On the court, on the screen: LeBron a starring starter for slam-dumk fall films

The autumn months, often considered the hunting season, also tends to flush out of the Hollywood wilderness a slightly better class of movies than the summer's every-weekend parade of sequels and comic-book adaptations.

That's because Hollywood studios are gearing up for Oscar time and still want to present the illusion they are capable of making good, grown-up movies.

Still, with the Halloween month of October bringing the usual wagon-load of horror-exploitation and Christmas-pandering movies not long after that, expect something for everyone at the screens.

One feature this fall with strong local ties — "More Than a Game" — the basketball documentary that follows young LeBron James and four cohorts during a period of years. Cameras followed them from a decrepit Akron gym to the championships, as James' exploding worldwide celebrity threatened to upstage the sense of mutual cooperation and teamwork. Don't forget, it was a basketball documentary, "Hoop Dreams," which made many 10-best lists of the 1990s.

Various documentary crews have been angling (some even filing lawsuits) for the privilege to tell the LeBron saga from the inside. But it was the unsung filmmaker Kristopher Belman who got the gig. With heavy promotions by ESPN and releasing company Lions Gate, the film opens nationally on Oct. 2.

Here are the rest of the highlights of fall releases:

* "Astro Boy": Nicolas Cage proved in "G-Force" he could be unrecognizable for trick voice-overs for animated features, and he's also contributing to the audio track of this CGI feature version of the Osamu Tezuka character who helped introduce Japanese animation to worldwide audiences. It retells the origins of Astro Boy as a robot replica of a bereaved scientist's dead son who becomes a superhero in a "Metro City" of the future. (Sept. 23)

* "Fame": A remake for the hip-hop and "High School Musical" era of the gritty 1980 feature (also adapted into a Broadway musical) that depicted the hopes, dreams and disappointments of a bunch of teenage would-be entertainers and musicians enrolled in a specialty urban art school in New York City. (Sept. 23)

* "The September Issue": Maybe LeBron would have had even more documentaries made about him if he'd gone into the fashion industry instead, as there have been recent nonfiction portraits of designers Valentino, Karl Lagerfeld and others (not to mention the mockumentary "Bruno"). This documentary promises to show the real truth about Anna Wintour, the legendary editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine for 20 years, who was trashed in a thinly disguised characterization in the book and movie "The Devil Wears Prada." (Sept. 25)

* "Surrogates": A few decades ago there was a mild craze for cyberpunk movies based on "virtual reality." This science-fiction thriller one takes it a step further: Bruce Willis discovers that dark side of a sort of the esperience of virtual reality in reality experience. In other words, it's a world where people experience life (and death) vicariously while jacked into lifelike robot replicas. (Sept. 25)

* "Paranormal Activity": Trying to score the same sort of success that "The Blair Witch Project" had a decade ago, Paramount has been using the internet and other 2.0 media to get the word out about this viewfinder-POV shocker in which a new homeowner tries to document spooky stuff in her new residence with hidden cameras. Actually it's a slightly bigger-budget remake of cheaper indie project of the same name by Israeli filmmaker Oren Peli. (Sept. 25)

* "Capitalism — A Love Story": When the economy collapsed, there was at least one person who had to be deliriously happy about it — gadfly filmmaker Michael Moore. Throughout his career, he has been smirkingly pointing to corporate American greed (and its handmaidens in government) at the root of every social problem, from health expenses to gun violence to the war in Iraq. Here, Moore examines the business meltdown of last year, and it's practically guaranteed that the review in the Wall Street Journal will be a big thumbs-down. (Oct. 2)

* "The Invention of Lying": British comic Ricky Gervais stars in a comedy set in an alternate world that looks just like this one except that lying is absolutely unknown and everyone tells the truth. Gervais plays a downtrodden guy who discovers the art of deception and finds how he can use this newfound skill to turn his personal and professional life around. (Oct. 2)

* "A Serious Man": The Coen Brothers, turning away from George Clooney and Frances McDormand for a while, deliberately cast a group of unrecognizable, unknown actors in this dark comedy, set in 1967, about a college professor facing the ruin of his personal and professional life, partially because his shiftless grown brother won't move out of the house. (Oct. 2)

* "Whip It": Recently women's roller derby made a big comeback, resuming in Austin and spreading across the U.S. as a cultish sport that combines riot-girl feminism with the larger-than-life cartoon posturing of pro-wrestling. Here's the big-girls' derby drama, directed by Drew Barrymore (of all people) and starring "Juno" actress Ellen Page as the young Texas heroine. (Oct. 2)

* "Zombieland": A horror-action-comedy for the Halloween trade in which the planet is overrun by flesh-eating zombies. A few frightened kids team up with an ace zombie exterminator named Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) to try to survive. (Oct. 9)

* "Couples Retreat": Whatever happened to "Christmas Story" juvenile lead Peter Billingsley with his by-association tie to Cleveland? He's the director of this comedy about four couples of varying dysfunction venturing to a tropical island to work on their relationships and/or suntans. (Oct. 9)

* "The Stepfather": From the same team who made the unwanted remake of the slasher flick "Prom Night" comes this unwanted remake of a 1987 slasher-thriller that at least got some good reviews at the time. Playing on longtime youthful-paranoid fears of step-parents, the picture once again shows the travails of a kid who gets back from boarding school to discover his mother shacked up with a new boyfriend (Terry O'Quinn in the original; Dylan Walsh here) who may be a closet psychopathic serial killer. (Oct.16)

* "Law Abiding Citizen": Gerard Butler stars as a family man who engineers a revenge scheme against the criminals who shattered his household. Butler might be following in the footsteps of Liam Neeson in "Taken," Kevin Bacon in "Death Sentence" and all the way back to Charles Bronson in "Death Wish." But the twist here is that Butler's character is in jail himself, and he manages to entangle a prosecutor (played by Jamie Foxx) into the plot. (Oct. 16)

* "Where the Wild Things Are": As "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" and "The Polar Express" have proven, Hollywood is now pouncing on doing feature adaptations of lushly illustrated children's storybooks. Must be easier on the Los Angeles crowd to absorb a book of 20 pages or so (or have a personal assistant read one to them). This has innovative director Spike Jonze using computer special effects to bring to life author Maurice Sendak's classic about Max, a rambunctious boy who feels misunderstood at home and escapes to an imaginary island of mischievous monsters. (Oct. 16)

* "Saw VI": When the first "Saw" movie came out, it seemed gory and gruesome, yes, but also fresh and smart. Five sequels later, don't we all wish the Time Traveler's Wife or somebody could go back to 2002 and destroy that one at the lab? The latest chapter has a new serial killer taking over for the late Jigsaw (that's been the plot for about the last three or four "Saws" now) and trying to get rid of annoying witnesses, and so forth. (Oct. 23).

* "Amelia": Oscar-winning Hilary Swank portrays Amelia Earhart in a biopic of the famous pioneering woman aviator (subject of an ongoing exhibit at the International Women's Air and Space Museum in downtown Cleveland) who vanished during an around-the-world flight in 1937. (Oct. 23)

* "Good Hair": This sort of follows in the footsteps of "Religulous" or "Expelled," wherein a documentary host better known as a perceptive funnyman goes on the road after a big issue. Here comic Chris Rock visits hair salons and styling battles, scientific labs and even Indian temples to explore the way black hairstyles have affected the culture and self-esteem of black people. Among those interviewed are Ice-T, Nia Long, Paul Mooney, Maya Angelou and The Rev. Al Sharpton. What, no LeBron? (Oct. 23)

* "Michael Jackson — This is It": Who would have guessed a year ago that a Michael Jackson concert film would be a fall 2009 event? Following the eccentric entertainer's sudden death, extensive rehearsal footage of his planned series of never-realized concerts set for London has been worked into this Columbia feature. It shows what Jackson's stage comeback as a singer-dancer-choreographer and showman might have been like. Heartless exploitation or a landmark in music-film history? (Oct. 23)

* "Cirque du Freak — The Vampire's Assistant": Ever since the "Lord of the Rings" features, studios have been going crazy trying to get a profitable successor film series going based on libraries full of popular children's sagas (which is why "Inkheart," "The Golden Compass," "Eragon" and "The Seeker — The Dark is Rising" got greenlit). Here's the latest attempt, a Halloween-flavored adaptation of the first two books in Darren Shan's popular paperback set about a boy indoctrinated into a magical traveling freak sideshow populated by real vampires and werewolves. (Oct. 23).

* "A Christmas Carol": In a repeat of the motion-capture CGI technology he demonstrated in "Beowulf" and "The Polar Express," director Robert Zemeckis used photo-realistic computer-graphics overlays on Jim Carrey and other actors in the latest version of Charles Dicken's holiday classic. (Nov. 6)

* "The Box": Cameron Diaz and James Marsden star in a movie-length "Twilight-Zone" type tale that brings to literal life a frequently posed ethical question: Imagine there was a magical box containing a button that, if pushed, would bring you instant riches and prosperity ... but simultaneously somebody else, somewhere would have drop dead. To which a lot of the caliber of folks in showbiz might respond, "Okay. What's the catch?" (Nov. 13)

* "2012": Columbia Pictures' latest CGI disaster movie, not unlike "The Day After Tomorrow" but with the timely hook of the Mayan calendar running out, has the proverbial all-star cast (John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson) in a tale of folks trying to survive global upheavals and environmental catastrophe on the title date. (Nov. 13)

* "Planet 51": A new CGI family feature plays the old narrative switcheroo with the concept of alien space invaders. This time it's an Earth astronaut who lands on a distant world inhabited by little green people in a 1950s-level culture. The space-suited human's presence naturally creates the alien equivalent of flying-saucer scare. Voices include Duane "The Rock" Johnson, Jessica Biel, Gary Oldman, Sean William Scott and John Cleese. (Nov. 20)

* "The Blind Side": Yet another inspirational sports drama based on a true story. This one tells the life story of NFL pro player Michael Oher, once an at-risk black youngster who was adapted by an affluent white family. The fact that Oher now plays for the Baltimore Ravens might not endear Northeast Ohioans to this jock-u-drama. (Nov. 20)

* "New Moon": Adolescent girls who should have something better to do are waiting across the world for the next installment of the movies based on Stephanie Myers' smash novels about a romance between a teenage girl in the Pacific Northwest and a handsome vampire dude. If you didn't know anything about vampires and just saw the trailer for this, you'd assume it was a variety of supernatural creature whose major characteristic was being young, male and not able to keep a shirt on. (Nov. 20)

* "The Road": The release has been delayed for a full year (a bad sign) for this big-screen adaptation of the bleak Cormac McCarthy novel that was an unusually depressing Oprah's Book Club pick. It shows the struggle of vagabond father and son trekking south through the dangerous, near-lifeless ruins of North America after some nameless catastrophe ravaged the planet. (Nov. 25).

* "Nine": Not to be confused with "9," this is director Rob Marshall trying to repeat his success with "Chicago" in an adaptation of the Broadway-musical version of Federico Fellini's "8 1/2," about a creatively-stalled movie director (Daniel Day-Lewis) caught up in reveries about his life and loves. (Nov. 25)

source :By Special to Arcade arcade@MorningJournal.com