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The first teaser trailer for "twist" master M. Night Shyamalan's post-apocalyptic flick After Earth has surfaced and it's basically Facebook. I mean, it's actually mimicking those retrospective videos that Facebook let users make after it rolled out the new Timeline layout. Weird gimmick or clever narrative technique to outline an alternative history? See the video, and decide.

In non-Apple, non-Microsoft, non-Google news from CES 2011, a consortium of media providers have announced last night that UltraViolet, a cloud-based digital media management standard, will be coming very soon. Hinted at last summer, the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), which backs  UltraViolet, claim it will provide consumers with life-time rights to the media they buy in addition to the flexibility to watch that content on a variety of devices. It works like this:

Hey, remember Devil? Its trailer ran when you went to see Inception and the whole theater laughed when the words "From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan" flashed up on the screen. Well, turns out it's part of a three part series of horror films "from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan." And the third one is "what would have been the sequel [to 'Unbreakable']."

Rumors about a fabled fourth season of Avatar: The Last Airbender have gained traction and number with the release of M. Night Shyamalan's movie, with willful disregard for the actual cinematic worth of the film. Nickelodeon confirmed them all today, with a press statement announcing the production of Avatar: The Legend of Korra, which will pick up the Avatar plot seventy years later, with the Avatar who comes after Aang, a Southern Water Tribe girl (Korra) who has already mastered Water, Earth and Fire.

Her quest leads her to the epicenter of the modern "Avatar" world, Republic City – a metropolis that is fueled by steampunk technology. It is a virtual melting pot where benders and non-benders from all nations live and thrive. However, Korra discovers that Republic City is plagued by crime as well as a growing anti-bending revolution that threatens to rip it apart. Under the tutelage of Aang's son, Tenzin, Korra begins her airbending training while dealing with the dangers at large.

*ahem* Squeeeeeee.

Unbreakable is such an underrated movie, but: yeah, accurate and brutal. To quote Weird Al Yankovic, "I think the studios should give M. Night Shyamalan just 30 or 40 more chances to make another good movie – then THAT’S IT."

When Shatner stole Leonard Nimoy's bike (The Daily What) There's a secret code in Cyber Command's logo (Danger Room) Men in Black 3 spoilers (Bleeding Cool) AT&T data upload speed problems explained; no throttling (GigaOM) The curse of the Little Rascals (Neatorama) Government starts BaTMAN and RoBIN defense programs (Topless Robot) Don't give up on M. Night Shyamalan ... (NY Mag) (title image via Capcom Unity)

Yeah, that sounds about right. (via @alyankovic)

In honor of the release of M. Night Shyamalan's Avatar: The Last Airbender, we have complied a list of the fifteen greatest chosen, prophesied, destined, or otherwise singled out heroes in science fiction and fantasy, whether they come from books, movies, television, or video games.  After all, Aang isn't the only person to have a terrible path set before them by fate, and he won't be the last.  Warning: we're talking about ultimate destinies here.  Here there be spoilers.

In spite of our unease about some of its casting decisions, we've had high hopes for The Last Airbender, the M. Night Shyamalan-directed adaptation of the excellent cartoon series, which hits theaters on July 1st. But man ... it's been getting Jonah Hex-like abysmal reviews. It currently has a 00% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert just dropped a review that gives The Last Airbender a half a star out of four and proceeds to tear the movie to shreds.

M. Night Shyamalan's forthcoming adaptation of Nickelodeon's animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender won't be released until July 2010, but criticism over the whitewashing of the series' Asian characters has already given birth to a thriving year-old community of dissenters at Racebending.com and preemptive discussions on whether the casting is racist.

While other movie critics were having eyegasms over Airbender's Superbowl Ad and latest trailer, both Topless Robot and Salon.com turned to address the racial anxiety Shyamalan has stirred up by casting mostly white actors as the series' clearly Asian and Inuit lead characters.