The Big Events. You know the season's going to be a little bit different when a James Bond movie shows up in fall (for the first time in memory) rather than summer. Daniel Craig steps into 007's shoes in Casino Royale on Nov. 17, but the fall season's high-profile titles don't end there. The long-awaited Flags of our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's massively scaled WWII adventure about the battle of Iwo Jima, finally sees the light of day on Oct. 20. Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese's star-studded crime drama The Departed (with Matt Damon, Leonardo Di Caprio and Jack Nicholson) opens Oct. 6, and there's major buzz about it being a return to form for this respected directo … Then there's the big screen version of All the King's Men (Sept. 29), based on Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize winner, with an Oscar-ific cast including Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini and Anthony Hopkins. The latest installments of various popular horror franchises are also all due shortly, from Grudge II (Oct. 13) to Saw III (Oct. 27) to Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (Oct. 4) … And if we're still alive and kicking at the end of the season — and if the director manages to avoid a complete meltdown before that time — there's a good chance that Mel Gibson's aptly titled Apocalypto will hit theaters on Dec. 8.

The Serious Stuff. Fall in Hollywood is synonymous with serious dramatic fare (the stuff of Oscars), so it should come as no surprise that the next few months are crammed with what sounds like potentially meaty material. There's certainly no shortage of inspirational dramas, beginning with The Gridiron Gang (Sept. 8), in which The Rock turns juvenile delinquents into a champion football team; Guardian (Sept. 15), starring Kevin Costner as an angst-ridden teacher of rescue swimmers; and The Pursuit of Happyness (Dec. 15), featuring Will Smith as a single dad sacrificing everything for his 5-year-old son … Less conventional fare is in store as well, beginning with Darren Aronofsky's high-concept The Fountain (Nov. 22), a romance taking place in multiple times; Stranger than Fiction (Nov. 10), in which novelist Emma Thompson tries to kill off her weirdly resilient main character (Will Ferrell); and Babel (Oct. 6), another ambitiously structured ensemble piece from Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros), this one starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett … Then there's the season's obligatory Royal Tennenbaums/Squid and the Whale-ish eccentric family outing, Running with Scissors (Sept. 22), starring Annette Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow and Alec Baldwin. And finally, what would the season be without an appearance from everyone's favorite sensitive ruffian, Russell Crowe? Director Ridley Scott and Crowe team up for A Good Life (Nov. 10), based on Peter Mayle's book about a Brit who inherits a vineyard in Provence.

For the Kids. Expect a slightly sparser season for kiddie fare, but certainly not one completely without its child-like charms. Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher supply voices for a couple of urban animals cast out into the wild (can you say Madagascar, Over the Hedge or, yep, The Wild?) in the animated comedy Open Season (Sept. 29). DreamWorks unleashes a gaggle of irrepressible animated rodents in Flushed Away, while Tim Allen once again reprises his Tim Allen shtick in The Santa Clause 3 (both Nov. 3) … Most interesting of all might just be Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (Nov. 30), a fantasy about a magical toy store starring Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman — but we might not be able to see it, at least not this fall. The film's production is reportedly dragging, and the finished product might not be ready by its scheduled release date.

Endless Summer. Besides the much-hyped Casino Royale and Scorsese's The Departed, there are quite a few movies slated for fall that probably would have been right at home as summer releases. Lots of steamin' hot, artificial cheese is practically unavoidable when the '80s soap opera/pop phenomenon Dallas comes to the big screen on Nov. 10. Fisticuffs and firepower galore are sure to be in store with the L.L. Cool J crime drama Slow Burn (Nov. 17) and Deja Vu (Nov. 22), a Tony Scott project featuring Denzel Washington and Val Kilmer … Jet Li's martial arts blowout Fearless, already a major blockbuster in Asia, finally gets its American release on Sept. 22. And if your horror jones hasn't been sated by Grudge/Saw III/Chainsaw, you can line up to see Hilary Swank confronting the supernatural in The Reaping (Nov. 8) or a secret society of teens with strange powers mixing it up in Renny Harlin's The Covenant (Sept. 8).

DVD Fever. Some of the best movies you'll see this fall will be in your living room. That's on DVD, natch, and here are some of the top picks of the coming litter. The Criterion Collection's September lineup includes one of the most fabulously surreal horror-fantasies ever made, Jigoku (Hell), as well as a remastered, 3-disc set of Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, and the magnificently poetic Spanish coming-of-age film Spirit of the Beehive. … Also due in September are special edition DVDs of the Tony Perkins-Tuesday Weld cult classic Pretty Poison; the original non-dubbed and Raymond Burr-less Godzilla (called Gojira); the Romanian slice-of-life masterpiece Death of Mr. Lazarescu; and collections devoted to Czech animator Jan Svankmajer and classic episodes of Inner Sanctum. … October sees Jane Campion's debut feature Sweetie hitting DVD, along with Inframan (an absolutely outrageous Ultraman clone), and, just in time for Halloween, Universal's Hollywood's Legends of Horror Classics box set featuring Mark of the Vampire, Doctor X, Devil Doll and Mad Love. … The hits keep coming on through November, with a special edition of the sci-fi landmark Forbidden Planet, the legendary martial arts freak-out Boxer's Omen, and a lavish four-disc set reconstructing Richard Donner's director's cut of Superman: The Movie.

Fall Arts 2006: Choose Me

What to Watch For

This article appears in Aug 16-22, 2006.