avatar:the last airbender is pretty cool for nickleodeon pseudo-anime

Signs had a lot of decent moments, but they're easy to forget because of the ending. I love the hell out of Unbreakable. After that... I haven't seen.

This was way better than the reviews let on - in retrospect it feels like a bunch of people were just waiting for something to jump on. It wouldn't really appeal to you guys, but my wife and son liked it pretty well. It was more watchable than Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.

Scattered thoughts:

It did start off really, really bad at the beginning, but things picked up.
There was very little humor, compared to the show. My wife's one complaint was that it was too serious.
There was one scene where the special effects looked especially crappy. Like, you could see where it was supposed to be 3D (if we had bought tickets to the 3D show, which we didn't).

Basically, most of y'all probably just want to watch the TV show. If you haven't seen it, you really really should. This movie would be a terrible introduction to the show. But if you have a young kid, go take em to an early-bird or a matinee. It'll be fun.

We are hosting a college friend who is a huge fan of the show and we are taking her to this later today. Eek.

I'm actually surprised now at Ebert's review, because he is usually more in tune with the intended audience of a movie. This is a little kids movie. It could have been a Star Wars or LOTR-style epic, but it's not. But that's what the TV show is. I'd get excited for a sequel though.

"Some of the situations and lines in that movie are just too hilarious and loopy to be sincere attempts at making a thriller."

There are lines/situations like this in pretty much every movie of his since sixth sense. I don't think it's insincere so much as his goals are as much outside of thriller-making as david lynch's.
if i were his agent, i'd make him do a low-budget zero-curveball movie like Elephant Man or the Straight Story to prove that he's got the chops, not make another Dune, which is apparently where airbender fits into the M.Night/Lynch trajectory.

Not buying the lynch comparison as a get out of jail free card.

well, lynch shouldn't get a pass either, but people more or less have settled on evaluating him outside of conventional criteria of good/bad, so all's i'm asking is my client get the same benefit.

and as dune was thoroughly savaged, it's still open season on airbender.

Dune is great

It could have been a Star Wars or LOTR-style epic, but it's not.

Nickelodeon just aired a special called "The Last Airbender Revealed" which must have been whipped up over the weekend as damage control. He addresses a few concerns:

1.) the lack of humor is attributed to "the movie just wanted to be more serious."
2.) he changed the pronounciation of the character's names to make them more accurately Asian, which, okay, I'll give him that.
3.) the kyoshi warriors were cut because apparently the scenes with them were too good and would have overshadowed the rest of the film.

Rolling my damn eyes at that last one.

well, lynch shouldn't get a pass either, but people more or less have settled on evaluating him outside of conventional criteria of good/bad,
― Philip Nunez, Friday, July 2, 2010 6:36 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Sugge

no they haven't.

I'm like the only person on earth who liked "Signs"

I really liked it, especially that you don't really see the aliens close-up, and most especially at the beginning where they are just finding out about the invasion through TV footage and stuff. Though yeah why would aliens who can be killed by water would land on the 1 planet that is covered in it?

I liked Signs. It was a refreshingly minimalist, old-fashioned sort of alien invasion flick. The ending was beyond dopey though.

Mr. Shyamalan's fondness for shallow-focus techniques, with a figure in the foreground presented with sharp clarity against a blurred background, is completely out of place in the deep-focus world of modern 3-D.

I've spent a good deal reading up on 3D stereoscopic filmmaking theory and deep-focus is one of the biggest contributing factors leading to the '3d headache' phenomenon because it is not the natural way we perceive the world. When you look at the world daily, you usually focus on one object or area in the field of view at a time.

Signs was the last time Mel Gibson's xenophobia was applied appropriately.

how does he keep getting opportunities? the sixth sense came out over a decade ago.

many google hits for "Airbender and worst movie ever"

x-post

Uh...Signs was a huge blockbuster hit, and his other movies have mostly done respectable business. That's usually reason enough for people to keep working in Hollywood.

xpost: trust me - it's very hyperbolic.

didn't know signs was a blockbuster hit

yeah, did like $200 million in the USA

Just saying, he had a few hits after Sixth Sense which is why he's still around.

This was kind of boring. Most of the acting was terrible, but large chunks of the badness seemed rather clearly to be directorial decisions (Dev Patel's wholly inappropriate emotional outbursts up until the last 3rd of the movie, for example).

The kid who plays Aang is terrible. Like, oh my GAWD terrible. Waterbender girl wasn't much better.

Dude's decline is so steady

http://i46.tinypic.com/2m2c8z5.png

IMDB ratings

shouldve got a white director

the thing that bugs me the most about this guy is when he has to write stuff like comic book dialogue or newscaster announcements or official proclamations and it ends up sounding like something a 7-year-old would write.

does that make sesne / has anyone else noticed this

Yeah, I recall his movies having some really, really embarrassing dialogue but it's been so long since I've seen anything.

the thing that bugs me the most about this guy is when he has to write stuff like comic book dialogue or newscaster announcements or official proclamations and it ends up sounding like something a 7-year-old would write.

"There appears to be an event happening"

these are the first lines of "the happening":

Woman Reading on Bench with Hair Pin: I forgot where I am.
Woman Reading on Bench: You're at the place where the killers meet to decide what to do with the crippled girl.

first of all who the fuck responds to "I forgot where I am" with anything other than a non-committal noise meant to indicate "oh that's too bad, don't know what you want me to do about it though."

second of all how the fuck do you know where someone else is in a book they're reading unless you're doing, like, synchronized reading.

Meanwhile...

Paramount keeps revising newwcomer The Last Airbender's grosses upwards because of its better-than-expected performance at the domestic box office. M Night Shyamalan's 3D epic opened to $16M Thursday from 3,169 theaters, including the $3 million from its midnight shows, and added another $16.6M Friday. But Saturday's take went down to $14.5M. Helped by higher 3D ticket prices, the pic based on the Nickelodeon animated TV series should be on its way to $40.6M for the 3-day weekend, $53.2M for the 4-day holiday and a 5-day cume of $70.5M by end of Monday and definitely 2nd place.

upwardly gross

The inevitable sequel could be even worse, and would keep the losing streak alive.

the twist is HE CAN BEND BOX OFFICES

$$$

So is "The Happening" really really bad? Like Bad Movie bad? Cos Im kinda bored today and wouldnt mind seeing a really bad, silly movie...

horrendous in a profoundly silly way

Oh yes. xp

The Happening is absolutely must see.

its really sort of unbelievable

it's a happening

this movie wasn't nearly as bad as i expected. dropping the kyoshi warriors is going to fuck up some really important plot points in book 2, if it gets made though. slumdog millionaire was good as zuko. shyamalan's best movie by a bazillion miles. he changed the climactic ending and GASP i actually liked it.

still not as good as the worst episode of the tv show though (which was 'the beach' in season 3)

also kinda shocked that a few scenes from the series were recreated exactly in the film ("he was earthbending rocks at us...it really hurt").

Well done there, M. Night:

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/49028608.html

Inevitable:

http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/last-airbender

LOL @ the foot massage reveal

"Do not worry about the moon's power, General."

^^^I quit watching the the rifftrax of this after Aasif's character said this line. IMO it can't be topped so why keep going? Plus it was making me fall asleep at 6:30 p.m.