It’s the dead of winter, I know, and the movies have a tendency to be rather grim at this time of year. However, there’s usually some relief from this as the stragglers of the previous year’s limited release offerings make their way into the provinces. And, of course, that’s happening, but last year that included Pedro Almodovar’s colorful and playful neo-noir Broken Embraces and Terry Gilliam’s fantastic and fantasticated The Imaginarium of Dr. Paranassus. This year it seems to be largely grim, grimmer, and grimmest.

It’s another four movie weekend where I’ve already seen half of the movies. That means that Another Year and Biutiful—both starting Friday at The Carolina—are reviewed in this week’s Xpress. What does that leave? Well, there’s what looks like bargain basement horror with The Roommate and underwater 3D suspense with Sanctum. The former is so far only down for the Carmike and Epic, while the latter will be everywhere except the Beaucatcher. I can’t say either one sets my pulse pounding with anticipation.

So the Oscar nominations were announced bright and early on Tuesday. Actually, it was probably dark and early in Los Angeles, but since we all know the only real time is Eastern Standard Time (read: New York time), they pretend it’s morning out there. (Similarly, they will pretend it’s a gala evening instead of late afternoon on Feb. 27. It’s a funny old world.) And there was nary a surprise in the lot, which wasn’t much of a surprise in itself. That, of course, doesn’t mean that most of us don’t feel compelled to attempt to dope out the results on at least the major awards.

A free screening of Christopher Smith’s Black Death takes place at 10 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 28, at Carolina Asheville (1640 Hendersonville Road). Free if you know the magic word, that is.

I’m sitting here with Michael Curtiz’s The Sea Hawk (1940) playing off to the side. It’s a movie I’ve seen enough times over the years—starting at about the age of 15—that I can “watch” it without watching it too closely or getting distracted into watching the whole thing before I realize it. On my desk are two films—Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) and William Friedkin’s The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968)—that I have to watch and review by mid-day Monday at the latest. I have this column to attend to, and reviews to write for The Way Back and Blue Valentine. And this is a light weekend comparatively speaking. I’m not complaining, mind you, but I also have a growing stack (literally and otherwise) of movies I want to watch, but when?