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.

That's what the latest Renée Zellweger romcom New In Town faces upon opening this Friday, with early word from one critic urging the "good people of Minnesota" to "Stand up! Fight back! Take back your state and your culture and your accent!" Another critic, still reeling from his subjection to Zellweger's turn as an icy Miami executive who discovers love on a wintry northern business expedition, wrote his entire review in the film's condescending Townspeople dialect: "Her corporate-speak pretnear starts a riot. I'm tellin' ya, da guys are so worried 'bout losin' der jobs dey treat Lucy like a gopher who got into da garbage, donchaknow."

Distributor Lionsgate, meanwhile, is doing all it can to mend the breach threatening its January delivery — including marketing kingpin Tim Palen's staunchest "tug-on-the-ovary" test-screening efforts profiled last week in The New Yorker:

After the screening, Palen listened carefully to the focus group. Then, on the escalator down from the theater, he said, “They weren’t talking about Renée Zellweger, but she was the reason they came, because she’s a movie star. So if we’re out on Super Bowl weekend as counter-programming—trying to get women—the trailer has to be about her and be all shellacked and lacquered. Though I wonder if Fargo meets Baby Boom might be more relatable, with the downsizing everyone’s experiencing.” I mentioned that Blanche (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), Zellweger’s administrative assistant at the plant, had got many of the biggest laughs. “Droll and folksy reads as quaint, reads as art house,” Palen said. “I love Blanche, but I can’t sell her.”

"Fargo meets Baby Boom"? Ugh. Now even the Minnesotans won't buy it.

• 'New In Town' [Rotten Tomatoes]

• The Cobra [The New Yorker]

While we highly, highly suggest you take the time to read the entire story, here are some revelations from people who make trailers, manipulating moments from flicks:

“The most common comment you hear from filmmakers after we’ve done our work is ‘This is not my movie,’” Terry Press, a consultant who used to run marketing at Dreamworks SKG, says. “I’d always say, ‘You’re right—this is the movie America wants to see.’”

But what about you, the modern woman? Oh, the marketers know all about you:

The collective wisdom is that young males like explosions, blood, cars flying through the air, pratfalls, poop jokes, “you’re so gay” banter, and sex—but not romance. Young women like friendship, pop music, fashion, sarcasm, sensitive boys who think with their hearts, and romance—but not sex (though they like to hear the naughty girl telling her friends about it). They go to horror films as much as young men, but they hate gore; you lure them by having the ingénue take her time walking down the dark hall.

That is, of course, only if you are under 25. If you're over 25, you fall into a different "quadrant" of marketing. You're "older."

Older women like feel-good films and Nicholas Sparks-style weepies: they are the core audience for stories of doomed love and triumphs of the human spirit. They enjoy seeing an older woman having her pick of men; they hate seeing a child in danger. Particularly once they reach thirty, these women are the most “review-sensitive”: a chorus of critical praise for a movie aimed at older women can increase the opening weekend’s gross by five million dollars. In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them.

The marketer at the heart of this article, Tim Palen, was working on a new Renée Zellweger new film, Chilled in Miami, and trying to figure out how to get people to watch it. After a screening, Palen worried:

“They weren’t talking about Renée Zellweger, but she was the reason they came, because she’s a movie star. So if we’re out on Super Bowl weekend as counter-programming—trying to get women—the trailer has to be about her and be all shellacked and lacquered. Though I wonder if ‘Fargo’ meets ‘Baby Boom’ might be more relatable, with the downsizing everyone’s experiencing.” I mentioned that Blanche (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), Zellweger’s administrative assistant at the plant, had got many of the biggest laughs. “Droll and folksy reads as quaint, reads as art house,” Palen said. “I love Blanche, but I can’t sell her.”

So how do you sell a Renée Zellweger movie? The New Yorker's Tad Friend writes:

He had been working to make a compelling trailer, using David Schneiderman, at Seismic Productions, who cut trailers for “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Sex and the City.” Paul Brooks wanted the trailer to be primarily comedic, but Palen felt that it needed an emotional through-line, “the stuff that tugs on the ovary.” Schneiderman says that Palen’s reaction to his first pass “was the worst: ‘Where’s the Mary Tyler Moore?’ He said, ‘This girl goes to this little town in Minnesota and she’s a cold person, and they warm her up, right? More warmth, more style, more “Devil Wears Prada.” ’ And I said, ‘I don’t know where that is in the movie.’ And he said, ‘Create it.’”

By the end of the piece, Chilled In Miami has the more straight-forward title New In Town; the poster features red, Devil Wears Prada-esque shoes and a Louis Vuitton suitcase (Palen shot the photograph himself; whether the shoes or the luggage actually appear in the film is unclear), and the trailer, writes Friend, "made me want to see the movie, even though I’d already seen it. It looked like fun."

Letter From California: The Cobra [The New Yorker]