It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it shaped our thoughts in a recent release.

I'm Scott Tobias here with...

Genevieve Koski and...

Tosh Robinson.

Keith Phipps is out plotting a series of third-act surprises, each more shocking than the last.

But he'll be with us again for a future pairing.

Every week, we get together to talk

over a classic film and consider how it relates to a current movie. Today, we're delving into

the buried secrets of M. Knight Sharmelan, the director and self-styled cult of personality

whose name has become synonymous with plot twists, but who's also brought a distinctive style

to mainstream filmmaking.

And we're looking at Shyamalan's career through two of the films in a so-called East Rail

177 trilogy, which turn on a fateful train crash outside Philadelphia.

But first, we have to answer a fundamental question.

Tasha, what's a comic book?

According to Merriam-We Webster, it's a magazine

containing sequences of comic strips, usually hyphenated in a tribute of use. Wait, comic strips,

like in the funny papers? I suppose if you must. Well, how many pages and illustrations are

talking here? There are 35 pages and 124 illustrations in the average comic book. Wow, that seems

...