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Signs (2002)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 14, 2013 8:07 pm    Post subject: Signs (2002) Reply with quote




M. Night Shyamalan based his story on a very complex philosophical concept: Some things are caused by unseen forces which direct events toward an intended outcome.

Human beings who detect and acknowledge these unseen forces might interpret them through the religion of their choice.

Whether or not you agree with the director's interpretation of this phenomena is up to you.


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Bongopete
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 3:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud...what the hell?
I thought it was an alien invasion movie.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

___________________________________

Oh, wait. Maybe I'm thinking of another movie.

No, it's Signs all right. The aliens are defeated by a butt-load of strange "coincidences" that turn out NOT to be coincidences. They were fated to happen. They were destined to occur. They were written in the script, so the actors didn't really have free will.

I love that aspect of the plot. And I was really surprised at the end when I found out that Mel Gibson was actually a ghost and only the kid could see him! Shocked

Oh, wait. Maybe I'm thinking of another movie.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bongopete
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 2:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are you serious? THAT was a point in the movie?

Wow, that went over my head!

I mean, ok...I got the point with the baseball bat...but .....heavy man....heavy.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 2:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh yes indeed, sir. The plot is positively loaded with things that seem random and accidental, but turn out to be seemingly ordained to happen.

Example: The little girl is constantly asking for a glass of water. She never drinks much of the water. She never returns the glass to the kitchen — she leaves them laying around the house on various pieces of furniture — always at least half full.

Result: There are glasses of water all over the house, and the alien is "burned" by the ones that's are smashed by the bat or spilled on him when he falls down.

The article at The Movie Spoiler explains it well in it's review, which includes this paragraph near the end.
______________________________________

All of the horrible events that have haunted Mel over the last few months and caused him to lose his faith have now shown him that God really has a plan. Everything from Joaquin's powerful bat swing, his daughters half full glasses, his son's asthma and even his dying wife's very last words, all prove to Mel that these all occurred for a reason and that reason just happened. God really did have a plan and was watching over them.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 3:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A new genre category: spi-fi, or "spiritual fiction", being a story disguised as sci-fi, but with spiritual elements substituted for scientific validity.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 6:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I gather you didn't care too much for the movie, eh?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 8:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was okay with it up until the "payoff". I can't say it was totally unexpected, however. When the plot summary for any movie starts out with
Quote:
Preacher Graham Hess... has lost his faith in God...

you just know where it's headed.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just considered it in the same way I would a story about parallel universes or alternate times lines or non-corporal beings or any other concept that's way outside the realm of hard science.

Just because the story presents the idea that some kind of predestination might be real does not mean it was promoting the idea that the universe is ruled by a good and just God.

Mel Gibson's character belived in a supernatural force that caused good things to happen, then he stopped believing — then he started again.

If you apply logic to the events in the movie and try to answer the question, "Is there a God?", you've got a better case for the idea that there is no God than that there is one.

Why?

Because if God truly didn't want cruel aliens to cause pain and suffering to the helpless humans . . . He wouldn't have let the damn aliens arrive in the first place!

That right there is my big problem with the concept of a "wise and caring God" and all the religions that promote the idea.

So, Signs pretty accurately presented what we see in life all around us: bad things happen to good people, and somethings they experience miraculous "saves" that fix their problems — which seems to indicate that God helped them through the difficult situation.

My question is: if there's a good and caring God in charge, why do the bad things happen in the first place? Shocked

Hey, I'm just askin'.

And that's what this movie did, too. It didn't answer the question. It just asked it.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 1:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I must have slept through that part.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 10:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________________________________

The second time I ever watched this movie was an unplanned event — I couldn't sleep one hot summer night, so I turned on the TV and this movie was just starting.

The room was only lit by the television, the bedroom windows were open, and the cricket noises drifted in from the woods just beyond my second floor apartment's back deck.

All very pleasant, all very peaceful. Until the aliens started showing up . . .

Mel Gibson, his brother, and his two cute kids were having a really close encounter in a corn field, and that scene of the alien's leg drawing slowly back out of sight turned my dimly lit back deck into the scariest place within a hundred mile radius.

I alternated between watching the movie and glancing at those open bedroom windows, because at any moment something green and creepy and definitely not from around here was going to show up on my deck and make it necessary for me to wash my sheets the next day, even though it wasn't Saturday yet.

Wonderful movie. Just don't watch it in bed at 4:00 AM with the windows open.
_______________________________________

Like the poster?

Yeah, me too — but I couldn't resist playing with it. Here's the real poster I started with —



__________________


— and here's the altered versions I made. I think it's WAY better! Very Happy



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 5:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I found a few interesting trivia items on IMD for this wonderful movie. The blue text is from IMDB.
________________________________

~ Rather unusually, James Newton Howard started scoring the film before it had been shot, as he was able to work from M. Night Shyamalan's detailed storyboards.

Note from me: The music is magnificent, and I own the CD. Here's the entire soundtrack on Youtube, which you can start playing and enjoy while reading this post.Very Happy


_______________ Signs - complete soundtrack


__________


~ The stories of the children's birth are actually the stories of M. Night Shyamalan's two children.



~ The artwork in the book about extraterrestrials was actually done by Saleka Shyamalan, director M. Night Shyamalan's daughter.

Note from me: She's also a talented singer . . . and hot! Wink

~ The production used a new watering technique to make the corn grow faster, which the Delaware Valley agricultural college was then very keen to adopt for themselves.

Note from me: SCIENCE now, add FICTION in post production Very Happy

~ M. Night Shyamalan's scene in which he talks to Hess about the death of his wife was shot a day after a member of Shyamalan's family died.

Note from me: I'll remember this fact the next time I watch that scene. Sad

~ According to M. Night Shyamalan the movie's title has two meanings. "One is the crop signs, but it is also about faith and the existence of signs from above."

Note from me: This is, of course, what I was referring to in the initial post for this thread.

~ Johnny Depp was originally approached to star.

Note from me: Being a fan of both Depp and Gibson, this might have worked. But I think Gibson was the better choice of the two.

~ The aliens were originally going to be invisible, but M. Night Shyamalan couldn't get the effect he wanted.

Note from me: Assuming this statement is accurate, I'm glad the effect didn't work. What makes the aliens so scary is that they are visible . . . but very illusive. The best two scenes are when one is glimpsed on top of the barn, and another one is seen briefly in the cornfield as it pulls it's leg back out of site.

~ M. Night Shyamalan had the cast watch The Birds (1963) several times during production.

Note from me: I can just hear Mel Gibson saying to Shyamalan, the third time the cast had to do this, "Ah, come on, Night! Can we please watch Rear Window today?" Laughing

~ The script originally called for the aliens to have a camouflaging ability much like the one portrayed by the alien in Predator (1987). However, when M. Night Shyamalan's saw the ILM test shots of the creatures, he decided that it was too effects-heavy.

Note from me: I know from the DVD special features that Shyamalan originally planned for the aliens' skin to have the ability to recreate the colors and patterns of the area directly behind them. This would make them hard to spot from a distant . . . but not from a few feet away, because human eyes focus differently on objects at a distance than objects closer to the viewer.

The DVD special feature shows that the skin on the alien's back in climax, when it faces Mel and his family in the living room, is mimicking the part of room directly in front of it, automatically attempting to blend with it's background (as viewed from behind).

In the movie, however, the shot of the alien's back is shown so briefly we don't realize this. And the instant before the shot the alien's back is shown, the little girl screams —



— but we don't realize that the image of the girl's face is mimicked by the skin on the alien's back.

If I'm remembering the special feature's presentation of this concept correctly, the scene was supposed to last longer, and the image on the alien's back quickly clarifies so that it blends well with its "background" — the room in front of alien.

A crude version of the girl's screaming face is the only recognizable element on the alien's back in the brief shot we see in the actual film.



In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, this is the 21st Century equivalent of The Thing From Another World, a pure science fiction story that presents clear concepts about an alien invasion, while it offers veiled glimpses of the terrifying creatures who have come to destroy us!

It's scary because of what it tells us, as well as what it shows us.
Shocked
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Wed May 22, 2019 12:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________
_________

_______________ Signs (2002) Official Trailer


__________


This was M. Night Shyamalan's take on alien invasion, revolving around the well-known mystery of crop circles and other mysterious doings.

It was his was most successful film at the box office since The Sixth Sense (1999), perhaps because it starred Mel Gibson when he was at his peak (this was just before Gibson turned to directing and got bad press for bad personal behavior).

Gibson's character lives on a farm in Pennsylvania with his two kids and a younger brother (Joaquin Phoenix). Since this is a large farm, they are fairly isolated, with the closest neighbor probably about a mile or more away. Gibson's character is recently widowed, his wife having died in a horrific car accident, and he also used to be a priest.

The family notes a crop circle on their farm and then becomes aware that they are being watched by something or someone; such crop circles also appear elsewhere, as revealed on the TV news. One of the family dogs goes nuts and is killed.



Shyamalan fills the story with all these little hints and glimpses, as well as some jumps, as he usually does in his films, but it turns out to be a largely empty affair. It may generate suspense for an audience who watches this for the first time, but afterwards, everyone should realize that everything was just a clumsy feint, hiding the fact that this is all simply a standard alien invasion, one which we have all seen many times before in films, going back to the fifties.

Why are the aliens fixated on Gibson's property, playing games there? We don't know.

Shyamalan also throws in enigmatic bits which make little or no sense, the primary one being the wife's parting words for her husband, words which have meaning later, of course, but not with any explanations of why the wife said them. It has to do with blind faith — Gibson's character had lost his and needs to reacquire it.

And by the same token the audience also needs to blindly follow Shyamalan's direction and ask no questions. That's hard to do in this case. It also involves the thought that there are no coincidences, that certain odd things happen for a reason or by some grand plan, but Shyamalan's sample here really is a stretch.

The best facet of the film is the location; there is this sense of isolation and most of that does work, especially the night scenes, which are understandably more creepy.

BoG's Score: 6 out of 10


______________________ Making Signs Pt. 1


__________



______________________ Making Signs Pt. 2


__________



__________________ Signs - In The Cornfield


__________


Trivia Signs: Shyamalan usually cameos in his films, but gives himself a substantial role in this one, playing the guy who is responsible for the wife's death in the auto accident... 1st film for Abigail Breslin as the daughter; she went on to a prolific film career.


BoG
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed May 22, 2019 5:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Well, my goodness . . . Bogmeister wasn't as moved by this movies quasi-religious concept as I was. I loved the idea that some kind of god-like being was arranging things which seemed to be "coincidences", but were actually carefully arranged situations which would come in real handy in tough situations.

It's a unique approach to the whole "God loves us and has a benevolent plan for our lives". It substitutes the idea that "God loves to thinker with the universe, and he's not particular about who lives or dies." Shocked

In the movie, mankind wins and the aliens go away. But if God really didn't want the aliens to hurt humans . . . why did He allow them to come here at all?

Hey, I'm just asking the question, guy!

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 5:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I seem to have frightened off the members who didn't get the premise of this imaginative movie. Smile

Here's the basic idea, in non-religious terms.

Think of this as one of Heinlein's odd concepts, like Stranger in a Stranger Land.

"Alien beings" can be both god-like and non-corporeal. As such, they can tinker with the events which humans experience, just to see how things turn out. They do it just for fun . . . not because they actually care about us.

These god-like, non-corporeal beings are NOT like the benevolent God described in the Bible.

However, their meddlesome efforts in the affairs of mankind have inspired our racial beliefs based on a "kind and caring God" — the one which religious people desperately hope has a plan for mankind which ends with all the true believers safe and happy in heaven. Cool

I hope that's true . . . but based on human history, the odds are against it. Sad

Remember, I'm just suggesting a philosophy based on this movie and the elements it has in common with the real world.

In this movie, Father Mel Gibson is a devout Catholic . . . until his beloved wife is brutally crushed between a car and tree! He then decides that this cruel event proves there is no God — so he gives up being a priest.

But then the creepy aliens land! And Mel must defend his family against them, while expecting no help from the god he no longer believes in.

However, all throughout the story Mel observes "random" events which eventually come together and present him with the astounding idea that some sort of "other worldly force" has been "stacking the deck" in his favor! Shocked

At the key moment in this great story he is aided by all those "coincidences" he thought were random!

For example, his asthmatic son is suddenly unable to breath — just when the alien sprays out it's poisonous breath!

And then Mel's brother, the former baseball player who is a remarkable "power hitter" — is standing right next to a wall-mounted bat which he can grab and use to clobber the alien!

The next miraculous event is that all around the room there are half-filled glasses of water resting on surfaces which can be smashed to drench the alien — a creature who is burned by this liquid as if it were acid! Shocked

The plot was loaded with elements which suddenly turned into "miraculous" events that seemed to be carefully arrange to defeat the aliens!!

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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