Reworking Shyamalan Titles

I spent the last weekend volunteering at the Florida Supercon and I noticed that a lot of the other volunteers were really excited for The Last Airbender. I am too and I hope its a big hit and he gets to make the thriller with Bruce Willis and Gwyneth Paltrow that he is currently shopping around the studios. Anyway it struck me that all of his titles could actually be titles for very different and very generic films. Let me elaborate:

1) The Sixth Sense: A sex comedy much in the vein of "The Ugly Truth" about how men and women want different things.

2) Unbreakable: The story of the "unbreakable" spirit of one young man with congenital "Insert Handicap"as he struggles to achieve his childhood dream of becoming a "Insert Sport/ Musical talent".

3) Signs: A romantic "its meant to be" kind of comedy about a boy and a girl and how fate puts them together no matter how much they try to get away from each other. In the end they realize "its meant to be" and boy stops girl just as she is trying to baord a ship to go off to do research in Antartica.

4) The Village: The story of a group of friends through the ages as they hang around New York's Greenwich Village

5) Lady in the Water: A small town in shocked by the discovery of a dead girl in the town river. Suspicions start flying and skeletons come out of the closet as everyone discovers its not so innocent a town as it would seem.

6) The Happening: A teen comedy about a loser who becomes the talk of his high school when he accidentally gets photographed with a Miley Cyrus/Selena Gomez type teen sensation. In the end his fame dies away and he learns the importance of being himself. Of course he gets the girl-who-was-his-friend-all-along-and-secretly-loved-him-but-never-told-him-and-he-was-too-blind-to-see-her-for-what-she-was. The film would be called The Happenin'.

7) The Last Airbender: a film about the airbending culture, a slang term in Kite-boarding for the really slick move where you use your board and kite to appear to float over water. We see the young kid who moves into a surfer town and gets involved with the surfer crowd and discovers himself through kite-Boarding. A coming of age/finding yourself/letting go type of movie.

Side note on Signs: The guy arrives at the port too late and sees the ship leave, as he turns around its the girl with her luggage. She never got on in the first place. Aaaawww!! so cute! Makes me wanna go strangle a puppy or two!

NY Pilgrimage

Why such a long hiatus you ask? well, its not that I reached a point where I had nothing to say anymore. Nor is it the fact that life in Miami is so engrossing that it leaves no time for anything else. Its just that I couldn't get my damn phone to transfer some photos to my comp. See, I had to say goodbye to NY/NJ properly before I started writing about Miami. You know they say you could live in Paris all your life and still never see the Tour Eiffel. Same thing happened to me in NJ. I had never been to the Statue of Liberty and a couple of other places. So before leaving I did a blitzkrieg visit of the all the famous sites. Then I visited some other places which were special for entirely different reasons. I humbly present the following:

1) Tom's Restaurant - Seinfeld

Throughout my teens I watched Friends while skipping the weird show that preceded it on Star World. How could I be so oblivious, so short sighted? Seinfeld is one of the greatest TV shows ever. EVER! Now, I find Friends lowly, even pedestrian. Seinfeld is avant garde. Seinfeld will still be hilarious 50 years from now. We need to beam Seinfeld into space so that Aliens realize that humans too are an intelligent species capable of much genius. Every Seinfeld episode is quotable. Seinfeld should be part of school curriculum. So I had to pay my respects at the below holy shrine before I left. The exterior shot of Monk's Cafe that is shown in almost every episode. In reality its Tom's Restaurant and they didn't actually shoot anything here, just the exterior shot. There were other people taking photos too.

2) Central Park - Marathon Man

Method actor Dustin Hoffman, actually ran a mile or two before each scene so he really appeared out of breath in the film. The following scene takes place just before the Nazi guy's brother crashes his car. Marathon man is such a fine film, it makes me wanna go out and run, even though its not exactly about running marathons.

"Is it safe?", "Is it safe?", "Is it safe?"

3) Washington Park - When Harry Met Sally

The following pic is Where Sally dropped off Harry after they share a long drive home from college. WHMS probably is the quintessential "can a guy and gal just be friends" film. Its not a chick flick, its not a romcom. Its a drama set around a relationship. I took the pic from the wrong side though. If you lean into the screen and spot a yellow car in the pic to the right, thats Sally's car right there. Go on .. lean in.

4) Manhattan Bridge - Once upon a Time in America

This is one heck of a film. Part male bonding/ friends through the ages, part Crime drama and part mindf*k. Sergio Leone may be known for his "Stranger with no name" flicks but this right here is undoubtedly his masterpiece. The following pic is not only the poster but also one fine and poignant scene from the film. This was the hardest place to get to and even though I though I was in the actual point, I should have maybe moved a couple of hundred yards closer.

5) The Soup Kitchen - Seinfeld

The place featured in this epic episode is now closed down. So indeed, No soup for me. There's a board that says that its available for rent. When I went around looking for it , I knew I was in the right place but just couldn't spot it. I asked a shopkeeper if there was anyplace to get soup nearby, he said there was, but if I was looking for the Seinfeld place, it was closed down. He pointed me in the right direction and said a lot of folks came by asking for the place.

Now that that's done, hopefully I can start writing about Miami!