The Friday after Thanksgiving is always a weird dead zone — the big movies opened on Wednesday, and everyone in the U.S. is out shopping. The Canadian release schedule invariably reflects this, which is why there are only three movies opening today. And they are?

“Cool It“: Documentarian Ondi Timoner participates in the image rehab of Bjorn Lomborg, whose pushback against Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” made him a useful idiot for climate-change deniers. Was he misunderstood, or a provocateur? Or is he just a publicity hound who took a consciously flexible position in order to make a big splash that could be walked back once people knew his name? One wonders.

“Made in Dagenham”: Nigel Cole, the director of “Calendar Girls”, returns with another tale of female empowerment through sexual role reversal, telling the true story of the women of the Dagenham Ford plant who went on strike for equal pay in 1968. Reviews have been mixed (including Susan’s), but Sally Hawkins has been building some serious awards-season momentum, so I’ll catch it before the TFCA ballots are due.

“The Nutcracker in 3D”: I likewise missed Andrei Konchalovsky’s new take on the classic Christmas-season tale, which I now regret, because it’s been getting some of the worst reviews of any movie released this year. (A children’s movie from the director of “Runaway Train” and “Tango & Cash”? How did that happen, anyway?) Rad dismisses it; Roger Ebert wants it expunged from living memory. Ah, well, there’s always Blu-ray.

And there you go. Unlike my American cousins, I’m facing a pretty busy work day, so I’ll be off. But spare a thought for me when you’re stuck in the checkout line at Best Buy …

The latest issue of NOW is on the stands (and online, obviously), and in it you’ll find my take on the Tim Burton exhibition that settles into the Lightbox this weekend.

The short version? It’s exactly what you’d expect a Tim Burton exhibition to be, highlighting his strengths and doing its best to downplay his weaknesses — and revealing, accidentally or not, how inextricably the latter are linked to the former. (Really, though, just two pieces from “Ed Wood”? Not cool.)

Oh, and if you were looking for my reviews of “Faster” and “Love & Other Drugs“, they’re in there, as well as “Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen“, which starts its exclusive Lightbox engagement today. Also opening there today is “Waste Land”, a very good documentary from Lucy Walker. I didn’t review that one, but it’s okay; Susan likes it too.

In Toronto? Looking for a great double-bill of free movies? (And if not, why not? Seriously, what’s wrong with you?) Jeff Wright’s Refocus Film Series is presenting two excellent American indies tonight in Kensington Market, Aaron Katz’ “Cold Weather” and Ben and Joshua Sadfie’s “Daddy Longlegs”.

How good are they? Well, “Cold Weather” would be on my top ten for the year if someone would just pick it up and give it a proper release. I’ve written about it at length over at the NOW Daily, but really, just take my word for it and get yourself down to Double Double Land on Augusta for 7 pm. You won’t regret it.

(Sorry for the late post; I had to wait for the piece to go up. You understand.)

It comes as no surprise that “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1” topped the box-office this weekend, grossing $125.1 million domestically and pulling in another $205 million in international receipts for total universal dominance, or something.

More surprising? The only other new release of note, “The Next Three Days“, crawled to a fifth-place finish with a distinctly piddly $6.8 million, behind “Megamind”, “Unstoppable” and “Due Date”. I guess people really are tired of Russell Crowe. Or Paul Haggis. Either way, they have every right to be.

This week’s MSN Movies gallery is a celebration of great cinematic opening-credit sequences (and, in a much smaller way, the magic of Bing‘s video search function), and as with any list, it’s more fun to think about the stuff I couldn’t squeeze in than the choices that actually made the cut.

“Watchmen”, for example, or “Panic Room”. The elegant simplicity of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. The majestic opening sequences of “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” didn’t qualify, as neither has actual credits. I thought about “Raiders of the Lost Ark” an awful lot, but the credits end just as the sequence gets interesting. “The Wild Bunch” and “”Deja Vu” have excellent directorial credit placement, but otherwise they’re just sort of okay. And as much as I love the scene-setting opening of “Lawrence of Arabia”, I can’t argue for it as the best of its kind.

So there you go. Click though the gallery, watch the videos, and think about other options. What would you have chosen?

With the big Thanksgiving movies just around the corner, this week’s pretty quiet on the new-release front. Well, except for the one about the boy wizard. Shall we get into it?

“Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer”: Alex Gibney’s documentary expands upon a thread dangled in his first 2010 entry, “Casino Jack and the United States of Money“, exploring the machinations of America’s financial sector to bring down the crusading (though fatally exposed) Gov. Spitzer. Susan likes it a lot.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1“: The first half of the last “Harry Potter” story finds the franchise fully matured and ready to tackle some very heavy themes. Speaking as someone who’s found most of the movies repetitive and pointless, I’m really impressed with the way David Yates has brought the series into its own as cinema. Pretty great stuff, even if you don’t know the first thing about Quidditch.

“The Next Three Days“: Russell Crowe plots to spring Elizabeth Banks from prison in Paul Haggis’ slick but unnecessary remake of Fred Cavaye’s “Pour Elle”, which throws out all the ambiguity and psychological detail of the original for a more orderly moral universe where every awful thing is justified by the plot. And Liam Neeson only gets the one scene.

And don’t forget “The Light Thief” and “The People vs. George Lucas“, which opened at the Lightbox yesterday and are no great shakes, but still. New movies are new movies, right?

I may not have any new interviews in this week’s issue of NOW — don’t worry, it’s just a quirk of scheduling, there’s plenty of stuff in the pipeline — but I do cover a couple of film festivals. If you’re curious about this year’s editions of the European Union Film Festival or aluCine, well, go learn something!

Also, if you missed the Cooks Source Magazine content-harvesting scandal that broke out on the interwebs earlier this month, it’s been resolved in a rather satisfactory manner. So that’s nice.

Oops, and I almost forgot: New openings at the Lightbox today include the middling TIFF title “The Light Thief” and the disappointing Hot Docs entry The People vs. George Lucas“. There, now you’re covered.