Word: witchingly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Maryland, to play in a horror movie. Twenty-two months later, their film was a smash...and the talk not just of Hollywood but of America. You could hardly walk down a bustling street last week or log on to a website without tripping over that ominous incantation "Blair Witch." The impact, sudden and seismic, of The Blair Witch Project is utterly unprecedented. Never has a--let's be honest--weird movie budgeted at a ludicrously low $35,000 stormed both the box office and the national pop consciousness. In its first week of wide release, on 1,101 screens...
Money and marketing are just part of the lure. This minimalist horror film, which appears to be a self-filmed documentary of three filmmakers who get lost in the Maryland woods while tracking down a local witch legend, has become the Elvis, the E.T., the Pet Rock of 1999--the hottest item in a hot summer. Shagadelic--what's that? Jar Jar Binks--remind me. Ricky Martin--isn't he Dino's kid? For this moment (and treasure it, because it may vanish as fast as it materialized), Blair Witch is the must-attend social event for plugged-in America...
Faced with this out-of-nowhere phenomenon, Hollywood cheers and shudders. Any movie that scares up business is considered good for the rest of the industry. But this one became a hit by breaking too many rules. No-star indie films usually make money with charm and sentiment; Blair Witch has neither. So the mass audience will accept something strident, elliptical, confrontational--what next? The movie was shot with its actors' being put through an eight-day survival game. They shot the film and made up the dialogue while the directors lurked out of sight and played sneaky tricks...
...product was eccentric, so was the peddling, what Artisan co-president Amir Malin calls "guerrilla marketing tactics." Blair Witch's creative team, known as Haxan Films, hustled the movie's clips onto John Pierson's Split Screen cable show, premiered its trailer on the insider Ain't It Cool News website and launched its own site, www.blairwitch.com which, on an eventual investment of $15,000, had racked up 75 million hits by week's end. If Artisan can create an avid audience on cable and in cyberspace, why is Fox or Warner Bros. spending tens of millions advertising...
...reaction of moviegoers is no less schizophrenic. Scan their faces as they enter the theaters playing Blair Witch. The anticipation is electric; this could be a fantasy reunion concert of all four Beatles. Many in the audience are escorted by hipper acquaintances who have seen the film and are back not to watch it again but to watch their friends watch it. And though those in the know will urge people to see Blair Witch, they won't spill its secrets. (Warning: we will.) The film is a rite of passage, fraternity hazing and haunted-house trip rolled into...