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.

Boomp3.com

At the premiere for Pride & Glory, star Lake Bell was momentarily star struck when she thought she saw mega movie star Johnny Depp. Bell cautiously approached the quirky Depp only discover it was her Pride & Glory co-star Colin Farrell. Bell tried to play it cool and explained that her co-star looked Johnny Depp from way far away. Farrell explained that she wasn’t the first person to get the two mixed up. Farrell added, “These things happen when you steal some body’s else mystique.”

[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.

· Paris, Not France premiered Tuesday night, with its subject in attendance as promised and with a letter from its beleaguered sales agent reportedly making the rounds beforehand:

"With less than one hour to go and no restraining order in place, I feel comfortable now letting you all know that this film was the subject of legal threats and was almost not shown at all here at the festival. [...] I am hoping that Paris will see, with the audience tonight, that there is nothing to be afraid of here. And will eventually let the film be distributed. What was originally conceived to be a 20-minute puff piece extra on the DVD release for her album, has in fact become a fascinating examination of what it's like to be a star in our star-obsessed culture. I can guarantee you three things: you may be the only people to ever see this version, you will not be disappointed, and everyone will be asking you if you saw it."

A few trusted sources were there, one of whom seemed to like the film more in theory: "Paris Hilton didn’t create this system––she’s just amongst its most photogenic exploiters. Its lack of perspective on its subject is troubling in the present, but at the very least, Paris Not France may serve in the future as a valuable time capsule of that exploitation in action." Another was less convinced, lamenting a larger Hilton conspiracy against the fest as a whole. And like you, we sense ourselves forgetting about the whole imbroglio before we even finish this sentence.

· IFC Films announced this morning that it acquired Steven Soderbergh's polarizing, 262-minute biopic Che for Stateside distribution. Look for one-week NYC/LA runs in December (followed by a VOD run in January), thus qualifying star Benicio Del Toro for an Oscar nomination that will probably go to Mickey Rourke anyway.

· Speaking of Oscars, The Hollywood Reporter notes that this year's fest is relatively light on awards-season hopefuls. Come back, Diablo Cody, all is forgiven!

· Kathryn Bigelow's actioner The Hurt Locker — which even mortal enemies David Poland and Jeffrey Wells agree is the best Iraq War film to date — also found a buyer, with the upstarts at Summit Entertainment grabbing it for under $2 million.

· Kevin Smith has officially moved into the I-slew-Goliath phase of his predetermined ratings squabble over Zack and Miri Make a Porno, telling an interviewer at Premiere exactly how many frames of fecal matter you can get away with onscreen before the NC-17 ax falls.

· Just for the record, Noah Emmerich's starring-role streak in New Line films — his latest being a cop in Pride and Glory — has nothing to do with the fact his brother runs the studio. If you don't believe him, ask him — it worked for Anne Thompson!