So Erik-with-a-k covered the coming comedies of 2009, Scott was all over the horror picks (though his inclusion of Race to Witch Mountain still boggles my mind), Eric-with-a-c nabbed the family-friendly fare, and Elisabeth went over the geek fodder that awaits. But while I respect their calendar years and made-up math alike, I've opted to divide my list of 2009's action and adventure flicks into four categories: Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About, Action Flicks I Couldn't Care Less About, Action Flicks That I Hope Surprise Me, and Those Which Fell In Between. Enjoy!

Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About: First and foremost -- Watchmen (March 6th). It's one hell of a graphic novel and looks to be one hell of an adaptation (with or without the Giant Blank), and come Fox or high water, it'll see the light of day soon enough. Then there's Public Enemies (July 1st), which has me sold on not the subject matter, but sheer pedigree: Michael Mann directs Johnny Depp and Christian Bale as '30s gangsters. (It doesn't hurt that the earliest word ranges from damn good to great.) On the skimpier side, I can only hope that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 17th) streamlines its source material as the previous one had, and I can only hope that Crank 2: High Voltage (April 17th) lives up/down to the depravity of its predecessor. There's one last action movie that I couldn't care more about because, well, I've already seen a version of it. The international cut of Taken (January 30th, though reportedly opening with some R-dodging trims) is about as brisk and butt-kicking as one might hope out of a man-on-a-mission kidnapping thriller, and if you disagree, I'll send Liam Neeson to change your mind.

2009 has begun on a rather tense note for geekdom as Watchmen became further embroiled in legal soup. As Fox pushes for a delay, we must contemplate a rather thin year of geeky offerings .... which just shows how spoiled we've become. Watchmen and Wolverine alone would have made our year before the wonder that was 2008, when we had Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and the Punisher. But hey, this is going to be the Year of Announcements -- we're going to find out who Captain America and Thor are, who or what Iron Man must face in his sequel, and hey, we might even find out whether Edward Norton will reprise his role as the Hulk. We're going to have fun, no matter what happens with Watchmen.

January
Nothing. Watch The Dark Knight ten more times, I guess (especially when it returns to conventional and IMAX theaters on January 23). Or read a graphic novel; you must have gotten some for Christmas? Anyway, take a breather. You're still recovering from 2008.

February
Neil Gaiman's Coraline, and a limited release of the long-delayed Fanboys both come out on February 6th. Gaiman for the win, no question.

March
Watchmen Watchmen Watchmen Watchmen Watchmen Watchmen Watchmen. It will come out on the 6th. It will. We must not doubt.

April
Dragonball Evolution hits theaters on the 8th. The excitement is palatable.

May
This is the month of geekdom, kicking off with the film my year centers around, X-Men Origins: Wolverine on May 1. If this isn't good, the Geek Beat will burn with the fury of a thousand suns the following Tuesday. May that be your warning, Fox.

A little independent film you might have heard of also comes out this month: Star Trek hits theaters on May 8th.

When we were kicking around ideas for year-end superlative Cinematical Sevens, I was proudly tasked with chronicling the year's finest in big-screen mayhem, violence, destruction and other such shenanigans. When I was kicking around ideas for said feature between me, myself, and I, there were too many titles to leave off the list, so instead of highlighting only a mere couple of movies, I've opted to sort these puppies out by specific manner of cinematic excess.

So there.

1. Most pervasive destruction - The Joker may have terrorized Gotham to the tune of a destroyed hospital, a wrecked helicopter, a sunken SWAT truck, a toasty fire engine, and a golden district attorney, but even he can't top the Cloverfield monster's swath of destruction across the real-life Gotham. Statue of Liberty? Gone. Brooklyn Bridge? History. Central Park? Adios. And that's not including all the Hollister stores that our protagonists might've fled to. (On a smaller scale, though, Inside's lady in black terrorizes a pregnant woman on Christmas Eve to the point of all but painting every last wall in her house with the blood of her victims. Gotta love the French!)

Last Monday, yours truly was invited to help a friend of a friend out by offering to review Frost/Nixon on their podcast. As it turns out, it was the /Filmcast we were talking about, and it happened to be the same night that head honcho here Erik Davis was due to join in. Small world, eh?

So we tag-teamed our film chatter with the cool guys over at /Film -- David Chen, Adam Quigley, and Devindra Hardawar, to be specific -- and you can listen to that episode right about here. When Erik isn't twirling his hair around his finger and gushing about MTV's episodes of True Life, he and the gang manage to get around to discussing all the latest film news from Terminator: Salvation to the potential Suck Rogers with Frank Miller at the wheel.

I also took part in the /Film After Dark podcast and a recent year-end horror wrap-up extravaganza with just about everyone over at Bloody Disgusting, so with any luck and nearly no shame, we hope to share those as well. For those of you wishing to listen to David, Devindra and Adam record their next /Filmcast live, they'll be looking back on 2008 in film this coming Monday at 9 PM EST/6 PM PST.

Click image above or below to enlarge

Cinematical has just received this exclusive teaser poster for this summer's hotly-anticipated Land of the Lost, starring Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, Anna Friel and Jorma Taccone. Based on the classic television series, Land of the Lost was directed by Brad Silberling and follows a has-been scientist (Ferrell), a crack-smart research assistant (Friel) and a redneck survivalist (McBride) who get sucked through time and spit out into an alternate universe -- one that finds them running from dinosaurs and weird reptiles called Sleestaks, while trying to figure a way out of this hybrid dimension. Really looking forward to watching Ferrell and McBride pair up on screen together, and with the "alternate universe" angle thrown in, I'm sure we're in store for all sorts of ridiculousness.

Land of the Lost arrives in theaters on June 5, 2009.

Mice have enjoyed a great ride in the movies. The animated variety first rose to prominence thanks to Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in the late 20s, enjoyed a rebirth as heroes in the late 70s and 80s with The Rescuers, The Secret of NIMH, The Great Mouse Detective, and An American Tail, and overflowed into live-action territory a few years later with Stuart Little. More recently, Flushed Away was a superior entertainment about a spoiled upper-class mouse who must learn to survive in the wild and wooly sewers, while the superb Ratatouille gave a rat a rare favorable turn in the spotlight as a culinary artist.

Adapted by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Dave) from the award-winning book by Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux features both a rat and a mouse in leading roles, but the self-described fairy tale is much more than a slapdash character study of two rodents. The setup makes it sound like a cousin to both Flushed Away and Ratatouille: a disgraced rat must learn to survive in a dark dungeon, a mouse develops a friendship with a human, and gourmet soup features prominently. Yet as the tale unfolds, it deepens and broadens its themes to a welcome degree. Though it never climbs too far above average and too often embraces the familiar, Despereaux remains a gentle and nurturing children's story, imparting lessons without being too condescending to its audience.

While Despereaux is aimed squarely at the little ones, adults may enjoy the top-notch animation and appreciate the above average performances by a celebrity voice cast (Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Watson, Tracey Ullman, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin Kline, William H. Macy, Stanley Tucci) that is well matched to the characters they play, which is a rare pleasure indeed.

I don't need much of an excuse to visit Austin, Texas. Find me an event that A) strings more than four movies together, and B) takes place at one of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters, and there's a good chance I'm checking my bank account, desperately scrambling for flight money. But despite the fact that I've done five SXSW visits, three Fantastic Fest trips, and a few more Austin journeys just for the heck of it ... I'd never attended a BNAT shindig. But I made it to the tenth annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon, and of course I had a damn good time once it got rolling.

Let's just do a quick run-through, chronologically speaking, and I'm listing just the FULL movies here. At the end I'll go over the various clips we were treated to...

I was originally going to start out this post by going off on those studios that habitually change dates on their releases and wait until the last minute to do so. Instead, I'll try to remain positive and emphasize one particular studio that has given us a head's up on the shuffling of their 2009 slate: Universal.

Of utmost priority is director Joe Johnston and star Benicio del Toro's take on The Wolfman, which has been bumped back from this spring to next November (not unlike The Box). Usually, such shuffling might seem like a bad thing, but about six more months to polish what I'm guessing are so very many special effects sounds like a fair enough compromise (which isn't to suggest that Oscar-winning make-up wizard Rick Baker didn't do a fine job the first time around). Also moving back is Ridley Scott's Nottingham, now pushed to a TBD date in 2010.

Do you want to see a visitor from another planet wielding a sword? Keanu Reeves, who plays the alien Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (opening on Friday), will play a samurai swordsman in 47 Ronin, an epic action tale of 18th century vengeance, according to Variety.

Described as mixing elements of The Lord of the Rings (fantasy) and Gladiator ("gritty battle scenes"), the film aims to tell a stylized version of a true story that took place at the beginning of the 18th century in Japan. A group of samurai became ronin (samurai without lord or master) after their master was forced to commit ritual suicide because, after repeated insults to his honor, he assaulted a court official. The 47 ronin eventually avenged the death of their master, even though they knew that they, in turn, would be required to commit suicide. Traditionally, the tale of the 47 ronin has been held up as an example of honor and other noble qualities. The story itself has been told numerous times in movies and television, and it's also served as loose inspiration for many other projects, such as John Frankenheimer's terrific Ronin (1998), with Robert DeNiro.

Keanu's 47 Ronin is being scripted by Chris Morgan, who co-wrote Wanted. Morgan is also the writer of the upcoming Fast & Furious and previously did The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Sakura: Blue-Eyed Samurai, about a 19th century woman training to be a samurai, so he has a track record of projects set in Japan, for whatever that's worth. 47 Ronin intends to start production next year, but a director must be selected first. Whoever else comes on board, this is being pitched as a very, very loose interpretation of the classic tale.

"You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore ..."
-- Richard Nixon, on his 1962 loss to Pat Brown for the Governorship of California

That statement turned out, of course, not to be true; we would have Nixon to kick around for decades more. That statement also concealed a different truth, which is that Nixon -- the hunched, scowling, puritan-satyr of American politics -- could not only take a beating, but also dish one out. Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard's film adaptation of Peter Morgan's stage play, kicks Nixon around, but it also lets him kick back, as TV personality (not journalist or reporter, but personality) David Frost faces Nixon in a series of 1977 interviews for an ambitious, expensive and poorly-planned multi-night TV broadcast. Why would Nixon agree to an on-camera inquisition? Because Frost paid him -- $600,000 -- for the chance to do so, and because Nixon thought it might be a chance to re-emerge from his exile after resigning the presidency in 1974. Two men, their careers in decline, circling each other for a shot at redemption: Frost (Michael Sheen) is wagering his fortune on the chance to re-make his reputation; Nixon (Frank Langella), with neither reputation or fortune, is desperate for a chance to escape infamy.

But Frost/Nixon is not simply the equivalent of Thunderdome for readers of The Nation, where two men enter and one man leaves. Morgan's script is smart enough to make sure there are things hidden under that clash, a quieter film about character and communication, modern media and ancient principles. And we also get the interview field of combat, which drapes the slick surface of modern manners over the kind of brute, bloody battle you normally see only in nature documentaries. The film, like Frost's interviews, is not merely about Watergate -- which is good, because we have, I should think, drained that well of venality fairly dry -- but instead about bigger issues of accountability and process and principle. Frost, stripped of all pretense, was asking Nixon a good question: Who the hell do you think you are? Nixon, stripped of all pretense, was asking an equally good question: Who the hell are you to ask?