WHAT'S NEW: Since 2005, Tyler Perry has been good for at least one No. 1 opening per year. He'll get 2009's first out of the way this weekend, reviving America's favorite grandma-with-a-dick in Madea Goes to Jail. Last we saw Perry's moody matriarch, she was being hauled off by cops at the end of Meet the Browns' slow-speed Atlanta freeway chase; this time around, she brings her saucy moral suasion to a women's prison as her family (mostly) rallies around her. We're all for ladies-in-chains genre revisionism, and we expect the moviegoing public is with us — probably to the tune of around $26.3 million.

Also opening: The Jay McCarroll documentary Eleven Minutes; the grim ex-con drama Chain Link; the porn farce Hookers Inc.; the acclaimed Belgian romantic comedy Moscow, Belgium; and the indie Hindi spiritual journey Delhi 6; and the microbudget critical darling Medicine For Melancholy.

THE BIG LOSER: Virtually no one dared challenge Perry and Lionsgate on historically toxic Oscar weekend, meaning that Sony's male-cheerleader comedy Fired Up is your lone wide-release counterprogramming option. We're sorry. That will still take a beating from the holdovers around it — Friday the 13th, He's Just Not That Into You and Taken in particular — netting $4.8 million en route to Flopz™.

THE UNDERDOG: Oscar nominees will all experience a last-minute surge between today and Sunday, but we'd prioritize Frozen River. Again. This was an Underdog of ours from waaayyy back in August, and we stand by it as Melissa Leo chases a Best Actress upset special. Sure, you can rent it, but out of respect for Sony Classics — which took a chance on this film out of Sundance and has navigated around awards-season shoals about as expertly as anyone in the running — buy in at the theater and hope for the best on Sunday night. You'll be happy you did, believe us.

FOR SHUT-INS: Among new DVD's, the other Leo settles into Netflix oblivion with Body of Lies; Angelina Jolie's own Best Actress turn arrives in Changeling; Bill Maher leads the Oscar-snubbed docu-comedy Religulous; Greg Kinnear and Dakota Fanning's best laid awards-season plans go awry in Flash of Genius and Hounddog; and the High School Musical 3: Senior Year gang roars shrieking into your living room.

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.

WHAT'S NEW: It looked for a moment like the aging He's Just Not That Into You had done in New Line's climate-controlled film cellar might have punched up its all-star romcom flavor. Yet as taste test results pour in, we're learning that might have been a little too premature an assumption. Not premature, however: The expectation that the Barrymore/ScarJo/Aniston/Affleck confection will win the weekend, wringing around $22.6 million of date-night loot and safely distancing itself from The Pink Panther 2's $16.8 million. Look for the stop-motion fantasy Coraline to present the weekend's big 3-D X-factor on 2,200 screens, pulling enough viewers from the top-two openers — as well as holdovers Taken and Paul Blart: Mall Cop — en route to a surprising, Focus-satisfying $11.2 million.

Also opening: Darth Weinstein's own shelf-dust Fanboys; the Lysistrata-ian, Soviet-era sex-for-water comedy Absurdistan; and the much-anticipated Thai martial-arts offering Chocolate, about a "special-needs girl with a special need to kick some ass." We can't make it up, we swear.

THE BIG LOSER: We suppose Summit Entertainment had to follow its blockbuster Twilight with something, but we had hoped it wouldn't be yet another grim, garish confirmation of the B-flick factory the studio actually is. Yet here comes Push, the psychic actioner pairing Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning as a telekinetic and a clairvoyant trolling Hong Kong for some experimental drug that, should it fall into the wrong hands (namely Djimon Hounsou's), would wreak some global havoc. Like, say, a sequel. We love noshing on some delicious junk now and then, but since we get the feeling that even Summit itself would hesitate to lick the frosting off this particular cupcake — and with Chocolate calling our names anyway — we'll pass. As will the rest of America; see you at $7 million and on Flopz™ by June.

THE UNDERDOG: Face it: This is a make-or-break year for you and your Oscar pool. Seventeen wins won't cut it anymore. Luckily, Magnolia Pictures is pulling for you, offering this year's Oscar-Nominated Short Films as a means of sharpening your competitive advantage in at least two categories. Add in the extra benefit of all of them being generally good (a few are outstanding, including Pixar's Presto, pictured), and really, there's no excuse to say "No." We'll offer our own handicapping guide later today, but clear a couple hours this weekend to judge for yourself.

FOR SHUT-INS: A sparse week of new DVD releases includes Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, a two-disc edition of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the good Dakota Fanning alternative The Secret Life of Bees, "deluxe" reissues of the first three Friday the 13th films, and the indispenable-to-somebody Becker: Season Two.

WHAT'S NEW: Some weeks we don't even know why we bother surveying winter's new-release folly — like what compelled Fox to open a male-geared actioner like Taken in the dead zone of Super Bowl weekend, or what compelled DreamWorks to open (let alone make) The Uninvited at all. The latter film, a remake of the contemporary Korean classic A Tale of Two Sisters, is particularly confounding: Evil nurse Elizabeth Banks turns evil stepmother by marrying David Strathairn. Brows furrow, quick cuts and gloom ensue. Once upon a time this might have been a camp masterpiece. Now it's just another diluted mass-market solicitation to pay first, ask questions later, hopefully after the 'Works/'Mount has wrung $14.3 million from its shrugging public.

Taken, meanwhile, reinventing Neeson as the spry '00s equivalent of Charles Bronson, has bigger ambitions, namely to make the Super Bowl holiday safe for ass-kicking Euro-trash en route to at least a $25 million frame. The meddlesome Paul Blart: Mall Cop will suck a good $4 million of that under his Segway wake, alas, and we can look forward to a DVD rematch three months from now. Smashing.

Also opening: Widow Michelle Williams grieves her adulterous ass off in the buried Sundance tragi-drama Incendiary; the acclaimed Filipino porn-theater family saga Serbis; the Invisible Man reimagining The Invsible Chronicles; the indie B-thriller Sam's Lake;and Terence Davies' affecting Liverpool doc Of Time and the City.

THE BIG LOSER: We know better than to underestimate Lionsgate, especially with NFL counterprogramming like New in Town. But we also have a lot of faith in our first impressions, and Renée Zellweger's latest has an unusually stillborn pallor to it — a one-quadrant romcom facing opposition from the heartland to the Blart-land. $10 million and/or a Top 5 berth would be the coup of the young year; we like it for $7.9 million and maybe a photo-finish for eighth with Hotel For Dogs.

THE UNDERDOG: France's verite schoolroom drama The Class won Cannes, is a front-runner for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, and is a prime candidate for the week's top per-screen average. If you don't see it this weekend you'll just have to beat a busier rush next month, so be the first on your block and get it out of the way.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's include Officer Sam Jackson's sleeper hit Lakeview Terrace, Officer Colin Farrell's not-so-sleeper bomb Pride & Glory, the Rainn Wilson abortion The Rocker, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Rocknrolla, and the faith-y Kirk Cameron blockbuster you've been waiting for, Fireproof.

WHAT'S NEW: We don't expect the unusual box-office surge that accompanied last weekend's January afterthoughts to continue this time around, but we know better than to underestimate action/horror franchises and Brendan Fraser curios regardless of their release dates. Take Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the latest entry in the gothic trash canon that loses Kate Beckinsale but retains Michael Sheen and Bill Nighy in the service of werewolves-versus-vampires schlock that should overachieve slightly at $28.8 million. The week's other new wide release, Warner's Inkheart, won't finish anywhere near that, though the PG-rated Fraser/Helen Mirren fantasy should challenge the redoubtable Paul Blart: Mall Cop in the neighborhood of $16.3 million.

Also opening: Outlander, a forgettable something about Vikings with Jim Caviezel; the oversexed splatter entry Donkey Punch; and major award-season expansions for The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler and Slumdog Millionaire.

THE BIG LOSER: Revolutionary Road's nearly 900-screen expansion would have occurred whether or not Oscar abandoned it in its snubby wake. But that dismissal — combined with the expansions of actual nominees (all of which have the added benefit of being, you know, watchable) will handily undercut its new ubiquity, nudging it below $4 million and accelerating its land-speed record to DVD oblivion.

THE UNDERDOG: Speaking of oblivion, The Weinstein Company would have liked nothing more for its long-shelved Elmore Leonard adaptation Killshot, a mess no one can necessarily endorse but which should benefit from the tailwind of Mickey Rourke's Wrestler nomination. Even on five screens and with no marketing to speak of, there is just enough of an audience alienated by the mid-winter movie doldrums around them to nudge this into the $45,000 range. Which might suck for Rourke, who could do without the bad word-of-mouth as Academy voters prep their ballots.

FOR SHUT-INS: It's not looking so good this week on the DVD front, where the modestly well-reviewed The Express goes to war with Saw V, Amusement, City of Ember, Max Payne, Repo! The Genetic Opera, and, by popular-ish demand, The Powerpuff Girls: The Complete Series. All the more reason to see Killshot, we guess.

WHAT'S NEW: There are plenty of reasons to hate January — post-holiday blahs, the weather, another season of 24 — but it took us a while to find peace in the wasteland of the month's film culture. Because while the mostly bad Oscar films you've already seen expand to thousands of screens like a contagion (Mendesitis? Fincher pox?), Paul Blart: Mall Cop and My Bloody Valentine arrive like big, dumb wonder drugs, treating us with the essential seasonal hope that we can forget, if even for a couple hours, about Revolutionary Road.

And that's what we'd expect an ailing America will in fact do this weekend, with a lively counterprogramming mix promising a busier-than-usual January frame. Kevin James's Blart is the only legitimate contender to knock Gran Torino out of last week's surprising first-place slot, and we'll just go ahead and presume it will with $27.4 million to Torino's $24.7 million. Another duel unfolds below them at No. 3 and 4, where we like My Bloody Valentine 3D to stay ahead of Hotel For Dogs by at least a million dollars — maybe $19.6 versus Dogs' $18.4.

Also opening: The chop-socky-meets-Bollywood blockbuster Chandi Chowk to China; the unearthed Godard noir Made in U.S.A.; the 20-years-in-the-making, Oscar-shortlisted doc Nerakhoon (The Betrayal); the poet-meets-biker, poet-loses-biker Leather Jacket Love Story; and the Susan Anton D-potboiler Playing With Fire.

THE BIG LOSER: Competition from MBV will result in a spectacular freefall for The Unborn , which we foresee plunging more than 70 percent before disappearing to DVD.

THE UNDERDOG: Fox Searchlight can drop Notorious on whatever crappy weekend it wants and still probably pull at least $13 million on half the screens of Blart, MBV or anything else. The specialty label had its hagiographic Biggie Smalls biopic on both urban and media radar as early as fall 2007, when it launched a public casting call for the lead; Jamal Woolard probably had the role locked up well before that stunt transpired, but Searchlight's continuing genius advancing its in-house product — Juno was its last — will pay off once again.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD's include the Dane Cook folly My Best Friend's Girl, Ed Harris's forgotten Western Appaloosa, the Kevin Costner political comedy Swing Vote, the underrated melodrama Brideshead Revisited, Tyler Perry's even more wildly underrated melodrama The Family That Prays, and the long-awaited sixth season of Walker: Texas Ranger. Run, folks, don't walk.

WHAT'S NEW: After the starry, lucrative grand finale that was the Christmas weekend, only four films bothered to shuffle out of the holiday hangover on to screens in the last minutes of 2008. Neither of the biggest among them — Defiance and Good — seem to have designated The Reader and Valkyrie worthy-enough Nazis-by-way-of-Hollywood parables for the season, so we now face a quartet of films recounting the era — each in their own, fitfullly successful ways, but perhaps not enough to justify their coexistence when all anyone really wants to do is sleep in until '09 begins in earnest next Monday.

Still, they're out there: Defiance (finally reaching screens after a delay by Paramount Vantage) banishes screen siblings Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell to the Belarussian woods, where their makeshift Jewish refugee encampment in 1941 established a heroic, true-story counterpoint to the horrors of the Holocaust. Directed by Edward Zwick, who previously dramatized Glory, The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond to within an inch of their lives, Defiance is Oscar fodder of the highest grade and the lowest momentum, opening on two screens too late in the year to aquire any traction other than a per-theater average that should crack $40,000.

Good, meanwhile, is a casualty of similar timing and near-mute word-of-mouth, adapting C.P. Taylor's play about a German intellectual (Viggo Mortensen, recalibrating his Aragorn accent to an academic lilt) who finds his novel about euthanasia perverted to endorse Nazi atrocities. The problem: He's the pervert, the proverbial "good German" who comes to realize that his helplessness is the least of the consequences of his complicity in Hitler's regime. Mortensen has the right idea here, following an enlightened parallel of Kate Winslet's equally bewildered, illiterate war criminal in The Reader, but Vicente Amorim's direction is so woefully on-the-nose and stage-managed (let Good count as Exhibit A in the Steadicam's own trial for crimes against humanity) that the actors are almost incidental to the moral crisis beating you over the head. It's too bad; there's something here that filmmakers Stephen Frears or Neil Jordan — with Mortensen's aid — probably could have knocked out of the park. But not this year.

Also opening: The Bollywood Memento rip-off — complete with amnesia, tattoos, Polaroids and everything — Ghajini; and the slice-of-arty-20-something-life Let Them Chirp a While.

THE BIG LOSER: N/A, unless you count us.

THE UNDERDOG: There's not so much to recommend here, either, so let's just suggest once again: If you haven't seen Synecdoche, New York, it's time. And even if you have, a second viewing of 2008's best film can't hurt.

FOR SHUT-INS: Now we're talking. New DVD's this week include the Shia-running-for-his-life thriller Eagle Eye; the underrated Keira Knightley drama The Duchess; Ricky Gervais's abortive big-screen breakthrough Ghost Town; Nick Broomfield's terrific narrative feature debut Battle For Haditha; and Alan Ball's notorious piece of shit Towelhead. Happy New Year — it can only get better from here.

WHAT'S NEW: High stakes are hardly unusual for a holiday frame, but their sheer volume in 2008 is slightly disturbing: Last week's new-movie nomads shall be consumed wholly by a pack of heavyweight predators in wide release. Their top grosser should be Disney's Bedtime Stories, a sizable stride in the slow Eddie Murphyfication of Adam Sandler, playing a novice storytelling uncle who is shocked when his tales come to life. Hijinks ensue while conjuring the most explicit double entendres he can imagine, thus leaving both the kiddies and himself fulfilled when the gumball rain outside yields a ball-gum flood requiring Keri Russell's careful attention. Expect Stories to win the long weekend with $39.9 million.

The bourgeois-white-assholes-and-their-crazy-fucking-dog tearjerker Marley & Me won't be that far behind at $35.7 million, defying Disney's covert spoiler ops to steer people to their own family offfering. Behind that, look for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to officially launch its Oscar crusade with $22.6 million, hindered by its nearly three-hour length and more-than-expected siphoning off by Valkyrie (which we'll get to in a bit). At the bottom of the scrum you'll find The Spirit, Frank Miller's spectacularly awful adaptation of Will Eisner's comics classic, pocketing $11.9 million for Lionsgate. Also opening in limited release: The Cannes darling, Oscar-probable animated documentary from Israel, Waltz With Bashir.

THE BIG LOSER: There aren't enough pejoratives in the world to pile onto Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes's misbegotten attempt to steal another Oscar while the Academy reaches for its collective Kleenex. Or checks its watch; the reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet is an interminable slog that, with any justice, should see its early, positive numbers reverse dramatically as Los Angeles and New York audiences flee theaters in search of refunds. What more can we say? Oh — lots.

THE UNDERDOG: We probably have no right to place a Tom Cruise film in this spot — especially one so expensively ubiquitous of late. But after all those months of speculation and dread surrounding Bryan Singer's $90 million thriller about the failed plot to kill Hitler, let's be fair: Valkyrie is a solid if weird popcorn thriller. The first act drags, Singer gets a little too cute for anyone's good (may we never again be subjected to his spinny Phonograph-Cam™), and you never do totally sink into Cruise and castmates Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Kenneth Branagh as English-speaking German officers. Still, the assassination conspiracy and its momentary glimmer of success is a captivating fluke of history handled articulately and tastefully — and sure, entertainingly — by Singer and Cruise. Even if you don't contribute to its $18.2 million opening, it's worth a look in the weeks ahead.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD releases include the Statham-y holiday favorite Death Race, the underrated Coen Brothers caper Burn After Reading, Anna Faris's Playboy commercial-cum-college comedy The House Bunny, and a couple of the year's most notorious indie flops, The Women and Hamlet 2. Gather the family, and have a great holiday weekend!

WHAT'S NEW: Warners, Sony and Universal are the first round of studios to drop what's left of their 2009 slates — not quite the grand finale any of them were looking for, if reviews and box-office forecasts are any indication. Yes Man and Seven Pounds will battle for the week's top spot, with Jim Carrey's comedy about a man who says "yes" to everything (including shagging Zooey Deschanal, despite himself, we're sure) favored to defeat Will Smith's suck-a-riffic Seven Pounds by less than a couple million dollars. We're calling Yes for $28.4 million versus Pounds' $26.7 million, thus ending Smith's No. 1-opening run dating back to 2002. Or maybe the sheer virtuosity of pans like A.O. Scott's or Scott Foundas's will compel more viewers than they alienate, like footage of the Hindenberg explosion or news reports coaxing spectators to the site of a uniquely spectacular train derailment.

Universal will open third with the animated mouse fable The Tale of Despereaux, which will benefit from a bit of adult/counterprogramming crossover to a take around $17.3 million. The art-house infantry is bringing up the rear, led in part by Paul Schrader and Jeff Goldblum's post-Holocaust curio Adam Resurrected, the Valerie Plame/Judy Miller dramatization Nothing But the Truth, and, all the way from France in its Oscar-qualifying run, the Cannes prize-winner The Class.

Also opening: The acclaimed, brutal Italian mob-novel adaptation Gomorrah; Bruce Campbell's misbegotten paean to himself, My Name is Bruce; John Leguizamo's working-class drama Where God Left His Shoes; the Southern-fried ensemble piece (led by William Hurt) The Yellow Handkerchief; and — ZOMG! — Uwe Boll's nasty Vietnam War venture Tunnel Rats.

THE BIG LOSER: Nothing opening this week will flop as mightily as, say, Delgo (what ever could?), but if Six Flags doesn't soon develop a Day the Earth Stood Still Hell Plunge — "the steepest drop of any film-themed thrill ride in America!" — to commemorate the film's 65% freefall in week two, we'll trademark that shit ourselves as the main attraction at Defamer Gardens.

THE UNDERDOG: Neither The Wrestler nor Mickey Rourke need our help to pull in about $260,000 in limited release this weekend, but listen: Like last week's recommendation of Gran Torino, our interest is in your total filmgoing satisfaction in the face of the Carrey/Smith threat. And The Wrestler is as good as you've heard (Kenneth Turan be damned): Rourke is a staggering screen hero in a season full of mere mortals, Marisa Tomei does some of the most dynamic clothes-optional work of her career, and Darren Aronofsky directs with purpose thought lost after the over-indulgence of The Fountain. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cringe, you'll never handle a stapler the same way again. Increasingly this fall, we don't take that kind of magic for granted, and you shouldn't either.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD's include your aunt's fourth most-requested holiday gift Mamma Mia!; the season's gag-gift sensation The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor; the HBO miniseries Generation Kill; and the Criterion edition of Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express. Spend wisely, and make your own sage recommendations below.

WHAT'S NEW: There's no wanting for prestige or variety this weekend, with Fox's remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still leading a saturated box-office charge on 3,600 screens. This time around, Keanu Reeves arrives from space to portend our imminent doom, evincing a timely environmental-awareness message with the aid of Jennifer Connelly and fitfully clusmy CGI. And if there's anything holiday moviegoers love, it's a Keanu apocalypse; expect Earth to pull around $38.3 million.

The next biggest opening is something called Delgo, the sci-fi quasi-Romeo & Juliet rendered with discarded Pixar 2.0 software and the budget voice talent of Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Malcolm McDowell and Burt Reynolds, among others. We like this one for about $3.2 million en route to Flopz™, neck-and-neck with the Latino ensemble (plus Debra Messing for gringa kicks) laffer Nothing Like the Holidays at around $3.3 million.

Doubt, meanwhile, opens small this week against fellow Oscar groveler The Reader; the former is faring far better with critics than the latter (unfairly, we might add), but the Kate Winslet lookie-loo factor won't disappoint the Weinstein Company when the numbers come in Sunday night, probably around $41,000 per screen. Also, if you've got four and a half hours and a seat cushion to spare, pack a lunch and check out Che in its one-week-only Academy qualifying run. It's the kind of thing you can tell your grandkids about years from now when they tug on your sleeve and ask you to regale them with stories of cinema's good old bloated days.

A few stars are actually smattered elsewhere in the mire: Ethan Hawke and Mark Ruffalo's Beantown gang drama What Doesn't Kill You opens on three screens, while Michelle Williams's spare girl-loses-dog indie Wendy and Lucy arrives on two. Also opening: The noirish Dark Streets; the animated fantasy Dragon Hunters; the stop-motion Oscar hopeful $9.99; the Chinese vanity project Waiting in Beijing; the Kim Basinger revenge flick While She Was Out; and the polish Holiday tale Hania. Whew.

THE BIG LOSER: Not so much a "loser" as an example of what we wish there was less of in the world, Timecrimes is an acclaimed Spanish thriller that nevertheless orbits around the genre conventions of time travel. Not to be arbitrary about it, but dear film industry: Please let the time-travel movie die. They're ultimately the same hoary stunt performed again and again, illogically at worst (Primer) and amusingly at best (Back to the Future), and almost always forgettably. Let Timecrimes end it. Please.

THE UNDERDOG: Speaking of going out gracefully, Clint Eastwood says his performance in Gran Torino is his last. And why not? Eastwood's late-career revisionist streak has knocked off its last myth: The vigilante hero, a man who'd sooner revolt in Dirty Harry than keep pace with the degradation of social order. Torino's grizzled Korean War vet still takes the same vengeance on Hmong gangs and black thugs overtaking his Detroit suburb, but essentially in the service of a multiethnic utopia perceivable just over the horizon. (He even gives his Silver Star and titular vehicle to the tormented young man he's taken under his wing, a little more optimistic bellwether than Harry Callahan's climactic badge-tossing in 1971.) As a straight drama, Gran Torino isn't especially good — sort of a violent, profane revenge epic crossbred with an afterschool special — but! Viewed in context with the last four decades of Eastwood's mercury, it's a strikingly rich, funny, elegant and utterly fascinating valedictory.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include The Dark Knight, the thrilling, Oscar-chasing doc Man on Wire, the first four seasons of Happy Days, and holiday-ready complete-series box sets of The Wire, Get Smart and Deadwood.

WHAT'S NEW: Punisher: War Zone returns the comic-book vigilante to theaters in ultraviolent and uniquely downgraded fashion, shedding the Thomas Jane/John Travolta bloat of the 2004 original in exchange for the cheaper, monosyllabic charms of Ray Stevenson. Bullets fly, shit blows up, audiences leave with slight bruising to the cerebral cortex, and Lionsgate banks about $10.4 million by Monday.

Universal, meanwhile, has far more modest hopes for Frost/Nixon in limited release, where Frank Langella and Michael Sheen will officially begin cross-training for the awards-season marathon as the disgraced president and his aggressive TV interrogator David Frost. You've heard our take (and we're not alone in our ambivalence), but older audiences in desperate need of a class fix will nevertheless drive it to about $36,000 per screen.

Also opening: Mariah Carey's Oscar-primed (or something) indie Tennessee; the Aussie autism study The Black Balloon; the child-abuse tale Gardens of the Night; the spicy, self-explanatory anthology It's a Good Day to be Black and Sexy; the overloud, underripe kidnapping thriller Nobel Son; the hospice dramedy Reach for Me; and the iconic Jeanne Moreau's latest, One Day You'll Understand.

THE BIG LOSER: Flopz™ beckons for Cadillac Records, but it probably didn't have to be that way. Adrien Brody stars as Leonard Chess, the Chess Records founder who oversees a stable of talent including Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry (acclaimed performances by Jeffrey Wright and Mos Def, respectively), Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker) and Etta James — whose portrayal by Beyonce Knowles still isn't quite the lauded cinematic breakthrough the singer so craves. All of which isn't bad in itself, but Sony is pulling a little more graceful Passengers move on this one — dumping on 600 screens, undermarketing (read: not marketing), and letting Cadillac crash into the post-theatrical afterlife following a soft opening around $1.6 million. Lame.

THE UNDERDOG: The British visual artist Steve McQueen makes his feature debut with Hunger, the austere semi-biopic of Irish Republican Army operative Bobby Sands, who died following a 66-day hunger strike in 1981. McQueen works one compositional trick after another in detailing truly shocking exchanges of abuse between IRA prisoners and their Protestant jailers, but really, we need recommend little beyond Michael Fassbender's lead performance as Sands — a silent wonder of dignity, crudity and emaciation that makes Christian Bale's Machinist/Rescue Dawn diets robust by comparison. Bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, but essential.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include four different versions of the brilliantly pulpy actioner Wanted, three versions of Step Brothers, one version of the stillborn X-Files: I Want to Believe, and the "Ultimate Collector's Edition" of Casablanca.

So what's your punishment this weekend? Can you rally the troops around Cadillac? Should we just screen Casablanca on a loop and call it good? Speak up, already!

WHAT'S NEW: Speaking of recipes, Four Christmases sure has a fresh one! Mix Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn. Add two cups of diced ensemble players including Robrt Duvall, Jon Favreau, Kristin Chenoweth and Sissy Spacek. Flavor with ball-kicking, pratfall and baby-vomit jokes. Bake for two hours. Serve lukewarm. It's good for about $40 million over five days. Transporter 2 is a little simpler hors d'oeurve for the guys out there, with Jason Statham liberally seasoned with bullets, quick cuts and decibels, turning out $18 million before the main course on DVD.

But if you're allergic to the multiplex, you may be best best suited to skip ahead to this week's new home video releases; the art-house kitchen appears to be closed to deliveries for the holiday weekend.

THE BIG LOSER: Australia is almost three hours' worth of the expansive (and expensive, at $130 million) hisorical epic no one makes anymore. And despite Oprah Winfrey's lavish endorsement, there's a reason for that: It's one in a generation that actually finds any traction in the two female quadrants whose repeat viewings push it toward box-office longevity and, almost necessarily, Oscar luster. Fox needs half a Titanic here (thus its Hugh Jackman heartthrob push at non-starter Nicole Kidman's expense) to make this work, and for the sake of the studio and director Baz Luhrmann and all involved, we hope they get it. But the middling, $26 million reality — especially on Twilight's likely second week at No. 1 — is what it is.

THE UNDERDOG: Instant-message quibbles aside, Milk is far and away the best thing opening this weekend; expect sell-outs and a per-screen average of at least $39,000 in 17 markets. (It opens wide Dec. 12.)

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD's include Will Smith's brooding hero Hancock, the summer champs Meet Dave and Space Chimps, more Vaughn holiday frolic in Fred Claus, the TV knockoffs A Colbert Christmas and 24: Redemption, and just in time for the holidays/white-elephant gift exchange, Beverly Hills 90210: The Complete Sixth Season.

So will your Turkey Day food coma overlap into moviegoing? Is it more of a football-and-shopping weekend, or will the budgie-smuggling pull of Australia be just too challenging to withstand? In any event, have a fantastic holiday, and should you brave Space Chimps, please let us know what we're missing.

WHAT'S NEW: Hopefully you enjoyed your mildly adult pleasures last week while you could, because it's an all-puberty weekend this go-around. Twilight finally crashes theaters after a hormonal, high-pitched tidal wave of anticipation, packing tween girls (and not just a few of their mothers) into as much as $70 million worth of sold-out shows. We don't have much to say about the vampire swoonathon that we haven't thrown your way already, but we will go ahead and call it for a $68.8 million gross, 237 fainting spells and a record 455 million shrieks drowning out the dialogue.

Disney will represent as well with its 3-D canine superhero opus Bolt, voiced by John Travolta and Miley Cyrus among others. Tracking is close to $40 million, but with reviews well-above average and the imprimatur of ex-Pixar chief John Lasseter, we could see it overlapping quadrants a bit and maybe peaking around $45 million.

Also opening: Actor Robert Davi's doo-wop/heist-flick directorial debut The Dukes; the imploding Irish marriage drama Eden; and the ethnically-charged lesbian love story I Can't Think Straight.

THE BIG LOSER: For the second consecutive week, the box-office is America's last remaining growth sector. No losers to speak of here, though talk to us next week about Australia.

THE UNDERDOG: The documentary Toots first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006; in the two-and-a-half intervening years, director Kristi Jacobson's paean to the legendary NYC saloonkeeper (and her grandfather) Toots Shor has only appreciated in its bittersweet regard for the lost high-class, hard-drinking cafe society of 1950s Manhattan. Less a hagiography than a delayed, definitive act of posterity, Toots nevertheless glows with anecdotes from Mike Wallace, Yogi Berra, Walter Cronkite and a bounty of archival footage showcasing the gregarious subject himself. It's nostalgia worth bingeing on, and it won't leave you with a headache the morning after.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include three different versions of WALL-E, two versions of Tropic Thunder, a single version of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, the complete series set of The Odd Couple, and just in time for the holidays and/or a 100-foot-tall bonfire, Hannah Montana: The Complete First Season.

So are you braving the Twilight tide this weekend? Does Bolt have street cred worth your dime? Are we missing something, anything to help bulk up this flimsy week? Enlighten us! Please!

WHAT'S NEW: Quantum of Solace has the wide-release slot to itself, where Daniel Craig's brooding Bond will likely crest above $60 million — by far the highest opening gross of any 007 film to date. We'll call it for $63.7 million despite some pull from leftovers Madagascar 2 and Role Models, themselves expecting $40 million and $10 million respectively in their second weekends.

Your options are a lot better when avoiding the multiplex in LA: Jean-Claude Van Damme's meta-self-biopic JCVD is opening, along with the almost universally acclaimed Catherine Deneuve/Mathieu Amalric dramedy A Christmas Tale. Also: The Alphabet Killers, featuring Eliza Dushku as a police detective (!); the explicit gay Israeli romantic comedy Antarctica; the talky Afghanistan war indie B.O.H.I.C.A. (Army slang for "Bend Over Here it Comes Again"); the Liberian repression doc Pray the Devil Back to Hell; the Jewish basketball chronicle The First Basket; and a new adaptation of Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun.

THE BIG LOSER: Aside from the glut of indies above, chasing scraps from art-house audiences on their way to DVD — and Soul Men continuing to underperform with $2.2 million or so — today's slate seems to be pretty insulated from disaster. Everyone wins!

THE UNDERDOG: Trainspotting director Danny Boyle is said to have made the best film of his career with Slumdog Millionaire, about a winning 18-year-old contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Except the host thinks he's cheating; he knows too much for a Mumbai slum kid, and his eventual grilling at the hands of the police reveals a sort of Dickens-meets-Bollywood trajectory of lessons learned, knowledge gained ad love lost throughout his youth. Rhapsodizing critics are pushing it for a Best Picture nomination, which, if the Oscar witches at Fox Searchlight have anything to say about it, it will probably receive. But it will need Little Miss Sunshine/Juno traction at the box office, and on 10 screens this weekend, that would probably mean a per-screen average of at least $12,000 to start. Like its hero, we think it's got a good shot.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the gay Hutt-starring Star Wars: The Clone Wars; Takeshi Miike's mystifying Sukiyaki Western Django; and complete-series box sets of both The Sopranos and The Cosby Show.

So is it Bond or nothing for you? Are you saving seats on the Slumdog Millionaire bandwagon? Or is The Clone Wars badness just too tempting to ignore any longer? Be honest! You're among friends.

WHAT'S NEW: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa revives the DreamWorks zoo-animal-on-the-loose franchise this weekend in the hopes of pulling down as much as $60 million — which it might manage, considering High School Musical 3's slowed box-office pace in its third week. Universal deftly counterprogrammed David Wain's R-rated comedy Role Models, featuring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott as would-be mentors to McLovin and a black kid whose best jokes you've probably already seen in the commercials. That shouldn't stop it from pulling down around $12.6 million while the screeching Madagascar throngs tear down the multiplex around it.

Also opening:Stranded: I've Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, the reenactment-heavy doc about cannibal survivors of a 1972 plane crash in the Andes; the Holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pajamas; and the goth horror-musical Repo! The Genetic Opera.

THE BIG LOSER: Maybe "loser" is too harsh an estimation of Soul Men's fate, but let's face it: If it weren't the final entry in both Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes's filmographies, it wouldn't likely fare in the top five on any weekend outside the dumping grounds of January or August. But as cynical, posthumous curios go, it'll draw, coaxing up to $9.5 million and possibly cracking the top three. Whatever sells, we suppose.

THE UNDERDOG: The documentary Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father defies conventional review, if only to preserve the mystery that makes it one of the year's most gripping and extraordinary films. The less you know about it, the better, but: Director Kurt Kuenne originally set out to chronicle the legacy of his childhood friend Andrew Bagby, who was murdered in 2001 by his ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner. When Turner fled to her native Newfoundland, pregnant with Bagby's child, Kuenne's personal film suddenly inherited a true-crime narrative laced with extradition battles, custody haggles and, ultimately, unbelievable tragedy. That it must be believed (and reckoned with, if you can) makes Dear Zachary an infuriating, devastating, graceful and utterly essential theatrical experience. Bring Kleenex.

FOR SHUT-INS: If you've managed to plow through last week's box-set bounty, reward yourself with last summer's Get Smart updating, Waterworld: The Extended Edition (!!!) or another complete-series windfall: The Wild Wild West, The Outer Limits, I Dream of Jeannie and/or Batman: The Complete Animated Series.

So after you check out Dear Zachary, what's next? Is anyone actually contemplating going, ahem, 2 Africa? Are you paying final, $10 respects to Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes? Or are you the one American in the market for an extended edition of Waterworld? Go ahead, be honest — we're all friends here.

WHAT'S NEW: The Pepto-Bismol is on ice at Weinstein Co. headquarters, where Harvey awaits the numbers for Kevin Smith's hopeful studio-savior Zack and Miri Make a Porno. But anyone who has followed our own prophetic Zack and Miri coverage since last summer is at least a couple steps ahead: Our predicted $14 million opening is right about where the raunchy Seth Rogen/Elizabeth Banks comedy is tracking, faced with heavy competition from holdover Saw V and other holiday hellraising outside the 'plex. Still, it's not a terrible showing; it will fall about $4 million shy of High School Musical 3's number-one spot, but should have relatively strong legs in weeks two and three, which is about the most Harvey can hope for with a movie he can't even market accurately.

Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie's Changling killed last week in limited release ($33,000 per screen) on its way to an 1,800-screen expansion today. Jolie portrays Christine Collins, whose son's kidnapping in 1928 led to one of the most damning police-corruption scandals in Los Angeles history. Plenty of critics are down on the star as some hysterical dervish chewing up Eastwood's period scenery, but we don't see the point in criticizing an unapoloegtic melodrama for being successful at what it does. Eastwood cranks out lugubrious movies for adults, emphasizing presence and technique; Jolie matches him step-for-step. What's the problem? It's a likely top-three finisher at $10.7 million and probably the best thing going wide today, and either way it's preferable to dealing with costumed punks at your doorstep for three hours.

Also opening: The animated suspense anthology Fear(s) of the Dark; the midnight-movie horror-comedy-romance Just Buried; the indie gorefest Splinter; and the bleak circus dramedy Little Big Top.

THE BIG LOSER: The teen-possesion The Haunting of Molly Hartley has little but a brow-furrowed turn from Chace Crawford and a laugh-out-loud trailer voiceover from the late Don LaFontaine to recommend it. If this breaks $4 million this weekend en route to Flopz, we will personally finance the sequel ourselves.

THE UNDERDOG: Paul Krik's 9/11-noir Able Danger is a nifty, paranoiac piece of work, a kind of Maltese Falcon meets JFK rendered in startling monochrome that defies the far more complicated scenario faced by its protagonist: Adam Nee plays a Brooklyn bookshop staffer and renowned conspiracy theorist chipping away at the German connection to the 9/11 terrorists. A mysterious femme fatale (Elina Löwensohn) drops in from nowhere, exposing the writer and his colleagues to secret agents, counteragents and all the deadly cloak-and-dagger mischief they imply. Krik's deft chemistry of density, humor and style are all the more admirable for the microbudget that enabled them; even if you don't understand a lick of it (and we can't say we've quite caught up ourselves), we think you'll appreciate the opportunity to give it a try.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD release include the Halloween must-see Zombie Strippers and a surplus of diverse, essential TV collections: NewsRadio: The Complete Series, Good Times: The Complete Series, Sanford and Son: The Complete Series and The Flintstones: The Complete Series. It must be the holidays.

So are you into Porno? Is it your time to catch up with HSM3? More importantly, have you seen Synecdoche, New York yet? Get on it, already; this week's crop seems to be making it easy for you.

WHAT'S NEW: Excepting battles for second place, we haven't had a good duel at the box office for a while now. We don't really have one this week either, but we're keeping an eye on High School Musical 3: Senior Year and Saw V for symbolic value alone: Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and the rest of their East High cohorts may be the first force to vanquish the splatter series on opening day since it launched in 2004. We talked a bit yesterday about HSM3's unprecedented market, and we stand by our $38 million call. Saw V will catch the older kids forced to drive their blubbering siblings to the mall; that and the fanboy cult should treat the film to a $29.7 million opening.

As if HSM3 and Beverly Hills Chihuahua weren't enough of a full-time cultural assault, Disney has Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D as well to court the Halloween crowd; that should pick up at least $5.3 million on 284 screens. Angelina Jolie and Clint Eastwood's missing-child melodrama Changeling also opens small today before platforming wide Oct. 31; we'll get into it a little more at that time. Also opening: The Anne Hathaway/Patrick Wilson ESP thriller Passengers (we hadn't heard of it either); the middling Disney/Bollywood animated effort Roadside Romeo; Kristin Scott-Thomas's Oscar bait I've Loved You So Long; and probably the best Swedish vampire coming-of-age film ever made, Let the Right One In.

THE BIG LOSER: The week's other wide release, the shouty cop-family drama Pride and Glory, finally gets its furlough from the New Line tombs after a nearly two-year delay. But buzz is low, reviews are upside-down, and Ed Norton and Colin Farrell can't open a window these days let alone a big Warner Bros. offering. It'll be left with about $7 million worth of Max Payne's week-two scraps before being reassigned to a nice, quiet desk back at the precinct.

THE UNDERDOG: As predicted here last month, the confounding appeal of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut Synecdoche, New York will likely never play at the box office. But in Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as a theater director attempting to stage his life's work despite a wayward wife (Catherine Keener), a quickly jaded paramour (Michellle Williams), a fragmented lover/aide (Samantha Morton, giving way to doppelganger Emily Watson), black holes in the time/space continuum and a variety of debilitating physical ailments, you will find the anchor in both the saddest, sweetest perplexity of Kaufman's career and quite possibly the best American film of the year. Just as no volume of words can or even should describe what's happening here (though we will try in our love letter to come later today), we can't recommend enough that you find two hours in your weekend — and then however many years of contemplation afterward — to accommodate this masterpiece.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's few DVD releases of note include The Incredible Hulk (both Marvel's folly from last summer and the collected TV series), the scary Liv Tyler sleeper The Strangers, Craig Lucas's Sundance blip Birds of America and for the exhaustive Hoff completist in all of us, Knight Rider: The Complete Series.

Is a tween riot enough to keep you from the multiplex this weekend? Will you defy Saw V's marketing campaign and actually believe how it ends? Have you yet put off laundry for another day to take in Synecdoche, New York? Better yet, call in sick and let's make it a holiday. Tell your boss we said it's all right.

WHAT'S NEW: No one would argue that Mark Wahlberg's video-game adaptation Max Payne won't win the weekend, but with Beverly Hills Chihuahua still barking in theaters (it actually expands by 32 screens this week), the sour-cop actioner might see a tiny bite out of its margin of victory. Still, $20.8 million is a reliable bet, with Disney's purse dog settling settling with around $11.5 million.

The X factor is W., the Bush biopic which some forecasters see sneaking into second place with as much as $12 million. But to project any more than $10 million, maybe $11 million max is to overestimate it as anything more than a curio, an election-year stunt that wields neither the bite nor the influence that even we thought it would when the fall movie season began. Josh Brolin drawls and squints in fitful, fascinating bursts, and certain imagined powwows leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion make for riveting ensemble drama. On the whole, though, W. connotes the rush job it was — undisciplined, tonally dissonant (Stone's professed empathy for Bush repeatedly knocks its head on low-hanging satirical fruit) and way, way too long. The American people deserve better, and at least until Nov. 4, they'll vote with their dollars. There will be no stealing this election.

Also opening: Seth Green's R-rated romp Sex Drive; Roy Disney's boat-race vanity project Morning Light; critic Godfrey Cheshire's acclaimed doc filmmaking bow Moving Midway; the indie tolerance drama Tru Loved; and for those of you in New York (and the rest of you on VOD), Madonna's directorial debut Filth and Wisdom. (L.A. will get its theatrical engagement Oct. 31.)

THE BIG LOSER: The Barry Levinson-directed/Robert De Niro-starring Hollywood satire What Just Happened is one of the year's finest case-studies in meta: A troubled, pedigreed film about troubled, pedigreed filmmaking, following in the flatlining tradition of every industry saga that preceded it. It false-started out of Sundance last January but finally found a taker at Cannes, and to its credit, Magnolia Pictures has aggressively pushed the film everywhere from baseball playoffs to presidential debates. Still, one half of that audience hates Hollywood, and the other half is off to see W. As recipes for disaster go — even in limited release — this one is ready to serve.

THE UNDERDOG: Is it too reductive of us to foresee good things for The Secret Life of Bees — a film featuring an Oscar-winner (Jennifer Hudson), a Grammy winner (Alicia Keys), two Oscar nominees (Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo) and America's favorite teen diva Dakota Fanning, presented in a nicely bundled chick-flick wrapper by the money-printers at Fox Searchlight? Like $7.3 million worth of good things?

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD releases include last summer's rapey adventure Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Errol Morris's dense, harrowing Abu Ghraib documentary Standard Operating Procedure; the Stephen Rea-in-Mena Suvari's-windshield thriller Stuck; and the much-awaited Nash Bridges: The First Season.

So is it time for Payne? Or is today brought to you by the letter W.? Or is this the weekend you clean up after Papi and Co.? Whatever you decide, don't leave Dakota Fanning out; her curfew is later these days, and she'll hunt you down without thinking twice. Choose wisely!

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?

WHAT'S NEW: This is the week we've been waiting for since May, when Disney ignored our urgent plea to immediately release Beverly Hills Chihuahua from its high-camp captivity. And now that it's here, we're kind of over it; blame it on last month's chihuahua-only sneak preview. Not like the sadists at Disney need us: BHC is this week's only new family release and will do business accordingly, setting up for around $32.3 million over the three-day. The Michael Cera/Kat Dennings effort Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist will ride teens and the date crowd to about $17 million, which still won't be enough to overtake Eagle Eye for second place. Nothing else will break $10 million; Greg Kinnear's windshield-wiper biopic (!) Flash of Genius is on too few screens, Julianne Moore's dodgy drama Blindness will fall victim to the angry blind lobby, and Ed Harris's expanding Western Appaloosa couldn't find traction when it was on 1,000 screens, let alone 2,000.

Most of the remaining release slate looks like a gang of orphans hassling tourists for change: Jia Zhangke's acclaimed Still Life; the timely, revealing political doc Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, Rutger Hauer's psychological love-triangle drama Mentor; Obscene, the story of Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset; the Muslim stand-up concert film Allah Made Me Funny, and the Iraq-vet basket case drama The Violent Kind.

THE BIG LOSER: MGM's hard-luck streak looks likely to continue with How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the adaptation of Toby Young's thinly-veiled bestseller about his misadventures in the Conde Nast empire. It won't fail for lack of trying — at least not with a cast including Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox and Jeff Bridges rocking his best Graydon Carter impression — and a month ago, in less-congested times, this may have even had some multiplex leverage. But in this glut, with the reviews it's receiving and audience awareness less than half of what it needs to be, expect a $3 million opening and quick dispatch to DVD. Where, in fairness, the Fox connection will more than make up for it stillbirth at the box office.

THE UNDERDOG: Religulous is already exhibiting legs in New York, where it opened Wednesday to $13,000 on two screens. It'll bulk up it Oscar doc creds this weekend alongside Rachel Getting Married, a genuinely brilliant piece of ensemble filmmaking by Jonathan Demme and an awards-season lock for Anne Hathaway. But like last week's evangelically supported Fireproof, which "shocked" everyone but us with a $6.5 million opening, watch the conservative satire An American Carol explode in the red states. Vivendi pushed it aggressively before and after last night's debate, it's critic-proof (not that it was available for review) and will fare far better on 1,600 screens — like "$6.3 million" better — than anyone will give it credit for.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD releases include Iron Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Julian Schnabel's rock doc Lou Reed's Berlin, the steroid expose Bigger, Faster, Stronger* and, because you (or somebody) asked for it, Can't Hardly Wait: The 10th Anniversary Edition.

So how do you plan to sort out the mess at the multiplex? Are there chihuahuas in your future? Can Kinnear's windshield wipers overcome? Can American Carol be the pandering sensation it aspires to? Call your shots, and aim carefully; there are too many innocent bystanders in the mix this week.