Witches

'Season of the Witch' MPAA rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, violence and disturbing content Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Playing: In general release

The 1,500-meter race in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was formful in one important respect: For the 16th straight Olympiad, an American didn't win it. For the fourth straight, and the 12th out of the last 16, one didn't even get a medal. It's one of sport's enduring mysteries: What happens to the Yanks in this most American of foot races and distances and events? We never expect to win the luge or the coxed fours or the small-bore rifle prone. But to go 80 years without winning the metric mile?

Steven Spielberg was certain his copy of "Paranormal Activity" was haunted. It was early 2008, and the director's DreamWorks studio was trying to decide whether it wanted to be a part of the micro-budgeted supernatural thriller. As the story goes, Spielberg had taken a "Paranormal Activity" DVD to his Pacific Palisades estate, and not long after he watched it, the door to his empty bedroom inexplicably locked from the inside, forcing him to summon a locksmith. While Spielberg didn't want the "Paranormal Activity" disc anywhere near his home -- he brought the movie back to DreamWorks in a garbage bag, colleagues say -- he very much shared his studio's enthusiasm for director Oren Peli's haunting story about the demonic invasion of a couple's suburban tract house.

Ten summers ago, a group of independent filmmakers came up with a Web-based, viral marketing campaign that proved so effective -- and influential -- in creating buzz and audience anticipation that it overshadowed the very movie it was designed to promote. These guys were never heard from again -- but their promotional savvy lives on. That's the conventional wisdom about the no-budget, exercise-in-imagination horror flick "The Blair Witch Project."