It looks like awards season is upon us, since two of the heaviest hitters are opening this week. There’s also a third art title for our viewing, a sort of mainstream/art hybrid and a big-budget blockbuster that’s already conquered most of the rest of the world. Actually, life looks pretty good this week — cinematically speaking.

While civilization attempts to recover from the embarrassing fact that Bad Grandpa is the number one movie in the country, we find ourselves faced with something of a slight week as concerns new movies hitting town (next week is slated to be a very different proposition, I assure you). This week we get three mainstream titles, one art title and a sort-of-art title.

If you take a look at the Upcomers in the print edition, the week looks pretty crowded, but three of those titles are part of the second edition of The Carolina’s “Music Madness” mini-festival. Not to minimize those — there’s some choice stuff in this second set — but that only leaves us with three full openings: two mainstream and one art title. (There was supposed to be one more, but the distributors changed their minds.)

This is an odd week in a number of ways. First of all, there’s something unusual in terms of approach with a collection of music films. Then we have one art title — an unusually fine documentary — and three mainstream ones, which is no shock. But on top of that those happy Weinstein pranksters have hit us with another of those curious, out-of-nowhere split bills.