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.

So who's in and who's out?

· The Soloist: OUT. The move to March 13 stings for everyone, especially with millions in marketing dollars already being spent ahead of the Jamie Foxx/Robert Downey Jr. drama's Nov. 21 release. Both men were on the bubble for actor nominations — Foxx as a schizophrenic cellist and RDJ as the journalist who chronicles his feel-good recovery journey — but Paramount's new conservatism (i.e. an intern hiding Brad Grey's checkbook) means it only has so many in-house resources to lend to its fall releases. The studio's semi-official insistence that the shifts have nothing to do with the film's quality or favoring its homegrown Benjamin Button and Scott Rudin/DreamWorks offering Revolutionary Road, but that's bullshit. It's not 2006 anymore; nobody can afford all this prestige at once.

· Defiance: IN. Barely. Paramount inherited the WWII-era Daniel Craig drama from its lopped-off Vantage arm; but unlike The Soloist, the studio didn't have it on its Oscar-season books until earlier this year. Pushed back from Dec. 12, it'll still get a qualifying run in New York and L.A. before opening wide on Jan. 16 — sort of an afterthought treatment that won't likely sit well with director/producer and biennial Oscar bridesmaid Ed Zwick, but hey: There's always the ShowEast Kodak Award. Congrats again, Ed!

And while we're at it, let's not forget the neglected Weinstein and MGM family:

· The Road: OUT. As noted yesterday, the Weinsteins took it back from MGM only to nudge it from Nov. 14 to an undisclosed release date in December. It's not finished, and the Weinsteins can't promote it; we foresee this one left wailing on someone's doorstep in a basket some time in mid-2009.

· The Reader: IN. It's apparently back on the Weinstein Web site, and Bob Weinstein thinks it's "terrific"! And now without Defiance to contend with, Harvey's Folly may actually have a shot at an audience on Dec. 12. Oscars, though? We're not so sure.

· Valkyrie: IN. Even the MGM Tower receptionist is pulling her weight on the campaign these days. If gold had a smell, Valkyrie would reek.

1. Brad Pitt will win an Academy Award. We know the post-Toronto establishment has all but engraved Mickey Rourke's name on this year's Best Actor Oscar (hell, even Rourke has engraved his name on this year's Best Actor Oscar), but taking both The Wrestler (release date TBD) and Pitt's epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (12/25) sight unseen, we'll take the aging-backward-on-other-people's-bodies gimmick over the gritty indie comeback 10 times out of 10. Not that it won't be close: Brad Grey will spend more on his old pal's campaign than Fox Searchlight is probably ready to drop on Rourke's, but Rourke will be the more accessible nominee to the media. Look for dark horse Sean Penn (Milk) to split the field late; Focus Features won't settle for another 0-fer in '08.

2. W. (10/17) will tip the election to the GOP. Opening less than three weeks before Election Day, the film will be too muddled to move the Democrats yet irreverent enough to galvanize the Republican base against Hollywood one more time before voting. Oliver Stone will be recognized as the new Ralph Nader.

3. You're going to miss Don LaFontaine a lot more than you think. Otherwise execrable trailers like this one for The Haunting of Molly Hartley (10/31) acquired bittersweet relevance overnight:

4. The Weinstein Company will muscle its way back to prominence. Harvey had a relatively hemorrhage-free summer, closed out by his $16 million-grossing (and counting) Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Meanwhile, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (10/31) left Toronto with goodwill to spare, the LA immigrant saga Crossing Over (10/24) has Harrison Ford, Sean Penn and others channeling Crash, and the company bumped up The Reader for Kate Winslet Oscar consideration. (NB: The Rourke Factor also reportedly inspired Harvey to finally slot his long-shelved Killshot on Nov. 7.) The Weinsteins being the Weinsteins, of course, the operation could crash at any time, but at least the ensuing conflagration promises Hindenberg levels of spectacle. That's our Harvey.

5. Owen Wilson will emerge from, return to hiding after explaining the trailer to Marley & Me (12/25). That is all.

6. The Soloist (11/21) will be better than it sounds. But it sounds great, right? Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, directed by Pride and Prejudice/Atonement helmer Joe Wright? Alas, the logline: "A schizophrenic, homeless musician from Skid Row, Los Angeles dreams of playing at Walt Disney Concert Hall." Based on a true story, natch: Downey Jr. plays the real-life LAT reporter who befriends him, warning Foxx behind the scenes about the perils of going full-schizo. All things being equal, we like their chances.

7. Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York (10/24) will be this year's unlikeliest tearjerker. Not just for its devastating, beautiful final act, but also for the probability that Sony Classics will weep red ink when it makes about five cents at the box office.

8. Twilight (11/21) will only be the second-best vampire movie released this fall. You won't find Let the Right One In (10/24) on the cover of EW, but you'll find the Swedish export in a lot of festival juries' hearts since last spring. Half coming-of-age romance and half vengeful horror epic, it picks up the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy whose sweet new girlfriend next door ends up being several thousand years older than she looks — and behaves accordingly. Genre distributor Magnet Releasing might only get this on a hundred screens, but watch the word-of-mouth and top-10-list acclaim bump it into sleeper status by the end of the year.

9. Extreme Movie will open to a $0 gross after viewers confuse it with the other, less-illustrious Movie franchise. But you can be prepared: Extreme Movie is the teen sex comedy starring Michael Cera and Frankie Muniz; Disaster Movie et. al. are the ones whose auditoriums smell faintly of piss. Know the difference!

10. Daniel Craig will miss 2006. Casino Royale was a surprising, sporadically brilliant reboot, but the honeymoon is over: Quantum of Solace's trailer isn't dazzling anyone; the title is stillborn; Sony couldn't settle on a US release date (it finally chose 11/14); and unfairly or not, franchise obsessives want nothing to do with new director Marc Forster. And all this after the Bond curse cost Craig part of his finger. It's a cruel world, but not as cruel as it'll seem after Defiance (12/12), the WWII Jewish resistance drama in which he and screen bros Liev Schrieber and Jamie Bell fight off Nazis during the invasion of Poland. Among the last of Paramount Vantage's orphaned prestige titles, and opening opposite Doubt, an expanded Frost/Nixon and The Day the Earth Stood Still, it's bound to knock Craig back to stardom's second tier for a while to come.

11. Beverly Hills Chihuahua (10/3) will astonish and amaze. But you already knew that.