Last week, two movies opened. This week, there are six: The Girl on the Train, Green Zone, Our Family Wedding, Remember Me, She’s Out of My League and The White Ribbon. Whether that’s an embarrassment of riches or just an embarrassment remains to be seen.

Several moves ago, I had a very small book of Leigh Hunt essays. I would love to know what became of it because it contained an essay that dealt with the idea of not comparing things to make a point. Hunt’s example was that he’d no desire to hear someone prove to him the relative lack of value of a kitten because it was inferior to a puppy. The idea was that we should continue to like that which is likable in anything without trying to render it unlikable by pointing out its inferiority to something else. I like that. I think it’s a swell idea. I also think—human nature being what it is—that it’s an unlikely idea to catch on. Nowhere does it seem less likely to me than with movie fans.

It’s the week of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Whether you’re primed to love it or hate it—or just approach it with caution—do you really need to know anything else about the moviegoing choices this Friday? Probably not. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t have some opinion on the wisdom of this undertaking, and isn’t at least curious about the results.

I have a friend who won’t even read my columns at this time of year because of the Oscars. Indeed, he has it in mind that I need to take some kind of boycott stance on the whole thing. In many ways, I understand his ire. It’s only two columns ago that I wrote, “When I start thinking like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, I’ll know I’ve been doing this too long.”

OK, so we got lucky last week with Shutter Island (see review in this week’s Xpress). It doesn’t follow that you should expect cinematic crocus popping up out of the snow this week. Far, far from it. We are reminded, instead, of the validity of Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction of more winter to come in the form of Kevin Smith’s Cop Out and Breck Eisner’s The Crazies.

Somehow when I wasn’t looking—or at least paying attention—the Screening Room passed its second anniversary. I don’t know if that’s cause for celebration, but it’s perhaps at least worth noting—if for no other reason than it never occurred to me I could find two years worth of things to write about.

The big news, of course, is the arrival of the new Martin Scorsese picture Shutter Island—a film everyone was shocked to see removed from the awards season lists, especially in favor of a February release. The question is, why the delay?