A new website called mnightschool aimed at soliciting donations to send M. Night Shyamalan back to film school is quickly going viral (and getting emailed to me every five minutes), thanks to the fact that M. Night Shyamalan has become a lower-hanging fruit (no homo) than Uwe Boll or The Situation.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, his movies are terrible. I just don’t think me paying for him to be less terrible would be a worthwhile charity.  In fact, this entire effort seems wildly ill-conceived.  Here’s what the site says:

“We’re crowdsourcing enough money to send M. Night Shyamalan back to film school.  Certainly, there must be 150,000 of us film lovers out there who are tired of his schlocky plot twists, canned dialogue, and over commercialized image as an “auteur.”

If we all donate just one dollar, we can send M. Night back to NYU so he gets the help we all so desperately need.

Let’s make it happen so we can get him enrolled before he starts principal photography on 1000 A.E.

We’ll make a giant check and present it to him, while filming the whole thing.  If he refuses it, we take the money and set up a scholarship in his name.  Budding filmmakers can submit their work, we’ll hold a small Film Festival, then we send the NEXT Tarantino to NYU.”

Hmmm, so let me get this straight: M. Night already graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1992, and your idea to make him a better filmmaker is to have him go there again?  Wouldn’t that be like paying to see another Shyamalan movie right after Last Airbender?  Yeah, that’s just what he needs, to be sheltered from the outside world amongst more film people.  Meanwhile, if you sent “the next Tarantino” to NYU, he wouldn’t be the next Tarantino (he’d probably just be a schlocky pornographer like Oliver Stone or Spike Lee).  It was a cute idea, sort of, but actually putting money towards this would be about as valuable to society as getting James Franco another graduate degree.  If, however, your plan is to send M. Night back disguised as an undergrad in some kind of Never Been Kissed situation and film the whole thing, THEN I’m totally onboard. Ooh, and maybe put him in a fat suit! It could be like Big Momma’s House meets Outsourced.  …With a twist!  Hey, is someone writing this down?

Manny was hurt and disappointed when he found out he'd missed funny hat day.

It had been threatened before, but today it’s official: America’s most obnoxiously over-processed father-son duo, Will and Jaden Smith, are teaming up with America’s least-favorite filmmaker, Manny Shyamalan, to make a movie that might finally inspire the populace to rise up en masse and storm Hollywood with torches and pitchforks.

Sony Pictures Entertainment has signed Will Smith and son Jaden Smith to star in an untitled futuristic science fiction adventure film that will be directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Shymalan wrote the script with Gary Whitta [The Book of Eli], and Overbrook’s James Lassiter, Smith, Ken Stovitz and Jada Pinkett Smith will produce with Shyamalan. Shyamalan talked about the project some last fall when he was promoting The Last Airbender, when the project went under the title One Thousand A.E. Back then, Will Smith was only supposed to produce, but now he’s set to star as well.

The story takes place far in the future where a young boy has to navigate an abandoned planet on a space ship that has crashed. On board is his estranged father. [Deadline]

Whoa, daddy issues?  In an M. Night Shyamalan story?  It sounds crazy, but that’s what it says.  When this starts shooting, I say we kidnap Joaquin Phoenix, shoot him full of angel dust, tell him we’re filming the video for his next rap album, spin him around six times, drop him off at the set, hand him a baseball bat and tell him “swing away.”

I don’t usually like to cover the Razzies, because I’m kind of opposed to them in spirit.  There are a thousand terrible movies that come out every year, and even limiting it to just major-release films, there’s no way the Razzie voters saw even half of them, which means the awards basically come down to what’s most popular to hate, and there’s something vaguely icky and Seltzer-Friedbergian about that to me. That said, they did choose The Last Airbender as the year’s worst movie, and I have a hard time imagining anything worse (and I saw Big Momma’s House 3 last week).

“Winners” were determined by mailing ballots to 637 voters in 46 U.S. states and 17 foreign countries. Electronic voting and certification of this year’s Final RAZZIE® Ballot was handled by Vote-Now.com.

Like I said, there’s no real rhyme or reason, it’s just a People’s Choice Awards in reverse.

Worst Picture Winner 2010
The Last Airbender

Worst Actor Winner 2010
Ashton Kutcher (Killers and Valentine’s Day)

I’m sure both of those movies are terrible and I wouldn’t mind seeing Ashton Kutcher get kicked in the nuts by a donkey, but was he really the worst actor?  The answer of course is no, Paul Walker had a movie out last year.

Worst Actress Winner 2010
Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis & Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City 2)

Worst Supporting Actor Winner 2010
Jackson Rathbone (The Last Airbender and Twilight Saga: Eclipse)

Jackson Rathbone might be a terrible actor, but it’s hard to tell.  DeNiro would look like an idiot too if he had to wear outfits like these:

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"POW!"

If Hollywood people weren’t terrified of offending each other and didn’t spend 98% of their press interviews kissing each other’s asses, an actor bashing a movie he was in probably wouldn’t make news, but here we are.  Mark Wahlberg has gone ahead and admitted M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening sucked, and only three years after he read the script.

Throw Shyammy from the train under the bus, Collider:

Asked to talk about his co-star Amy Adams [during press for The Fighter], Wahlberg revealed that they almost did a previous movie together and that’s when the truth started tumbling out:

“I was such a huge fan of [Amy Adams]. We’d actually had the luxury of having lunch before to talk about another movie, and it was a bad movie that I did. She dodged the bullet. I don’t want to tell you what movie… All right, The Happening with M. Night Shyamalan. It is what it is. F*cking trees, man, the plants. F*ck it. You can’t blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher. You know? I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook.”

Meanwhile, Wahlberg remained curiously silent on the subject of The Lovely Bones, Date Night, Max Payne, We Own the Night, Shooter, Invincible, Four Brothers, Rock Star, Planet of the Apes…  Look, I’m all for honesty, but everyone bashes Manny Shyamalan (probably because we lack a European sensibility), so this wasn’t that ballsy (or even as ballsy as say, Shia LaBeouf stating the obvious about Indy 4).  I mean have you SEEN The Lovely Bones? Just because it’s about rape doesn’t mean every character has to speak in a creepy rape whisper.  I watched twenty minutes of it on HBO and spent the next hour crying on my shower floor.
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In what I can only assume is a particularly brutal test of discipline and fortitude, Tae Kwon Do schools across the country will soon be forcing their students to watch M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender.  Wrap those wrists!  Only you can prevent dismissive wank injuries!

SUCK HARD SUCK FIRST NO MERCY!

On November 16, in celebration of the DVD release of The Last Airbender, Paramount Home Entertainment will team up with the American Taekwondo Association (ATA) to participate in themed parties to mark the film’s home entertainment debut.
In addition, actor and martial arts enthusiast Noah Ringer, who stars as Aang, the lone Avatar, will take part in a special streaming video event, giving hundreds of ATA students the chance to interact with him directly.  Students at select member martial arts schools will be able to pose questions personally via Ustream.  Fans interested in watching the live event can visit www.ustream.tv/lastairbender on November 16th from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. PST.
Ringer achieved first degree black belt rank with the ATA when he was 12 years old and is proficient with a variety of Eastern weapons. [from the press release]

Focus your Qi!  Oh God, the sucking, it’s too strong!  Oh and hey, Taekwondo.  I was thinking.  People might respect your martial art a little more if you didn’t let pre-pubescent actors become black belts.  Just a thought.  I guess what I’m saying is, I’m pretty sure I could kick this kid and Jaden Smith’s asses simultaneously without spilling my martini.  Okay, it’s actually a grasshopper.  This palate’s not a sewer, you know.