With the eminent release of M. Night Shyamalan's Lady In The Water this Friday, the Night Hype machine has roared to life. We read last week the excerpt from Michael Bamberger's book in Entertainment Weekly about the fraught making of this new film (Disney doesn't understand the genius of Night! Bad Disney, bad!) and more details about the super-secretive process ze auteur insists upon. Then today we caught Night's interview on the Today show and read the Caryn James piece in the New York Times. Over saturation alert!
There's just something icky about a still relatively young, working director so easily comparing his up coming fantasy tale to E.T.. Let others proclaim your genius after you've built up a considerable body of work. Toil quietly, make good movies, tell stories that matter to you--that seems to be the best path towards lasting cinematic importance. Cinecultist enjoyed The Sixth Sense because there was some buzz around this creative storytelling and suspense but there wasn't this overblown cult of personality around the director. Besides, no film critic is going to like seeing themselves depicted by a cranky-pants Bob Balaban, who plays a film critic character in Lady. You "kid because you love" Night, as you said on TV this morning? After that passive aggressive dig, critical consensus may really be showing Night who's the big bad wolf.
Posted by karen at July 17, 2006 11:10 AM