You know how January is. It’s a time of quiet contemplation and naked Oscar-baiting, when a Kevin James movie can lay waste to the box-office like the Cloverfield monster. And “Wendy and Lucy” just got bumped again, dammit.

So what’s opening? Not a hell of a lot.

“Know Your Mushrooms”: In which Ron Mann continues in his inexhaustible bid to canonize every last aspect of hippie culture, and good for him! Susan liked it; Jason did too, with a few reservations.

“New in Town”: Efficiency expert Renee Zellweger gets all Northern Exposure-y when she’s dispatched to deepest Minnesota to close down a branch, or something. Neither Susan nor Kate Carraway are particularly impressed.

“Taken”: In a nice twist on the Givemebackmyfamily!!! popularized by Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson back in the ’90s, former covert operative Liam Neeson goes on a rampage through Paris when his daughter is abducted. Neeson’s blunt, potent competence, aided by a straightforward script and efficient direction from Pierre Morel, makes for a much better actioner than the ad campaign would have you believe. Barrett thinks so, too.

“The Uninvited”: David Straithairn and Elizabeth Banks in an American remake of “A Tale of Two Sisters” that turns Kim Jee-Woon’s fragmented Korean nightmare into a linear horror film with a really big twist at the end? Um, okay. Didn’t see it, but word coming out of the preview screening has not been good.

Also opening this week: Lee Demarbre’s documentary “Vampiro: Angel, Devil, Hero” screens tonight and tomorrow at the Royal , and Terence Davies’ Liverpool oratorio “Of Time and the City” rolls into the Bloor on Sunday after its limited Cinematheque engagement. You know, if you’re into the whole reality thing.

Sometimes the universe just can’t help itself.

Two days ago, Marina Zenovich’s “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” came out on DVD, just days after the latest flurry of activity in the exiled director’s ongoing attempt to get himself cleared to return to the United States without being thrown into jail on that whole skipping-town thing.

And today, over at the Onion AV Club, Scott Tobias confronts one of Polanski’s thorniest, weirdest pictures, “Bitter Moon“, in his latest column exploring The New Cult Canon.

Now, at first blush, I would have gone with “The Ninth Gate” as Polanski’s key cult venture, myself. (It has the robes and everything!) But despite a nicely twitchy performance from Johnny Depp and a swell supporting turn from Frank Langella, “The Ninth Gate” doesn’t stick in the mind the way “Bitter Moon” does.

Also, “Bitter Moon” has Kristin Scott-Thomas and Hugh Grant as the unsuspecting couple sucked into Peter Coyote and Emmanuelle Seigner’s twisted world, and there’s something perverse and discomfiting about seeing Grant and Scott-Thomas as a couple, despite their obvious comfort with each other (and the echoes of their non-pairing in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”).

Also also, the movie is deeply weird. Like, weirder than you remember. Even if you’ve just seen it recently.

So, you know, if you find yourself snowed in this weekend … well, why not revisit the freaks? Not every movie has to be “The Pianist”, y’know.

Sorry for the lateness of today’s post; I’ve been waiting for my Sympatico/MSN DVD column to go online, but obviously something’s holding it back this afternoon.

Instead, I’ll throw to another of the site’s columnists: Sean Francis Condon, who writes the surprisingly cheerful “Random Sampling of Things I Hate” column … and who, it turns out, has my back on the whole state-of-Canadian-film thing.

With the big party for Canada’s Top Ten just a couple of days away, and “Passchendaele” and “Blindness” set to hit DVD stores in the next couple of weeks, it seems like something people ought to read.

It’s 10 am on a Monday morning, I’m on deadline and apparently nothing at all has happened in the world except for the news that “Paul Blart, Mall Cop” defied expectations to remain atop the box office in its second weekend, and that just makes my nose bleed.

So I’m going to throw to the Onion AV Club’s weekly inventory, which this week is devoted to “fifteen great gearshift movies” — films that start out, either narratively or stylistically, as one thing, and then become something else.

Spoilers abound, obviously, so read with care. And somehow, “From Dusk Till Dawn” didn’t make the list, though there’s plenty of discussion about that in the comments.

Given the sad reality that “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” seems set to dominate this weekend’s box-office — being the only new film opening wide enough to register — we figured my latest Sympatico/MSN gallery should take a look at recent female action heroines.

The “hottest” designation was an editorial decision, mind you. And please note that neither Kate Beckinsale nor Rhona Mitra ultimately made the cut.

Also, here’s my NOW review of the “Underworld” threequel. It ain’t pretty, but then neither is the movie.

Hey, have you seen “Slumdog Millionaire” yet? Perhaps you’d like to go see that today — like, right now — the better to inflate its numbers and nudge “Underworld” out of the #1 spot? That’d be just swell of you.

Worried that I wasn’t making too much noise about the Oscars? Worry no more, folks; here’s my online assessment of this year’s nominations over at NOW, and you can follow that up by listening to our Oscar Podcast, in which I debate the Academy’s various good and bad deeds with Susan, Barrett and Glenn.

Just remember, these are industry awards, which means the rules are made up, the points don’t mean anything, and no one has to pretend that Clint Eastwood’s work was any good this year.

We’re still stuck with “The Reader”, but you can’t have everything.

This week’s announcement of the Oscar nominations means Hollywood is less interested in opening new movies than in expanding the runs of the nominees, and films expected to be nominated. Thus, “The Dark Knight” returns to IMAX venues, and “Slumdog Millionaire” becomes inescapable. And as for the extra screens for “Revolutionary Road” and “Rachel Getting Married” … well, oops.

If I were you, and I lived in Toronto, I’d hie me down to the Cinematheque and check out the Terence Davies retrospective that’s starting tonight, framed around a limited run of his excellent documentary “Of Time and the City”. I cover it all at length in this week’s NOW. (Have I mentioned how much I love having a job that lets me spend 600 words discussing the films of Terence Davies? Because I do, I really do.)

And there’s new stuff, too:

“Examined Life”: Consisting of seven monologues (and one conversation) from nine philosophers, social theorists and political scientists, Astra Taylor’s DV feature is a cross between a documentary and a symposium — uneven and long-winded, but when it hits on a good idea, it’s mesmerizing. And she shot most of it in my favorite parts of New York, so points for that. Jason and Susan felt about the same way.

“Inkheart”: Brendan Fraser does the fantasy thing again as a family man cursed with the power to … bring whatever he reads aloud to life? Wait, that can’t be right. Can it? It sounds awfully weird. Apparently it’s based on a children’s book. Anyway, Andrew liked it.

“Underworld: Rise of the Lycans”: Neither director Len Wiseman nor slinky star Kate Beckinsale could be coaxed back for this third go-round, but that’s okay: It’s a prequel, so they can concentrate on the backstory between Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen! No press screenings, so I’m catching it this afternoon.

“Welcome to the Sticks”: Dany Boon’s city-souris/country-souris comedy is apparently the most successful French film ever … though Barrett found it to be a the kind of cultural work that doesn’t really translate.

That’s plenty for today; check back tomorrow for more on the Oscars, if you can stand it!

Is it that time already? The Academy announces the Oscar nominations this morning, and as that’s happening I’ll be on my way to the CTV Newsnet studios for a 9:15 am hit.

Now, they specifically said this was going to be a pre-tape, so I’m not sure when it will actually air, but if you keep your TV tuned to Rogers Cable 62 for, oh, the rest of the day, you’re bound to see it.

I’ll try to have something coherent to say.

UPDATE: Clip’s posted! Check it out!

Also, for all the Paul & Storm fans out there: Go, “Slumdog”, go! You my friend!