SeptCUember

It's "Good-bye" to Summer. "Hello" to Fall. The major block-busters have either busted their blocks, or been busted themselves. It was a pretty good Summer at the Movies, overlorded by the Ubermensch though it was. In the Fall we can look forward to a new Coen Brothers movie--another comedy this time, which means a lot of people won't like it, Oliver Stone takes shots at the sitting president, there'll be an all-star-updating of "The Women," DeNiro and Pacino team up again for "Righteous Kill," Ed Harris directs and co-stars in a Western with Viggo Mortenson and Renee Zellwegger, Vin Diesel returns to sci-fi with "Babylon A.D.", and Spike Lee puts his money where his mouth is with a movie about the "Buffalo Soldiers" of WWII. Leonardo DeCaprio has two movies coming out: one with his "Titanic" co-star Kate Winslet, and and the other a Ridley Scott film co-starring Russel Crowe. Clint Eastwood directs Angelina Jolie in "The Changeling," Baz Luhrmann directs Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in his dream project, the epic "Australia" (natch!), and the kids get something with adaptations of "Twilight," "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," and (only in theaters!) "High School Musical 3." Gus Van Sant directs Sean Penn in the long-awaited "Milk," and we get to see the directing debut of Charlie Kaufman with "Synecdoche, New York." And then, of course, there's Bond--Daniel Craig returns in the first "true sequel" in the 007 series, "A Quantum of Solace."

And that's just a few things jockeying for position before the Holiday Crunch.

We hope to hit them all, and then some. But if that wasn't enough of a "Prevue of Coming Attractions"...

A little announcement: After struggling to keep a new review (or olde one)coming every day, I'm cutting back just a bit, taking a couple of days' break a week to, you know, maybe watch a movie, rather than review it--our "To View" shelf is starting to look a little crowded, and we've got a couple NetFlix that have been here for a month!

There'll be less of an attempt to try and wedge together a "theme week"--that just doesn't seem to work to my satisfaction, and gets a bit "old" by the end of the week, but we're going to keep Sunday's "Don't Make a Scene," starting with one that's been thudding around the archives since we started the feature. We've got quite a few lined up for the months ahead--yeah, there are a lot of them--with plans for five weeks of classic scenes from one particular star. But if you're looking for a "Rhyme" or a "Reason" to anything else, forget it! We'll just wing it this Fall, and see how the schedule works out. It's all an experiment, and sometimes one has to shake things up a bit to get the right formula.

Notice the new poll up there? That's the reason the old one was up for so long--we wanted to keep those answers burned in people's minds to see your reactions to those films.

Also, don't forget to drop us a line at Questions2LNTAM@gmail.com with suggestions, questions and unmarked gratuities in small denominations.

Thanks for reading! We hope you're having as much fun reading as we are bringing it to you.