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The Happening is one of those weird cases where I'm sure that I missed the point of it - My mind simply can't accept that it's supposed to be taken seriously. This is a movie that features Mark Whalberg talking down a psychotic grandmother, a man committing suicide by feeding himself to lions and an action set-piece in which the main characters outrun the wind. I think I need to watch it again.
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Sep 22, 2011 12:02
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Adrianics posted:The Happening is one of those weird cases where I'm sure that I missed the point of it - My mind simply can't accept that it's supposed to be taken seriously. This is a movie that features Mark Whalberg talking down a psychotic grandmother, a man committing suicide by feeding himself to lions and an action set-piece in which the main characters outrun the wind. The entire movie I was honestly and completely convinced there was some imminent plot twist, where the horrible, bizarre acting was going to be explained away by some plot mechanic. That isn't a joke, I didn't even question that maybe the movie was just that lovely, as I sat in the theater having paid $9.50 instead of going to see The Incredible Hulk I literally could not comprehend the alternative on any level. Then the movie ended.
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Sep 22, 2011 14:29
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I've shown "The Happening" to quite a few people with Rifftrax, and they've always asked when the old lady shows up, "Is the twist that she's the one controlling the plants?"
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Sep 22, 2011 17:43
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The Happening is even better because of its twist, who would have expected that Wahlberg's dim-bulb high school science teacher would just accurately guess what was going on?
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Sep 22, 2011 18:06
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:The Happening is even better because of its twist, who would have expected that Wahlberg's dim-bulb high school science teacher would just accurately guess what was going on? For me, the fact that the movie was shot partially at my old middle school makes it even more bizarre. Like Wahlberg just wandered in one day and decided to pretend he was a teacher.
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Sep 22, 2011 18:37
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The Happening is one of the greatest comedies of all time. Every scene just gets funnier and funnier the more you watch it. And Dante from Clerks is in it.
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Sep 22, 2011 18:53
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You know you're in for a treat when you get to John Leguizamo and think "finally, a restrained, understated performance."
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Sep 22, 2011 18:55
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Speaking of M. Night I'm seriously dreading a rewatch of Lady in the Water. M. Night's character is one of the most embarrassing things I've seen in a movie in a long time.
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Sep 22, 2011 19:04
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OldTennisCourt posted:Speaking of M. Night I'm seriously dreading a rewatch of Lady in the Water. M. Night's character is one of the most embarrassing things I've seen in a movie in a long time. I feel bad when I watch that movie, because Paul Giamatti does some really good work in it. I also like the basic idea of the movie...he needed to give it away for a rewrite, find a different director.
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Sep 22, 2011 19:15
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LesterGroans posted:I feel bad when I watch that movie, because Paul Giamatti does some really good work in it. I also like the basic idea of the movie...he needed to give it away for a rewrite, find a different director. The whole movie just felt like he was pissed off while reading a story to his kids. "And then the mean old movie reviewer was gobbled up by the monsters, because he was a jerk and he wrote nasty things about your daddy-I mean the magical writer who is so amazing his work will save all of humanity."
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Sep 22, 2011 19:19
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Whenever I think about The Happening, my mind goes straight to that weird guy halfway through who talks about growing a hotdog farm or something. If he'd wanted to, Shyamalan could have slightly tweaked the script and turned that film into an absurdist parody of horror movies.
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Sep 22, 2011 23:36
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I saw Lady in the Water in theaters when it came out, but for some reason I remember barely anything about it. In fact the only thing I remember is that I thought Bryce Dallas Howard was cute in it. I think my mind did that whole 'block out memories' thing and is protecting me from the movie. e: Also, regarding Shyamalan, I can't stop rewatching The Last Airbender. It's so bad in so many ways that it's fascinating.
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Sep 23, 2011 00:28
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What other directors have gone off in the way M. Night has? Like, they make one movie, get praised all to hell, make another decent one and within 3 movies become loving atrocious? He had such high hopes to live up to and just crashed and burned.
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Sep 23, 2011 01:04
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ComposerGuy posted:I know Cutthroat Island was sooooo 2 days ago but I wanted to chime in and say that it might have one of the biggest gaps between "Badness of Film" and "Greatness of Film Music" ever. Ever see Krull? It's the first and only movie I sought out entirely because of the score.
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Sep 23, 2011 01:14
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OldTennisCourt posted:What other directors have gone off in the way M. Night has? Like, they make one movie, get praised all to hell, make another decent one and within 3 movies become loving atrocious? He had such high hopes to live up to and just crashed and burned. Jan de Bont comes to mind. Say what you will about Speed, it's a really fun, basic movie that does exactly what's expected of it. He's made utter shite since then.
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Sep 23, 2011 01:19
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OldTennisCourt posted:What other directors have gone off in the way M. Night has? Like, they make one movie, get praised all to hell, make another decent one and within 3 movies become loving atrocious? He had such high hopes to live up to and just crashed and burned. It's bizarre because every single one of his movies is somehow worse than the previous. Unbreakable was worse than Sixth Sense, but a fair amount of people liked it. Then Signs came out and was worse than Unbreakable, but there was a minority of people that liked it. Then The Village came out and was worse and a very small minority people liked it. Then Lady in the Water came out and it all went to Hell. It's like his career is some sort of social experiment to see just how bad of a director you have to be before everybody (industry, critics, and moviegoers) says, "ENOUGH ALREADY."
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Sep 23, 2011 01:20
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The Happening just isn't that bad. It's funny as hell. It's shocking when some of these characters show up. Hot dog guy. The old lady "I hear you whispering" speech. It's just full of oddness. Not saying I watch it often or even give a poo poo about it but his characters are pretty silly and memorable. M. Night is just weird because he went from making blockbusters to B-movies within just a few years.
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Sep 23, 2011 01:24
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Crow_Robot posted:
I went to see Inception twice, and both times there were trailers for Devil, and both times when his name came up on screen (yes I know it's not his movie...) people around the theater snickered. I've never seen that kind of reaction before. Also, hhhhhot dogs.
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Sep 23, 2011 01:35
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What baffles me is that he still keeps getting money to make movies that are loving awful and always make their money back and then some. The Last Airbender was universally panned by critics (currently has a staggering 6% rating on RT), but it was a financial success. I suppose a lot of that could be attributed to its ridiculous worldwide marketing budget: IIRC it was about $130M. The entire production itself was $150M. To date it's earned something like $320M worldwide, including home releases. Devil only cost $10M to make and earned something like 5 or 6 times that worldwide. I remember when it was first announced as going into pre-production and it that it was part of some new trilogy he was doing. I don't think that's changed, so he's still got other poo poo in the works. Whether they turn out to be utter garbage or just barely mediocre, it's a safe bet that they'll be financial successes. I just don't get it. EDIT: VVVV Ah, OK. That makes a bit more sense. Always did wonder why there hasn't been any talk of a sequel when it seemed like somewhat of a financial success. Although I have to wonder how it got such a budget in the first place. Did they really expect a movie like that to earn $550-600M worldwide? Horns fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 01:39
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gregday posted:I went to see Inception twice, and both times there were trailers for Devil, and both times when his name came up on screen (yes I know it's not his movie...) people around the theater snickered. I've never seen that kind of reaction before. This was universal. Any showing I went to with that trailer attached got the same reaction. It's almost cosmic. The Last Airbender was simply appalling. I've never seen such flagrant disregard for basic film editing rules (like dont make every high paced action scene a ten minute long unbroken leisurely single shot). mareep fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 01:39
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Horns posted:What baffles me is that he still keeps getting money to make movies that are loving awful and always make their money back and then some. Airbender wasn't a success. It cost 150 million to MAKE, yes, but it cost that much again for marketing. And the overseas gross is misleading because the studio only gets a percentage of that (less than domestic). For Airbender to have been successful, it needed to make around twice it's TOTAL budget (including marketing costs). There's a reason there has been no talk of the 2nd one ever seeing the light of day, and it has zero to do with how panned it was. It's telling that, starting with "The Village", his budgets kept getting smaller and smaller as his returns went down....then suddenly Paramount goes YOU BET WE'LL GIVE YOU 150 MILLION DOLLARS! for god knows what reason. As a ratio, though, his worst flop was Lady in the Water, which didn't even make back it's production budget, even counting in overseas take. ComposerGuy fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 01:48
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Crow_Robot posted:It's bizarre because every single one of his movies is somehow worse than the previous. Unbreakable was worse than Sixth Sense, but a fair amount of people liked it. Then Signs came out and was worse than Unbreakable, but there was a minority of people that liked it. Then The Village came out and was worse and a very small minority people liked it. Then Lady in the Water came out and it all went to Hell. I think I'm going to do The Village soon in this thread. I remember hating it, but I think that was mainly because it had such an awful advertising campaign. It was being billed as a horror film when it's pretty clearly a drama with a few scary parts and even those are just sort of creepy. Though that wouldn't help the atrocious twist.
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Sep 23, 2011 01:52
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There are so many reasons Airbender is amazing, not the least of which is Princess Throbbingmember.
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Sep 23, 2011 02:02
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My god...that's....I don't even know. Airbender is yet another example, by the way, of "Jesus this movie is TERRIBLE but oh my god this score is AMAZING". To the point where when I got the score, I was actually *really* excited to see the film. Thinking "no way Howard wrote all this awesome poo poo for anything less than a passable movie". ...I...I was wrong. Actually, a lot of James Newton Howard's working relationship with M. Night seems to function like that.
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Sep 23, 2011 02:06
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The talk of The Last Airbender's domestic gross got me thinking, so I took a look at boxofficemojo and the week-by-week performance of the movie. It was in theatres for 12 weeks, for anyone curious. In its first week, dated July 2~5, it made $69,315,329 in 3169 theatres. By week 12, its final week, it made $118,105 in 174 theatres. As a comparison, the Dark Knight made $158,411,483 in it's opening weekend during the weekend of July 18~20 2 years prior. On week 12, it made $828,213 in 663 theatres. Its gross wouldn't fall to TLA wk.12 numbers until week 22 and in fact, the film made a resurgence in week 28, over the weekend of January 23~25, around the time when awards season starts.
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Sep 23, 2011 02:25
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Hahahaha. Holy poo poo, that's amazing. Is it just a bad angle or does she also look like a giant dong from the front?
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Sep 23, 2011 02:27
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OldTennisCourt posted:What other directors have gone off in the way M. Night has? Like, they make one movie, get praised all to hell, make another decent one and within 3 movies become loving atrocious? He had such high hopes to live up to and just crashed and burned. *(I really liked Southland Tales  )
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Sep 23, 2011 05:04
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Crow_Robot posted:Then Signs came out and was worse than Unbreakable, but there was a minority of people that liked it. This is a derail, but http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/signs/ http://www.metacritic.com/movie/signs There isn't a minority of people that liked Signs; it was a critical hit and a commercial smash. The people that hate it are just really, really loud.
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Sep 23, 2011 05:09
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Automatic Jack posted:*(I really liked Southland Tales Don't be ashamed. It's one of my favorite movies because of how batshit it is and how off the wall the dialogue is. quote:Did I just see two cars porking each other? quote:You know what, I like to get hosed, I like to get hosed hard. Okay, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I mean, violence is a big problem in our society today and I will not support it. That is the primary reason why I won't do anal. quote:Boxer Santaros: It all hinges on a Top Secret experiment. A young couple comes home from the hospital with a newborn baby. A week goes by and the baby still hasn't produced a bowel movement. I understand what he was going for with this film, but gently caress if I understand how he got there.
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Sep 23, 2011 05:15
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lizardman posted:This is a derail, but It's also the last major hit that Shyamalan has had. I think the Happening is the last movie to have a higher domestic gross than its budget, and even then it barely made more than it cost (not including however much was spent to market that movie).
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Sep 23, 2011 05:36
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^^^ Oh, I'm not arguing against that, just against internet movie geeks trying to claim a consensus on a particular something that, well, wasn't.
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Sep 23, 2011 05:38
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lizardman posted:^^^ Oh, I'm not arguing against that, just against internet movie geeks trying to claim a consensus on a particular something that, well, wasn't. Signs was where the "twist ending" complaints really started, on account of the twist being dumb. Then The Village happened.
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Sep 23, 2011 05:40
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OldTennisCourt posted:The whole movie just felt like he was pissed off while reading a story to his kids. You joke about this but Shyamalan has straight up said in interviews that the plot was based off a bedtime story he'd tell his kids. That's the thing about Shyamalan. Any time you make some kind of hyperbolic joke about his bullshit, it turns out to be actually true. He is two steps ahead of all of us. It's not that he sucks at what he does, it's that he's ridiculously awesome at a completely different game. Also Unbreakable was a drat good movie and his best by a fair margin.
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Sep 23, 2011 05:46
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Robert Denby posted:May I suggest... John Belushi is absolutely amazing in this. I love the gas station scene. One of my favorite things about this movie is the little detail of the fact that Christopher Lee is speaking German and Toshiro Mifune and his crew are speaking Japanese, and they understand each other perfectly throughout the movie.
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Sep 23, 2011 05:51
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The Last Airbender certainly wasn't a flop except in the living up to expectations department. The internet is weird with the perception of Hollywood accounting. If a film crests 320million dollars worldwide then it absolutely counts as a success. How can anyone claim it wasn't a success? How much money did it lose? "foreign doesn't pull as much as domestic" isn't really saying anything unless there's an example. I suspect M Night lobbied very hard to get The Last Airbender. He still thinks he did a good job. Looking at the film, I would have to wonder if he ever actually sat through the whole series prior to starting the project. He just didn't seem to have any love for the characters or any connection with the scenes. I honestly don't know who the fans of that film were though. I know plenty of people that like Signs or The Sixth Sense.
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Sep 23, 2011 05:56
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The Happening was a weird movie experience for me. I didn't look up anything on it before going to see it in theatres. All I heard was that it was universally panned and said to be really stupid. The movie started, all the people started killing themselves and it was genuinely creepy as poo poo. I was floored and thought to myself "what the hell? Everyone is insane, this movie is going to rule." Then the rest of the movie happened and God what a piece of poo poo. Apparently I should watch it again with RiffTrax though.
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Sep 23, 2011 06:03
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The Happening starts really, really well.
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Sep 23, 2011 08:31
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doctor 7 posted:The Happening was a weird movie experience for me. I didn't look up anything on it before going to see it in theatres. All I heard was that it was universally panned and said to be really stupid. I felt exactly the same way about The Village, although that might just be my love of creature horror speaking. I haven't watched a Shyalaman movie since.
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Sep 23, 2011 08:43
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ZombieParts posted:The Last Airbender certainly wasn't a flop except in the living up to expectations department. The internet is weird with the perception of Hollywood accounting. If a film crests 320million dollars worldwide then it absolutely counts as a success. Not if said film's production budget plus marketing costs are too significant a percentage of that 320 million. There is a difference between "success" and "made ends meet", and the difference is a big one. $320 million dollars sounds awesome until you look at how much you sunk into the project. With marketing costs, Airbender ran up around $230-250 million to make. As for the world-wides, the reason you can't count a foreign dollar as much as a domestic one is because films often have different distributors in foreign markets, and those distributors take a hefty cut. Again, though, you don't even have to take my word for it. The ultimate proof will be the fact that the sequel isn't coming. ComposerGuy fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 15:11
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ZombieParts posted:The Last Airbender certainly wasn't a flop except in the living up to expectations department. The internet is weird with the perception of Hollywood accounting. And what happens to that 40%? quote:Consider a typical action movie, such as Disney's Gone in 60 Seconds. Its reported foreign box office was a staggering $129,477,395. Of that sum, Disney, according to the Dec. 31, 2003, participation statement, got $55,979.966, and of that figure, it paid out $37,986,053 in out-of-pocket expenses. Of that, $25.2 went for foreign advertising—including $6.5 million for Japan, $3.1 million for Germany, $2.5 million for Britain, $1.4 million for France, $1.1 million for Australia, $997,000 for Spain, and $915,000 for Italy—and another $5.7 million went for foreign prints, $823,000 to dub and subtitle them, and $455,000 to ship them abroad. On top of that, it had to pay $5 million in foreign taxes, $267,000 for converting currencies, and $122,000 for dues to foreign trade associations. After paying these expenses, Disney was left with $17,993,913, which amounts to about 15 percent of the reported $129,477,395 "box office." frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 15:36
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