M. Night Shyamalan's American Express Ad

After that live actions Simpsons piece turned out to be an ad, another mysterious item has been identified as a promo spot - and this one is well worth your time too.

When a brief, mysterious clip of a woman eating a fly appeared online a week or so ago, some sources pegged it as an excerpt from The Lady in the Water. I speculated that the piece probably had commercial origins in a previous post, and now it's confirmed: the snippet's true nature has now been revealed as coming from a 2-minute spot for American Express, directed by and starring M. Night Shyamalan.

I first saw the full ad during last night's Oscars broadcast, but have since downloaded the .mov and given it another watch. It's not a bad piece at all, though hardly the best thing Night's ever done. I'll be keeping the .mov, though, maybe even burning a disc of it - things like commercials tend to be sadly ephemeral and I doubt there's even much chance of it turning up on a future M. Night DVD.

It seems, sadly, that I must be one of the few serious film watchers of the world looking forward to The Lady in the Water. At least this means, or at least I hope it means, that people will be pleasantly surprised. There are conjuring tricks in The Sixth Sense and The Village that still make me smile whenever I think about them.