M. Night Shyamalan is the master of suspense and he knows it. "All the decisions are made in honor of the god of tension," he is quoted as saying in a recent Newsweek article. "Raising the tension over and over and never letting you up." Indeed, Shyamalan is the anti-Speilberg when it comes to language of cinema: Night knows what you expect and delivers the opposite. "Where you would normally cut, I don't cut so now you're not sure of the rhythm of the movie, which makes you feel uneasy. Or the camera is moving just six inches over the course of three minutes-- you're not sure why because you're not aware, but you're feeling more tense."

Unfortunately, when it comes to The Village, he also knows exactly what you expect and delivers, well, exactly what you expect-- the shocking, mind-blowing twist that has become Shamalyan's calling card. And his crutch. After all, just how shocking can a twist be when you know one's coming from the moment you read Written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan?

True to form, Shyamalan twists and re-twists his audience like a Mobius strip. Trouble is, each twist is more anticlimactic than the one the one that came before. The mind is baffled rather than blown.

The Sixth Sense was so effective because then-unknown Shyamalan blindsided his audience with the twist. The twists in both Signs and Unbreakable were organic to the plots. The Village reads like Shyamalan came up with the twist first and the movie second.

At this point, Shyamalan's taken his own style of writing as far as it can go. Next time he should have the courage to film a script written by someone else in order to spotlight his true talent: directing.

Moreso than any other American filmmaker, Shyamalan knows how to play with our expectations of cinema. Here's hoping that he learns how to play with our expectations of him.

If you asked me at 9:00 PM who I wanted to be the next President of the United States, I would have told you I was undecided. For all of my anti-Bush diatribes, I couldn't have told you that I was sure I wanted the guy out of office. After all, I have been listening to a lot of right-wing talk radio recently, so my mind has been clouded.

Well, John Kerry's speech cut right through that murkiness. Tonight, I felt for the first time not a vauge desire to ouster Bush but a true desire to see John Kerry as my leader. Mr. Kerry eloquently and passionately addressed my concerns with the direction of our country. (In order: job creation, health care, stem cell research, and international respect for our nation.) Mr. Kerry displayed the kind of optimism and vision for a better tomorrow for which I have been searching.

Tonight I am proud to say that John Kerry can count on my support, because I believe America can count on his.

Why is it that when I see someone who wants to rent Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma all at once, I automatically assume they are some kind of poseur? And I'm all, "Kevin Smith film festival?" And he's all, "Oh yeah, I'm a big fan," and I'm thinking, If you are such a big fan, why is it that you don't already own these films?

I'm such an elitist.

I found this little exchange from the Will Smith episode of Inside the Actor's Studio to be rather amusing:

Host: The theme song for The Fresh Prince of Bell Air begins, "West Philadelphia, born and raised." Presumably that tells us something.
Will Smith: Yes, I was born and raised in West Philadelphia.

Speaking of creativity, looks like it's going to be called Star Wars -- Epsidoe III: Revenge of the Sith. I have no complaints about this title!

I have been saying from day one that the Catwoman movie was going to be a major dud and looks like I was right.

It literally amazes me how Hollywood -- a town that couldn't find its way out of a paper bag without basing that way on a 1970's television series -- keeps arrogantly thinking that it knows how comic book characters are supposed to be treated, that somehow playing them straight from the comic page is like some tremendous insult to their "craft." This despite every successful comic book movie in the history of the genre being the ones -- and only the ones -- which get the true-to-comics essence of the character just right. Hello? Both Spider-Man movies set records because they were live action Spider-Man comic books. X2 played like it was a direct adaptation of a classic X-Men tale. Meanwhile, Hulk, Batman and Robin, and now this most abysmal of all failures, Catwoman, just l don't get it. What I don't get is how all of this is lost on whoever it is that gets to waste zillions of dollars on these projects that scream "crap" from day one.

UPDATE: Here's another awesome review of this craptacular film. Anyone want to take bets on how low this thing will go on the Tomatometer?

What a rad moment. I'm sitting here at work, taking a momentary breather from the monotony of data entry, when I load up my blog. Only it doesn't load right away. Instead, the screen is black. I see my reflection in the black screen and, in absence of anything else to look at, I stare at it.

Suddenly, my blog loads up and right there, perfectly bisecting my real reflection, is the picture of me that forms the background of this page. Half of what I saw was the flourescent light bouncing off my face and then back onto it from the glass screen and half of it was a 1's and 0's description of it transmitted from a webserver in Bloomington to the phosphorous under the glass and it all miraculously lined up. How post-modern!