Vin Diesel and girlfriend welcome a daughter

Vin Diesel is a dad.

Diesel, star of "The Pacifier" and "The Chronicles of Riddick," and his girlfriend, model Paloma Jimenez, welcomed a baby girl in Los Angeles on April 2, his representative, Meredith O'Sullivan, said in an e-mail Friday.

O'Sullivan said the 40-year-old action star wasn't releasing the baby's name.

Diesel's screen credits also include "The Fast and the Furious" "Boiler Room" and "Saving Private Ryan." He'll next be seen in the sci-fi movie "Babylon A.D.," slated for release Aug. 29.

Source: Movie Reviews

Box Office Guru Wrapup: American Gangster Crushes Competition at #1

The North American box office exploded thanks to the scorching debuts of the Denzel Washington-Russell Crowe crime drama American Gangster and Jerry Seinfeld's animated comedy Bee Movie which combined for over $85M in ticket sales. Following weeks of sluggish business where the marketplace failed to match 2006 levels, this weekend's box office enjoyed a healthy bounce over last year and kicked off the holiday movie season with a bang.

Washington and Crowe both scored new career highs with the estimated $46.3M opening weekend for the crime saga American Gangster which dominated the multiplexes. Universal opened the R-rated tale in 3,054 theaters and generated a scorching $15,175 average per location. Directed by Ridley Scott, Gangster tells the true story of a drug kingpin who built up a heroin empire in Harlem in the early 1970s. The opening easily beat out the former all-time biggest debuts for the Oscar-winning actors: Washington's Inside Man with $29M and Crowe's Gladiator with $34.8M.

American Gangster enjoyed the second highest launch of the year for an R-rated film trailing only 300's $70.9M. Much of the success came from strong sales from young males and the urban audience which saw it as a Scarface for today's generation. The same audience also helped to power Eminem's R-rated hip hop drama 8 Mile to a surprising number one opening of $51.2M in November of 2002. Brian Grazer produced both Mile and Gangster. Reviews were mostly favorable and early Academy Award buzz could help the film in the weeks ahead. Despite the long running time of nearly two hours and forty minutes, moviegoers lined up and found their showtimes.

Paramount and DreamWorks settled for a second place debut for their latest animated film Bee Movie which grossed an estimated $39.1M in its opening weekend. The PG-rated toon averaged a sturdy $9,954 from 3,928 locations and performed just a bit below the levels of recent November animated titles. Last year, the penguin pic Happy Feet bowed to $41.5M while the previous year's Chicken Little launched with $40M. The two went on to gross $198M and $135.4M, respectively, from the North American market. Co-written by and starring Jerry Seinfeld, Bee Movie enjoyed virtually no competition in the current marketplace for family audiences. Critics were not too kind, but ticket buyers showed interest on the opening weekend. For 2007, the toon posted the fourth biggest debut for an animated film after Shrek the Third ($121.6M), The Simpsons Movie ($74M) and Ratatouille ($47M).

Suffering the largest sophomore drop in franchise history, Saw IV tumbled 65% from its top spot bow and grossed an estimated $11M. The Lionsgate title has still banked an impressive $51.1M in ten days and should finish with nearly $70M.

Buena Vista's Dan in Real Life fared much better in its second weekend dropping a slim 31% to an estimated $8.1M. With $23M in ten days, the romantic comedy might find its way to around $50M despite playing in less than 2,000 theaters.

Sony's vampire thriller 30 Days of Night declined by 42% and took in an estimated $4M lifting the total to $34.2M. Buena Vista's The Game Plan followed in sixth with an estimated $3.9M, off only 37%, for a cume to date of $82M.

Neglected and landing in seventh place was the new John Cusack drama Martian Child which opened with an estimated $3.7M. Playing in 2,020 locations, the PG-rated story of a man that adopts a boy who says he's from Mars averaged a pitiful $1,807 for New Line. Child was the seventh wide release in the past six weeks to debut with an average of less than $2,000.

Three adult-skewing fall pics followed. George Clooney's legal thriller Michael Clayton collected an estimated $2.9M, down 41%, for a sum of $33.2M for Warner Bros. Lionsgate's Why Did I Get Married? got hit hard by Denzel's arrival tumbling 52 to an estimated $2.7M. Cume is $51.2M. The Miramax mystery Gone Baby Gone captured an estimated $2.4M, off 37%, for a $14.9M total.

Warner Independent saw a solid platform bow for its documentary Darfur Now which saw an estimated $24,000 in ticket sales from only three theaters. Averaging $8,000 per venue, the Don Cheadle-narrated film will expand on Friday to more cities.

Three October titles fell sharply and left the top ten this weekend. Disney's latest re-release of Thee Nightmare Before Christmas saw its post-Halloween sales slump 55% to an estimated $1.5M for a cume of $12.8M. A $15M final seems likely. The Joaquin Phoenix/Mark Wahlberg drama We Own the Night fell 59% to an estimated $1.4M. The Sony release has taken in $27.7M and could make it to $30M. The spoof comedy The Comebacks grossed an estimated $1.5M, down 56%, and has collected a disappointing $11.9M for Fox. Look for a $13M final.

The top ten films grossed an estimated $124.1M which was up 14% from last year when Borat debuted in first place with $26.5M; and up 8% from 2005 when Chicken Little opened in the top spot with $40M.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Review: Bee Movie Has Familiar Buzz

Following "Antz," "A Bug's Life" "Flushed Away" and this summer's "Ratatouille," "Bee Movie" is yet another animated flick with a starry cast in which a creature that ordinarily would seem pesky is rendered as not just harmless but even lovable and idiosyncratically human.

Enough already.

There is zero life left in this concept, even if it does spring this time from the fertile mind and absurd sensibility of Jerry Seinfeld.

The comic co-wrote, co-produced and stars in this colorful jaunt as a bee named Barry, who dares to leave the tradition and rigidity of New Hive City for the vast unknown of the outside world specifically, the corner of 67th and Columbus on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Seinfeld's longtime stomping grounds on TV and in real life.

Sound familiar? This DreamWorks Animation release shares almost the same premise as Pixar's "Ratatouille," in which Remy the rat left the safety and comfort of hiding with his family and picking through trash to become a gourmet chef in Paris. It's an unfortunate coincidence, because clearly both films were years in the making. But the similarity serves as a reminder of the superiority of Pixar's animated offerings their substance, character development and heart.

What distinguishes "Bee Movie" somewhat is that it's flooded with Seinfeld's sense of humor his trademark observations on the ridiculous minutiae of our daily lives. That should keep his fans, and adults in general, relatively entertained. There are some cute lines here and there (and some amusing cameos from Sting, Ray Liotta and Larry King) but because "Bee Movie" is also for kids who have never been the target audience for "Seinfeld" bee puns all too often prevail.

Barry, a recent college graduate, could go work for the Honex Corp. alongside his nebbishy best friend, Adam (Matthew Broderick), making honey as bees have for millions of years. In a highly detailed set-up sequence, he learns he could be a heater, cooler, crud picker or stirrer like his dad (Barry Levinson; Kathy Bates does the voice of Barry's mom).

"Choose carefully, because you'll stay in the job that you pick for the rest of your life," he's warned, a dig at corporate culture and the closest "Bee Movie" comes to having a point. (Seinfeld concocted the script with Spike Feresten and Andy Robin, former writers on his show, as well as Barry Marder, author of the "Letters From a Nut" books. Simon J. Smith and Steve Heckner provide the speedy direction.)

Instead of settling into a cubicle, Barry boldly goes on a flight with the tough-guy pollen jocks, the only ones allowed outside the hive, who collect nectar and pollinate flowers and look cool in their aviator sunglasses.

After zipping through Central Park, getting stuck to a ball in a tennis match and dodging raindrops in the film's most thrilling sequence, he meets and falls for a kindhearted florist named Vanessa (Renee Zellweger), who spares him from being squished on the coffee table by her meathead boyfriend (voiceover veteran Patrick Warburton, who also played Elaine's boyfriend Puddy on "Seinfeld").

Even though rule No. 1 of bee existence is never to talk to humans, Barry wants to thank Vanessa for saving his life. Vanessa not only talks back, she befriends him (and the humans' expressions are distractingly jerky and artificial compared to the bees' more lifelike characterizations.) Then she helps him sue the entire human race after a trip to the grocery store provides the shocking revelation that people are stealing the bees' honey, putting it in jars and selling it.

There is an actual trial (John Goodman plays the bloviating defense attorney; Oprah Winfrey lends her voice as the judge) with jurors and TV news coverage and Barry taking notes on a tiny legal pad. And this is where the movie takes an irretrievably silly turn, even for Seinfeld's peculiar universe.

"Bee Movie," a DreamWorks Animation release, is rated PG for mild suggestive humor. Running time: 90 minutes. Two stars out of four.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Interview: Jerry Seinfeld on Bee Movie

Nine years after ending his ratings-dominating TV show and walking away from the public limelight, Jerry Seinfeld is everywhere again. You probably saw the comedian on primetime with his absurdist teasers (called "TV Juniors") or in a guest role on 30 Rock, all to increase visibility for his new film, Bee Movie, opening this Friday. For Dreamworks' second animated film of 2007 (after Shrek the Third), Seinfeld voices Barry B. Benson, an idealistic bee who takes humanity to court for withholding profits from our wanton honey consumption.

So why animation over live-action?

Because I had done so much of that on the TV series. I had made 90 hours of programming. You cut that up, that's like 45 movies. So there was no movie that seemed exciting to me. "Yeah, I know, they give you the script, you stand over here..." I don't know...it just wasn't exciting.

But [then] I saw this whole technology, and the look of it is so different. I thought, "Gee, what if we took that look but [made them] talk like I want them to talk, maybe that would be something interesting." I just got excited about it.

Did becoming a father have something to do with it?

No. [Laughs] I just wanted to do something different.

[But] it is funny how it worked out. I have three kids -- six, four, and two. Of course, I know all their friends so now I know millions of kids. And I realized these kids are going to go nuts [over Bee Movie]. Sometimes when their friends are over I show them little clips on the computer that I'm working on for whatever reason. And they'll come in and they'll watch it. They go nuts. It's so fun. There's nothing more fun than entertaining kids.

Do you find there's a big difference in the kind of comedy you have to invent between mediums?

There's a big difference. Sometimes you can do certain things on stage, or even in a TV series, and people see the look on your face and they know what you mean, so you can get away with certain things. But if you can't create that look on an animated character, which is essentially a puppet, the line will hit the audience in a very bad way.

[It's] like a petting zoo and you're blindfolded. They want you to take care of this animal, which is your show. But you're blindfolded. We're going to put you in a room with the animal, and the food that it needs. And everything it needs is in the room, and you're in the room with the animal. But you're blindfolded. So you go into this room and start feeling around for this stuff. Feel a little fur, and you feel a little claw. And you go, "Oh, my God, what is this thing?"

This is the great advantage that you have doing a TV series. Say, for example, my series -- which is the only one I know anything about -- by year four, we knew exactly what this thing ate, when it wanted to go out, how it liked to be petted. What it liked and what it didn't like. And what makes a movie so challenging -- so much more challenging than a TV series, frankly -- is that you never get that opportunity. Because you make a TV show and you put it out there and you get a reaction. You go, "Okay, this work. This doesn't work." You put out another one. "They like this. They don't like this." But with a movie, you get one shot at it. Even though you have test screenings, pretty much, we're going to put this lemur in people's living rooms. And, just, bang, they're going to react to it. I hope I didn't over-answer your question. [Laughs]

This is one of my big things of creative pursuits. You have your idea you want to do, but then you got to figure out what does this thing want to be? You got to let it lead you a little.

And how were the test screenings?

Well, you know, I like to try anything. So we would have some horrible ones. We'd try crazy things just to see how they reacted. Some of the work, some of them don't. Comedy is a very scientific exploration. You have to do the experiments to find out what the formulas are.

How much did you put yourself into the character of Barry?

How much? As much as I have. I don't really know how to do it any other way. I think in a TV series I could be a little more obnoxious. This character in this movie is never obnoxious. He's a little nicer than I am. So I actually took a little of myself out.

 

How much of Bee Movie is yours? Is it a collaborative effort between you and Dreamworks or do you feel that this is entirely your vision?

There's nothing "entirely." You have 350 people working on this thing. [But] I would say the tone, the comedy of it is mine. Even though I work with writers, I'm in charge of what goes in the script and what doesn't. Win or lose, [that] is my thing.

How involved were you with the casting of the other voices?

I was involved in every single aspect of everything. [Laughs] From the cars they drove, to the ties they wore, to the desks they sat at. Not to say that I came up with it all, but it was brought to me. "Do you like it like this? Do you like it like that?" All day, every day. It was ridiculous. [Laughs.]

Was there a lot of ad-libbing in Bee Movie?

Some of it we'd use, some of it we didn't. We had a scene about [Renee Zellweger's character] trying to have coffee with [Barry]. We read the scenes a few times and we got all the lines. So I said, "Okay, just try to get me to have coffee. Just keep pushing me to have coffee and I'm going to say, 'Nah, I don't want any.'" And a lot of that made it into the movie. It gives it some life if you do it that way.

Were the TV and movie teasers your idea?

Yeah. I wanted to do something that signaled to the public that this is not going to be the same flavor that you're used to getting from animated movies. I [know] that a certain type of moviegoing audience [will say], "Here comes the next Dreamworks movie. Here comes the next Pixar movie." You don't know what this is going to be.

What did you do different from other animated movies?

Some of the way we recorded dialogue was different. The jokes that we make are different. It's got its own personality. It definitely does not feel like a slice off of the same loaf. Certainly, [not like] all these animal movies, which, believe me, I'm as sick of as you are.

During the Cannes Film Festival, I heard you jumped off a hotel, and dived eight stories into a pool.

You just heard about it? You should check on that. [Laughs] It was a little nutty. But I was told that during the Cannes Film Festival, people do crazy things. You know, Sacha Cohen did that crazy thing on the beach. Did you hear about that? You have a computer, don't you? [Laughs]

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Jerry Seinfeld Returns With Bee Movie

Jerry Seinfeld casually refers to "the TV show" like it was just another resume entry, a vaguely familiar event from his past.

Wait, wasn't that TV show "Seinfeld"? One of the greatest comedies in TV history? You know, the one with double-dippers, puffy shirts and mimbos?

Seinfeld, it seems, has moved on more than most of his audience. Though "the TV show" ended its historic run in 1998, the perpetual glow of "Seinfeld" has been mostly uninterrupted because its star and namesake has remained largely out of sight like his beloved Superman resting in his Fortress of Solitude.

Seinfeld has even been called "the J.D. Salinger of television," as Conan O'Brien recently joked.

"I'm doing as much as I possibly can, I promise you," says Seinfeld, archly defending himself with a laugh in his Manhattan office, where the award statuettes are outnumbered only by the many model cars that dot the room.

The 53-year-old comedian is releasing "Bee Movie," a film which began as a causal pun made over dinner with Steven Spielberg. A call was then placed to Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks Animation SKG, and the small joke eventually spiraled into a $150 million blockbuster which Seinfeld has spent more than three years writing, producing and voicing the main character.

Seinfeld, of course, hasn't been doing nothing since "Seinfeld." He and wife Jessica were married in 1999 and have since had three children. Seinfeld's mission has generally been to return to being a standup comedian; his relentless work to build a new act was documented in the 2002 film "Comedian."

But that documentary grossed less than $3 million in limited release. Tens of thousands have seen Seinfeld in comedy clubs across the country contributing a significant chunk of estimated yearly earnings of $60 million, including $15 million for "Seinfeld" residuals, according to Forbes.

To those who wish they saw him more, Seinfeld replies with his characteristic flare for language: "Me too, but I wonder if they would be willing to accept me being not good. I wish I could do more, too, but I can't do more as good, so I figure I'll do less, but good."

For years Katzenberg pitched movie roles to Seinfeld, who had numerous opportunities to star in films. So why did Seinfeld make "Bee Movie" his first feature film and his first major post-"Seinfeld" project?

"One very simple difference, but it made all the difference in the world: This was his idea," says Katzenberg. "If you look at Jerry's work, his entire career was always about doing things he authored."

Katzenberg adds: "Jerry has his own rhythms and his own interests."

Like the bees depicted in "Bee Movie," Seinfeld believes in sticking to what you do best, and for him, that's centered upon the comedic persona he's sharpened and refined over decades. He would rather leave the acting to the pros. "Tom Hanks is available. He can do it," he jokes.

Finding a new challenge, though, was imperative.

"That's why I haven't made a live action movie," Seinfeld says, explaining that it would be "too similar to what we did on the show. ... And I have no need for the ego gratification of `Hey, I'm in a movie.' But this medium was so different and interesting that kind of sparked my energy."

The comedian acknowledges that his energy was low after working on "Seinfeld" for nearly a decade. The painstaking process of creating an animated movie, though, has left him "even more tired than I was before," he says.

What's distinctive about "Bee Movie" is how thoroughly it's imbued with Seinfeld's sense of humor. The involvement of talent in animated films doesn't typically go beyond a few days in a sound studio, but "Bee Movie" is essentially Seinfeld in bee form. Though Dreamworks is pitching it as a family movie, Seinfeld never had kids in mind when writing it.

"You should feel like you really spent time with my outlook on silliness, I guess," he says. "That's why I tried to put my fingerprint on everything in the movie so it feels like it was made by one person. Sometimes that studio, corporate feel the movies can feel very processed so it feels like generic entertainment."

Evident is Seinfeld's love of details (the bees can survive up to about 75-pages of magazine thickness, making the especially thick Italian Vogue the most frightening of weapons), his gift for gymnastic phrasing (his character remarks: "There's quite a bit of pomp under the circumstances") and his sometimes overlooked inclination for pushing comedy to surreal ends.

That was most obvious once his "Seinfeld" partner and co-creator Larry David left the show before the last two seasons, leading to some out-there plots (like Kramer hydrating Jerry's car with his own blood). In "Bee Movie," the bee voiced by Seinfeld sues honey companies for stealing the bees' honey.

"I always try to work personally," he explains. "On the TV show, we never thought we would have an across-the-board appeal we didn't seek it. We just thought, `Let's make our little thing and whoever likes it, likes it.' I tried the same thing with this."

Seinfeld has a lot riding on "Bee Movie," and he has aggressively (and creatively) promoted it like bungee-jumping at the Cannes Film Festival and hosting a series of one-minute sketch comedy promos he calls "TV Juniors."

The unflappable Seinfeld acknowledges: "I'm a little keyed up about the movie's opening. I think of it as extreme interest in the outcome."

Once the fanfare of "Bee Movie" has subsided, Seinfeld simply is planning to hit the road again and get back to what he calls his "normal, daily life": writing and honing his standup act.

Still, he says, "It's fun to chop down a big tree once in a while. I don't know if I could live this way all the time, but every once in a while. I think that's why people run these marathons: `I wonder if I could run that far without dying.' It's idiotic, but it's part of human nature."

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Holiday Films Offer Elves, Bees, Crooks

Among your choices on Hollywood's holiday menu, you can have talking bees and chipmunks or savage aliens and predators. You can have jolly elves and pretty princesses or vicious gangsters and the mother of all mythic monsters. You can have music, or you can have blood. And in at least one case, you can have both.

"I remember I did try to pitch it as a musical with lots of blood," director Tim Burton recalled of his early attempts many years ago to make a movie version of Stephen Sondheim's stage hit "Sweeney Todd."

With frequent collaborator Johnny Depp in the title role, Burton finally succeeds with an adaptation of the musical about the murderous 18th century Londoner who turns his barber business into a shop of horrors.

This time of year is Hollywood's most diverse, offering a mix of dark drama vying for Academy Award attention, action, horror and fantasy sagas, and light comedy and animated films.

Among the comic and cartoon offerings: "Bee Movie," with Jerry Seinfeld providing the voice of a worker bee who sues humanity for stealing honey; "Alvin and the Chipmunks," a blend of live-action and computer animation featuring Jason Lee and the little cartoon rodents; "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," starring Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman in the tale of a magical toy shop; "Enchanted," with Amy Adams as a cartoon fairy-tale princess exiled by a wicked queen (Susan Sarandon) into very real Manhattan; and "Fred Claus," with Vince Vaughn as the black-sheep brother of old St. Nick (Paul Giamatti).

Reuniting Vaughn with "Wedding Crashers" director David Dobkin, "Fred Claus" casts Santa's brother as a guy who's lived for centuries in Santa's shadow.

"There's definitely a sense of sibling rivalry," said Giamatti, who wears a fat suit to play Santa. "I was always kind of the favorite, I become Santa Claus and everybody loves me. Everywhere he looks, Santa is everywhere, and he's just a screw-up who can't hold a job."

The season offers a couple of real-world holiday stories with "This Christmas," a family-reunion flick whose ensemble cast includes Delroy Lindo, Regina King and Mekhi Phifer, and "The Perfect Holiday," featuring Gabrielle Union, Morris Chestnut, Queen Latifah and Terrence Howard in a romance between a single mom and a store Santa.

In his first big project since his sitcom went off the air, Seinfeld also co-wrote "Bee Movie," the idea stemming from his childhood fascination for nature documentaries. Seinfeld liked the drama and unintentional laughs those shows brought to the natural world.

"I found them kind of funny, because they make one species the hero. That week, whatever his prey is, you want him to kill it. The next week, the one that was the hero becomes the prey, and you want that one to die," Seinfeld said. "Your allegiance changes with whoever is the star of the show that week."

Disney's "Enchanted" tweaks the studio's legacy by forcing a classic animated princess to survive in an unfamiliar realm.

"It begins in the animated kingdom. My character is looking for her true love, and she immediately meets him, but the prince's jealous stepmother casts her into Manhattan," Adams said. "She confronts all sorts of realities. There's an old man who steals her crown, she learns the truth about gravity. She learns what food tastes like. It just tastes different in the real world."

A look at other highlights this season:

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT:

Two grave, violent, brilliantly executed crime sagas could emerge as front-runners for this year's best-picture Oscar. Ridley Scott's "American Gangster," with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, and Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men," featuring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, have caught strong buzz in advance screenings.

Based on a true story, "American Gangster" stars Washington as a 1970s Harlem drug lord who balances brutality with altruism and Crowe as a freewheeling but upright Jersey cop on his trail.

"No Country for Old Men" is adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel and features Jones as a sheriff tracking a merciless killer (Bardem), who in turn is pursuing a good old Texas boy (Brolin) who made off with a fortune in drug money.

Also on the crime front is "Hitman," with Timothy Olyphant starring as a genetically engineered assassin in an adaptation of the video game, and Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream," the filmmaker's third-straight tale set in England.

"Cassandra's Dream" is Allen at his darkest, with Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell as brothers lured into a murder scheme. Allen said he set out to craft a tragedy among ordinary people, McGregor playing an ambitious son stuck toiling in his ailing father's restaurant, Farrell an auto mechanic with modest aspirations.

"I wanted two nice brothers. Ewan a sweet guy who works for his father even though he doesn't want to," Allen said. "And Colin a decent guy who just wants to have a nice little house with his wife and all that. They get into this terrible situation because of their ambition, because of their flaws, and they get swept up in this tragic thing."

LANDS OF MAKE-BELIEVE:

In the fantasy footsteps of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" comes "The Golden Compass," with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig leading the cast in the adventure of a young girl trying to rescue a friend in an alternate reality.

Robert Zemeckis brings the Norse legend of "Beowulf" to life with similar technology he used on "The Polar Express" to capture live actors whose performances are then digitally animated. The film features Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie as Beowulf's vile foe, Grendel's mother.

Emily Watson leads the cast of "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep," about a Scottish boy whose magical egg hatches into a legendary creature that lives in a little body of water called Loch Ness.

BLACK GOLD AND LEGENDARY RICHES:

Daniel Day-Lewis stars as a fortune-seeker in California's oil boom of the early 1900s in "There Will Be Blood," a saga loosely based on an Upton Sinclair novel and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson ("Magnolia").

Nicolas Cage reunites with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Jon Turteltaub for "National Treasure: Book of Secrets," the sequel to their 2004 smash.

This time, Cage's history-minded treasure hunter sets out to clear the name of an ancestor implicated in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the quest leading to a mythic cache of wealth and a secret text intended only for the eyes of U.S. leaders.

"A book only presidents are privy to, and in the book are all the secrets of the great myths, like Area 51, the Kennedy assassination or who was involved with this conspiracy, or Cibola," a legendary city of vast riches sought by early Spanish explorers, Cage said. "What becomes revealed to us is there was this enormous treasure, kind of a Native American sacred temple that was a city of gold."

CURRENT AFFAIRS:

Robert Redford directs himself, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep in "Lions for Lambs," an ideological saga set against the war in Afghanistan involving a presidential hopeful, an inspirational professor and a story-hungry journalist.

"Charlie Wilson's War," from director Mike Nichols, stars Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a drama about the architects of the U.S. response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

"The Kite Runner" is the stark story of an Afghan boy who flees with his father to America after the Soviet invasion but returns as an adult to rescue the son of an old childhood friend.

In "Grace Is Gone," John Cusack plays a man who takes his daughters on a road trip to put off breaking the news that their mother has died in action in Iraq.

DEATH AND DYING:

Francis Ford Coppola returns with his first film in 10 years. The fantastical "Youth Without Youth" stars Tim Roth as an elderly scholar filled with regret. His whose life's work, a tome on the origins of language, remains unfinished; when a freak lightning strike restores his youth, he has a chance to correct past mistakes.

The second-chance theme resonated with Coppola, who spent much of the last decade developing an epic film that never got off the ground. He wound up financing "Youth Without Youth" himself and shot it like a young maverick director fresh out of film school.

"I found lots of parallels in the character's life and my life," Coppola said. "I had the big work I hadn't been able to finish. I got a chance to reinvent myself and make a film not as a big Hollywood producer but as kind of a new wave filmmaker."

"P.S. I Love You" stars Hilary Swank as a widow whose husband left behind a series of tasks for her to cope with her grief and get on with her life.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney team for "The Savages," playing a brother and sister reluctantly forced to care for their estranged, dying father.

"The Bucket List" features Jack Nicholson as a wealthy business executive and Morgan Freeman as an auto mechanic, both dying of cancer, who form an unlikely friendship and set out to do all the things they wish they'd done with their lives.

"Two older guys who have cancer and are going to die, that doesn't sound like a blockbuster," said Rob Reiner, who directed "The Bucket List." "But when you see the movie, it's emotional, it's uplifting, and it's not about dying. It's a movie about living and embracing life."

LOVE AND MARRIAGE:

Nicole Kidman plays a writer sowing discontent as the marriage of her sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to an out-of-work artist (Jack Black) approaches in "Margot at the Wedding."

Javier Bardem, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Benjamin Bratt star in "Love in the Time of Cholera," an adaptation of the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that traces the half-century wait of a man to win his true love.

"Atonement" features Keira Knightley and James McAvoy in a chronicle of the repercussions that follow a teenage girl's false accusations against her sister's lover.

CREATURE FEATURES:

Last man alive Will Smith fends off the remnants of humanity, who have been transformed into nocturnal fiends in "I Am Legend," a new adaptation of the novel that also was the basis for Charlton Heston's "The Omega Man" and Vincent Price's "The Last Man on Earth"

"There's something primal about being the last person on Earth," said Smith, who spends much of the movie alone and in silence. "It's me and a dog for the first probably hour and 15 minutes."

"Stephen King's the Mist" is the third adaptation of the horror master by director Frank Darabont ("The Green Mile" "The Shawshank Redemption"). Thomas Jane and Marcia Gay Harden lead the cast in the tale of townsfolk threatened by creatures from a mysterious mist.

The grudge match continues between two breeds of space monster in "Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem."

BALLADS, BLUES AND BOB:

Not one, but six Bob Dylans come to the screen in "I'm Not There," director Todd Haynes' dreamlike portrait of the rock icon. Among the performers doing Dylan: Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett, who plays a Dylan-esque folk idol enraging his fans by going electric.

Blanchett's character comes the closest to the real Dylan, a spot-on rendering of the musician in the mid-1960s as he confounded fans and critics with oblique prattle and unpredictable musical turns.

"That's why Todd wanted a woman to play it, because if you had a man play it, you would have been looking for the impersonation," Blanchett said. "And so you would have been seeing the shortfall, whereas you're automatically saying there's a Brechtian distance here between character and performer, and that allows for the poetry and kind of the irony to really breathe."

John Sayles' "Honeydripper" stars Danny Glover as a Deep South proprietor making one last stab to save his failing juke joint, hiring an electric-guitar whiz amid the transition from blues to rock 'n' roll in the 1950s.

John C. Reilly stars in "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," a comedy chronicling the sordid life of a musician who lives the extreme rock-star life as he sleeps around, sires kids and does every drug he can find.

"August Rush" features Robin Williams, Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Freddie Highmore in the story of an orphaned musical prodigy seeking his parents.

And the season's big musical question: Can Johnny Depp sing?

"He's a very musical person, but when he said he would do it, nobody had any idea if he could sing. I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't have said yes to doing it if he couldn't," said "Sweeney Todd" director Burton, adding that he was pleasantly surprised at how well the vocals of Depp and co-stars Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen and Alan Rickman turned out.

"It's pretty much all actors, not professional singers, and they really did a great job. It's one of my favorite roles that Johnny has done."

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com