Posted on 01/27/2023 5:38:22 AM PST by FarCenter
Paris (AFP) – From "The Sixth Sense" to "Old", director M. Night Shyamalan has had a unique string of hits, but these days he works outside the Hollywood studio system, which he says has grown "sick".
Balancing art and commerce has always been the great game of Hollywood and few have played it as well as Shyamalan, who returns to cinemas next week with the apocalyptic horror tale, "Knock at the Cabin".
Still just 52, he has been cranking out box office hits every couple of years since the iconic "The Sixth Sense" in 1999, through "Unbreakable", "Signs", "Split" and many more.
They have been almost entirely original, rarely based on pre-existing franchises or superhero characters that the major studios now rely upon.
Watching how Hollywood has evolved in that time has left him deeply disillusioned.
"If you look at the industry right now... there are movies that feel incestuous, they're just masturbatory... It's just Hollywood talking to themselves," he told AFP.
"And then there are movies where they're saying: the audience is dumb so we're going to take all the soul out and we're just going to do it by numbers," he said.
"These are signs of complete dysfunction."
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
From the article:
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“The industry was different then. It was aimed at — how do you get the best storytellers to tell stories for the widest audience? That’s not the case now,” Shyamalan said.
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My take is that he thinks he left Hollywood, but he’s still quite caught up in it. His movie has two gay married men as the main characters. Oh that’s so very appealing to me. (/sarc) I wonder if it will be the blockbuster hit he’s hoping for. It could be, because our country has really lost its way.
I know he’s considered to be a brilliant man. Perhaps so. I think he’s twisted.
Me either.
show business kids
Making movies of themselves
You know they don’t give a f***
About anybody else
Hits?
The "s" is in the wrong place.
The last good movie was Patton (1970).
Split also was “something else”, I’ll tell you.
The lead actor, can’t remember his name, put in one hell of a performance. Amazing, the way he shifted between multiple personalities, one more frightening/petrifying than the next.
Anybody remember how bad “The Last Airbender” was? That movie was just mediocre.
I mean, “After Earth” was just a mistake of a movie.
Some of his flicks work, some don’t. But he’s an original. And always sets his films in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.
That train left the station a long time ago.
The Village was the last movie of his that I saw. I felt like I was ripped off by that movie because the trailers made it look like something it was not. I was seriously thinking about going to the box office and demanding my money back. I’ll never go to another one of his movies after that.
Poonjab is just pissed people quit buying his formula, which stunk from the get-go. The only time he's ever been honest is when he got punched down (not down, punched out) by single-handedly strangling the potential Airbender franchise.
"There has always been this inexorable pull to join the group, a constant seduction in the form of whatever you want to tally, in the form of money, or safety, ease, not getting criticized. I did these movies, and I rightfully got crushed, because they rightfully said, 'You don't believe in yourself, you don't believe in your own voice, and you don't believe in your values."
His movies are always very intriguing
Not a Bollywood type at all
The Sixth Sense will always be a classic
100% agree with you. His movies are far superior to Bollywood trash.
He’s right. I tried to watch Jurassic Park World Domination. Man was it bad. Every stupid eco-trope shoehorned in at a rapid pace. Plus the usual “corporations are evil” yada yada yada.
But when there’s this teenaged girl playing by a cabin in the woods and she sees a juvenile velociraptor. Does she do what any reasonably intelligent person would do and beat feet back into the cabin and grab the BAR? No. She walks up to it to try to make friends with it! Well that was enough for me. What ridiculous garbage.
Someone told me it ended up feeling a documentary on Covid times
I am absolutely *NOT* going to watch a show that normalizes two f@ggots and their adopted little girl who checks the "Asian" box.
This was a bone head move that only someone in that sewer would even think of doing.
More people are watching movies on their streaming TV than going to the movies.
There is a potential market for a streaming service that offers non-Woke movies with a good script and acting.
His sixth sense was the last flick of his that I saw.
why? Oddly, I came out feeling entirely alien. like I had been shifted off center.
psychologically very unpleasant.
what’s more, I don’t think that the guy intended the effect that I felt.
byo of comparison I also came out of pandora the way of water -—....slightly changed. but it was not in a strange or alien way. rather I was moved in a direction I thought was roughly right.
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