Michael Cieply writes in The New York Times June 25:
The party meanwhile appears to break new ground even in a city that has seen its share of big nights. “I’ve been doing this for years, and haven’t had one like it,” said Maureen McGrath, vice president for sales for the SBE Restaurant Group, which owns Privilege. “Usually they want premieres to be squeaky clean. It sounds like they want this to be the antithesis of that.”
Mr. Solomon went one better in describing his plans, which are loosely intended to mimic the past doings at a once-notorious Moscow bar, the Hungry Duck. “If ‘Captivity’ is what it is, and we’re the bad boys, then ‘Captivity’ deserves a bad-boy party,” he said. “It deserves a nasty party.”
The primary audience, he said, will be fans, who can cycle through the club free in groups of 50, along with an expected army of Web-based video bloggers — the real opinion-makers when it comes to horror — who will start getting their invitations this week.
“I’m aware of it,” said Brad Miska, co-owner of one of the more popular such sites, Bloody-disgusting.com. “If they let us bring a camera, we’re there.”
I hear that the party almost fell apart after the New York Times story. The producer, Courtney Solomon, pitched the New York Times on the story but seeing it in print was a shock. It was as though Courtney didn’t believe that Cieply would write it. To Cieply’s credit, he was totally accurate.
The initial fear was that everyone would get arrested at the party. Then the second generation said, we’ve got to do this. All week, Courtney has been inundated with calls about the party.
At 3 p.m. Thursday, the club Privilege got the check for renting its venue.
The party will feature two Ultimate fighters doing an exhibition. Most every Hollywood freak has been calling Courtney to get into the party.
Tom Leykis, shock jock, will be the guest of honor.
Captivity – the Movie.com.
I’m still upset at the gruesome billboards they put up. One thing is to watch a horror movie, another is to post torture pictures on billboards for children and everybody else to see. It was a stunt that sure got them a lot of publicity, but I’m glad to hear that the movie sucks anyway:
From Time Out London (2 stars out of 6)
From ‘Killing Fields’ director Roland Joffé and veteran genre scriptwriter Larry Cohen . . . a sordid, incoherent copy-cat of ‘Saw’, a movie notorious for its controversial billboard ads, which played on women’s fears of sadistic sexual violence. But that’s not the whole story. Originally shot in Moscow, this co-production was acquired a US distributor, which ordered substantial re-shoots that upped the gore quotient and changed the end. However, the script’s inherent structural weaknesses and thematic inconsistencies remain.
As the four-panel billboards proclaim, the formula is depressingly familiar – Abduction, Confinement, Torture, Termination – but presented without the cruel wit and perverse imagination that saved ‘Saw’ from numbing predictability. Fashion model Jennifer Tree (Elisha Cuthbert) wakes up in a subterranean cell and her all-knowing captor torments her by exploiting her weaknesses and phobias: her vanity, her fear of the dark. Then she discovers that a young man, Gary (Daniel Gillies), is locked in an adjoining room. Perhaps together they can find the strength and ingenuity to escape.
When Jennifer is encouraged to parade herself in a dress and stilettos, this suggests that she is being punished for her modelling. Yet flashbacks to her captor’s childhood suggest his psychopathology has a more banal origin. Most damaging of all is a ‘trick’ reveal, again taken from ‘Saw’, which creates even more confusion. When Jennifer is being force-fed a bloody cocktail of liquidised eyeballs and ears, we are genuinely choked up about it. The film’s clunky point-of-view shift and obviously re-shot climax are likely to have you choking in disbelief.
Captivity is a rip off of Hostel and I don’t believe it will fair well in the Box Office as it’s just kinda..blah. Come’on guys, give us something original once will ya? Maybe..oh I dunno but a little movie called, The Kentucky Fried Horror Show???? Oh yeah, now that will be original. 😉