Owing to circumstances over which nobody has any control, this week’s Screening Room will be of the short variety—and I mean it this time. Yeah, I know you’ve heard that before and then my natural tendency to subscribe to the immortal words of the equally immortal Mantan Moreland, “Can I help it ‘cause I’m loquacious?” takes over. (Bonus points for anyone who can identify just where he said this—two clues lie within.) But that simply cannot be this round, owing to a packed reviewing schedule and the fact that no one has yet managed to invent the 48-hour-day, which I think is lax in the extreme. Haven’t we been using the 24 hour model quite long enough by now?

Well, here we go again—and, no, I don’t mean the fact that another Tyler Perry movie is coming out. Once more, a title has sneaked into town while I wasn’t looking (or at least after the print deadline). The week started out with the promise of For Colored Girls, The Tillman Story, Due Date and Megamind. Then last night out of nowhere Nowhere Boy was added to the list. I’m not complaining, mind you, because it’s a film I’m actually anxious to see.

The silent film is virtually—and in part because of its silence—a world of its own, but even in that world the silent horror picture is a little world unto itself. And it’s a corner of cinema that is less known than it should be—perhaps because it’s occasionally confusing owing to what has come to be classified—or mis-classified—as horror. With this in mind, this weekend—this very crowded Halloween weekend—there are eight silent classic horror films—four on Saturday and four on Sunday—playing free to the public in the Cinema Lounge at The Carolina. This may give viewers a better understanding of silent horror, if only on a small scale.

In terms of mainstream movies, the week belongs to Saw 3D—but there’s certainly some heavy art-title competition for it. The Carolina opens Heartbreaker and Catfish. The Fine Arts has Jack Goes Boating. Even the Beaucatcher is getting into the act with Buried. And if that’s not enough for you, there’s a raft of Halloween special offerings to tempt you out of the house and into the Old Dark Movie House.