It's what I call a low fever week on DVD shelves this week, but let's see what we can find. Kim Voynar described Penelope as "a charming but fluffy little fable about a girl born under the shadow of a family curse." Christina Ricci stars as a woman with the face of a pig (!). James (Wanted) McAvoy, Reese Witherspoon, Catherine O'Hara and Peter Dinklage are also featured. The DVD includes a "making of" feature.

Other indie releases of interest this week: The Curiosity of Chance; Meet Bill; Monsieur Vincent; Never Forever; Times and Winds; The Year My Parents Went on Vacation.

Now that's we've covered the official business of this weekly post, let's talk oddities. The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell is a wild post-apocalyptic comedy that other people have enjoyed much more than I did (which is to say not at all), but what I find really odd is that the DVD comes complete with "National Lampoon Presents" plastered at the top. Now, the National Lampoon label has never embraced comedy that I'd call "nervy." Gross out comedy? Yes. Bad attempts at parody? Yes. Endless pale imitations of frat house laughers? Yes. Beach Party may not have succeeded for me, but at least it tries to push the boundaries of what it's OK to laugh about.

Yesterday, Scott posted a terrific month-by-month report card looking back the 2008 movie scene from the halfway point. With the interval between theatrical and DVD release dates shrinking steadily, a lot of the movies from January through June are either already available on DVD, or soon will be. For your consideration, here are what I consider to be seven underseen, underexposed, and/or unfairly overlooked gems from the year to date. Something to consider next time you log on to Netflix.

In no particular order:

1. Charlie Bartlett - I'll clamber out on a limb and call Charlie Bartlett the most valuable movie for young teenagers this decade (despite its R rating). Most films for kids and teens unthinkingly implore them not to worry about being popular -- do your own thing! Don't worry about what your peers think of you! Good advice in the abstract, maybe, but completely detached from reality for most school-age kids, who have to, you know, go to school, and eat in the cafeteria. Charlie Bartlett is smart enough to realize this. Rather than imploring kids to "be themselves," it wants to say something about what the ones who are actually popular should do with their popularity. For once, it's a movie with a message aimed not at the misfits but at the leaders: the kids who are smart, charismatic and capable; the schoolyard trendsetters and tastemakers. It powerfully suggests the importance of using that influence for good instead of evil. Oh, and it's bright, sincere, and very funny, with a downright miraculous performance by Anton Yelchin.

In the next week or two, we're going to be emerging from what's generally considered a miserable cinematic wasteland -- a time when Hollywood treads water between Oscar season and summer, getting rid of scores of movies it doesn't have a lot of confidence in. It's a season most movie buffs dread, since the odds of a worthwhile trip to the theater are low, and time seems better spent contemplating the summer films that seem impossibly far away. Given the amount of time we've spent daydreaming about Iron Man and Speed Racer here at Cinematical, we're clearly not immune from the winter and spring haze.

Before you know it, Apatow cash cows, long-awaited sequels, and Wachowski extravaganzas will start making their way to the multiplexes. But I wanted to take a quick look back and ask what, if anything, you've liked from this sad stretch. I don't mean what the best film of 2008 is -- winter and spring can actually be quite a good season for festivals and indies, so one could come up with a number of worthy contenders from that stock. I mean the bright spots of the mainstream wide release dumping ground.

Well look what we have here -- you're back again, asking me to feed your caption contest addictions. I'll do it. Someone has to do it. Just remember, the first one's free. Wait. Scratch that. They're all free! Yes, welcome back to another installment of our universe famous caption contest. While you're probably all dying to find out who won the Vespa we gave away last week (thanks to Penelope and her freaky pig nose), you're gonna have to wait a little while longer. Sorry folks. In the meantime, how about you give us your best captions for the photo below from Roland Emmerich's 10,000 B.C. The top three captions from this week will walk away with (deep breath) one 10,000 B.C. The Legend tee, one 10,000 B.C. beanie, one 10,000 B.C. weathered baseball cap, one saber tooth necklace, one set of 10,000 B.C. photo postcards in a notebook, one set of lenticular buttons and one wooden pyramid puzzle. If all that stuff isn't enough to create your very own prehistoric beast (like the one featured below), then I don't know what is. Sound off folks!

Read the official rules for this contest

Welcome friends to what has to be the most exciting Insert Caption in the history of caption contests around the world! This week, we have something so special for you that I can hardly write about it without watching the jealousy literally pour out my body. Seriously. It's disgusting. The jealousy just pours out into this liquid goo that sticks to everything. This week, we're wrapping our caption claws around Summit Entertainment's Penelope, starring Christina Ricci, James McAvoy and Reese Witherspoon. Now check this out -- one Grand Prize winner will ride away with a brand spanking new yellow Vespa LX 50 (pictured right, and courtesy of Vespa -- click on the image for a larger version).

That's right! And all you have to do is come up with the wittiest caption for the photo of Christina Ricci on a park bench below. The contest officially begins right now, and you have until 12:01am on Wednesday, February 27th to enter. For more on Penelope, check out the film's official website, and sound off below!

Read the official rules for this contest

Last week, we asked you to come up with captions for a photo from Charlie Bartlett -- and as much as we loved your toe-tapping toilet humor, we ultimately decided that Josh B. provided all the right caption-winning ingredients.

1. "So I definitely think your daddy issues stem all of the way back to potty training." -- Josh B.

See full image and all captions

Here's a few bites to chew on:

• Back in July, I alerted you to the news that Keira Knightley signed on to play Georgiana Cavendish, the 18th century Duchess of Devonshire in an upcoming flick called The Duchess. Now Variety is reporting that Lord Voldemort -aka- Ralph Fiennes, Dominic Cooper of The History Boys, and Cassandra's Dream co-star Hayley Atwell have also signed on to the film that starts shooting on the 23rd in the UK. Fiennes will play the Duke of Devonshire, Cooper will be Georgiana's lover, Earl Grey, and Atwell will take on the role of her best friend, Lady Bess Foster. And yes, this Earl Grey is the man linked to the tea. Georgina's life was pretty wild -- affairs, lovers, and messed-up marriages, so this could be one fun flick.
• Variety has also posted that Reese Witherspoon and Christina Ricci's Penelope is finally coming out in theaters. Summit Entertainment has picked up the North American rights, and it will be released on February 1. You might remember that IFC and the Weinsteins nabbed the rights in Toronto last year, set it up for release in April, and then stopped it all to focus on "its core business of smaller-budget indies." You'd think they could've at least put out what they'd purchased. Luckily, Summit head Rob Friedman says: "It is the kind of material that will allow our marketing group to really shine," and it looks like its time has finally come. (Crosses fingers.) While we wait, you can check out Kim's review here, and the trailer here.

Now that she's an Oscar-winner, one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood and currently the second-highest-paid actress, Reese Witherspoon can afford to be picky with the parts she chooses. And she is also likely one of the most desirable clients for agents. After spending only a year with Endeavor, Witherspoon has signed with CAA. It isn't known why Witherspoon switched representation again so soon, but it couldn't have anything to do with the roles she got while at Endeavor, none of which has been released yet.

Variety mentions that since her separation from Ryan Phillippe, she has been making a number of life changes, though her departure doesn't seem to have anything to do with Phillippe, who is repped by UTA. Maybe she is in fact disappointed that Endeavor couldn't get her enough money to maintain her place as the highest paid actress (she was displaced recently by CAA client Julia Roberts). Or she's just having trouble finding an agent she's as comfortable with as Steve Dontanville, who she was with for almost her entire career up to his retirement. For a peek at Reese Witherspoon's next movie, check out the new trailer here.

As a society, we don't seem to like blemishes too much, whether they're temporary or permanent. If we get a zit, or find our hair popping up into a cowlick, we buy creams and special drug store amenities to right the affliction and make it go away. If we've got an unsightly mole, bump or other such birth idiosyncracy, we head to the surgeon and remove it. There's a cream or scalpel for most normal curses, but what if the exploits of our ancestors resulted in swine deformities? That's the affliction Christina Ricci faces in the upcoming Penelope, which now has a trailer online.

As our Kim Voynar described in her TIFF review, Penelope deals with a young girl cursed with a pig face. She is isolated by her parents, but then breaks free to discover life beyond the protective walls of her home. The curse will be lifted when she can get someone to love her for herself -- obviously a spin on Beauty and the Beast. The trailer has some goodies and glimpses of Catherine O'Hara giving birth and screaming in fright during delivery (did they not inform her of the curse!?) and Reese Witherspoon, who plays Penelope's guide to the real world. However, don't expect to see much Ricci, or her round, pig nose. They've left that out of the trailer. Actually, you won't see much of Ricci at all. The powers that be have chosen to give an introduction to the film and the back story, but not share in her worldly exploits or life. The film will find limited release on April 6, so there isn't too long to wait until the quirky fable hits the screens.

There's a certain satisfaction in reading about distribution deals for independent films that have caught your interest -- the smaller the film, the greater the satisfaction. Suddenly, there's a real possibility that you might actually get to see the film without having to live in New York or LA. And if you did catch the film at a film festival, and loved it, now you can persuade all your friends to see it too, when the movie arrives in theaters or on DVD. (If you hated it, well, then you can boast to everyone that you saw it already, that was soooo last week, and it's not worth bothering over ... and that's a whole other type of pleasure.)

When Kim reviewed Penelope (pictured right) at TIFF, I was intrigued and hoped I'd get a chance to see the movie. Fortunately, IFC and The Weinstein Company have jointly purchased the North American rights to the film produced by Reese Witherspoon and starring Christina Ricci and James McAvoy. Kim was worried that the movie had no clear audience, but I'm sure that IFC and the Weinsteins will find one. IFC is handling the theatrical distribution, and TWC will handle TV and video rights. My only worry is that Penelope seems to share certain superficial story elements with Gretchen, an Austin-shot feature I enjoyed at SXSW, and I hope that this buy doesn't harm Gretchen's chances at distribution.

In addition, Zeitgeist films has acquired the U.S. distribution rights for the film Into Great Silence, a documentary about the Carthusian Order monastery in the French Alps. Cinematical interviewed the film's director, Philip Groening, at Sundance in January. Zeitgeist faces a challenge: marketing a nearly three-hour documentary that contains almost no dialogue, because the filmmakers respected the monastery's vows of silence. (Perhaps they could persuade Morgan Freeman to record narration? I hope not.) The distributor is planning a release timeframe of next February or March.