I missed the Movie Trivia post for last week, so we're doing a double feature today. Grab yourself a bowl of popcorn and some M&Ms and enjoy! By the way, if you're one of the few people who hasn't seen The Sixth Sense by now, I'm going to recommend that you stop reading, because a lot of my trivia revolves around the plot twist. There, you've been warned. I'm jealous of people who have never seen the movie, actually - this is one of those films I wish I could go back and see again for the first time.
• We don't see a drop in temperature when Malcolm (Bruce Willis) is around Cole (Haley Joel Osment) because the cold only occurs when a ghost is angry or upset. Malcolm is never angry or upset around Haley Joel.
• I knew there was a reason I liked this movie: M. Night Shyamalan says the movie was at least partially inspired by an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark, which was only like my favorite show on SNICK back in the day. The episode was called "Tale of the Dream Girl" and centered around characters who had died but didn't know it.
• Lefty Bruce Willis learned to write righty so we couldn't easily see that he wasn't wearing a wedding band (presumably his wife received it when he died).
• The color red is used to represent "anything in the real world that has been tainted by the other world," M. Night Shyamalan says. A few examples: the red sweater Cole wears when he gets attacked in the attic, the red dress Malcolm's wife wears when she visits the restaurant where they got engaged, the doorknob in the scene pictured and right and the red tent where the little girl who was poisoned by her mom appears to Cole.
• I didn't know that Malcolm's old patient (and killer) Vincent Grey was played by Donnie Wahlberg until years after the fact. I probably didn't recognize him from his New Kids days because he lost somewhere around 43 pounds for the role. He told M. Night Shyamalan that he was going to drop some weight for the role, and Night basically said, "Sure, you do that," thinking somewhere along the lines of 5-10 pounds. Wahlberg showed up to the set to film his scenes and Night didn't even recognize him at first because his frame had gone from muscular and athletic to extremely wispy and thin.
• This is probably common knowledge at this point, but in case you don't know, the little girl who is poisoned by her mom is played by a young Mischa Barton. It was one of her first few roles. • Michael Cera (Arrested Development and Superbad) has said that his first-ever audition was for the role of Cole Sear.
• Although he was only 11 at the time, The Sixth Sense was far from Haley Joel Osment's first acting gig. He has been acting since the age of four, including notable roles such as Forrest Gump, Jr., and Avery Brown (Murphy Brown's son).
• The whole movie was filmed in sequence.
•As with all of his movies, M. Night Shyamalan has a little cameo. You can catch him as the doctor who examines Cole after he has the incident in the closet at the birthday party.
• All of the clothes that Bruce Willis wears throughout the movie are variations on the clothes he was wearing the day he died.
It's too bad that Shyamalan hasn't had the critical success he had with The Sixth Sense. I really enjoyed Signs and am probably one of the few people who didn't hate The Village, but yeah... they weren't quite the same. Maybe it's because we're all expecting the plot twist at this point. Anyway, what did you think the first time you saw the movie?
Sixth Sense and Signs are my favs though.
The end of Sixth Sense always gets to me when it's showing the wedding video.. always gets me all teared up.
I liked Unbreakable, tolerated Signs, disliked The Village after about a half hour. Unlike The Sixth Sense, The Village is virtually unwatchable if you guess the twist.
It's a shame that M. needs to flog the same tropes over and over. He is a good filmmaker, but his choice of material is silly.
My wife was a New Kids fan, so she finds it funny that I like Donnie Wahlberg's acting (in Band of Brothers). Maybe it helps that I had no exposure to New Kids on the Block.
Pick it up, M Night...or say "Good Night"...
But I enjoyed The Village a lot more!!!
The Village was just tiresome, and I haven't seen the others.
For those unfamiliar with the series, check it out. Its a totally awesome and epic Nickelodeon cartoon.
I really liked 6th Sense, and enjoyed unbreakable, but am pretty much otherwise unimpressed with his directing. But I can't see him fucking up Avatar. Its too good!
Maybe I'm just being a homer, but I think his work is somehow intuitive. Maybe not always spot on, but always at least in the ballpark.
Close enough for me to pay attention whenever he puts out a new work...
I liked Unbreakable because Im a comic book fan and really liked Bruce Willis' character. Signs, Lady in the Water and The Village I liked when I saw them but would not watch them again. My biggest problem with signs is that an alien race brilliant enough to accomplish intergalactic travel somehow thought it was a good idea to holiday on a planet that is made almost entirely of the one thing that can hurt them.
I did not like The Happening because it bored me.
Unbreakable, and The Sixth Sense, everything past that has been godawful. Senor, I also got the "twist" in the first scene-- IMO it's pretty obvious when he's talking to the mom and she doesn't respond even slightly to it. (People who are actively ignoring you will respond to you in certain ways, turning the other way etc.)
The Village is great, too. I think the "twist" at the end is a little bit much, but I don't care. I love the characters, especially Bryce Dallas Howard's performance as Ivy.
I haven't seen The Happening yet. I should probably rent that soon...
I saw the Sixth Sense right from the start - excellent, and I didn't see that one coming either!
How is he kidding? Just one of many, many examples: The film cuts to a scene with Bruce and the boy's mother sitting across from each other in the living room and the boy walks in the door, breaking the silence. The director points out that you assume Bruce and the mother were talking before the cut, when in fact not a word is exchanged between them (because she doesn't know he's there). How convenient! The director never explains how Bruce can get into this woman's home, sit down with her in her living room, and be completely unaware that she can't see him? Woudn't she have not opened the door when he knocked? Oh, he just walked in unannounced and sat down wordlessly not at all wondering why she was ignoring this surprise guest? Yeah, we should be able to guess that no problem. I don't know why I didn't figure that out on my own.
Unbreakable trivia, please?
He didn't want to see that he was dead, so blocked out the obvious signs that he was.
Was it just an easy way to fool the audience? Sure, but they do explain it at least.
Anywho... yeah, even though the aliens thing in Signs was a bit bleh... I still enjoy the movie. I just love the part where Mel's character comes in to the room and sees his brother and kids w/ the tinfoil hats :P
And when he's talking with his wife.. ugh.. also just gets to me.. so sad :(
And to the Unbreakable fans; you know M. Night, Sam Jackson and Bruce Willis are all up for making sequels, right? At least one, maybe 2.
Oh, and The Happening started out interesting enough but fell waaaaay flat soon after. Mass suicides? Yeah, okay. Uh, the ending? Nooooo sir!
The plot twist in Signs was particularly absurd, so I'm kinda scared of what he'll do to The Last Airbender.
I LOVED IT!!
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Usually I see this kind of stuff coming, but not this time!
I personally like most of his stuff, and really loved Lady in the Water, but I have to admit that some of them are hit and miss.
We rode our bikes there... it was still light outside when we arrived.
Upon standing from our seats, I commented that everyone around us could be dead.
The 20 minute bike ride home took her 10. I had a hard time keeping up as she sped through the dark streets of Eindhoven.
It's really annoying when this happens cos it means I blew $6 or $8 and can't enjoy the movie.
All Shyamalan movies sucked. But that's my opinion.
brayden - that's going to be a trilogy? good to hear, i thought they were going to try to pack it all in one film, which would be an impossibility! I know the first one comes out in 2010, got any other info on them you'd like to share?
-Bullshit
Cole (the boy) could see dead people because, well, he's special like that. He's not a dead person, but give the ending another look, and you will probably catch on to who's actually dead.
Loved the movie btw. I was pretty dumb, didn't see it coming haha. It's more of an emotional, tearjerker for me (like the ending!!) though than a horror (though I did have goosebumps during some parts).