It's true! I saw a huge line for that Friday night and wondered why everyone was going to this crappy looking thing I'd never heard of.

It was probably the only classic horror movie actually playing, which might have made it the default choice.

I saw DOOM, and my in-depth review is here.

The kiddies love the horror movies. If you want the big bucks, it's all about marketing to the kiddies.

If you want a real blockbuster, though, make a movie that features a youthful protagonist (often a teenager or adolescent), struggling against hostile older people. Or a cartoon, or a comic book hero (or a combination of the above).

For example, 21 of the top 30 all-time box-office grossers fit this pattern:

Titanic
Star Wars (all 6)
Shreck (I and II)
E.T.
Spider Man (I and II)
Lord of the Rings (all 3)
Finding Nemo
The Lion King
Harry Potter (two of them)
Home Alone
The Incredibles

Yeah, and it's amazing how many of those are fantasy and/or sci-fi related, yet those markets are considered "niche" or specialty markets.

well it is Halloween weekend

Apparently it features a Jewish character being dressed in concentration camp gear, locked into a bathroom, and being gassed.

WTF? Hollywood is even more tastelessly insane than I thought.

Yeah, but they don't dare show members of the RoP as the enemy. Not like we are actually fighting them now. Interesting that before 11 September 2001 it was okay to use Arabs as bad guys, such as True Lies. Now that we are at war and need some good "rally the home troops" movies, like what Hollywood did during WW II, they won't make them. Tom Clancy had is right in his book, but when they made the film with Aflake the enemy was changed to National Socialists. Pussies!

I saw this movie at 12am opening day and it is actually pretty good. It doesn't have as many twists as the first movie, but the ending sequence ties things together nicely and really makes you smack your head and give a Homer Simpson remark.

It's a better movie than most of the crap that's out there today. It does rely a little too much on gore for its key sequences, but it's still a better horror film than almost any franchise that has come before it. If you enjoyed the first movie, you'll find the second one entertaining. If you want to see a psychological, in your face horror flick, catch it.

Othewise, run, run far away...

Yikes, thanks for warning me. I walked out of the cinema after watching Seven feeling grimy. So now I can cross Saw off my list of movies to see.

From the front page of my local lame-ass college paper:

"In protest of 'Saw II,' 1,000 ring-tailed lemurs will throw 1,000 pounds of feces at 1,000 zookeepers. It ain't pretty, but it's justice."

Hey, for a lame-ass paper from a lame-ass college, it's kind of sporadically amusing.