m night shyamalan
‘Worst People Of 2008′ List Chillingly Accurate
2:44AM Seth | Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! As today is something of a news wasteland, expect lots of electronic stocking stuffers, blog regifting, and other forms of Defamer elfin magic. More »
Mark Wahlberg Talks To Pharmacists About Cough Syrup
6:40AM Seth | Deep gratitude to Videogum for guiding us to this scene from The Happening—M. Night Shyamalan’s surprisingly lucrative eco-thriller, originally pitched to skeptical studio execs as, “A lot like the The Birds, but instead it’s The Trees. Well, there’s birds in the trees, but they aren’t scary. I dunno, maybe they’re already dead. Hello? Are you still with me? What are you scribbling on that notepad? Do you want this or not, because there’s plenty of studios who do.” More »
Fox and Hallmark’s Greeting Card Empire: A Defamer Sneak Peek
9:25AM STV | Variety reports today that 20th Century Fox and Hallmark have reached a landmark licensing agreement granting the greeting card giant exclusive use of the studio’s library. While Hallmark has already issued cards for properties like Napoleon Dynamite and has its eye on major titles including Futurama and The Sound of Music, Defamer wrangled a hold of mockups for Hallmark’s “Turbulence at Fox ‘08″ line — a selection celebrating the beauty and joy of life through Fox’s bumpy year at the box-office. Follow the jump for a glimpse at warm greetings to come by way of Manoj Night Shyamalan, Eddie Murphy, The X-Files and others, and feel free to suggest your own heartfelt pairings as well. More »
Shyamalan’s ‘Night Chronicles’ to Teach Three Young Filmmakers the Art of Critically Reviled Pretentiousness
2:15AM Defamer Hollywood | If it’s true that he who laughs last laughs loudest, then we can hear M. Night Shyamalan this morning cackling all the way from his exurban Philadelphia enclave. Less than two months after his beleaguered The Happening hurdled billboard vandals and epidemic critical loathing on the way to wallet-fattenting coup, Cash-Machine Manoj announced a deal with financiers Media Rights Capital to develop and produce a slate of films through 2011. More »
Accused Rapist Pitches Jail Ordeal as Stephen King-Meets-M. Night Shyamalan
10:40AM Defamer Hollywood | Perhaps to our discredit, we had long ago relegated disgraced fashion designer/tacky Web-site proprietor Anand Jon Alexander to the quiet corners of our minds where accused serial rapists like him (59 counts, at last check) await trial. Sharon Waxman, meanwhile — who extensively interviewed AJ and pored over eight volumes of grand jury transcripts for an article in the new issue of Los Angeles — acknowledges that the testimony of the aspiring models he allegedly assaulted is both “damning” and “extremely weak in places,” implying that Alexander’s case may not be as open-and-closed as we’d suspected once it goes to trial in September. “Anand Jon does not appear to be a nice guy,” she writes. “But that is not a crime in any state.” More »
Is M. Night Shyamalan Our Generation’s Ed Wood?
3:35AM Seth | It’s been two surprisingly brisk years since M. Night Shyamalan unleashed his last utterly unwatchable labour of love upon us. That would be Lady in the Water—a project Disney would successfully argue was legitimate grounds for divorce, and that would ultimately go on to teach Warner Bros. a valuable lesson about never making movies about swimming pool mermaids hunted by weredogs with grass fur, regardless of how compelling the pitch sounded in the room. During that time, the highly self-regarded auteur and sometimes-actor has been toiling on yet another secretive project: The Happening. More »
What’s the Last Thing You’d Say if M. Night Shyamalan Killed You Off?
8:50AM Defamer Hollywood | From last week’s revelations about his new “90-minute paranoia film” The Happening to his latest disclosure to USA Today that the movie is “terrifying,” M. Night Shyamalan is full of surprises for the first time in years, The concept, that is — not necessarily the execution. And as usual, his enticements have us asking all kinds of questions from the womb-like remove of our Manoj-free sanctum: More »
M. Night Shyamalan to Play Himself in Eagerly-Awaited ‘90-Minute Paranoia Movie’
7:20AM Defamer Hollywood | It’s been nearly two years since we last detected the whimperings of M. Night Shyamalan, who followed Lady in the Water (and the pouty studio exile that preceded it) with a quiet retreat to his shrouded, moated enclave in the Pennsylvania wilderness. But the LA Times’s Susan King smoked him out in advance of his return to theatres this summer, reviving the classic Manoj Twist for a readership craving every word: More »
