cinema HYPE

By: Joanna Grillo

Shutter Island, another Scorsese-DiCaprio collaboration will be released February 19^th. This past Sunday the film was one of a small collection of blockbusters that showcased an ad during the super bowl.

The average price for a 30 second spot in this year’s super bowl was between $2.5 and $2.8 million. This was interesting considering the release date of Shutter Island was said to be pushed back to February from its original October 2^nd date due to financial issues within Paramount.

Paramount moved up the release date of “Up in the Air” starring George Clooney to take advantage of early awards buzz and that its low production cost allowed more spending on promotion.

The films new release date is also the same as 1991’s Silence of the Lambs, supposedly in hopes of borrowing some luck from Dr. Lecter and walking home with several Oscars for their thriller too.

Now, remember back in the fall when all those film makers were trying to defend Roman Polanski because being a rapist is okay so long as you are a quality director? Scorsese was one of Polanski’s supporters.

Maybe its just me, but it seems like pushing the release date back so that our A.D.D. generation doesn't remember this was a good way to make sure no one avoids giving paramount their money in protest of Scorsese’s words of support. Then again, I may just be being cynical.

The Super Bowl ad did do a nice job of working in titles of Scorsese’s past films, including those with DiCaprio. That simple reminder of, “Hey, remember when we made these other totally awesome movie that you loved?” mixed with chilling clips from the trailer certainly seemed to do the job. I will be the first to admit I've screamed in fear of my own shadow, and I still want to see Shutter Island.