Hot Tickets: As the blockbusters of summer give way to the fall movie season, special effects increasingly wind up taking a back seat to star power in the service of actual stories, and this year is no exception. Some of the upcoming season's most anticipated projects include relatively (remember, we said "relatively") sophisticated plots and more A-List movie stars than you can shake a shiny little gold statue at. It all begins with American Gangster (Nov. 2), a gritty human drama that not only reunites director Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe but also adds Denzel Washington to the mix. Then there's Lion for Lambs (Nov. 9), behind-the-scenes political intrigue set against the war in Afghanistan, and featuring the combined star power of Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford (who also directs). And after offering his take on Michael Caine's signature role in Alfie a while back, Jude Law finally gets to costar with the real thing when Caine and Law turn up to ooze charisma all over the screen in Kenneth Branagh's Sleuth, a remake of the much-loved 1972 cat-and-mouser (Oct. 12).

Let's Get Serious: We generally expect fall to be top-heavy with serious dramatic offerings, but what we didn't expect are so many westerns showing up amongst this season's "adult" fare: Brad Pitt rides off into the sunset in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Sept. 20); Russell Crowe and Christian Bale stare into the barrels of each other's six-shooters in the psychologically charged 3:10 to Yuma (Sept. 7), and even the Coen Brothers try their hand at the western genre with No Country for Old Men (Oct. 26), an adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel, starring Tommy Lee Jones. Meanwhile, harkening back to an even earlier time, we have Cate Blanchett reprising her role as England's imposing and astonishingly pale monarch in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Oct. 12). And in a more contemporary vein, we have a slew of political thrillers rooted in today's so-called war on terror, including the Saudi-centered The Kingdom (Sept. 28), Lion for Lambs (see "Hot Tickets") and Rendition (Oct. 19) starring Reese Witherspoon as a woman whose Egyptian-born husband mysteriously vanishes. Jake Gyllenhaal costars as a CIA analyst drawn into the mess.

Just For Laughs: Comedy never goes out of fashion, and this season has plenty of (hopefully) funny stuff in store for us. First up is director Bob Odenkirk's Brothers Solomon (Sept. 7), which promises some seriously over-the-top antics from Arrested Development's Will Arnett and Saturday Night Live's Will Forte. Leatherheads (Dec. 7) is a romantic comedy set in the world of pro football and starring George Clooney and Renee Zellweger; Good Luck Chuck (Sept. 21) features the unlikely combination of Dane Cook and Jessica Alba; and Fred Claus (Nov. 9) stars Paul Giamatti as jolly old St Nick and Vince Vaughan as his no-account brother. And if all that isn't odd enough for you, wait to see what the Farrelly Brothers do with Neil Simon and Elaine May when the remake of The Heartbreak Kid hits theaters on Oct. 5. Ben Stiller and Michelle Monaghan star.

Kiddie Korner: Fall isn't the most exciting time in the world for the wee ones, and the youth-oriented movies that do manage to show up in theaters this season are geared more toward the somewhat dark-ish Lord of the Rings/Narnia school of sword and sorcery. The highest-profile of these upcoming projects would include The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (Oct. 5), in which a 13-year-old boy discovers he's really a mystical warrior pledged to battle evil; and the much-anticipated Golden Compass (Dec. 7), featuring Daniel Craig cleaving a path through oodles of special effects. At the other end of the light-dark scale is the reportedly bright and breezy Bee Movie (Nov. 2), the new animated feature film from Jerry Seinfeld, and Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (Nov. 19), a candy-colored fantasy starring Natalie Portman as a girl who inherits a magical toyshop from Dustin Hoffman. The movie was postponed from last year, but perhaps it'll be worth the wait.

The Summer That Just Wouldn't Die: One look at Will Smith as the vampire-battling, super-macho last man on earth in I Am Legend (Dec. 14), and it's easy to start thinking we've been transported back into the adrenaline-pumping depths of summer. There's more on the way, too: Hitman (Oct. 12), based-on-a-videogame mayhem starring Deadwood's Timothy Olyphant; Shoot 'Em Up (Sept. 7), in which Clive Owen leaps tall buildings in a single bound while protecting a child from gangsters; the 300-styled "adult" animation Beowulf (Nov. 16), reportedly featuring hyperstylized violence and hot cartoon nudity; a Stephen King adaptation about malevolent fog called, appropriately enough, The Mist (Nov. 21); Saw IV (Oct. 26), already notorious as the movie that caused its own director to vomit while filming a scene; and the Sam Raimi-produced 30 Days of Night (Oct. 19), based on a graphic novel about vampires living large during the loooong nights of Northern Alaska. Josh Hartnett stars.

Everything Else: There's a lot more on the horizon, but most are movies that don't easily fit into specific categories or have release dates so fluid they're hardly worth mentioning. Possible September sightings include The Hunting Party, December Boys and King of California, starring Richard Gere, Daniel Radcliffe and Michael Douglas, respectively. A firmer date (Sept. 24) is Across the Universe, fresh Julie Taymor boy-meets-girl eye-candy set to Beatles tunes. Tentatively slated for October are Ben Affleck's missing-child drama Gone Baby Gone; Michael Clayton, starring George Clooney as a law firm's burnt-out fixer; and Things We Lost in the Fire, in which After the Wedding director Susanne Bier enlists Halle Berry for a variation on her basic scenario of grieving widows and romantic surrogates. Among November's scheduled films are a couple of literary adaptations — the Afghan family saga The Kite Runner, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical realist romance Love in the Time of Cholera — and Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, a biopic that poses the question, "How many Dylans does it take to screw in a light bulb?" And finally, sometime in December, look for Paul Thomas Anderson's epic There Will Be Blood; the new Tim Burton-Johnny Depp collaboration Sweeney Todd; and Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding, which might just turn out to be a romantic comedy for people who can't stand the stuff.