Photo: 20th Century Fox, iStockphoto
The Happening just keeps on disappointing. Yes, M. Night Shyamalan's new movie is bad — but was it really the calamitous disaster that his millions of non-fans were hoping for? We were expecting critics to shred it en masse, but Roger Ebert and Manohla Dargis both let it off the hook (for the most part). And audiences didn't completely hate it either — it made $30 million over the weekend! Most disappointing of all, though, is that the film so easily could've been better (i.e., worse). We procured a copy of The Happening's original screenplay, called The Green Effect (dated January 2007), which — before a rewrite — was rejected by several studios. Astonishingly, without that rewrite, this very bad movie could've been even worse (i.e., worse). After the jump, Vulture mourns The Happening that might've been.
To be fair, sort of, The Green Effect doesn't include The Happening's most guffaw-inducing misstep: a scene in which — honest — a man kills himself by allowing a lion to bite his arms off. He then he walks around bleeding to death, like he's in a slasher movie made by high-school students, while an onlooker shrieks, "What kind of terrorists ARE these?" Apparently, the notes Shyamalan received on The Green Effect included, "Not enough bloodthirsty lions and/or stumps."
More important, though, in The Happening, the idea that malevolent plants can be defeated by true love is subtext. In The Green Effect, it's just … text. At script's climax, Mark Wahlberg's heroic science teacher realizes that the film's evil plants can't kill you with their suicide-causing neurotoxins if they think you're a good person (actual line of dialogue: "This is the final trigger, Alma! They're weeding out our energy! They've become a mood ring. When they see a color they don't like, it sets them off"). In Shyamalan's original vision, the plants kill mean old religious fanatics, but they spare Marky Mark because he and his unfaithful wife (in Effect, the wife's extramarital dalliance seems to include more than just tiramisu) still have a marriage worth saving. It's a twist on the classic: "If you love something, go outside with it into a field of toxic plants. If you survive, then your marriage is sound. If you're driven to abruptly strangle yourself with the garden hose, it never was."
But the best moment in The Green Effect comes in one of its descriptions of action: "The house by the road becomes very quiet as THE TREES WHISPER MISCHIEVOUSLY." You'd think nothing could be more difficult for a director than teaching Mark Wahlberg to act entirely with his right eyebrow, as he does through most of The Happening, but that's because you didn't know Shyamalan could've, instead, ended up standing in a grove of trees trying to explain to them that their whispering wasn't mischievous enough. Sigh. —Linda Holmes
Monday 23 June 2008
Monday 16 June 2008
Donny Osmond
Artist: Donny Osmond
Genre(s):
Pop
Other
Rock
Vocal
Discography:
Love Songs of the 70's
Year: 2007
Tracks: 12
What I Meant to Say
Year: 2004
Tracks: 14
Somewhere In Time: Classic Love
Year: 2002
Tracks: 12
This Is The Moment (CD2)
Year: 2001
Tracks: 6
This Is The Moment (CD1)
Year: 2001
Tracks: 13
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1992 Canadian Cast)
Year: 1994
Tracks: 21
Donny Osmond has had many musical lives. As a very young child, he and his brothers started out as minor singers on The Andy Williams Show. In the late '60s and early '70s, fueled by the success of The Jackson Five, the Osmonds became close teenybopper competitors, with their possess swerve of hits. Donny was the centerpiece, and he competed with Michael Jackson for the hearts (and dollars) of pre-teens all over. Later, he bad a very successful solo life history, and noneffervescent by and by teamed with sister Marie for a stumble TV evince. Nonetheless, it took him until 1989 to going his first gear adult solo track record, and tunes like "Soldier of Love" and "I'm in It for Love" with their George Michael-ish feel brought the onetime adolescent graven image to the public optic once once more. Work on the theatrical stage followed, and although Osmond's recording career again slowed later 1990's Eyes Don't Lie he remained active passim the decade, to the highest degree notably enjoying a five-year run as the lead in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He next made a splash in 1998 with a raw day babble indicate co-hosted by sister Marie; that same year, he besides released a solo holiday album, Christmastime at Home. In 2001 he capitalized on his theatrical life history with his waiver, This is the Moment which featured a modern-day appeal of songs from Broadway.
Friday 6 June 2008
Amy Winehouse - Fascinating Fact 5297
British soul singer AMY WINEHOUSE left home on Thursday (08May08) night wearing a spotty head scarf with her jailed husband BLAKE FIELDER-CIVIL's name emblazoned on it.
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