New Films Bring Hope to Hollywood
After a less than sizzling summer at the box office, studios hope for a rebound as audiences return from vacations and settle back into seats at movie theaters.
Holiday season extravaganzas like King Kong Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Aeon Flux and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are just around the corner. Many of these big films won't be released until around Thanksgiving or Christmas, but they are already creating buzz..
Also creating a buzz are some serious dramas (and potential Oscar nominees) like Ang Lee's gay cowboy drama Brokeback Mountain, Stephen Gaghan's big oil drama Syriana, Rob Marshall's adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha, Steven Spielberg's account of the tragic 1972 Olympics (Munich) and the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.
It wouldn't be fall without history lessons. Terrence Malick recounts the arrival of the first white settlers in America with The New World, while George Clooney recalls the communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era in Good Night, and Good Luck.
Autumn also seems to be the ideal time for moviemakers to harvest literary classics like Dickens' Oliver Twist, and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Both are re-imagined this fall.
And how about this for a twist: a Broadway hit adapted from a hit movie will burst onto the big screen again in The Producers: The Movie Musical. Another hit Broadway musical, Rent, checks in in November.
In this paranoid, post-9/11 society, is it any wonder that Chicken Little is heading to the big screen as a computer- animated feature from Disney? Other family fare includes the inspirational horseracing movie Dreamer, the stop-motion animated feature Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and the Jumanji-like Zathura.
Here's a sampling of what's due out in theaters the rest of '05:
September
Jennifer Lopez and Robert Redford antagonize each other in the drama An Unfinished Life.
Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy pair up to investigate a stolen- arms ring in the buddy comedy The Man.
Reese Witherspoon plays a "spirited" woman who only can be seen by Mark Ruffalo in the romantic comedy Just Like Heaven.
Elijah Wood discovers the dark side of hard-core British soccer fans in Green Street Hooligans and explores his Jewish ancestry in Everything is Illuminated.
In Proof, Gwyneth Paltrow reprises her stage role as a mathematician who questions her sanity after her brilliant but mentally unstable father dies.
Julianne Moore stars as an oppressed '50s housewife whose miserable life gets turned around when she enters and wins a jingle- writing contest in The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.
Following their Academy Award-winning film The Pianist, director Roman Polanski and writer Ronald Harwood team up on the Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist.
Jodie Foster experiences every mother's worst nightmare when her 6-year-old daughter vanishes without a trace while onboard a transatlantic flight in Flightplan.
Nicolas Cage portrays a globetrotting arms dealer trying to elude an intrepid Interpol agent (Ethan Hawke) in the action adventure Lord of War.
Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, chronicles the In Cold Blood author's investigation into the sensational mass murder that was the basis for his best-selling book.
October
George Clooney co-wrote, directs and stars in Good Night, and Good Luck, depicting the Cold War era conflict between TV newsman Edward R. Murrow and communist hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Oscar-winner Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey co-star as high- stakes gamblers in the drama "Two for the Money.
In North Country, Charlize Theron portrays a Norma Rae-like labor leader who takes her mining company employer to task for sexual harassment.
Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst co-star in the romantic comedy Elizabethtown from Almost Famous director Cameron Crowe.
Oscar-winner Glenn Close and Dakota Fanning appear together in one of nine vignettes about very different women whose paths intertwine in Nine Lives.
The Fog, a remake of John Carpenter's 1980 hit horror flick, rolls into theaters.
Steve Martin stars in the big screen adaptation of his best- selling novella, Shopgirl, a comedy about love in the modern age.
In The Legend of Zorro, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Antonio Banderas reprise their luscious Latin roles in the sequel to the 1998 swashbuckler hit.
November:
Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear co-star in the black comedy The Matador.
Sarah Jessica Parker meets her chilly future in-laws in the ensemble comedy The Family Stone.
Chicken Little is Disney's computer-generated animated update on the classic fable.
The Holidays:
That brings us to mid-November. Around Thanksgiving we'll be seeing Walk the Line (Nov. 18) and the latest Harry Potter film (also Nov. 18). And shortly before Christmas (Dec. 14) the really big gun comes out: King Kong.
Will Hollywood deliver the holiday cheer? Stay tuned.
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