The Oscars attempt (emphasis on the word, “attempt”) to recognize cinemas greatest achievements each year. The Razzies, on the other hand,  recognize cinema’s greatest underachievements each year.

After seeing the nominees for this year’s Razzie Awards, I’m beginning to think that the Razzie judges need to be given jobs on the Oscar selection committee. Maybe then the Oscar noms would be a little bit more spot-on.

Here are the 2008 Razzie Award nominees for your viewing displeasure.

It’s Wednesday so it’s time for our weekly open discussion, but as it happens this one is hitting on the last day of 2008! Can you believe this year is over already?

And what an incredible year it’s been for movies… 2008 was a banner year for superhero movie fans with the likes of The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Hellboy 2, and yes – even Hancock and Punisher: War Zone.

Other great genre films included Rambo, Cloverfield (do you even remember that opened this year?!), Tropic Thunder, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Kung Fu Panda and more.

Short version: If you’re in the mood for an absurd film that alternates between boring and comedy, this is the movie for you.

I thought The Sixth Sense was awesome. I loved Unbreakable. I thought Signs was OK, except for the premise of aliens allergic to water invading a planet 2/3 covered by it. I didn’t hate The Village, but I thought Lady in the Water was terrible.

Are you seeing a trend there? Well guess what, it hasn’t been broken.

I don’t know how reviews for M. Night Shyamalans’s The Happening are going to roll, but this one isn’t going to be pretty.

Going in, I was hopeful that this might actually turn out to be decent, despite what I had heard regarding the ultimate plot of the film. I even hoped that maybe that was a new twist by Shyamalan – misdirection outside the confines of the movie itself… but sadly this was not the case. It is indeed as absurd as I had feared.

The early word (granted, based on just ONE review) is that Shyamalan is not breaking his losing streak with his latest film The Happening.

Joblo.com has managed to get their grubby little hands on a new trailer for the movie and I’ve embedded it below.

Be warned that the trailer below is a “red band” trailer and contains images that viewers may find disturbing.

Geez, sometimes it feels like you’ve got to twist a studio’s arm to get a trailer out.

First there was a crappy YouTube version that made the rounds on movie websites. Then there was the teeny tiny version you could watch on a French website. Finally, 20th Century Fox has released a full trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s next movie, The Happening.

You can see the trailer below and rest assured that it’s not going anywhere.

I know I’ve ragged on M. Night a bit of late, but based solely on the trailer, The Happening looks pretty effective. Does that mean that the end product will necessarily be great? No, but at least we won’t be writing this one off right off the get-go based on a terrible trailer.

[UPDATE: Ok, it's finally online here.]

Sorry it took a little while to get the teaser trailer for The Happening online, but I was hoping to find a higher resolution version. No luck yet, so here is what’s available.

In my last post about this movie I wasn’t terribly kind, for reasons you can read for yourself, but I have to admit that this teaser gives off a very effective and extremely creepy vibe. Who knows? Maybe Shyamalan can make up for his, shall we say, less than impressive Lady in the Water and break out of his downward trend with this one.

It seems to me that each subsequent M. Night Shyamalan film has gotten progressively worse. The guy is probably just a victim of his own success… after all while we all like the idea of starting out on top of the world, the problem is that there’s nowhere to go but down from there.

Hey started out amazingly with The Sixth Sense and followed up with Unbreakable, which really split people down the middle (personally I loved the concept but wanted more at the end). But after that came Signs (a movie about aliens that are deathly afraid of water trying to invade Earth, which is 2/3 covered in the stuff), and then The Village, another split opinion movie.

M. Night’s next movie, The Happening, sounds like it has the potential to be pretty good. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, it will star Mark Wahlberg as a father who takes his family on the run as a result of a global crisis. I really hope that this movie is well written and does well as I like Shyamalan and think he is pretty gifted. The Sixth Sense genuinely surprised me and I thought that Unbreakable was a neat concept and an interesting take on the superhero genre.