Alanis Morissette & M. Night Shyamalan

I'm sure you've all asked yourself once or twice, what do Alanis Morissette and writer/director M. Night Shyamalan have in common. Well, rejoice, for now I'll tell you exactly that. Both of them came out of nowhere in the '90s (this is sort of a half-true 'cause Alanis was a teen pop diva in Canada, but she had been kinda of forgotten by them... anyway, bear with me) and took the world b assault: Jagged Little Pill, Morissette's 1995 sort-of-debut (again, teen pop diva) was the biggest selling album ever by a female artist and got mostly rave reviews; Shyamalan's sort-of-debut, Sixth Sense, was the surprise hit of the year, got a bunch of Oscar nominations, and made him the rising star in Hollywood.
Then came their follow-up works: Supposed Former Infactuation Junkie (probably my favorite Alanis album, not very popular opinion though), Unbreakable, Signs, Under Rug Swept, MTV Unplugged, The Village, So-Called Chaos. With each new release, less and less people liked them; I, on the other hand, was firmly believing they were still cool, as I mostly enjoyed all of Shyamalan's movies (except for that stupid ending in Signs... what the hell were you thinking, Nighty??!) and it would take a lot to get me off Alanis... and then came 2008.
I've been reading about Alanis' new album for a few months now, and ever since I came to the US, I haven't been to one movie and not seen the trailer for The Happening. This, I thought naively, was it: finally they would return to their former glory and I would be proven right. To be honest, I wasn't that excited about Alanis' album, but the trailer for The Happening was really cool, I really thought it would be good. Then came the bombs... Flavors of Entanglement sucks. The Happening is one of the worst movies of the year, the year of Speed Racer and Vantage Point!! What happened, guys?!?!
Flavors of Entanglement is derivative and electronic-y, which seems to be the way Alanis is headed since Under Rug Swept. Honestly, the only good song of the album is Not As We, a piano ballad where there is basically no room for the over-production that haunts the rest of the album. The thing I always loved about Alanis was her lyrics, but the music in this album is so uninteresting that I haven't really gotten interested in checking out the lyrics (well, except for Not As We, that is). And even though I'm pretty sure Alanis can still write, I don't think I'll be looking at those lyrics anytime soon.
The Happening is bad. No, strike that, it's terrible. There's not one really good thing about it. Well, Shyamalan can still direct (sort of), there are some chilling moments, but that's it. The acting is horrible (can that be the same Mark Whalberg from The Departed?!?!?). The script is a joke. I know why all those people are killing themselves: they saw the damn movie!!!
So there you go: what do Alanis and Nighty have in common? They both showed up with masterpieces and took the world by surprise in the '90s. Then they both grew less and less popular, but kept me as a fan while losing basically everybody else. And now, in june/2008, they've both lost me. Pity.