Don Surber, from his latest column:
In the movie The Sixth Sense, the hero, Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), does not realize he is dead.
That was 20 years ago.
Today, the mass media are Malcolm Crowe, stumbling about and talking among themselves. The media died of credibility poisoning.
9 comments:
Hard to believe The Sixth Sense is 20 years old already.
Then I remembered M Night Shyamalan's second best film, Signs, was filming on 9/11/2001.
Oh, yeah! "Swing away."
BTW, am I the only person in the world who didn't see that incredible twist coming at the end of The Sixth Sense? Truthfully, I was flabbergasted.
Naah Paco, you're not the only one, the end twist was what made it popular.
I'm a Mel Gibson fan but I didn't like his performance in Signs - too sincere and emotional, made me think they were making fun of him and his actual beliefs ('See how kooky this guy is?'). I thought Phoenix's remote weirdness was a better fit. Gibson probably was miscast, to my thinking, because he doesn't have much range and is usually the sincere guy in every movie - couldn't play a villain unless it was a neurotic conflicted one - he began his career doing Hamlet and Romeo on stage - brilliantly. Unusual misfire for him as he's very film-savvy.
Nope, Paco, you were not alone in being surprised by that movie. I was beyond flabbergasted.
Don Surber is right that the media perished from credibility poisoning -- a self-inflicted wound, I might add. But those aren't ghosts of the media stumbling about. Those are zombies, the undead who know not that they should move on, looking to feed upon the living.
(Yes, I'm mixing storylines. Poetic license says I can.)
I just sometimes think I should have seen that twist coming. In any event, it was managed superbly.
It stunned me, but yeah, it should have been obvious. It was so effective, now every one of Shyamalan's films are expected to have a "twist" ending, even when they don't - leading to the "What a twist!" meme that lives forever.
I didn't see that ending in The Sixth Sense coming. Then I had to go back and rewatch the movie to mark out all the scenes that should have alerted me. It was brilliant, and I don't usually associate Shyamalan with brilliance.
I agree about Shyamalan Rebecca. This was apparently his first movie out of film school when the words of his tutors were fresh in his mind - 'Cut your best scene' and the scene he cut was overdone: I saw him discuss that on Ytube, years back now, that's all I remember.
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