Studio 60 on the Man-crush Strip

NPH has just viewed the pilot of the new NBC drama, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," thanks to an arrangement between NBC and Netflix. More detailed commentary will be appropriate later. Only, for now let us be absolutely clear: NPH has a serious man-crush on Bradley Whitford.

That is all.

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Take That, Bat

As NPH saw the wife out the door and down the third floor hallway of our apartment building this morning, we were greeted by a pleasant man wielding a broom and a bucket. "Did you see the bat?" he asked us.

Awesome.

He made a couple of lengths of the hallway whilst I stood with my back to my apartment door, checking over my shoulders to be sure the devilish creature wasn't cozily perched above me. The coast appeared clear, and just as the batcatcher and I were speculating (with some relief) that it must have flown out the ceiling vent, up it came from the stairwell below me. It flapped its wings, made a pass at my head, and then made for the opposite end of the hallway.

It got past the broom-wielding handyman once, at which point he yelled out to me, "Have you got a tennis racquet?" Nope. Only a racquetball racquet. Still fluttering, the bat made the fateful mistake of trying to circle back around the handyman, and one lusty swipe of the broom sent it down. He lay motionless, with his wings folded in upon itself, upon the new red carpet.

The handyman used a towell to pick it up, then dropped it into his bucket. I asked, "How many bats you got in that bucket?"

"Just one," he said, smiling triumphantly, as he strode down the stairs.

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Shyamaladenfreude

Thanks to Kairos for the tip on this article about Shyamalan and the upcoming book (The Man Who Hear Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on A Fairy Tale). NPH went to get the book at our local bookseller the other day, but it hadn't come in yet. You can bet we'll be reading it.

The article, written by Patrick Goldstein, is part book review and part movie review. The book, he's certain, is a damining tell-all that reveals the arrogance of Hollywood's most talked about directors. For its part, the movie sucks; it's little more than a stage for Shyamalan to show off himself and to air his grievances (casting himself as a tortured writer whose work will change the world and killing off a smarmy movie critic character). So goest the article.

It's hard to take issue with the piece. Even as staunch a Shyamalan apologist as NPH feels the need to acknowledge the guy's shortcomings. But we will still champion his work and what he's trying to do with his talent, and that is to tell original, meaningful stories through film, often defying the conventions of his business. Here's a money quote from the article, an answer given by Shyamalan's agent, Jeremy Zimmer:

"I told him this [the book] was dangerous — that the press will fixate on it. But
he saw the movie with himself in it. And you know what? It's his
vision. And if the business doesn't support it, he's not going to run
away and say, 'Oh well, I'll do "Jumanji 3." ' You can say he's preachy
or self-important, but who else is telling original stories out there?
He should be applauded, not derided."

Hear hear.

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NPH Gets An Online Video Tutorial on The Middle East

NPH is no expert in Middle East politics; we know next to nothing, when you consider the vast amount of history and culture that feed present day violence. But we do know a little bit more now, thanks to Current TV, Reuters, and the BBC.

If you haven't heard of it before, Current TV is Al Gore's "citizen journalism" channel. Some people have been critical of it, calling it less bottom-up, independent journalism and more MTV-esque entertainment. But NPH has subscribed to Current TV's RSS feed for several months now, and we can honestly say that we have learned things we didn't know before, things that we would not have learned by watching CNN or reading the BBC.com.

Presently there are three pieces on Current's site that merit attention. This one, a little hands-on lesson in the basics of the Katyusha rockets being fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel; this one, a primer on the city of Beirut itself and the Hezbollah political party, filmed mostly before the current fighting broke out; and this one (by the same correspondent that did the first one), a brief synopsis of the situation from inside Israel.

Don't expect these pieces to achieve the unbiased neutrality that has eluded the mainstream media; it doesn't exist. We all speak from somewhere, and we all carry assumptions and commitments that determine how we view any situation. But that's o.k. These pieces are still worth watching.

And so is this Reuters.com video on the continuing day-to-day routine in Beirut, and this one filed from northern Israel. The BBC, for its part, has a video report from Fergal Keane, NPH's favorite journalist in the world, taken from the city of Tyre.

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Aint It Cool News on "Lady . . ."

"You see, this is a film that asks you to not believe in the here and now. To not step foot in reality, but to step into a writer’s hands and just let him tell you a story, where he’s making it up as he goes along and where logic has little to no place. Where you can have a character with one gigantic muscled side of his body and tells everyone that he likes being scientific. It’s goofy like that. It’s innocent.

"If you can’t just go with the story, you’ll find yourself trapped in what some will call the most pretentious ego-trip ever committed to film. The people that hate this film will compare it to the biggest disasters ever made."

Exactly. Which is why NPH can handle it. Let M. Night tell you a story, and try not to notice the sound of his thoughts. Because if you do, you won't hear anything else. And that would be sad.

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Slate on Shyamalan

Ross Douthat has a great piece about M. Night Shyamalan up right now. It's partly about the disappointing reception of "Lady in The Water," and partly about the soon-to-be-released book that chronicled the director's efforts to get the film made (The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale). But mostly the piece is about Shyamalan himself, his grandiose intentions and his heavily-scrutinized missteps. It's good reading. Here's a money quote:

    Shyamalan deserves credit, despite his vanity and his missteps—not
        because he's succeeding, necessarily, but because he's willing to keep
    trying and unwilling to take his place with those timid, highly
                        compensated directors who know neither victory nor defeat.

And that's why NPH will continue to champion Shyamalan and his movies. Despite the discomfiting emergence of his pretensions (note: his expanding roles in his own movies--this time as a struggling writer who's told that he will be killed for his painfully truthful ideas; also the role in "Lady . . ." of the glib film critic who's too cynical to see the real story and who, in the end, pays a heavy price for his cynicism), we still love the guy.

And "Lady in The Water" is still better than 75% of what's out there right now, and 50% of what the year will produce.

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M. Night, NPH Forgives You

Way back in August, NPH flapped his arms all over the place to discuss our favorite filmmaker's latest project. "Lady in The Water," the sixth full length feature by writer and director M. Night Shyamalan, was to star Paul Giamatti and "The Village" heroine Bryce Dallas Howard. It promised to be another engrossing mythical yarn, set, of course in Pennsylvania.

Well, today the waiting finally ended, and NPH took in a matinee of the long-awaited film with the wife. We promised ourselves that we weren't going to let the reviews curb our expectations of the movie, since critics weren't exactly thrilled by "The Village," which NPH still thought was pretty darned good. But still, we read a bad review in the Pitch, and we glanced at rottentomatoes.com early on Thursday. What we read created the expectation of disappointment.

And disappointed we were. A little. I mean, "Lady in The Water" is still better than most of what you'll find in your local multiplex, especially in the summer; Shyamalan could craft a compelling story from a phonebook. It's just that the things he does with this film he's done before, and done them better. There's been a great deal of buzz about Shyamalan's feud with Disney, the producer of his last five films. When Disney told him they didn't like this script (which started as a bedtime story for his children and then morphed into an illustrated children's book before finally maturing as a screenplay), Shyamalan walked and took the thing to Warner Brothers. WB was only too happy to produce it, because the Philadelphia native's movies make lots of money. Plain and simple.

NPH is no film critic, so we'll not pick apart the merits of the thing. But we do deal in story on a fairly regular basis, so our disappointment can be located there, in the story. It's too intrusive. I mean, the beauty of Shyamalan's storytelling has heretofore been his ability to tell you a different story than the one you think you're being told. There is his trademark "surprise ending," in which the screen is pulled back to reveal something about the characters that changes the whole narrative. But "Lady in The Water" doesn't do that. Instead, the story you get is exactly the story you think you're getting. And that's because, from beginning to end, you're told about the story, you're reminded of the story, you're teased by the story--you look and look and look at the story. The Lady's name is actually "Story."

Shyamalan is trying to make a case for the reality of stories for real life. It's a beautiful case to make, and every one of his films makes it. The story is about ghosts or comic heroes or aliens or monsters in the woods or the Lady in The Water. No matter what the story's subject, its effect on reality is tangible and meaningful, and, above all, purposeful. It's only that, with "The Sixth Sense" and its successors, you're tantalized by the story so that its effect is accomplished before the viewer is aware what's happened. But with "The Lady in The Water," Shyamalan has made the story the subject of the story, so that you're never unaware of the effect that the story is supposed to have on you. Ultimately, you're in control of your relationship to the story, and that's not good.

There are things in this movie that Shyamalan fans will be well used to by now: the tragic and tortured protagonist who is an agent of redemption, the idiosyncratic supporting characters who turn out to be essential in their idiosyncracies, and, of course, the drumbeat of "purpose."

Shyamalan's quest for stories about purpose is, NPH believes, his greates virtue as a filmmaker and storyteller in these aimless times. All of his films grapple with the inconsequential and cooky, people and families trying to make meaning out of seemingly senseless circumstances. They are existential pep rallies for tortured souls (and those of us who love a good tale). It's just that, with this film, "purpose" appears from the very start and never lets up; you know what you're getting from the minute, in the opening credits, when you learn that the Lady has been "sent" to accomplish something. The thing's shot through with purpose, purpose, purpose. By the midpoint you almost want to scream, "What's the purpose behind all this purpose?!"

I love M. Night Shyamalan. I will always be the first in line to see his films. I just wonder if he's started to struggle, in this film, with his own purpose as a filmmaker and yarnspinner to the culture. He seems much more conscious of his image (note the American Express ads), even going back to the ill-conceived publicity stunt that preceded "The Village." Frankly, NPH is a little worried for him.

But, wander and experiment as he will, NPH will still be here, waiting, when his next film comes out.

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