It was the weekend from hell. I think we’ve had more movies lined up for a single issue before, and I know I’ve reviewed as many as nine, so it’s not just quantity. By judicious whining, I managed to fob off both Whiteout and Broken Hill on Justin Souther, leaving me a mere eight titles to wrestle to the ground, but what titles they were!

This is the week that the newly remastered, remonkeyed, repackaged and generally rejiggered Beatles box set hits record stores (and my CD player), but of course that’s not really a movie topic—or is it? In one sense, it very obviously isn’t, but in another sense modern film owes a debt to the Beatles just as much as music does.

We’ve already had District 9, so this week we get plain old Arabic numeral 9. And nearer Christmas we’re slated to get Nine. Number nine, number nine, number nine. Mere coincidence—or something more? And if you play them backwards do you get “Paul is dead” clues? That remains to be seen (and will likely be incomprehensible except to readers of a certain age).

I’d been planning on doing something on this topic for some time—at least as far back as last night when the stars aligned and brought an eventuality into being. In this case, the celestial line-up consisted of Orbit DVD offering a sale, me pointing this fact out to co-critic Justin Souther and Justin attending said sale.