[nukkad] Shyamalan shows Signs of greatness

["Amit Arzare" <>]

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Shyamalan shows Signs of greatness

CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2002  7:42:30 PM ]

WASHINGTON: Hailing him as "Hollywood's next great entertainer," the latest
issue of Newsweek magazine has put the Indian-American film-maker Manoj
Night Shyamalan on its cover and suggested he may soon be as big a 'brand'
as Steven Spielberg.

The Pondicherry-born Shyamalan, who is only 28, has just finished making
Signs, yet another supernatural thriller that has become his trademark.
Starring Mel Gibson, Signs is slated to open in the US this coming weekend
and the previews are already suggesting it may be another mega-hit for
Shyamalan.

Shyamalan's previous big films include The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, both
starring Bruce Willis. The Sixth Sense was a monster hit, grossing around
$700 million worldwide and placing it among the top ten grossers of all
time.

Both movies were written and directed by Shyamalan in keeping with his
standard practice of directing his own scripts. He also insists on shooting
his films in Philadelphia, his hometown, far away from the studios of
Hollywood.

Such quirks have not stopped him from becoming Hollywood's highest paid
screenwriter. The record has been burnished with Signs. Disney gave him $5
million to write the movie and $7.5 million to direct it.

Signs revolves around widower priest Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), who has lost
his faith after the agonising death of his wife. Graham, his brother
(Joaquin Phoenix) and his kids (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin) are holed
up in their Pennsylvania farmhouse when crop circles suddenly materialise in
the cornfields, the first episode in what appears to be an alien invasion.
Soon the family dog goes nuts, the baby monitor starts giving odd signals,
and the family chases a man who vanishes into thin air.

But the movie does not follow the heart-stopping suspense thriller route of
The Sixth Sense. Instead, says a separate review in Newsweek, "Shyamalan has
found a spare, taut style that's all his own. Defiantly old-fashioned, he's
come up with something new: horror movies that pull on the heartstring, the
tear-jerker terror flick."

Elsewhere, the magazine compares him to Spielberg, one of Shyamalan's
self-confessed idols. "The scares in Signs call Hitchcock to mind, but
Shyamalan is more akin to the young Spielberg in his careful rippling of the
heartstrings, his deft touch with child actors, his fascination with the
middle-class American family and his desperate desire to keep pleasing the
same demographic over and over: people between the ages of 10 and 100," says
Newsweek.

The story also dwells at some length on Shyamalan's hunger for success and
self-confidence, which often comes across as cockiness. Asked about his
expectations for Signs, Shyamalan says he doesn't care about the box office.
"I care about the connection. I want it to be a phenomenon-a cultural
phenomenon, where the audience feels some connection to this place, these
people and what was being said here. That's Jaws, E.T., The Exorcist."

But the magazine endorses Shyamalan's rush to greatness saying he's
attempting to turn his name into a brand, like Spielberg, "so that on
opening weekend audiences will converge to see not a Mel Gibson or a Bruce
Willis movie, per se, but an M. Night Shyamalan movie with Gibson or Willis
in it."

"Where we're headed is, 'Shyamalan' will open the film," it quotes Marc H.
Glick, the director's lawyer and earliest supporter, as saying.

Still, Signs is up against two typical Hollywood blockbusters Austin Powers
in Goldmember and XXX - which are releasing around the same time for box
office sweepstakes. Among the salutary lessons Shyamalan recalls is how
Unbreakable, which was supposed to be a big hit, was crushed at the box
office by the little-publicised Grinch.


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