A month ago, I described the trailers that preceeded 300 thusly:

With the exception of Spider-Man 3, virtually all of the innumerable trailers yesterday before 300 highlighted Hollywood's current phase: dank, gross, low-budget nihilistic horror films, and, in a very similar genre, the latest effort by Quentin Tarantino, which featured the disgusting image of a buxom young woman whose leg is amputated and replaced with a machine gun, which she alternately walks on and fires at the baddies (baddies being a relative term in a Tarantino movie, of course) by crouching in some sort of kung fu-style pose spraying bullets upward. (No, really.)

In their latest issue, Newsweek writes:

Over the next few months, Hilary Swank, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger—all of them Oscar winners—will topline scary movies. "Grindhouse" features Bruce Willis ("Planet Terror") as well as Rosario Dawson ("Death Proof"). Luke Wilson, known for boyish comedies such as "Old School," will appear on April 20 in "Vacancy," a shocker about a couple marooned with a psycho at a backwater motel. Next month Ashley Judd will star in a movie about flesh-eating bugs. The title: "Bug." Horror has been the trend du jour for a while, but it was largely confined to the industry's fringe. Now Hollywood has turned into Horrorwood, and the reason is simple: money. "People want to be part of movies that are successful—sometimes it's as simple as that," says Joel Silver, producer of Swank's "The Reaping." "And lately these movies have been very lucrative."

In the late 1970s, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg saved a Hollywood bent on collectively auguring itself into the ground by dusting off the 1930s Republic serial, and spiffing it up with big budgets and cutting edge special effects. 20 years later, it appears that having nearly driven moviegoers away once again with a similar collection of dark, cynical highly politicized movies, Hollywood's latest attempt to save its collective keister involves dusting off the low rent spirit of Roger Corman and William Castle.

As I said last year...