This absolutely has to be the strangest Christmas movie season ever. Usually it's buddy cop movies, sequels, and superheroes.

Today we have epics based on Fitzgerald short stories, a movie simply about a mildy troublesome mutt, and a Nazi espianage thriller wherein we all know the ending?

Somebody explain to me what this all means. I'm not exactly complaining and am glad Hollywood is making some seemingly daring choices for a change...

...but this is just weird.

As a scribbler who has always taken note of the market and its trends, this is unprecidented. I literally can see the potential of all these Xmas releases failing miserably.

Ben Button? Too long and too esoteric. (I'm dying to see it, mind you.)

Marley & Me? (I don't think I've ever seen a dryer, more lackluster trailer. The human stars are barely bankable and the dog isn't particularly cute or charming... and I hear it has a real downer of an ending. Who the hell is this movie for???)

Valkyrie? (Don't even get me started on this one. I can't think of a more off-putting film for the holiday season than this. Again, I'm a fan of Singer and, usually, Cruise, and I'm sure it could be a fine film. But the average viewer out for a breather after full-contact Xmas shopping? No way. They want lightsabres and wisecrackin' buddy cops or something.)

Maybe I'm way off the mark here and that's fine, but what exactly does this bode for the future of the industry? It seems like a really bad time for Hollywood to have a down season, y'know?

Jeff, there's a good analysis in the Daily Variety about this Christmas week movie slate:

"There seem to be too many presents waiting to be unwrapped at the holiday box office, with five pics set to open wide on Christmas Day.

Yet by all indications, many of the titles will work -- weather permitting -- putting an exclamation point on a year that saw the B.O. stay strong even as the economy buckled."

Also note the BO totals so far for each of the studios:

"The 2008 race for major studio market share will be won by Warner Bros., which is on the brink of crossing the $1.7 billion mark in box office revs and leap-frogging Sony to become the recordholder for highest-grossing year. Sony collected $1.7 billion in 2006; Warner revs through Sunday were $1.68 billion.

Paramount comes in No. 2. Studio's revs to date are $1.51 billion. Sony is currently No. 3 ($1.21 billion), followed by Fox (including Fox Searchlight titles, $1.09 billion), Universal ($1.08 billion) and Disney ($921 million)."

And there's this report that says Marley & Me had the biggest Christmas Day opening ever: $14.8M.

Yep, can't argue with those articles, Scott.

I'm a classic Cassandra/Chicken Little so...

And those are some big numbers for Marley, so it shows why I'm writing this from my kitchen in Wisconsin and not an executive suite on some studio lot.

I'd better dust off my "cute cat wreaks havoc with dyfunctional family" screenplay...

Jeff, I can relate to your assessment of the current slate of releases. It's a real mish-mash that was largely influenced by (A) the delayed release of Harry Potter (pushed back to next spring) and (B) Valkyrie delayed for a looooonnnnggg time, then finally slotted into this week.