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!).

Oh, I must see it again if only to avoid the idiotic server thing.

Stuart Townsend, Joseph Fiennes and Naomi Watts have all been cast in HP and the Half-Blood Prince.

Naomi Watts = Narcissa?