Director in the Water

The return of self-aggrandazing auteur M Night Shyamalan is nigh upon us. His fairy tale Lady in the Water with Gwen Stacey Bryce Dallas Howard as a mer-creature of sorts and Paul Giamatti as a super opens a week from today. I don't know how many of you have read this frighteningly ill conceived piece about LitW in EW's latest issue. I've been thinking about it ever since I read it. It's an excerpt from a book on 'the making of.' The problem is this: If you hire someone to write a book about your genius, it's bound to be a comedy even if you, the subject, are a genius. Real books don't have such embarassingly naked PR agendas.

I have contradictory feelings on Shyamalan. I loved The Sixth Sense but found the follow-ups (Unbreakable, Signs, The Village) to be both finely crafted and, well, stupid. For lack of a better word. They all have fine moments but it's almost like his raw filmmaking talent (man can direct a scene) is continually thrown off by questionable/dumb ideas that think themselves brilliant.

Surely by now everyone knows that M Night is a narcissist but what is surprising to me about the whole thing is how he has become the narcissist. He's hotter for Shyamalan than even QT is for Tarantino. Consider: Tarantino (wisely) did not appear in Kill Bill despite having been a blemish in all of his other films. M Night is much easier on the eyes but he still isn't a good actor. But rather than giving up (a la Tarantino) he has apparently written himself a larger world-saving role this time. See what I mean about stupid?

Reverse Shot has some interesting words about this EW debacle and also about the actual film which they call "ineluctably, maddeningly, memorably bizarre", thus raising my interest from none to lots. I'm all for memorably bizzare... even if it involves M Night Shyamalan's insatiable ego.