Cadillac Records opened this past weekend with a respectable $5,023 per theatre, and got good reviews. It came in second place in this week's Box Office Power Rankings behind only Bolt, the unstoppable force that nobody cares about.

But because it was only in 686 theatres, it couldn't make a box-office splash, earning $3.4 million overall and landing in ninth place. And because it was in 686 threatres, it was too big to be one-of-those only-in-major-cities movies that generate buzz and huge per-theatre numbers. (Think Milk.)

For our fall photo contest, we made your job easier, and ours harder.

We asked for photographs of babies and pets for this year's contest, and we received 166 entries.

No movie has ever won the Box Office Power Rankings with a 10th-place finish in overall ticket sales. It's certainly possible, but a film has to be perfect or nearly so in every other category to pull it off.

Now that the Davenport City Council has approved a March 3 referendum on the Davenport Promise proposal, one can be certain that the coalition that has been built over the past year-plus is being mobilized to demonstrate broad community support.

It will not be technically affiliated with any major community player, but it will include a lot of familiar names and faces behind the scenes. It will undoubtedly feature "real," everyday citizens, so voters won't feel like they're getting bullied by the heavy hitters. And the campaign will basically argue that there's no sensible reason to vote against the Promise, that there's no way the program could fail, and that the risk of voting the proposal down is too great.

That style of PR push was the successful approach of backers of River Renaissance in 2001. And the work in 2007 and 2008 of a Promise exploratory committee and a Promise task force has looked less like objective analysis than propaganda.

But don't mistake the marketing for unanimity.