Fall Film Preview

LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood may wish it had kept a great ape, a lion, a witch or a wizard in the bullpen for this fall, whose movie lineup has just two really familiar names: James Bond and Santa Claus.\nThe movie industry's prestige period, when studios trot out their big Academy Award contenders, also has become a steady blockbuster season with such recent hits as "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, most of the "Harry Potter" flicks and last year's "King Kong" and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."\nLacking any of those entries, the fall schedule is led by "Casino Royale," Daniel Craig's first outing as British superspy Bond.\nInheriting the license to kill from Pierce Brosnan, Craig is the sixth actor to play 007. Adapted from Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, "Casino Royale" takes James back to his beginnings as a young operative taking on a terrorist ring being financed at an exotic gambling hall.\nNot yet the casual womanizer of later years, Bond is assigned a gorgeous woman as ally -- Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), a bean-counter dispatched by British intelligence to keep tabs on the money he's gambling with.\nUncharacteristically, Bond falls in love -- and gets his heart stomped on.\n"We're kind of meeting him for the first time, and a number of things need to be explained. His attitude toward women, how he becomes what he becomes," Craig said. "He meets Vesper, this very beautiful, very complex, very mysterious girl who steals his heart then double-crosses him. It may explain the distrust of Bond for women later."\nHollywood revives a handful of other film franchises this fall, including Tim Allen's "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause," in which Jack Frost (Martin Short) makes a play to steal Christmas from St. Nick.\nWithout the big fantasy spectacles that have been Hollywood's fall mainstays in recent years, real-world stories will have to take up the slack. Luckily for film fans, there's an interesting crop of possibilities:\n-- "All the King's Men," a fresh take on Robert Penn Warren's novel of a Southern political boss inspired by Huey Long, stars Sean Penn as the idealistic leader whose rise to power is poisoned by corruption. "Schindler's List" screenwriter Steven Zaillian directs a cast that includes Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and James Gandolfini.\n-- Clint Eastwood, who directed Penn to a best-actor Oscar in "Mystic River," follows his best-picture champ "Million Dollar Baby" with the World War II saga "Flags of Our Fathers." Starring Ryan Phillippe, Paul Walker, Barry Pepper and Jamie Bell, the film tells the story behind one of the most enduring war photographs: The soldiers who raised the American flag at Iwo Jima.\n-- Martin Scorsese reunites with Leonardo DiCaprio and brings along Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Martin Sheen for "The Departed," the director's return to the cops-and-mobsters tales that have been his strong suit. DiCaprio plays a cop who's undercover in Nicholson's crime gang, while Damon plays a mob member who's infiltrated the police department.\n-- After lip-synching to Ray Charles' voice for his Oscar-winning turn in "Ray," Jamie Foxx gets to do some singing of his own in "Dreamgirls," an adaptation of the stage musical that co-stars Beyonce Knowles, Eddie Murphy and "American Idol" finalist Jennifer Hudson. The film follows the triumphs and trials of a trio of female soul singers in the 1960s.\nDirector Bill Condon ("Gods and Monsters") skillfully blends story and character with show-stopping musical numbers and takes singer Knowles and comic Murphy to places audiences have never seen them, Foxx said.