The holidays have come and gone, and while the snow played havoc with the usual Christmastime-viewing rush, Asheville more than made up for it over New Year’s. Now, it’s time to face the grim reality of what appears to be the usual January White Sale of movies nobody much wants to see. Oh, sure, we’re slated for a few choice—or potentially choice—offerings that haven’t yet made their way to the provinces. But all in all, the prospects for a bright new year at the movies aren’t too good for at least the first couple of months—as witness Season of the Witch and Country Strong, which invade local theaters this week.

So that’s another year down, which means it’s another year of movies down. As usual that means that Justin Souther and I will be listing our picks for best and worst in the first Xpress of the new year. But I’m going to take a different kind of look at the year in terms of movies—not individual titles, but a broader picture of where movies are in Asheville. In that regard, this was a year of some note, especially from my perspective.

It’s quite possible that there’s an unexpected benefit to the fact that nothing new opens this week. You know that white Christmas that Bing Crosby enthused over from a soundstage in sunny Hollywood 68 years ago? Well, as you might have noticed, we got it with a vengeance hereabouts. I admit it was picturesque, but it played havoc with Christmas moviegoing, causing early closings, power losses and something other than exciting attendance. Since it’s supposed to warm up and theoretically melt all this stuff, this weekend offers a chance to catch up with The King’s Speech, True Grit, I Love You, Phillip Morris and Black Swan. Of course, Little Fockers and Gulliver’sTravels are out there, too, but wasn’t being snowed in bad enough?

Justin Souther’s article that appeared this week on my 10 years at the Xpress caused me to reflect on just what those years had meant to me, what they’d given me and what I’ve learned from them. And how, yes, I sometimes have felt like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971). It also made me decide — after I read it on Tuesday — that I’d break my threat or promise (you decide which) not to write a Screening Room this week. Well, after all, it was really a promise to myself not to work over an unprecedented Christmas off — and since I’m at least starting in on Wednesday, I might pull that off yet.

Well, it’s Christmas week, and, as usual, that means all the studios are vying for your holiday attention. Three films of note come to town this week: The Coen Brothers’ True Grit hits all the first-run theaters (except Carmike) on Wednesday, while The King’s Speech comes to The Carolina and the Fine Arts on Christmas Day, and I Love You, Phillip Morris opens Christmas Day at The Carolina. That’s the good news. Two other titles show up as well. I’d rather not talk about them, but I guess I have to.

As the year sinks slowly in the west, I realize that for me the movie year pretty much is over. When I turn in this week’s reviews, the only thing left for me to review this year is Little Fockers. (Assuming Justin Souther isn’t knocked down by a bus, I have no intention of sitting through Gulliver’s Travels.) So far as I know at this point, there’s nothing opening locally on Dec. 31 and the next new movie we’re slated for is Season of the Witch on Jan. 7. (How depressing is that?) What’s mostly left for me this year is shuffling things around for my Ten Best list. I think I may need the time this year, which has been a peculiar one in a number of ways.

So here it is the week before Christmas, and here we are with five new movies coming to town. Two of them—the two really choice ones, Black Swan and The Fighter—I’ve already seen. What that leaves us with is TRON: Legacy, How Do You Know and, for the truly masochistic among us, Yogi Bear (in 3-D no less). If nothing else, it’s hard to complain about a lack of diversity.

So here’s the situation, having just come off a binge of moviewatching owing to the annual SEFCA (Southeastern Film Critics Association) vote being today, I took a look at what the next couple weeks are going to be like and I was struck by what I saw. Perhaps I should have ducked, but I didn’t. And here’s how it works out—it is within my grasp to take off both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The stars—and the studios—have not been in the alignment necessary for this for some considerable time. So considerable a time, in fact, that I can’t remember when it was.

This week, we have walking octopi from outer space, a pontificating lion, a duped Johnny Depp and a soccer documentary. The last two give rise to the terms “duped Depp” and “soc-doc,” which you’ll be glad to know I’ve now gotten out of my system. Actually, from my perspective, it’s another kind of slack week. I’ve seen and reviewed Monsters, and my partner in perfidy, Mr. Souther, has seen and reviewed Pelada, both of which open Friday at The Carolina, and both of which you can read about in this week’s Xpress. That leaves the new Narnia picture and The Tourist, which are opening all over the place.

Running across The Gilded Lily (1935) in the TCM listings (Sun., Dec. 5 at 2 p.m. ET) this week made me think about all the movies that just seem to fall through the cracks for one reason or another. The Gilded Lily is one such film. Its director, Wesley Ruggles (brother of Paramount comedian Charlie Ruggles), was once considered a fairly major director, but he lacked a notable signature and so lacked staying power. Claudette Colbert was a big star for years, but she’s not someone who got snatched up by the nostalgia craze of the 1960s and 70s. I have no idea why. The same is true of co-star Fred MacMurray, though he became so identified with the My Three Sons TV series and his Disney movies that his earlier work was eclipsed. What little treasures are we missing out on because of this?

A week of some interest from my perspective heads our way. Yes, it’s big news that Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours opens (at The Carolina and the Fine Arts), but I’ve seen it (twice). Both it and another opener, Cool It, are reviewed in this week’s Xpress. All that leaves is The Warrior’s Way. It occurs to me that if I work this right—meaning I palm off The Warrior’s Way on a certain particular co-reviewer—I can get something like the weekend off. The prospect of this causes me no pain.

I know I’ve batted around the question of when you fell in love with the movies, but in one of those moments of passing pensiveness I found myself pondering the related question of who—or alternatively what, I suppose—got you started watching movies in the first place. I think it’s probably safe to assume that most of us had some kind of moviegoing mentor—even if it’s just as probable that the mentor in question had no earthly idea that’s what he or she was. Myself, I’m having a little difficulty actually pinpointing such a person.

Since it’s Thanksgiving, everything opens on Wednesday this week. The idea is not merely to cash in on the fact that school will be out, but also it serves the public function of providing something that families can do together without the need for actual interaction. In this regard, Hollywood probably prevents thousands of murders a year. That’s admirable. I cannot, however, pretend any great personal excitement over the bill of fare this year.

The Marx Brothers—for those who don’t know—were a team of Jewish comics who made their way from vaudeville to the Broadway stage and from there to the movies. For our purposes, they were Groucho, Harpo, Chico and—for five movies anyway—Zeppo. According to rumor and most historians and critics, they are supposed to be funny. They counted George Bernard Shaw, T.S. Elliot and Salvador Dali among their fans (Dali even sent Harpo a harp strung with barbed wire). Many books—ranging from the fannish to the exceedlingly academic—have been written about them, starting with Alan Eyles’ The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy in 1966, which coincided with their disovery by a generation of moviegoers who were mostly born after the boys made their best films. But where are the Marx Brothers on today’s radar?

This Friday, we have Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Actually, if you’re morbid about the whole thing, you can see it at midnight on Thursday. I know The Carolina has it then, and I assume that means some other local theaters will, too. That may be as much as you need to know this week. Even so, two excellent films that are not Harry Potter are also opening: Fair Game and Tamara Drewe. It would be a shame if these got overlooked in all the Pottermania. Oh, yeah, and some Paul Haggis picture opens, as well.

Every so often—and sometimes oftener—I have ideas for these columns that prove insufficient for an entire column. Or if they aren’t insufficient, they’re too much to be tackled here in the detail they deserve. Let’s call those “subjects for further investigation,” but there’s no real guarantee I’m going to find time for those further investigations. With this in mind, I’ve decided to pull a few of these things out of the drawer—perhaps two at a time—and at least give them a little airing out. They’re doing no one any good where they are.

From a serious moviegoing standpoint, the big titles opening this week are ones I’ve already seen: Four Lions and Inside Job. You’ll find reviews of both in this week’s Xpress (they were among the films I reviewed over the weekend from hell—10 movies in three days). Conviction, Morning Glory, Skyline and Unstoppable are also coming to town. That means six films will be vying for your moviegoing attention—not to mention your hard-earned spondulicks.

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.