What a twist!

and if churning out movies is all that it takes to be talented, Roger Corman would be the supreme chancellor of Hollywood.

the best response to your argument is this: by almost ANY standards, Shyamalan's movies has been getting progressively worse. each one is a little less than the one previous. Sixth Sense is the best, and the fucking death air is the worst. the only possible exception is The Village, which came in the middle but may be not only his worst, but one of the biggest turds in movie history.

from Roger Ebert's review of The Village:

"Eventually the secret of Those, etc., is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.

And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets."

Shyamalan made a great thriller, but he's been elevated to a position he's never earned. doing everything yourself, which you seem to indicate is inherently proof of real talent, is really just ego and vanity. if you're going to do everything yourself, then you better be Soderbergh, or Kubrick, or Coppola. otherwise, you're just an average filmmaker with no one telling you when your ideas suck.

I will take one hundred Shyamalans over the true hacks like Sommers or McG. They have no style whatsoever. Shyamalan is a gifted director with a great visual look.

I personally like The Village. It takes a lot of balls to pull the rug from under the audience. Everyone is expecting a monster movie and instead get an allegory on violence in America. I will take that everytime over the brain fart that is Transformers 2.

I love the first three-fourths of Signs but it has one of the worst endings in recent memory.

Could be pretty cool.

And was that Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show in the credits? Nice. Had no idea he was in this.

Which reminds me, I still haven;t seen The Happening, will have to give that one a viewing. All I remember from the trailer is Marky Mark doing one of the worst facial expressions in screen history.

So its not out of the question for regular people to see Japan's large eyed characters and wonder if they're supposed to be non-Japanese.

Email me for details:

dannyglovers.dickblood@gmai l.com

I didn't think I'd say it, but on this issue, DGDB is absolutely correct. I can't wait to see what M. Night does with this.

Aang is the fun-loving, 112-year-old protagonist of the series, who is biologically 12 years old, but was frozen in an iceberg with his flying bison, Appa, for 100 years. He is the current incarnation of the Avatar, the spirit of the planet in human form. Aang is a reluctant hero, who would prefer adventure over his job as the Avatar and making friends over fighting the Fire Nation.

-------------------- ---

Ummmmmm yeah. So all those dumb fucks crying the kid needs to be Asian-- shut the fuck up. Its a fanciful world with ambiguous origins. Because they fight in a martial arts style, they MUST be Asian? Well that makes YOU pretty fucking RACIST.

After reading about the world and the character, I don't think it fucking matters. He is an incarnation of the spirit of the planet in human form....I didn't know the spirits of planets were nationality specific.

SO FUCK OFF.

"Still not owning up to your own Ethnic heritage and Gender, huh?"

You are a slimy little prick, aren't you? What the fuck is your point? I want every kid in a film to look just like me? Yeah right. Thats exactly what I want.

Really its as simple as me not being the kinda fucktard that sees an Asian inspired world and an Anime sensibility and natural assumes the actors MUST be Asian. Fuck off with that nonsense. And at the end of the day...who gives a fuck what you think. The films in the can.

DAMN WHITE DEVILS!!

You are hilarious. Keep going.

http://tinyurl.com/lq2rga

I think you're onto something.

Sickening.

And this whole idea that studios don't cast Asian-Americans because they don't make money.....if thats the case, does that mean its a racist agenda? It has nothing to do with the specific ethnicity, it just has to to with the fact that white-bread Brad Pitt-esque leads sell. Don't blame the studio. Blame YOU...the paying customers. If the public demanded films with more diverse leads, and those films became profitable, you can bet fuck thats what the studios would start pumping out.

The only thing missing from this talkback is one of those useless online petitions. Get to work, mazuzu.

That sounds pretty White Vader to me.

Also, while I'm at it... am I correct in judging the Fire Nation to be more Japanese influenced than anything else? Seems odd to want a Korean guy to play Zuko, then, if we're going to nitpick. Wasn't that a criticism of Cho's casting as Sulu? Where's AsimovLives when you need him...

Sam "Gandalf" Jackson: "YEAH HE DESERVES TO DIE, AND I HOPE HE BURNS IN HAYELL!!!"

And Dragonball, come on. If you want to get on a high horse about other anime shows that take place in Japan even though the character designs look like 100% honky cracker white people thats fine but Dragonball, DBZ and DBGT don't take place on our earth, There is only on continent in Dragonball and Goku is an alien. He doesn't have to look asian at all. Granted the original story is based on a Chinese legend the show strayed away from that and stayed away from that early on. You are just projecting your own racial views on these properties.

Also, the whole "His lungs were closed, the poison didn't get in" thing was crap. Asthmatics generally can't breathe OUT; that's why they perform poorly in peak-flow tests. The poison would have gone in and stayed in, most likely. So that's two pieces of nonsense at the climax.

Maybe I'm too harsh, but for me those pretty much ruined the end of the picture.

As far as Aang goes I pointed out that that even though heavily asian influence the characters designs themselves are non race specific. Yes, Aang has black hair but he also has blue eyes. So what would you prefer a white kid that they make look a little more asian or an asian kid they make look more white?

Oh yeah, this movie ROCKS! Dev Patel for BIlbo!

And I actually loved The Village, it's my second favorite film of his after Unbreakable. I even thought LITW was an interesting failure, which is more than I can say for most shit out there. The guy knows how to tell a story and BUILD SUSPENSE, something few directors today have any clue how to do.