Over the weekend I saw the trailer for Devil in a theater for the second time, and for the second time, the crowd laughed and jeered during the “from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan” title card.  Point being, his last few movies have sucked, and there’s no need to pile on.  But it seems every day there’s a new story about Shyamalan responding to “his critics” (i.e., everybody).  Is that because he won’t shut up and just go away for a while?  Or is it because the studio is making the poor bastard get out there and promote Last Airbender in foreign markets to earn back the budget, leaving him to face adversarial journalists everywhere he goes, even though he and everyone else involved knows the movie is a turd and he’d rather just stay home?  I don’t know.  But I know quotes like these aren’t helping:

“I don’t know what’s going on with me and the critics in the United States. They’ve never got me and it’s getting worse!” said the filmmaker.

“I’ve always had a European sensibility to my movies, so the pacing is always a little bit off for (Americans). It feels a little stilted, they need more electricity.”

“I’m very used to getting on a plane from the US having been savaged by them and going to – in this case – Japan next, and then they’re like ‘genius!’, he added. [ITN]

Oh, you didn’t like it?  You probably just didn’t get it.  Have you ever lived in Europe?  No?  Well there’s your problem.  If you’d been to Europe, you’d probably love it.  Expository dialog is a delicacy over there.

I think my problem is that I didn’t see Eat, Pray, Love BEFORE The Last Airbender.  All that privilege and world travel probably would’ve helped put things in perspective.  They should do a co-branding push.  My aunt saw Eat, Pray Love first, and when she saw Airbender a few days later, she said loved it.  During the closing credits, she queefed so hard it blew popcorn on the people in front of her.  True story.

M. Night Shyamalan was at a press conference for The Last Airbender in Mexico City recently, where, once again, a reporter dared to raise the subject of Manny’s bad reviews.  Here’s what she said:

“You had a very strong start of your career with The Sixth Sense,” asked a brave reporter in an exchange captured by TwilightFeverVIP. “Your movies have been very personal. However, the audience has lost its faith in your work, with Lady in the Water and many of your more recent productions. Airbender feels like you want to captivate the audiences again by becoming more commercial. Am I right?”

I’m a little torn on the A-holeyness of questions like these.  I realize his bad reviews are kind of the Ganesh in the room at this point, and although I think a good director would be able to address the subject of his own negative reviews, questions that feel like an attack are generally only met with defensiveness, which usually isn’t that enlightening or interesting.  Plus, you never want to validate Manny’s “Critics are meanies!” stance from Lady in the Water, because that movie was terrible.  Anyway, here’s some of his response:

“I think if I thought like you I’d kill myself,” he said.

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Back by popular demand, it’s the FilmDrunk Frotcast Episode 4. I don’t want to oversell it, but I think this is easily our best episode to date, driven largely by this week’s guest, former porn camera man and comedian extraordinaire Joe King.  Again, I don’t want to oversell it, but I thought his first-hand stories from the shady world of low-budget pornography, not to mention his idea for “P*ssy Ninjas,” were pretty epic.  Interview starts at 31:15 of the Frotcast.

Other topics include (along with my panel Brendan {not the WWTDD one}, Ben, & Bret):

• Singing karaoke with my dad (yeah, weird) and the crowd from the bar in Star Wars, and the weird hippie who tried to sell me baby hats
  
• Pooping my pants on Tuesday and how that made me feel
• Why Louie is an awesome show
• The Lindsay Lohan case: could we sentence her to do porn?
• More Kafka references
• Ben’s new biggest fan on iTunes, who called him “an ear-raping gay tyrant.”
• The Joe King porn interview (yes, there was a “friendly fire” incident)
• The Last Airbender, and why it is the most pointless waste of time in history
• Wrap it up with a little MMA talk.

I apologize if we went a little scat and got a bit graphic in this one, but hey, we were talking about pooping your pants and porn, after all.  Enjoy, and please, tell your friends.

Download (or stream) Here.

Player here.

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*There’s a buzzing sound during the first part of the Joe King interview, which I apologize for, but it does go away after a few minutes

In a surprise to no one, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse grabbed the top spot at the box office like it was the last piece of cake this weekend, earning $69 million.  That was enough for the third highest Independence Day weekend opening (behind Spider-Man 2 and Transformers), and the seventh highest five-day opening, with $161 million.  Long story short, it’s doing about as well as everyone expected with few surprises either way.

The Last Airbender managed to earn $40.7 million, despite some of the worst reviews I’ve ever seen, and actually outgrossed Prince of Persia‘s four-day star by 50 percent.  I can only hope this increases the possibility that Shyamalan will eventually have to face an angry mob.

Elsewhere, there weren’t too many surprises.  Knight and Day reached $45 million ($70 million worldwide), which doesn’t sound too bad, but it also has a listed production budget (not including marketing) of $117 million.  It’d be nice if the lesson they took from this flop was that maybe making a movie that looks like 10 movies we’ve already seen isn’t the “safe bet” they always thought.  But let’s be serious, the lesson they take will probably be “CAMERON DIAZ’S HEAD SHOULD HAVE BEEN BIGGER ON THE POSTER.  PEOPLE MUST NOT HAVE KNOWN BIG STARS WERE IN THIS MOVIE.”

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WOOHOOO!  FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND!  TIME TO PARTY!  Then when we’re hungover, we can go see… uh… Sparkly vampires?  Boy wizards?  Hmm.  Opening this weekend (trailers after the jump):

Twilight Saga: Eclipse
I’m going to go see this weekend and find the hottest girl in the theater.  Then, I’m going to follow her home, break in through her window, and just sit there staring at her while she sleeps.  If she wakes up and catches me and starts screaming, I’m just going to cover her mouth while I say, “What?  I thought this was what you wanted.”

The Last Airbender
Sample reviews:

• “Shyamalan has made a dull, boring, poorly acted, limply written and thoroughly unappealing fantasy, featuring bland characters locked in a struggle of no interest.”
• “’The Last Airbender’ is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.”
• “Let’s just be honest: M. Night Shyamalan is an idiot.”

However, everyone hated Jonah Hex too, and as I’ve pointed out, with the right attitude, that movie is hilarious and entertaining as hell.  Could that be true of Last Airbender?  Somehow I doubt it.  I tried that with Lady in the Water, and it’s one of the few movies I’ve ever seen where getting high first actually made it worse.  M. Shyalami can harsh your mellow from afar.

Love Ranch
Joe Pesci plays a pimp, Helen Mirren is a whore, I really want to see this, and of course it’s only be opening in limited release.  Ugh.  I was pretty much sold as soon as I heard Pesci would be a pimp and Helen Mirren’s character “stomps on the throat of a misbehaving prostitute,” but curiously, the reviews have been pretty bad so far.  All I know is that the guy who decided to open a movie with “ranch” in the title the same weekend Twilight opens is an evil genius.

Happy Fourth

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