The movie ended without anyone making an attempt to show appreciation, a gesture of clap and not even a form of appreciative smile was given. Everyone was with their serious hats even when the movie ended. Was it because the movie didn’t fulfill its expectations? Or maybe because the movie’s theme is something that should not be taken lightly? Was it because everybody knows what the movie is all about?

In the last two days, almost everyone I know was excited to see the movie on the first day showing. Though most of them have already read the book, it was more of the curiosity of how the novel would be turned into a movie that keeps them (and me) keep guarding the Sureseats website, to keep an eye on the movie’s online reservation availability. Though the movies schedule was shown, reservations were suspended because the movie hasn’t been rated yet by the MTRCB. The delay was probably due to some influential religious groups, moralists and conservative Christian groups that keeps on making noise to ban the public screening of the movie.

Bad publicity is good publicity. As more and more people who cries and whines to stop the movie from being shown, the more and more the public becomes curious in watching the movie, and as for that, the accumulated curiosity becomes a hype.

The curiosity and then the hype. If you’ve ever been in Glorietta and Greenbelt ticketing lobby you’ll get to know how everybody is trying to get schedules on the first day of showing. The online ticket reservations via Sureseats were no good (TG! I got my tickets reserved midnight when reservations was opened). It seems their system couldn’t handle large simultaneous connections and their system choked. So everybody was piling up on ticket booths to buy tickets one day in advance. The last time this same circumstance happened was a few days prior to the previous Harry Potter movie.

Rated-18. Besides the limiting of the movie’s audience to mature audience, the next major effect was concentration these audience to a limited number of cinemas. SM Cinemas who holds the 50% market share of the movie audience has to decline the showing of the movie, simply because they don’t show “R” movies in their cinemas. As a result, remaining non-SM cinemas like Ayala Cinemas are forced to use almost all of their theaters show the movie and give chance to the madding crowd.

What’s the Fuss? It’s the current hype. The controversy of the moment. Nobody wants to be left out when you and your friends starts to discuss the movie or the book during lunch or during a water cooler conversation.

I guess this hype is every body’s fault. Who wants to be “out” anyway.