I guess misogynistic fictionalized torture and rape just don't bring 'em in like they used to.

Steph, may I tag?

Matt, absolutely!

If media hype couldn't make Snakes On A Plane a hit, even gawking curiosity shouldn't make a big difference to Captivity's numbers.

Snakes On A Plane clearly wasn't going to be a hit, in my world -- I never thought on the online base around it would translate offline, as the online hype had emerged before much was even known about the film (even a trailer!). In short, the studio made the mistake of believing people laughing at their film title and premise was going to be a good sales pitch. Which it ain't. I wish Snakes wasn't used as an example of viral marketing, as there's plenty of examples of it working, and a billion dollar industry surrounding that, because of that.

There are, however, clear examples of studios hyping something controversal to big numbers successfully. When it all falls down is usually when the end product is also utter crap.

It's got to be more complicated than that. Utter crap makes money all the time.

Rob Schneider has built a career on that very fact.

Yeah, but rarely does utter crap make it big by mounting a campaign about how utterly crap something is. Which was the basis of the Snakes campaign, basically. The secret to horror marketing is, in my opinion, to have a good film that will create buzz about the fact it's good, and have people campaign about how it's 'bad'. Example: Saw. Budget: $1m. Box office: $100m. DVDs: around $200m as an industry average. Result: $299m profit. I also thought it was a good film, but it's used as one of the recent examples of torture porn.

Phase Three: Profit!

I also thought it was a good film, but it's used as one of the recent examples of torture porn.

Yeah, Saw wasn't what I expected (especially since I saw Saw II first). It was much more psychological; it wasn't some non-stop gorefest.

Yeah.. As I've said to you previously, I think, P-C I've not seen 2 or 3 as they just don't appeal. What I've heard -- right or wrong -- suggests it's just milking a franchise now.

I've seen a few reviewers saying Captivity marks the beginning of the end for torture porn flicks, but I'd tend to disagree (although I hope I'm wrong). With that kind of money, they're going to keep coming. It's turned Lion's Gate from a struggling film company to a massively profitable movie corp.

Since the reason I called in sick to work (a) wasn't really all that bad, and (b) cleared up by noon, I decided to go to the 1:40 showing of Harry Potter and give it a second looksee. Very few people at the cinema (about seven others), and the first reel had an annoying soundtrack issue (about every 5 minutes, but sometimes more frequently, about 5 seconds of sound would repeat, overlaying what was supposed to be said), but I did manage to catch a bit that I missed due to crowd reactions and mishearing the accents the first time around.

Mrs. Black's portrait is there--that's what Kreacher is talking to the first time Harry sees him when he first arrives at Number 12, and you can hear her talking back to the house-elf.

Also, I noticed a lot more what DR was doing with Harry's neck roll--he only does that when he's feeling a bit Riddle-ish. It's a nice echo of the one that Ralph Fiennes does.

Definitely worth a second viewing. Oh, and because I mentioned the problem with the soundtrack to the manager afterwards, I got two free passes! Now I can go see Bourne Ultimatum in the evening instead of waiting for a weekend matinee (which is still $7.50, so not much of a savings!).