"Posters for Warner Brothers’ film“The Reaping,” about deadly plagues, and the torture-filled “Captivity,” from After Dark Films and Lionsgate, appear on bus shelters on Pico Boulevard between two elementary schools. A fright puppet from Universal’s “Dead Silence” peers menacingly from a construction-site wall by a children’s center in Santa Monica. A few blocks away, a large billboard promoting Sony Pictures’“Perfect Stranger” overlooks the campus of the Crossroads School, the daytime home for the offspring of many in the film industry.

All rated R for violence, among other traits, the films belong to what has become an annual winter-spring crop of horror and suspense. But the harvest is trickier than usual this year, as Hollywood braces for a new government review of the marketing of violent entertainment to the young."

Full Article on The New York Times Website

I’m generally not too enthusiastic about government regulation, especially of entertainment marketing. However, it seems the movie studios should take a little more care in where their advertising is placed, or a few careless marketers are going to bring unwanted scrutiny to the industry that will just waste everyone’s time and money.

What do you think?

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The Reaping looks pretty cool. Thousands of years ago there was a series of bizarre occurrences that many believed to have been the Ten Biblical Plagues. No one thought they could happen again. A former Christian missionary, (played by Hilary Swank) who specializes in debunking religious phenomena, investigates a small town which seems to be suffering from the 10 biblical plagues. Release date: April 5. Official Site.