The MindValley e-commerce marketing blog posted this much-improved DVD cover for a pirated version of Good Night and Good Luck they found in Chinatown, which reminds us that for all of the movie's stylistic and political ambition, it was sorely lacking for a scene in which Edward R. Murrow unwinds by taking in a wet t-shirt contest. But more importantly, we bet that if just one maverick thinker in the Warner Bros. marketing department applied the lesson learned here to the Superman Returns campaign, the Gay Superman question could be washed away with nothing more than a bucket of cold water and a part-time cocktail waitress looking to pick up some modeling work on the side.

The evil promotional procession of The Omen's instantly recognizable triple sixes etched into the sky above Fox's Century City lot late yesterday (see included photo, sent in by a reader who just knocked a millennium off his purgatory sentence) by the studio's infernal biplanes was merely the first stage of their airborne marketing blitz. Another operative informs us that Fox's airborne, fork-tailed terror squad continued down to Anaheim, briefly turning the Magic Kingdom into the Most Satanic Place on Earth:

A nicotine-addled Defamer operative just submitted this report about Fox's latest skywriting-based attempt at movie marketing:

Defamer is committed to providing our readers with up-to-the-minute information about any changes to the release schedules of the summer's hottest blockbusters, especially when those blockbusters feature the wisecracking, lasagna-lovingest feline to ever creep across the big screen on little CGI cat feet.

In a bold and potentially reckless attempt to expand the early buzz surrounding Snakes on Plane from the internet into the real world, New Line is releasing actual snakes onto actual planes in transit between crucial test markets:

Today's LAT delves into the marketing dilemma that Warner Bros. faces in selling its possibly homosexual box office hero to America: Should they hop on their generously muscled, spandex-clad Superman's shoulders and parade through Boys Town, or would it be wiser to book Brandon Routh on TRL to make out with Jessica Alba? Reports the Times:

Paramount has much riding on Jackass: Number Two, with the hit-hungry studio praying audiences will show up for another heaping serving of its particular brand of inter-rectal Hot Wheels fun. Director Jeff Tremaine—whose face became familiar to West Hollywood locals when Jackass star Johnny Knoxville put it on a billboard promoting a fictional gay cruise line—spoke to MTV.com about his unwitting participation in the viral marketing prank:

At first, we suspected that our favorite actress was actively trying to develop "The Wink" as her signature one-sheet move (surely we all remember Matthew McConaughey's now-iconic "The Lean" ), a visual shorthand letting you know that this is a Lindsay Lohan Film, Where Fun Things Are About To Happen!™ But then we realized there's a likelier, less calculated explanation: Lohan showed up for her photo sessions exhausted from typical, sleepless nights of non-stop partying, and when a team of exasperated pros couldn't halt the uncontrollable twitching in her eyes with even a potent combination of make-up tricks and injected muscle relaxers, just worked the tic into the ad campaigns. Voila! A trademark is born. But the first true test of her move's staying power will come when it's time to do posters for her darker upcoming films, Bobby and Chapter 27, where The Wink will have to be reinvented as a more subtle spasm of grief punctuating the horrors of the Bobby Kennedy and John Lennon assassinations. We think those uncontrollably fluttering eyelids are up to the task.

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:

Collider noticed the billboard looming over the corner of Palm and Santa Monica in West Hollywood, which rather boldly touts something called "Rainbow Cruise Lines" and directs curious, prospective vacationers to check out the company's website. Gay shuffleboard enthusiasts will undoubtedly be disappointed to discover that the seafaring come-on is just a stunt advertisement for Jackass: Number Two, and that the movie's web presence is completely devoid of Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O's signature mututal cock-and-ball torture, adding to the sting of the promotional subterfuge.

The inscrutable logic of Amazon.com's targeted-marketing emails, as manifested in a friend's inbox yesterday:

Maybe we don't understand these things because we didn't go to an Ivy League school. But it would seem to us that the first part of getting yourself perceived as one of the cool kids — as a big front-of-Metro takeout in Saturday's Times explained a crew of Cornell kids is trying to do — would be to not have big front-of-Metro takeouts on how damn hard you're trying to become one of the cool kids.

A flummoxed reader emails:

Or a New York Press deathwatch status report?

Because nothing revives a sagging industry like a heinous stunt, the Magazine Publishers of America is in the midst of a three-year campaign of wrapping certain titles in space-age covers, dated 100 years into the future. These special copies are then sent to "thousands of advertising and marketing leaders," who are then immediately convinced on the enduring relevancy of glossy listicles. Or, at the very least, they're convinced that the MPA has lost its self-marketing mind. A sampling of some of the cover lines:

We were finally comfortable with the idea of living in a six-borough'd city. But now we learn that new sixth borough has up and seceded: Philadelphia, according to a report on CNN.com today, has been named "America's Next Great City."

We suspect that's at least a bit of a misquote.