Word: yes
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...there movies nobody likes but everyone sees? Yes, especially over weekends when only one major-studio film is released. That seemed to be the case with Couples Retreat, the Vince Vaughn comedy that received a flatulent 13% on Rotten Tomatoes' survey of critics' reviews and a mediocre B rating from CinemaScore's poll of exiting moviegoers. Yet by Sunday night, according to early estimates, it will have earned $35.4 million, the top gross ever for a movie on Columbus Day weekend...
Then there are movies that people simply have to see. Paranormal Activity, made three years ago for a no-budget $11,000 - yes, thousand - is the new overnight sensation. Opening two weeks ago at midnight shows in 16 college towns, Oren Peli's haunted-house thriller expanded on Friday to full playdates at 159 venues and scared up a phenomenal $7.1 million. That's $44,475 per screen, making this the highest-ever average for a medium-size release. Paramount Pictures' clever viral media campaign helped, but credit the movie's breakout status to old-fashioned word of mouth...
...hairy deal, say cynics who were bred on gross-out horror movies. Show us heads exploding, chests busting, legs sawed off. Yet the packed audience at a late-night screening of Paranormal Activity in Times Square this past week didn't need gore effects to be scared witless. Yes, they knew it was only a movie - one that, like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and plenty others before it, used "found footage" to give a patina of realism to the fanciful events that were dreamed up by writer-director Oren Peli and are endured by actors Micah Sloat...
...since psychologist Martin Seligman crafted the phrase "learned optimism" in 1991 and started offering optimism training, there's been a thriving industry in the kind of thought reform that supposedly overcomes negative thinking. You can buy any number of books and DVDs with titles like Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, in which you will learn mental exercises to reprogram your outlook from gray to the rosiest pink: "affirmations," for example, in which you repeat upbeat predictions over and over to yourself; "visualizations" in which you post on your bathroom mirror pictures of that car or boat you want; "disputations...
...anything at all, simply by using your mental powers to "attract" it. The poor listened to upbeat preachers like Joel Osteen and took out subprime mortgages. The rich paid for seminars led by motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and repackaged those mortgages into securities sold around the world. (Read "Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking...