies but machines, their sole purpose being to suck money out of my wallet.

Now I'm afraid that MNS has finally made a choice: when it comes time to decide between setting aside the bag of tricks to start making solid, visually thrilling, twist-free films, or to fly off the fucking deep end into the terminal territory of the bat-shit insane, the answer will be the number two of Lady in the Water.

Want to know why?

Of course you do.

Let's take a look at the "plot" blurb for this upcoming movie, as reported by IMDB:

Apartment building superintendent Cleveland Heep (Giamatti) rescues what he thinks is a young woman from the pool he maintains. When he discovers that she is actually a character from a bedtime story who is trying to make the journey back to her home, he works with his tenants to protect his new friend from the creatures that are determined to keep her in our world.

By "Giamatti," they mean, of course, Paul Giamatti, who played Harvey Pekar in the movie American Splendor; Pekar (for those of you who aren't from Cleveland and are therefore free of the inclination to applaud a little bit every time Cleveland is mentioned in any national context whatsoever) being a Cleveland hero, of sorts.

Uhm.

So what he have here, is, the actor in a movie about a character from a story becoming "real" is playing a character named after the home city of the guy that actor portrayed in what may be his most well-known role.

Erm.

You can't see it, right now? But I'm totally slamming my face into the fourth wall.

Repeatedly.

I think we know where this is going.

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Mostly irrelevant full disclosure: one time, after I saw American Splendor, I sat in a west side hipster coffee shop listening to Toby Radloff play Scrabble, which was undoubtedly the single most surreal experience ever. Then a couple weeks after that my girlfriend and I were at the theater to see, I think it was Lost in Translation, and Toby walked into the theater and sat in the seat directly behind mine, making that the undoubtedly second most surreal experience ever.