Hollywood for the Holidays

It’s that time of year again, when commercial crowd pleasers and Oscar hopefuls all jockey for position at your friendly neighborhood multiplex. Which means it’s also time for Creative Loafing to trot out its year-end look at what the studios have lined up to carry us through the end of the year (and, in the case of the limited releases, into the new year).

NOVEMBER 17: Casino Royale isn’t just the 21st film in the James Bond series; it’s also the first, in that it’s taking the whole franchise back to the beginning and showing how Agent 007 (Daniel Craig) initially became a British spy with a “licence to kill” … Fast Food Nation is director Richard Linklater’s fictionalized take on the nonfiction bestseller by Eric Schlosser, with Greg Kinnear, Bruce Willis and Maria Full of Grace Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno as three people all involved in one way or another with a hamburger chain whose product might be contaminated with cow manure … After providing the voice of a mouse in Flushed Away, Hugh Jackman turns to lending his vocals to the part of a flightless fowl in Happy Feet, an animated yarn about a tap-dancing penguin (Elijah Wood). Other cast luminaries include Nicole Kidman, Robin Williams and the late Steve Irwin (a.k.a. the Crocodile Hunter) … The trailer for Let’s Go to Prison includes a Brokeback Mountain gag, which provides a glimpse at what to expect from this comedy about an innocent guy (Will Arnett) who winds up behind bars.

NOVEMBER 22: In the comedy Deck the Halls, a suburbanite (Danny DeVito) decides to decorate his house with an obscene amount of Christmas lights, much to the dismay of his neighbor (Matthew Broderick) … Deja Vu stars Denzel Washington as an ATF agent who’s forced to rely on the title sensation to help him solve a mystery … Writer-director Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind) and his cast of regulars (including Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey and Fred Willard) return with For Your Consideration, a comedy about a group of actors who learn that their latest film is generating Oscar buzz … Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) directs Hugh Jackman and recent Oscar winner Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener) in The Fountain, an ambitious sci-fi tale that spans centuries as it relates the story of a man’s love for his ailing wife and his eventual discovery of the Fountain of Youth … Nicole Kidman stars as legendary photographer Diane Arbus in Fur, which fictionalizes parts of Arbus’ life by providing her with a soulmate (Robert Downey Jr.) whose entire body is covered in hair … Tenacious D in ‘The Pick of Destiny’ finds the two members of the rock band (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) on the hunt for a magical guitar pick.

NOVEMBER 23: Bobby Brown? Bobby Seale? Bobby Goldsboro? None of the above. Instead, Bobby centers on Robert Kennedy and that fateful night when he was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The writer-director is Emilio Estevez (you read that right), who managed to assemble an all-star cast whose members include Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, ex-flame Demi Moore and, yes, dad Martin Sheen.

DECEMBER 1: The tale of Mary (Whale Rider Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes) and the birth of Jesus are recounted in The Nativity Story, directed by Thirteen‘s Catherine Hardwicke … The first film from Fox Atomic, the new specialty branch with an eye on the youth dollar, will be Turistas, a Hostel-like tale about a group of American campers terrorized in a Brazilian jungle … Ryan Reynolds and Tara Reid have both bailed, so Kal Penn, who played a supporting role in 2002’s Van Wilder, rises to leading man status in Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, in which his character heads to Oxford.

DECEMBER 8: On those occasions when he wasn’t engaged in drunk driving or anti-Semitic rants, Mel Gibson was busy directing Apocalypto, a subtitled period epic about conflicts among Mayan warriors … The latest large-scale yarn from director Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai, Glory) is Blood Diamond, in which three people (Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly) in Sierra Leone find themselves coming to blows with the ruthless companies raping the land for diamonds … The Holiday, from writer-director Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give), finds two women — an American (Cameron Diaz) and a Brit (Kate Winslet) — temporarily swapping houses, which in turn introduces prospective new boyfriends (Jude Law and Jack Black, respectively) into their lives … Several kids find themselves stranded in an airport during the Christmas season in Unaccompanied Minors.

DECEMBER 15: In the tradition of Dragonslayer and Dragonheart comes Eragon, an adaptation of the best-selling book about a young lad (Edward Speleers) who teams up with a dragon to stop an evil king (John Malkovich) … Three soldiers (Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Biel, 50 Cent) serving in Iraq deal with issues during and after their tours of duty in Home of the Brave … A struggling salesman (Will Smith) trying to support his son (played by Will’s own kid, Jaden Smith) worries about losing both his job and his home in The Pursuit of Happyness.

DECEMBER 20: One of the most beloved books in all of children’s literature, E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web comes to the screen for a second time (following an animated 1973 version), this time in an FX-heavy, live-action rendition starring Dakota Fanning as the little girl who loves a pig named Wilbur and Julia Roberts providing the voice of the spider who saves the animal from being served up for supper. Others providing vocals for various animals include Robert Redford, Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Garner and Oprah Winfrey.

DECEMBER 22: Robert De Niro directs and costars in The Good Shepherd, a complex Cold War thriller about a spy (Matt Damon) involved with the CIA during its formative years … It’s Jurassic Park meets Discovery Place, as the comedy Night at the Museum focuses on a third-shift watchman (Ben Stiller) who learns that the creatures on display have a habit of coming alive after the sun goes down … Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the boxing ring, along comes Rocky Balboa, the sixth installment in the 30-year-old series about a boxer (60-year-old Sylvester Stallone) who repeatedly goes the distance … We Are Marshall tells the true story of a college — and, in particular, one of its coaches (Matthew McConaughey) — that tries to cope after a plane crash kills most of the members of its football team.

DECEMBER 25: A remake of the 1974 cult favorite, Black Christmas centers on a sorority house whose members are being bloodily dispatched one-by-one by a serial killer … Dreamgirls, the screen version of the Broadway smash, is loosely based on the real-life story of Diana Ross and the Supremes, with Beyonce Knowles as the group’s lead singer, Anika Noni Rose and American Idol loser Jennifer Hudson as the backups, Jamie Foxx as their sly manager and Eddie Murphy as a popular R&B singer.

LIMITED RELEASES: Anthony Minghella directs his former stars Jude Law (Cold Mountain, The Talented Mr. Ripley) and Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) in Breaking and Entering, in which an architect begins an affair with the mother of the boy who’s been ransacking his office … Candy stars Heath Ledger as a heroin-addicted writer who falls for an art student (Abbie Cornish, presently in A Good Year) … Set in a bleak and barren future when women can no longer get pregnant, Children of Men stars Clive Owen and Julianne Moore as two activists who try to protect a young woman (Claire-Hope Ashitey) who learns that she is miraculously carrying a child inside her … DOA: Dead or Alive, based on the popular video game, rips off the plot of Enter the Dragon with its storyline of several martial arts experts who are invited to compete in a secret tournament being held on a remote island … The story of Edie Sedgwick (played by Siennna Miller), one of the superstars “created” by Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce), is related in Factory Girl … Not to be confused with The Good Shepherd (see Dec. 22 above), Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German stars George Clooney as an American journalist who gets involved in a labyrinthine mystery in post-World War II Berlin; Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire costar … Eight British lads cope with various distractions — including the groping hands of one of their teachers (Richard Griffiths) — in the stage-to-screen saga The History Boys … René Zellweger essays the title character in Miss Potter, a fanciful look at Peter Rabbit author Beatrix Potter; Ewan McGregor lends support … A crafty teacher (Judi Dench) takes advantage of the fact that a married peer (Cate Blanchett) has engaged in an affair with an underage student in the drama Notes On a Scandal … Based on the W. Somerset Maugham novel (and filmed before in 1934 with Greta Garbo), The Painted Veil centers on the tumultuous marriage between a workaholic doctor (Edward Norton) and his unfaithful wife (Naomi Watts) in 1920s China … The innovative Guillermo del Toro (Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone) is behind the Spanish import Pan’s Labyrinth, in which a young girl (Ivana Baquero) discovers a fantasy world next to her house that may or may not exist only in her imagination … Director Tom Tykwer (of Run, Lola, Run fame) serves up Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, about a man (Ben Whishaw) who resorts to killing as he tracks down the perfect fragrance; Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman head the supporting cast … Peter O’Toole has been Oscar-nominated seven times without ever winning, so expect a huge award push for Venus, in which the septuagenarian plays an ailing actor who strikes up a relationship with a teenage girl (Jodie Whittaker) … A Cannes winner for Best Actress (shared by lead Penelope Cruz and her five co-stars) and Best Screenplay, Pedro Almodovar’s Volver focuses on the relationships between the female members (including a ghost!) of a family that’s been put through the emotional wringer.

This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2006.