M. Night Fans » The Sixth Sense

M.Night Shyamalan Interviews

Rohan — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:22:54 +0000

Thanksgiving is over and hope you guys had a good one with your relatives and friends. This weekend I have been searching the net for some important Shyamalan interviews and I selected 3 good ones which are not that long, but they are useful if you are an aspiring writer or director. The first video is from Devil Premiere which we never posted before. And the last 3 videos are 3 part interviews with Rajeev Masand where Shyamalan talks about his personal life a little bit, The Happening, Lady In The Water, The Last Airbender, The Sixth Sense and all other controversial remarks against him. Check them out. They are not new interviews, but I find them interesting. And make sure to post your comments and let us know your thoughts.

Thanks to ChannelApa for the following video.

The following are 3 part interview with Rajeev Masand. Enjoy!

Framed: Unbreakable

Rohan — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:50:50 +0000

The folks from Cinematical runs a column every Thursday called “Framed” to celebrate the artistry of cinema — one frame at a time. Personally, I like the idea and I even love it now since they have “Unbreakable” on their list. Like every other website they commence their article discussing how M.Night Shyamalan was one of the brightest film directors and now he is going down. Hey, at least that’s their opinion and our opinion differs from theirs for it is clearly showing where Shyamalan is heading with his career. Despite the brutality of the critics against “The Last Airbender” the film has earned over $300 million worldwide and ‘Devil’ doing great as well. And, not to forget, Shyamalan’s clash with Smiths for a new project called “One Thousand A.E.”.

Anyways, I can go on, yet at least they have better things to say about the beauty of Unbreakable. And, it’s nice how they have discussed carefully every frame. It’s worth the visit and to read.

Framed: Unbreakable

Shyamalan gave himself permission to do ‘Sixth Sense’

Rohan — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:26:57 +0000

M.Night Shyamalan sat with “American Film Institute” to talk about who gave him the permission to make “The Sixth Sense” and how he dived into filmmaking. The video is posted below and it’s a short clip, yet a important one for the fans, specially for those who are inspiring directors and writers.

The Last Airbender box office update

Rohan — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:23:43 +0000

Critics took their turn bashing M.Night Shyamalan’ s THE LAST AIRBENDER and some even stepped outside of the box to bash M.Night Shyamalan personally. Disrespecting the “The Sixth Sense” “Unbreakable” director and chanted that M.Night Shyamalan’s career is over.

However, reviews are often useless when it comes to the box office, which can disgust critics and make studios sign in relief. Even some poorly reviewed movies are box office hits and can save a franchise. The Last Airbender was opened on the Fourth of July weekend and in spite of review rants the film opened big and Shyamalan laughed heading to the bank.

The Last Airbender was opened in a difficult period. Twilight: Eclipse was destroying all competitions in its first weekend, while Toy Story 3 was still doing big business in its third week. All the awful The Last Airbender review scores may ensured that it would get blown by Eclipse, yet that didn’t meant that the film would be a bomb.

According to Deadline Hollywood, the film opened to $16 millions on Friday July, 2, 2010, behind Eclipse’s third day of $28.2 million. Despite all of The Last Airbender review complaints, the film was built in brand name. M.Night Shyamlan himself is still a brand, despite his declining reputation. In addition, the 3D prices also helped boost the numbers, even though most critics stated that the 3D conversion was terrible.

Let’s not constitute the film a bomb. The Last Airbender earned $20.3 million from 45 territories according to Box Office Mojo. It held steady to a $3 million first week take in China and a $4.3 million debut in Mexico. In two months, The Last Airbender earned $122.2 million overseas for a worldwide (domestic plus foreign) total of $252.8 million.

M.Night Shyamalan always planned to make THE LAST AIRBENDER into a trilogy. Now we are waiting for Paramount to green lit the project with a trilogy.

Shyamalan embraces inner kid

Rohan — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:45:18 +0000

M.Night Shyamalan is known for spine-chilling thrillers with ghoulish final-frame twists like in The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and The Village. But director M Night Shyamalan says he loved getting the chance to be a big kid again when making his latest film ‘extravaganza’ The Last Airbender.

Based on a hit children’s TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender, the film in which the world is at war and its fate lies in the hand of one small boy. ‘I think each artist thinks of themselves at a certain period of their life and a little bit of me perceives me as a ten-year-old a lot,’ Shyamalan tells AAP from his home in the US.

‘You see it, even in my darker pieces – there’s always a perspective from that age group. Whether it’s Unbreakable when he sees his father in a certain way, obviously in The Sixth Sense and also in Signs which tells the kid’s point of view of what’s going on.

‘It’s always feathered in there. ‘The Last Airbender tells the story of a primitive world which is being threatened with extinction by the Fire Nation, who aims to annihilate the more peace-loving nations of Air, Water and Earth.

But then a ‘waterbender’, who is still learning to control her powers, discovers the long-lost Aang – not only the world’s last airbender, but an avatar sent to save the earth.

It was Shyamalan’s own children who introduced him to the captivating TV series which inspired the big-budget, CGI-assisted, 3D film. ‘Usually people are getting stabbed in all of my movies,’ Shyamalan laughs.

‘It was fun to make a movie that the whole family was a part of from beginning to end. ‘(My kids) were hanging out (on set) and they’re friends with the cast and when I come home, the cast is at my house – it was like that kind of atmosphere.

‘It was a very emotional, fun time – kind of being a kid and doing something for the family and families and thinking with a different part of my brain. It was a soul-enriching kind of thing.’ Wrapping the movie and saying goodbye to the young cast was a tough day, Shyamalan says.

‘It’s always emotional at the end of a movie, but that one in particular was hard,’ he says. Shyamalan is hoping to get the green light on a sequel to The Last Airbender, but he doesn’t think his darker film-making days are over. ‘As the kids grow older and become teenagers, I’ll start to make movies for them at that age, and soon they’ll be adults and we’ll be making only thrillers again,’ he laughs.

‘But it’s nice to make movies for your kids while you have kids.’ The director always had it in his mind to create an alternate world on film, but he acknowledges that in transforming the hit TV series for the big screens he is under a lot of pressure from hard-core fans to get it right.

‘They know the width of the arrow on the head and all that stuff,’ he says. But it was a story that should always have been told on a grand scale, he argues.

‘The ideas were so cinematic … it felt like it was almost too big for what it was before,’ he says. Shyamalan says he had always considered CGI effects to be his ‘arch nemesis’, but he embraced them for this film and soon learned to love them.

‘I’m glad I don’t see it as an enemy anymore,’ he says.

‘I’m a technophobe a little bit. I think it’s just my old curmudgeon ways of not wanting to change, more than anything else.

‘But spending all this time working with CGI I’ve really come to love it as an art form … I think I’ve learned a new tool for the belt.’ Shyamalan, who describes himself as a ‘minimalist film maker’ doesn’t envisage a CGI-dominated movie like Transformers on his horizons.

‘I think when I go back to doing other movies I’ll be able to use it as a tool, but it will still have a minimal part of the story-telling process,’ he says.

M. Night Shyamalan: Critics never get me

Rohan — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 04:00:21 +0000

M. Night Shyamalan says he has learned to turn a blind eye to his detractors, particularly the ones across the pond.

“I don’t know what’s going on with me and the critics in the United States. They’ve never got me and it’s getting worse!” said the filmmaker.

Despite high praise for 1999′s The Sixth Sense, which was nominated for six Academy Awards, follow-ups including The Village and Lady In The Water went down like lead balloons.

The writer and director thinks cultural differences may play a part:

“I’ve always had a European sensibility to my movies, so the pacing is always a little bit off for (Americans). It feels a little stilted, they need more electricity.

“I’m very used to getting on a plane from the US having been savaged by them and going to – in this case – Japan next, and then they’re like ‘genius!’, he added.

Poor reviews or not, Shyamalan has already penned the sequel to The Last Airbender and a strong peformance at the US box office means it is likely to be made.

Shyamalan Will Be A Keynote Speaker at the 3D Summit

Rohan — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 01:23:25 +0000

Bob Dowling, President of The Bob Dowling Group, and Unicomm, LLC, a leading event management company, announced today that Writer Director M. Night Shyamalan (The Last Airbender; Sixth Sense) and Chris Cookson, President of Sony Pictures Technologies, will be joining Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, as Keynote Speakers at the 3rd annual 3D Entertainment Summit presented in association with Variety. The two-day conference is scheduled for September 15-16, 2010 at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City, CA.

“Using new creative techniques to tell stories with fierce and brilliant intelligence has been the hallmark of M. Night Shyamalan’s remarkable career,” said Dowling, “and we look forward to his insights into the immersive narrative possibilities of 3D as one of our Keynote Speakers.” M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed the 1999 breakout hit Sixth Sense, which was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay; other notable films include Unbreakable (2001), Signs (2002), The Happening (2008) and the current box office hit, The Last Airbender.

“As President of Sony Pictures Technologies, Chris Cookson’s mandate is to oversee the use of hardware and software in the service of content creation and creators across Sony’s vast entertainment space,” Dowling said. “Few executives can speak more authoritatively than Chris about the critical importance of company-wide integration of technology and creativity to maximize audience response to 3D in all its platforms.”

Visit http://www.3d-summit.com/

Shyamalan ‘not just about gimmicks’

Rohan — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 02:19:40 +0000

Say whatever you want to say or rant about M.Night Shyamalan, but it seems like Jackson Rathbone is standing shoulder to shoulder with M.Night Shyamalan from the beginning and defending the director. Jackson recently had the chance to sit with Digitalspy.com and do some talking.

Jackson Rathbone has said that there is more to M. Night Shyamalan’s work than plot turns and gimmicks. Rathbone also told Digital Spy that his Last Airbender director, whose early films The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable featured twist endings, was “amazing” to work with.
“People say he does twists in all his movies but where really was the twist in Signs?” he said. “It’s kind of hard to say that there’s a gimmick to his work, it’s not that, he tells a story so compelling that you’re on the edge of your seat all the way through the film.”

On Shyamalan’s approach to The Last Airbender, which is based on the popular Nickelodeon children’s TV show, Rathbone said: “What he was able to put into the live-action adaptation was a condensed version of the animated series. It was fun, it was amazing to get to work with a director of Night’s calibre, someone we’ve respected and admired for years now. We’re waiting for his next film to get out and see what he was going to do next.”

Do you agree or disagree with Jackson Rathbone?

M.Night Shyamalan: ‘My Critics Will Never Be Happy’

Rohan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:05:28 +0000

Filmmaker M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN is convinced he’ll never be able to please his critics – because they set impossibly high standards for him after his early career success.

Shyamalan shot to fame after writing and directing 1999 hit thriller The Sixth Sense but his more recent projects have been met with disappointing reviews.

The moviemaker has now compared his career to that of basketball legend Michael Jordan, who sometimes struggled to meet fans’ expectations.

He tells Britain’s Total Film magazine, “Look, I loved Michael Jordan, right? He was my favourite basketball player. When I used to watch him at Madison Square Garden there would be 25,000 people booing every time that he touched the ball, screaming abuse at him. And it was because the entire stadium was there to see him be spectacular. They were like, ‘I don’t want you to disappoint me or hurt me.’

“I’m no Michael Jordan but maybe I get a little of that… Reviews of my movies often spend a lot of the time talking about me, not the movie!”

10 Questions for M. Night Shyamalan

Rohan — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:47:55 +0000

TIME’s “Gilbert Cruz” had the chance to sit with director M.Night Shyamalan one on one as M.Night Shyamalan answered 10 questions from fans around the United States. M.Night talks briefly about race controversy and why he directed The Last Airbender.

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