• Why doesn’t anyone care about M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening? iO9’s Graeme McMillan has a theory: “The trailer gives you absolutely no idea what the movie is about, apart from people dying and Mark Wahlberg looking confused. People probably thought that it’s some kind of big-budget sequel to A&E’s turgid Andromeda Strain remake.”
• Paul Scheer’s first paid job as an actor was in The Onion: The Movie. “I shot it about 6 years ago, I’ve never seen it, nor did I ever see a script for the entire film (just my scene) but after reading this quote from the Washington Post, I’m intrigued…” We assume he was as “intrigued” as us by the part about the film co-starring “Kevin Federline, who — oh irony of ironies! — appears as a dancer in a music video that satirizes soon-to-be-wife Spears.”
• Jeff Wells takes a look at a piece by Gregg Goldstein on Charlie Kaufmann’s Synecdoche, New York. “The title of Goldstein’s piece is ‘Synecdoche could improve with edit’; the subhead is ‘Hypnotic film may undergo further cuts.’ The Hollywood Elsewhere response: ‘No shit?’”

I hate twist endings, especially those in the films of M. Night Shyamalan. Maybe it’s because I was told the twist of The Sixth Sense prior to seeing it and haven’t been able to appreciate the filmmaker ever since. It’s not so much that I believe films shouldn’t have twist endings, it’s that I believe films that have twist endings should be enjoyable even when you know the secret (Psycho is still great after a thousand viewings, for example). The only one of Shyamalan’s movies to hold up even with the spoilers revealed is Unbreakable.

So, I had no problem reading about the big secret of Shyamalan’s latest, The Happening. An early review of a rough cut of the thriller has shown up on Collider, and in addition to claiming the thing is “a terrible, terrible movie,” and that, “Mark Wahlberg might very well give the worst performance I’ve ever seen in anything,” the critic includes a complete plot synopsis, including the big revelation of what is causing people to suddenly kill themselves (surely you’ve seen the trailer).

I won’t write out the spoiler here (but here’s a hint: the film has something in common with both The Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter), but you’re welcome to head over to Collider (or Vulture blog) to ruin it for yourself.

Maybe I read too much Curbed, but it seems we’ve been having a lot of construction accidents in New York City lately (actually, the Daily News has also taken notice). So, while watching the new teaser trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, I couldn’t help but think about last Wednesday’s tragedy in Brooklyn involving a man falling 13 stories to his death. The trailer, which features construction workers throwing themselves off a site due to some strange “happening” that causes people to suddenly commit suicide, may hit too close to home for other people, too. A few blogs and forums have noted the similarity to the images of airborne jumpers/fallers from the World Trade Center on 9/11 (this wouldn’t be the first time Shyamalan made a 9/11 metaphor).

Now, I’m not the kind of guy to normally get sensitive about trailers unintentionally evoking tragedy (I thought it was unnecessary for trailers for The Core to be pulled following the Columbia disaster, but I guess I’m heartless). But this one hit me differently. Maybe it’s because these accidents are more of an ongoing/continuing problem, and certainly I’m also letting my bias against most NYC real estate developers get me heated up. However, I don’t think the trailer should be pulled — no, I’d rather it be seen by enough locals who might also relate the imagery to the tragedies.

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Honestly, I didn’t want to write anything about the ending of There Will Be Blood until the film is in theaters. The holidays are tough enough–I really, really don’t need the spoiler brigade on my ass to add to it. But this post by Craig Kennedy reminded me of a conversation I had earlier today with Paul and Kevin, and I have to get the thought out before it goes away. Noting that P.T. Anderson’s film currently carries a 100% Fresh rating amongst Cream of the Crop critics on Rotten Tomatoes, Craig writes:

I’m only skimming reviews until I finish my own, but one theme keeps popping up in review after review: On the surface, There Will Be Blood is unlike anything Anderson has done before…It’s like watching a runner sprinting at the limit of his ability when, just before the finish line, he kicks into another gear you didn’t even know he had and he surges ahead of the pack. It’s exhilarating.

It’s true that Anderson’s previous films were essentially ensemble pieces, which There Will Be Blood is not. And as a director, Anderson seems to have matured, in that he seems less interested than ever in showing off. But “unlike anything Anderson has done before”? I don’t think that’s true at all.

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• Lions For Lambs is, according to Dade Hayes, a “remarkably strident political work that takes dead aim at the Bush White House and assails post-9/11 foreign policy.” It’s also the first project to see release from the Tom Cruise-controlled United Artists, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Cruise’s comeback is riding on its success. And yet, it seems as though Cruise the producer hasn’t given Cruise the star (who plays a right-wing senator in Lambs) talking points on how to package his own political views in relation to the film.
• Ryan Gosling gained 20 pounds and grew a beard for the job, and yet, a day before shooting was to begin, he was fired from Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones and replaced with Mark Wahlberg. Who wants to put money on what “creative differences” actually means in this case?
• Graphic novel adaptation 30 Days of Night barely squeaked past Why Did I Get Married? at the box office this weekend, earning $16 million to Tyler Perry’s $12 million. Michael Clayton, which has already been written off as a failure by some Clooney haters, held on to the fourth place slot for the second week in a row. Star-studded Oscar bait continued to bomb pretty hard: Rendition opened wide in ninth place, and Reservation Road managed just $2,630 per screen in limited release.

Hopwood DePree, screenwriter and co-founder for the Waterfront Film Festival, wraps up Sundance. Paul, Dave and Kevin debate questions like, who is The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? How do they pick a winner? Are losers chosen so they make better films? What is up with Dreamgirls among other bizarre anomalies of the 2007 Oscars?

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