Vintage '02

Our "Year of the Month" or, rather, first half of the month, is 2002. We've already talked Frida and Unfaithful , Viola's first bigscreen breakthrough, and Nicole's Best Actress win. We also introduced you to the Smackdown Panelists who'll be talking about the Best Supporting Actress race on June 17th so here's more context for that year in pop culture time...

 

Great Big Box Office Hits:
The leggy sleeper hit My Big Fat Freek Wedding, M Night Shyamalan's alien-invasion movie Signs, and the animated Ice Age were the top three "original" hits. Sequels or franchise launchers, were, as ever in our modern era, the very biggest hits with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and the then-latest Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter installments as the top four titles. The musical adaptation of Chicago was also a smash. And the major Oscar favourite. More on that after the jump... 

Click to read more ...

Showbiz History: Shyamalan Twists and Steppenwolf Alum

10 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...

we just called to say we loved you, Myrna1905 Charismatic Myrna Loy is born in Montana. She'll come to epitomize urbane style and wit at the movies as one half of The Thin Man's glorious marrieds with William Powell. Though she was never Oscar nominated she was given an Honorary Oscar in '91.

1914 Beatrice Straight is born in New York. In her sixties she'll make history by becoming the actor with the least amount of screentime to win an Oscar. She rages through Network (1976) for all of five to six minutes as a betrayed wife, but that was enough...

Click to read more ...

The Decline and Fall of M. Night Shyamalan

Hi, Tim here. This weekend sees the release of After Earth, the latest of 2013’s surprisingly well-stocked slate of post-apocalyptic sci-fi thrillers, starring Will and Jaden Smith. These are all things that are proudly trumpeted by the ad campaign. What is conspicuously not trumpeted, proudly or otherwise, is the identity of the film’s director M. Night Shyamalan, who for the first time since his gigantic 1999 breakthrough The Sixth Sense is not mentioned by name in the ad campaign for his latest feature.

This is, undoubtedly, because Shyamalan been steadily pissing away audience goodwill almost since the moment he started earning it, with each new film he’s made being widely regarded as worse than the one preceding it (a steady downward trend on Metacritic, down with just a single blip up on Rotten Tomatoes). With After Earth appearing to flatten or slightly reverse this trend, it’s as good a time as any to explore the exact shape of Shyamalan’s fall in such a relatively short time, trying to figure out exactly how the man anointed as “The Next Spielberg” at a tender age ended up becoming one of modern cinephilia’s greatest punchlines.

THE SIXTH SENSE (1999): Wunderkind

Click to read more ...