1. Beverly Hills Chihuahua — $17.5 million

Disney unleashed its vast canine army for a second straight week, prompting mad scientists at competing studios to commence top-secret experiments to engineer another, equally lucrative breed. Word on the street has Miramax taking the early lead with Tribeca Guard Dog, the story of a vicious German Shepherd named Henrik who unexpectedly finds love with a pug who persuades him to let her owner out of captivity in a dank Manhattan editing facility. Scott Rudin will produce, natch.

2. Quarantine — $14.2 million

The stunning opening gross for Sony's horror film exceeded its budget by $2 million, thus inheriting the B-schlock mantle from the retiring Saw franchise and guaranteeing another five years of sloppy, utterly forgettable viral marketing. Well done, America.

3. Body of Lies — $13.1 million

We never thought we could be accused of being too generous to Ridley Scott's spy-flick folly, but there you have it.

4. Eagle Eye — $11.1 million

The Shia LaBeouf thriller sustained exceedingly well in its third weekend, dropping less than 40% percent and inspiring DreamWorks to scour the Hitchcock canon for the third thinly veiled Gen-X updating between their young star and director D.J. Caruso. The front-runner to date: Nutso, one of Hollywood's hottest unproduced scripts, which would feature Shia as a rural motel proprietor on the outs with his mysterious, Klonopin-addled stepmother. A green light is forthcoming as soon as the judge lifts the injunction.

5. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist — $6.5 million

Continuing a new tradition, expect the disappointed producers of The Express — the highly touted footbal biopic that nevertheless finished a distant sixth behind Playlist — to launch an inquiry into ticket fraud and other Michael Cera-inspired box-office shenanigans by the end of the day.

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?

Like the 01/18/08 release date that came to represent both the setting and the cultural catchphrase for Cloverfield, a quick browse through IMDB's release dates — 10/17, specifically — points to Sony's big mystery-disease horror flick Quarantine. The plot summary, which features an L.A. news crew's footage the only record of the illness ravaging the building in which it's trapped — fits as well.

So there you have it! I know, I know — you're impressed. And with only seven months to wait, at least the studio doesn't have to worry about peaking too soon.

• Case 1017 - Please help identify this [YouTube]