Shyamalan & Plagiarism

This might be an old news but since I’m coming across it repeatedly, I might as well mention it here. Night M Shyamalan is being accused of plagiarizing by the publishers of a children’s book. When I first heard of the film, I had jokingly mentioned that I had also written a short story — The Village — and he might have taken a few portions from it.

My personal take on Shyamalan is that he might have produced a one block-buster film, namely The Sixth Sense, he is not that great a script-writer and a director he is made out to be. A critic somewhat rightly pointed out that it is intriguing how he manages to get top-notch actors for his intellectually mediocre flicks. Ok, I won’t say he is bad. He is way ahead of the silly showmen we have in Bombay. He tries to be intellectual and philosophical. He tries to convey a message, although lacking in profundity. I have partly seen The Unbreakable and completely seen The Sixth Sense and The Signs. I only liked the The Sixth Sense. The remaining two failed to incite an interest. In fact The Signs was extremely disappointing, especially after all the pre-show hype our movie channel had orchestrated. Fortunately it was Sunday and immediately after that there was a re-run of the Keanu Reeves flick Speed. Now that was some stimulating entertainment even when I was seeing the movie third time.

Shyamalan, irrespective of plagiarism or not, is a refined director. He has that thing in him. But he needs to work on his scripts more and he should stop being an intellectual. He has the potential.

Talking of plagiarism, I dug up an old satirical article of mine that was long time back published in the newspaper. Here it is.