M. Night Fans » The Village

‘The Village’ is not a bad film.

Rohan — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 05:02:52 +0000

Did the sun rise from the east or the west today? – Found an interesting article over at Joblo.com. They run a column known as The Black Sheep featuring different takes on films. This time they are taking on The village. Here is their column. Reason it’s interesting, for the majority of the critics bashed Shyamalan’s film. I think this is the film after they all started saying that Shyamalan has lost the touch while in my opinion The Village is one of Shyamalan’s beautiful films. The score, the story, I can go on, but that’s my opinion, but make sure to check out their take on the film. I think they deserve a thank you. And, it looks like we will have a good word about Lady In The Water as well in the future.

M. Night created an environment based on fear and tradition that seems both realistic and terrifying (well, to a point. Not really scary but more eerie). Creating a near alternative world (for three quarters of the movie at least) where monsters ruled the woods and humans lived in fear. Where colors mean something more than a color scheme.

Joblo’s – The Black Sheep

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 answers back to a reporter!

Rohan — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 01:23:28 +0000

“I think if I thought like you I’d kill myself. Everything you said is the opposite of my instinct as an artist. The way you just thought, I literally would kill myself,” Shyamalan said. And that’s just the start of a near 3 minute answer. – Watch the rest of the press conference below.

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.

Composer James Newton Howard All Access Interview

Specter — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:24:33 +0000

He’s been the primary composer on all of M. Night’s films starting with The Sixth Sense. Currently writing the music for The Last Airbender, composer James Newton Howard invites you into his studio for front row access of his Yamaha photo shoot. Learn what inspires him when scoring such blockbusters as The Sixth Sense, and his process for scoring films like Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water and more, while working with Night.

Blast from the Past – M. Night Interview from 2004

BenKim — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:39:10 +0000

Since we’re all twiddling our thumbs and waiting ever so patiently for a teaser trailer for The Happening, let’s take a look back at a fun and energetic take on an interview that M. Night did back in 2004 when he was making the rounds for The Village.

For a close look at what drives our favorite director, why he chooses to act in his films, his approach to writing, and how he deals with anything that he is afraid of, check out the following interview:

M. Night Shyamalan Interview from 2004

Couple provides movie props

Specter — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:25:12 +0000

Another antique shop has provided props for The Happening, they also provided some for The Village a few years ago. Here’s the story from NJ.com:

A local antiques stores that has provided furniture to decorate the sets of director M. Night Shyamalan’s popular movies is helping to decorate the set for his current film in the works, “The Happening.”Suzanne and Michael Cooke, owners of Royal Port Antiques located at 13 Market St., started working with set decorators about 10 years ago when they owned two shops,King’s Row and Queen’s Row Antiques in Mullica Hill.

The Cookes, who opened Royal Port Antiques here in the fall of 2004, are continuing to furnish pieces needed for period films.

“We helped furnish The Village’ and sold them pieces and rented them pieces,” said Suzanne Cooke.”The pieces that were used were mostly early American they used baskets, a spinning wheel, a pie safe-cover which was used for food storage and dry sinks.”

The Cookes have also sold plenty of set pieces to the set decorators for Shyamalan’s “The Happening,”which is being filmed in Philadelphia by 20th Century Fox.The movie stars Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo. It is scheduled to open next summer.

“Set designers have made about three trips for this movie and buying a lot more set pieces like rugs, jars and things to outfit a home. They have certain buildings they need furnished,” said Suzanne Cooke.

“The Northeast of the United States is set in a horrific journey of survival and the rest of the world listens and watches helplessly as the answers are revealed,” said Christine Wick, assistant set decorator for “The Happening.”

Wick, who is originally from Philadelphia, has been shopping with the Cookes for many years, going back to the 90s. For this movie, a farmhouse is featured that has been in the family for a long time.

“We have bought beds, chairs, fireplace mantles and old tools from the Cookes. They have a (large) selection of things across the board.”

Thanks again to Ben Kim for the link to nj.com!

Bryce Weds!

Specter — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 01:35:44 +0000

The Village star Bryce Dallas Howard has wed her longtime boyfriend in Connecticut. Howard, who is the daughter of director Ron Howard, married her boyfriend of more than five years on June 17, according to the American edition of OK! magazine.

Congratulations, Bryce, from all of your fans here at MNightFans.com!

The truth and consequences of being Bryce Dallas Howard

Specter — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 19:52:01 +0000

It’s hard to believe Bryce Dallas Howard’s soft-quoted claim that when she was a kid growing up in Greenwich, Conn., she didn’t know her dad was famous. Her dad is, of course, the beloved and very famous Opie-grown-into-acclaimed-director Ron Howard. Plus, her mother is the accomplished actress and writer, Cheryl Howard, and her godfather is none other than the one-and-only Fonz, Henry Winkler.

With that lineage and its inherent insider connections – and the fact that she’s been on Dad’s movie sets observing and acting since she was 7-years-old – comes exposure to celebrity and opportunity few young actresses can imagine. Or, if they can, it’s probably with extreme envy. But Howard says she was sheltered from Hollywood – the fame and fortune of it all – by parents who wanted her and her three younger siblings to grow up with decent values and their own self-defined life goals.

“I didn’t really connect with the industry until I was in my teens,” says Howard. If that’s true, she reacted like most kids who are told not to do something: once she had a chance, she did exactly the opposite. At age 15 she attended Stage door Manor, a fairly celeb-conscious summer-theater camp whose alumni include Bryce, Natalie Portman, Robert Downey, Jr., Zach Braff and others. You can’t become more of an immediate insider than that. But despite these orchestrated steps, Bryce continues to claim her role as reluctant actress.

“When I was growing up, everyone seemed to assume I would become an actress or choose some other career that exercised my creativity and imagination – not so much because the entertainment industry was accessible to me, but because my imagination has so dominated my life,” she says. “But I was so frustrated by everyone’s assumptions about me and what I’d do, I rebelled against them and wanted to be a lawyer or forensic anthropologist.”

Of course, that never happened. Instead,Howard enrolled in NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts undergrad acting program, which assigned her to study at the legendary Stella Adler Conservatory.

The acting BA never happened, either. After finishing the third year of the four-year program, Howard left Tisch to pursue the career everyone had always assumed she’d follow.

[Read the rest at NY Press ]

Shyamalan Found Dallas Howard on Stage in New York

Specter — Fri, 26 May 2006 06:34:02 +0000

M. Night Shyamalan had been looking for the perfect young woman to play the spirited blind heroine of his creepy fable “The Village.” Attending the theater one night in New York, Shyamalan found her – Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of filmmaker Ron Howard , himself once the fresh-faced child star of “The Music Man”and “The Andy Griffith Show.”

“For me, it was the moment I saw her on stage. I was just.. That‘s the girl,‘” said Shyamalan, who also cast Howard in his upcoming summer film “Lady in the Water.” “I actually believe she‘s a leading lady,which is a rare thing in this day and age. She‘s an old-school star,like the ‘20s, back when the big stars were women. Lillian Gish. She‘s that.”

[From the article: Hollywood Casts a New Face on Superman]

M. Night Fans » The Village

‘The Village’ is not a bad film.

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