{"id":461,"date":"2006-07-21T15:51:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-21T21:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2006\/07\/lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng\/"},"modified":"2006-07-21T15:51:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-21T21:51:00","slug":"lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2006\/07\/lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady in a Watery Grave of Storytellng"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>He has lost his mind.<\/p>\n<p>As Mark Shea is fond of saying, \u201cSin makes you crazy.\u201d  I don\u2019t presume to know the complete condition of Shyamalan\u2019s  soul, but clearly, egomania has taken hold and so he has lost his grip on reality. In this case, the demanding and wonderful realities of the essentials of narrative filmmaking.<\/p>\n<p>I remembered, somewhere in the first ten minutes of <em>Lady in the Water<\/em> that I had pledged back in the last ten minutes of <em>The Village<\/em> that I would never be coaxed to spend any more money buying this director\u2019s movies.  And then it was just a matter of time before I got the energy to propel myself out of my seat.<\/p>\n<p>I walked out of <em>Lady in the Water<\/em> about mid-point of the film, when it had become embarrasingly apparent that the filmmaker was splashing around this pathetic unstory, desperately caught in the undertow of his own hype.  I left when it was clear that nothing could happen in the remaining hour to salvage the first half\u2019s perfect storm of narrative, character and thematic elements from devolving into a level 5 typhoon of cinematic pretension and absurdity. <\/p>\n<p>What was that great insult of the Wizard to Tin Man in <em>The Wizard of Oz<\/em>?  Oh yeah, this film is a \u201cclinking, clanking, collection of calligenous junk!\u201d  But maybe I haven\u2019t expressed myself strongly enough here\u2026<\/p>\n<p>There is really nothing in <em>Lady<\/em> for the audience.  It is all about Shyamalan in an icky kind of valentine to himself as a writer.  He says the kind of things about himself in this film that people should let others say about them.  But they will NEVER say them about this guy.  You can quote me.<\/p>\n<p>The greatest emotional response the film evoked from me was a monumental chortle when I recalled Robin on Good Monring America yesterday referring to Shyamalan as a \u201cMaster of Suspense\u201d.  HA!  <\/p>\n<p>How bad is it?\u2026.Hmmmmm\u2026.  I\u2019d rather watch a Peter Jackson film fest 20 hour marathon then a half hour of anything Shyamalan has done since <em>Sixth Sense<\/em>.  And those of you who know me, know what I\u2019m saying here\u2026<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing scary in this film.  The audience I was with actually laughed at a couple of moments that were <em>supposed<\/em> to be scary, but were so badly executed that it was a cause of sneering.  There is nothing offensive from a moral standpoint \u2013 unless one considers, as I do, that bad art is a moral problem.  <em>Lady<\/em> is just really, really, monstrously bad storytelling.<\/p>\n<p>The only thing this movie does is confirm that M. Night is class A, textbook, laughing all the way to the bank, one hit wonder.  [read in the little girl whisper they\u2019ve had on the TV trailers:]  Pass.  Pass. Passsssssssssssssssssssssssss.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He has lost his mind. As Mark Shea is fond of saying, \u201cSin makes you crazy.\u201d I don\u2019t presume to know the complete condition of Shyamalan\u2019s soul, but clearly, egomania has taken hold and so he has lost his grip on reality. In this case, the demanding and wonderful realities of the essentials of narrative [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lady in a Watery Grave of Storytellng<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"He has lost his mind.As Mark Shea is fond of saying, &quot;Sin makes you crazy.&quot; I don&#039;t presume to know the complete condition of Shyamalan&#039;s soul, but\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2006\/07\/lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lady in a Watery Grave of Storytellng\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"He has lost his mind.As Mark Shea is fond of saying, &quot;Sin makes you crazy.&quot; I don&#039;t presume to know the complete condition of Shyamalan&#039;s soul, but\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2006\/07\/lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Church of the Masses\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-07-21T21:51:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Barbara Nicolosi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Barbara Nicolosi\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2006\/07\/lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2006\/07\/lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng\/\",\"name\":\"Lady in a Watery Grave of Storytellng\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2006-07-21T21:51:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2006-07-21T21:51:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/#\/schema\/person\/ba0f1b7b363d55ec96a9775380695055\"},\"description\":\"He has lost his mind.As Mark Shea is fond of saying, \\\"Sin makes you crazy.\\\" I don't presume to know the complete condition of Shyamalan's soul, but\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2006\/07\/lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2006\/07\/lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2006\/07\/lady-in-a-watery-grave-of-storytellng\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Lady in a Watery Grave of Storytellng\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/\",\"name\":\"Church of the Masses\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/#\/schema\/person\/ba0f1b7b363d55ec96a9775380695055\",\"name\":\"Barbara Nicolosi\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/425c746b5615ed26d89d082ba5276d75?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/425c746b5615ed26d89d082ba5276d75?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Barbara Nicolosi\"},\"description\":\"Barbara Nicolosi is the Executive Director of the Galileo Studio at Azusa Pacific University. 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