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In its continuing, valiant efforts to raise awareness for the obscure art film they're releasing today, Paramount has apparently taken its publicity assault to the skies. We've received several reports like this one this afternoon:

What's that sinister drone rumbling over Burbank? Three planes flying in some haphazard formation with long billowing banners emblazoned with the M:I:3 logo. Three planes...three M:I:3 films. Urgh. Tried to grab a camera...wasn't fast enough, and my camera-phone is shite.

The planes were spotted circling the Paramount lot a couple of hours ago, prompting one of our operatives there to complain, "As if we didn't know our biggest picture opened today." (Just in case someone might have forgotten, the studio's made sure that the Mission theme music plays whenever someone's on hold when calling the 'Mount.) And we've had other sightings of the planes buzzing the Universal lot, an unambiguous, airborne declaration of war against a competitor. Still, as unnecessary and tacky as the banners might be (whatever happened to the elegant simplicity of sky-writing?), they're still better than scaring the shit out of potential ticket-buyers just trying to buy a newspaper.