1. Beverly Hills Chihuahua — $17.5 million

Disney unleashed its vast canine army for a second straight week, prompting mad scientists at competing studios to commence top-secret experiments to engineer another, equally lucrative breed. Word on the street has Miramax taking the early lead with Tribeca Guard Dog, the story of a vicious German Shepherd named Henrik who unexpectedly finds love with a pug who persuades him to let her owner out of captivity in a dank Manhattan editing facility. Scott Rudin will produce, natch.

2. Quarantine — $14.2 million

The stunning opening gross for Sony's horror film exceeded its budget by $2 million, thus inheriting the B-schlock mantle from the retiring Saw franchise and guaranteeing another five years of sloppy, utterly forgettable viral marketing. Well done, America.

3. Body of Lies — $13.1 million

We never thought we could be accused of being too generous to Ridley Scott's spy-flick folly, but there you have it.

4. Eagle Eye — $11.1 million

The Shia LaBeouf thriller sustained exceedingly well in its third weekend, dropping less than 40% percent and inspiring DreamWorks to scour the Hitchcock canon for the third thinly veiled Gen-X updating between their young star and director D.J. Caruso. The front-runner to date: Nutso, one of Hollywood's hottest unproduced scripts, which would feature Shia as a rural motel proprietor on the outs with his mysterious, Klonopin-addled stepmother. A green light is forthcoming as soon as the judge lifts the injunction.

5. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist — $6.5 million

Continuing a new tradition, expect the disappointed producers of The Express — the highly touted footbal biopic that nevertheless finished a distant sixth behind Playlist — to launch an inquiry into ticket fraud and other Michael Cera-inspired box-office shenanigans by the end of the day.

WHAT'S NEW: Yesterday we broke down some of our problems with Body of Lies, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a CIA operative entangled in the boilerplate "web of intrigue" when his sketchy boss (Russell Crowe) dispatches him to Jordan to zzzzzzzzz... Critics aren't behind it, and it's too late in the year for Warner Bros. to push this as anything more than the beach-reading it is. Which doesn't mean it can't finish in first place, of course — even though it won't. Beverly Hills Chihuahua will sprint out the stretch over Body's lumbering, wheezing frame, narrowly outgrossing Warners' $16 million for the week's biggest dogtrack upset.

Warners will do much better distributing RockNRolla for Guy Ritchie and Joel Silver on a smattering of screens in LA and New York before going wide on Halloween, but that's pocket change below Universal's football biopic The Express (should open strong around $15.2 million), the B-horror Quarantine ($11.9 million), the family adventure City of Ember ($6.6 million) and finally in wide release, Keira Knightley nifty bodice-ripper The Duchess ($5.2 million). Eagle Eye and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist will skim off everyone's top as well with a combined $16 million for the weekend.

Also opening: Mike Leigh's latest annoyance Happy-Go-Lucky; the quirky microbudget romance Good Dick; the gay family dramedy Breakfast With Scot; Daddy Yankee's gangland redemption saga Talento de Barrio; and the self-explanatory biopic Billy: The Early Years of Billy Graham.

THE BIG LOSER: Equipped as it is for international support and a long life on DVD and cable, $20 million is still the low end of studio expectations for Body of Lies. It won't come anywhere close.

THE UNDERDOG: We'll be the first to admit that Ashes of Time Redux — Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai's revival of his 1994 martial arts epic — makes exactly no sense. Wong packs swordsmen, jilted lovers, defensive siblings and, naturally, Maggie Chueng into the parallel universe of the "jianghu," essentially a martial arts Middle Earth where vengeance seems to be the only thing more plentiful than primary colors. Luckily, Wong's legendary lenser Christopher Doyle is the guy with the camera; nonsense hasn't looked this good since David Lynch uncorked Eraserhead — itself the recent beneficiary of the kind of restoration that saved Ashes from certain doom in dilapidated warehouses around the Far East. Bigger Wong fans than we swear by this version; if we can trust them, so can you.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's slight new DVD releases include three different versions of You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Manoj's mint The Happening, last summer's sleeper hit The Visitor, the 30th-anniversary edition of Halloween, the 50th-anniversary edition of Touch of Evil, and the eagerly awaited second volume of The Smurfs: Season One.

So are we being too hard on Body of Lies? Can The Express or Quarantine pull an October surprise on an unwitting Chihuahua? Can anybody explain Ashes of Time in 50 words or less? Weigh in below; what's your weekend looking like?

Warners may be the only studio that hasn't yet had its big Iraq-themed clusterfuck; that time appears to have arrived. (Its defunct subsidiary Warner Independent bungled the underrated In the Valley of Elah to a $1.5 million wide release last September, just one of the misfires that cost the mini-major its life.) Universal only opened with $17.1 million for last year's The Kingdom, and Paramount saw Stop-Loss die quickly this past spring, earning almost half of its $11 million total gross in the first week of release. So if Iraq and the war on terror aren't over yet as Hollywood themes, they probably will be when Monday rolls around.

Critics aren't digging it either, but maybe even more importantly: Has Leonardo DiCaprio ever seemed more out-of-place than the Body trailers and TV spots?

It's worse than Blood Diamond, and we're facing it again with the upcoming Revolutionary Road. Audiences see more punchline than pedigree. From Warners to the White House, would you really entrust any matter of national security to this man? We'll have our own bold, pinpoint predictions about Body's fate in tomorrow's Defamer Attractions column, but for now, better safe than sorry, Warners: Watch out for chihuahuas.

Boomp3.com

At the premiere of Body Of Lies, Russell Crowe was shocked to hear that one of the reporters on the red carpet was not a fan of cheese. The rough and tumble Aussie actor couldn’t believe that the reporter did not enjoy one of the finest things in life. Crowe said, “Perhaps, this woman has been given the wrong cheese and maybe I’m the person to teach her about the ways of proper cheese consumption. I love CHEESE! Give me a nice slice of Havarti and a beautiful Bordeaux and I’m as tame as a baby kitten.”

[Photo Credit: WENN]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Boomp3.com

Hip Hop aficionado and dolphin short enthusiast Russell Crowe took to the rough and tumble streets of Beverly Hills to pick up the latest mix CD from his favorite rapper, Supa Soaker. The Body Of Lies star asked Supa Soaker if he sells his mix tapes and CDs on line as a direct digital download. Crowe believed it would increase Soaker’s audience and it would be a lot easier to put onto his iPod. Crowe said, “Mr. Soaker and myself know that Beverly Hills is full of hardcore hip hop fans, but I believe he’s limiting his commercial appeal by focusing primarily in this area. Now, if he was on MySpace or the Friend Book, he might have more fans.”

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

If you saw the preview for The Insider, you pretty much know what most of Body of Lies will be like. It's men under intense pressure shouting at each other over cell phones, usually beginning their speeches with some variant on "Don't fuck with me!" Russell Crowe smugly lectures Leo for most of the movie in speeches like this: "This is the New Model Al Quaeda. [sic] These are the new evolved analog cockroaches. They got in place and waited. This is war. This is not Osama got Lucky on his flying fucking carpet."

The testoster-ensemble is mitigated by agent DiCaprio's naggingly "nymphomaniac" wife back in the States (played by Black Book siren Carice van Houten) and a mysterious "French aid worker" whose vagina apparently doubles as a launching pad for Leo's tender character arc. And while we've stood by Scott through even his most banal transgressions (this story kind of reminds us of Legend, in fact, but without the unicorn), we're a bit nervous about the 70-year-old's chances of finally breaking his awards-season drought with what amounts to a well-tailored Departed Redux. Worse yet, we expect most viewers would agree that the world needs another war-on-terror film like we need Dune re-made by Peter Berg. Wait, what's that? Oh, fuck.

[Photo Credit: Estrenoblog]

• Advance Script Review: Body of Lies [CC2K]