WHAT'S NEW: Want it or not, Michael Bay's reboot machine has spit out Friday the 13th for a new generation — the one for whom the 1980 original's quaint, arrow-through-Kevin-Bacon's-throat charms no longer do the thrilling trick. And while director Marcus Nispel is likelier to perpetrate even more crude, quick cuts than Jason Voorhees himself, there's no denying he'll be rewarded with a No. 1 opening somewhere around $36.9 million for the long President's Day weekend.

Trailing a distant second will be Confessions of a Shopaholic, Isla Fisher's troubled, mildly anachronistic ode to retail profligacy fiscal responsibility; it faces competition from He's Just Not That Into You, but should nevertheless ride its PG-13 counterprgramming boost to $23.9 million. Clive Owen rounds out the wide releases in the bank-intrigue actioner The International, which is tracking like shit but still has enough muscle to surmount Taken with $17.9 million and a top-five finish.

Also opening: Warner Bros. gives us ocean life as God intended it — in nausea-inducing IMAX 3-D — with Under the Sea; the Oscar-jilted, critically lauded Italian mob epic Gomorrah; the Indian tandem of Billu Barber and Dev D; and the Roman Polanski biopic (!) Polanski Unauthorized.

THE BIG LOSER: Again, we're not hearing especially promising things about The International's prospects, but hey: It's a holiday weekend, nothing is roundly reviled, and unless you count last week's loser Push dropping to $5 million, things look relatively rosy out there. Of course, there's always...

THE UNDERDOG: Two Lovers, which is just as vulnerable to a Joaquin Phoenix backlash as it is to his batshit momentum. On one hand, it did botch its best outreach opportunity Wednesday night on The Late Show — not necessarily by thrusting its aloof star onto national-TV and YouTube infamy, but by airing one of the film's most unappealing clips. On the other, it's hard not to like director James Gray's moody melodrama about a suicidal 30-something Jew holed up with his parents in Brighton Beach, where he wrestles with romantic devotion to both the clinically crazy shiksa upstairs (a great Gwyneth Paltrow) and the sweet daughter (Vinessa Shaw) of his father's business partner. In their third collaboration (after The Yards and We Own the Night), Gray and Phoenix finally take real advantage of their rapport, trading crime-flick conceits for a more humane, way less self-serious survey of love's utter impossibility. We'd say, "More like this, please," but, well, you know. It deserves better.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include Barry Levinson's beleaguered Hollywood satire What Just Happened, Spike Lee's even more beleaguered war epic Miracle at St. Anna, the ultimate indie Oscar underdog Frozen River, your parents' seventh-favorite film of '08, Nights at Rodanthe, Oliver Stone's W., and the autistic martial arts milestone Chocolate.

It hardly seemed fair to the 32-year-old Aussie, whose massive break in Wedding Crashers followed more than a decade of dues-paying in scattershot soaps, independent films and studio trifles like Scooby-Doo. But there it was: The movie adaptation of Sophie Kinsella's novel about a recent college graduate whose financial reporting gig opens her to a fulsome New York lifestyle — even as it underscores her laughable inability to reckon with the bills once they come due. It was a fun, frivolous, romantic, ostensibly moral portrait the swinging early '00s that producer Jerry Bruckheimer naturally had to have, and which he spent the better part of eight years developing as his chick-flick passion project.

Fisher always sought something a little more intellectually stimulating than just that, though, even if her name did go above the title. She told journalists during last year's press rounds for her romcom Definitely, Maybe about her interest in writing her own comedies; she'd penned two Australian bestsellers by her early 20s, after all, and had hooked a fiance, Sacha Baron Cohen, who was as fulfilling a creative partner as he was a soulmate and father to their young daughter Olive. The Wedding Crashers promise had yet to abate, though what immediately followed seemed incongruous at best with her long-term goals — particularly the hollow indie double-shot of London and The Lookout, the latter of which left viewers wondering how Vince Vaughn's nymphomaniac Crashers paramour wound up portraying arguably the most inessential femme fatale of her generation.

So she tried Hot Rod, another curious choice buying into the gamble that Andy Samberg could open a summer comedy for Paramount. He — and she — couldn't; it finished ninth at the box office its first frame and ended its run with a decidedly underwhelming $14 million. The underrated Definitely, Maybe was next, a far more appealing fit featuring Fisher as the idealist romantic foil to Ryan Reynolds's moody single father. Universal halfheartedly unleashed it on Valentine's Day 2008, where it opened fifth, trailing even the McConaughey/Hudson effort Fool's Gold. At least her voice had a hit less than a month later, supporting Steve Carell and Jim Carrey in Horton Hears a Who!, but Fisher's post-Crashers run has been a bust by even the kindest estimations.

Yet a cocktail of bad roles/luck/marketing is one thing. What can you even say about the unbelievably bad timing of Shopaholic, which Disney has worked to push as a sort of fiscal coming-of-age story while Bruckheimer dizzily spins to the LAT: "The timing for this movie couldn't be better. This is the journey of a young girl who has a problem and she turns her life around. It's a tale the whole world can learn a lesson from." They're entitled, we suppose, and there is the possibility of an escapist-fare hit. For Fisher's sake, at least, we'd like that. But its conceptual dubiousness still accompanies her face on the poster, still weighs down her arms perhaps even more than the overstuffed bags from gilded Fifth Avenue redoubts past which unemployed New Yorkers today pound the pavement with contempt.

And it's Isla Fisher's name, however unfairly, Hollywood hears today and increasingly thinks, "Wow, tough break." It's worse for millions of others, of course. Like them, she deserves better. And also like them, it may be years, if ever, before she gets it.

Most of the ladies who gave up fearing Jesus remain happily married to their Chosen Person. Stunner Elizabeth Banks married the businessman Max Handelman in 2003, and her mother not only approved of Banks’ choice, but made the chuppah herself. First Lady of Dreamworks Kate Capshaw, though still hanging on to her surname from her first marriage, made the switch for Steven Spielberg, and Anne Meara’s conversion put a quasi-end to the primary source of material for her comedy act with Jerry Stiller, “Stiller & Meara,” which used their religious differences for many a punchline. And who can forget Miss Connie Chung, whose baffling adoration of silly Maury Povich convinced the anchor to go Jew for life.

But it’s not all dradles and festivals of lights! Model/actress/bimbo Nikki Ziering went through the lengthy process for, of all people, Steve Sanders himself, Ian Ziering. But predictably, the union went bust after four short years. However, Nikki’s still Jewish! And most memorably, Liz Taylor very famously converted to Judaism to become Eddie Fisher’s second wife, only to eventually become number two of five just a few years later. But her “guts and guile” found its way into Sex And The City, inspiring Charlotte to be proud of her decision to convert for her bagel-loving Jewish baldie, and even name her fancy puppy after Liz.

[Photo credits: Getty, FilmMagic, Wireimage]

• SACHA BARON COHEN AND ISLA FISHER'S WEDDING ON HOLD [Daily Mail]

[Confessions] is not just for women, the filmmakers insist. "We all have spending habits, a lot of us do," said Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the film's producers, speaking by telephone last week. "If we do our job right, this could be another Wedding Crashers." ...

As Mr. Bruckheimer noted of Shopaholic, we all have issues. "How do you cope with money and love?" asked this producer, whose credits include the 1983 hit Flashdance, about a Pittsburgh woman with a passion for welding, exotic dancing and ballet. He added, "That's something everyone can understand."

Bruckheimer's own experience with money and love is indeed famously complex, often ending with Michael Bay or Tony Scott blowing the shit out of something. This dovetails nicely with Confessions of a Shopaholic, whose fashion and romance themes currently skew female but have yet to undergo the extensive green-screen and CGI that will place plucky star Isla Fisher among a futuristic Fifth Avenue wasteland of transforming accessories and mutated, bloodthirsty shop clerks who steadfastly refuse to stock clothes in her size. Whether or not guys eat it up, God knows Nora Ephron will never know what hit her.

[Photo Credit: WENN]

• Wary Hollywood Plans More Chick Flicks [NYT]