Big names and big budgets for winter

Early Oscar run marks the return of the Coens, Tarantino, Eastwood, Jackson and Minghella

With the Oscars moved from March to February of next year, Hollywood studios are starting their Academy Awards campaigns earlier than ever, and many of the possible contenders are opening earlier as well.
We've already seen the release of Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, Gary Ross' Seabiscuit, the Harvey Pekar biopic American Splendor, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, Disney's Finding Nemo, and Andrew Jarecki's documentary Capturing the Friedmans. This means that last year's phenomenon when all five best picture nominees were released in December's last two weeks, won't take place this time around. But the best is hardly behind us. Coming up this winter/holiday season is still some terrific material.
On the dark and serious side there's Robert Benton's adaptation of Philip Roth's novel The Human Stain, about a professor who has passed for white for most of his life (Anthony Hopkins) and who sees his career destroyed in old age; he finds comfort with a younger cleaning woman (Nicole Kidman). The movie also stars Gary Sinise as a reclusive writer and Ed Harris as an abusive husband.
Joel Schumacher's Veronica Guerin stars Cate Blanchett as the murdered Irish journalist whose death changes the way the judicial system in Ireland today deals with criminals. Also stars Brenda Fricker as Guerin's mother.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 21 Grams stars Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn and Naomi Watts as three very different individuals who are brought together during a freak accident.
Tim Burton's Big Fish is set in Alabama, where a salesman (Albert Finney) is dying of cancer. His estranged son (Billy Crudup) tries to piece together family history from legends his dad spreads, including tales of life in the circus. Ewan McGregor plays the dad in flashbacks; Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman and Helena Bonham Carter co-star.
Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain stars Jude Law as a wounded Confederate soldier who deserts his regiment to walk across North Carolina to his mountain home, where wife Nicole Kidman awaits. Renee Zellweger plays a mountain woman who teaches Kidman how to survive.
Bo Welch's The Cat in the Hat stars Mike Myers as the disruptive title character. Kelly Preston plays the orderly mom, Spencer Breslin and Dakota Fanning the stuffy kids, and Alec Baldwin a nosy neighbour.
Peter Webber's Girl with a Pear Earring focuses on the life of Dutch painter Jan Vermeer (Colin Firth), referred to as the master of light and shade, who (in this telling) falls for the subject of one of his masterpieces in oil, a young peasant (Scarlet Johansson) forced to work for him.
Vadim Perelman's House of Sand and Fog features Oscar winners Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley. He's an Iranian immigrant who buys a house in northern California; she's the woman who was unjustly kicked out for failing to pay - and now she wants her house back. Ron Eldard turns up as a deputy sheriff.
Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King sees Frodo trying to deliver the magic circlet to the fire, Aragorn coming into his kingdom, Gollum embracing his tragic destiny, Sam battling a giant spider and the massed armies of Middle Earth coming to grips in a battle.
Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is set against the Napoleonic Wars of the 1800s. Russell Crowe plays Capt. Jack Aubrey; and Paul Bettamy is ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin. The script combines Patrick O'Brian's two novels (the first and tenth), with actor Billy Boyd on board.
P.J. Hogan directs another dramatic version of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Jeremy Sumpter plays the title role and Jason Isaacs Captain Hook (and the father of Wendy Darling). Ludivine Sagnier is Tinkerbell.
Gary Fleder takes on John Grisham's Runaway Jury, about a juror (John Cusack) who offers himself for sale to the highest bidder in a suit against gun manufacturers. Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Rachel Weisz and Jennifer Beals also star.
Nigel Cole's real-life Calendar Girls, stars Helen Mirren and Julie Walters as middle-age women who strip for a calendar in order to raise money for cancer research.
Ron Howard's Old West drama The Missing stars Tommy Lee Jones as an estranged father who returns home to his wife (Cate Blanchett) after the woman's daughter is kidnapped.
On Christmas day, Disney is releasing John Lee Hancock's epic The Alamo, starring Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton in this retelling of the famous standoff between Texans and Tejanos.
Also on Christmas day is John Woo's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's story Paycheck, starring Ben Affleck as an electrician who's had part of his memory erased and is now trying to figure out what happened to him in the past two years. Also stars Uma Thurman and Aaron Eckhart.
Another December release is Edward Zwick's The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise as Capt. Nathan Algren, an American military officer hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country's first army in the art of modern warfare. As the government attempts to eradicate the ancient Samurai warrior class in preparation for more Westernized and trade-friendly policies, Algren finds himself unexpectedly affected by his encounters with the Samurai.
Mike Newell's Mona Lisa Smile stars Julia Roberts as a teacher at the all-girl Wellesley College in 1953, where some of her students include Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Nancy Meyers' Something's Gotta Give stars Jack Nicholson as a hip-hop music mogul who finds himself falling in love with his young girlfriend's mother (Diane Keaton).
Heavily anticipated is Quentin Tarantino's first film in six years, the revenge action flick Kill Bill: Volume One, starring Uma Thurman as a former hit-woman who takes revenge on her former boss (David Carradine) and colleagues (Lucy Liu, Vivica Fox, Michael Marsden) after they murder her husband on her wedding day.
Also back are the Coen brothers' with the comedy Intolerable Cruelty, starring George Clooney as a ruthless divorce lawyer who finds himself falling heads over heels for one of his clients (Catherine Zeta-Jones).
And finally there's The Matrix Revolutions, the final installment of the tale about a human hero (Keanu Reeves) who tries to free humankind from the grasps of a computer-dominated civilization.

Publication Date: 2003-10-12
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3234