CINEMA STUFFERS: Hollywood delivers A-list names in holiday season

The holidays are one of Hollywood's favorite times of year. It's good for moviegoers, too, as the studios fill theaters with A-list directors and actors, hoping for the next blockbuster. "New Moon" and "The Blind Side" have already staked their claim at the box office, but they'll soon have company from aliens, frogs and a legendary detective, among others.

IT'S ELEMENTARY

With "Sherlock Holmes," Robert Downey Jr. and director Guy Ritchie also recreate old London while reinventing Arthur Conan Doyle's brainy, monkish detective as an action hero, verbal quipster -- and even a bit of a lover.

Downey's Holmes fights with fists, clubs, pistols and hammers, trades odd-couple banter with best buddy and roommate Watson (Jude Law), and shares romantic moments with the one woman (Rachel McAdams) who never got the better of him.

It was a nice change of pace for Downey after he leaped to the box-office A-list with last year's comic-book blockbuster "Iron Man."

"It was such a radical departure," Downey said. "A period piece. A very, very established kind of iconic image comes to mind when you think of Sherlock Holmes. Whereas Iron Man was a relatively unknown quote-unquote second-tier superhero ... until last year."

OUT OF THIS WORLD

In the fantasy realm, James Cameron is back with his first fictional film since 1997's "Titanic" swamped Hollywood to become king of the Oscars and the biggest modern blockbuster. "Avatar" also marks Cameron's return to his science-fiction roots and a reunion with "Aliens" star Sigourney Weaver, who joins Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana among the cast of the filmmaker's 3-D epic about humans taking on the form of extraterrestrials as they explore a distant world.

"What we have on the screen right now is 150 percent of what I imagined. The other 50 percent is the part I could not have imagined without having the actors there, without working with a team of artists who come up with all these amazing, outlandish designs," Cameron said. "My job was really kind of herding the cats, getting the artists to kind of be cohesive about the aesthetic decision, so it was all one world, so it seemed like part of an evolutionary or ecological system."

HUSBANDS, WIVES AND LOVERS

"Chicago" director Rob Marshall orchestrates his latest musical with "Nine," based on the Broadway adaptation of Federico Fellini's foreign-language classic "8 1/2." It's the story of a filmmaker (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his many, many women: his wife (Marion Cotillard), his mistress (Penelope Cruz), his mom (Sophia Loren), his film star (Nicole Kidman), his costume designer (Judi Dench), a lover from his youth (Stacy Ferguson) and a fashion journalist (Kate Hudson).

Animal Kingdom

Disney animation goes old-school as the studio releases "The Princess and the Frog," its first hand-drawn cartoon in five years with this update of "The Frog Prince" fairy tale, set on the jazzy Louisiana bayou. It also marks the first time Disney animators put a black female, Princess Tiana, front and center. Ironically, the inspiration for the new film came from two white men: current Pixar-Disney chief John Lasseter and the late Walt Disney himself.

"The story really came from an initial idea of doing an American fairy tale, which hadn't been done at Disney," said "Princess" co-director Ron Clements. "And setting it in New Orleans, which is John Lasseter's favorite city in the world. It was Walt Disney's favorite city in the world. ... Out of that, it seemed natural that the heroine would be African-American."

INSPIRATION ON THE PLAYING FIELD

Clint Eastwood taps "Million Dollar Baby" and "Unforgiven" co-star Morgan Freeman to play Nelson Mandela in "Invictus," a post-apartheid drama about the South African president rallying black and white behind his country's rugby team during an underdog run in the 1995 World Cup.

Matt Damon, who co-stars as the captain of South Africa's rugby squad, said Freeman was the only choice to play Mandela.

"Someone would have been keelhauled if he hadn't played that role," Damon said.

FAMILY AFFAIRS

"Lord of the Rings" mastermind Peter Jackson turns to the homefront while keeping a foot in otherworldly realms with "The Lovely Bones," an adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel about a slain girl (Saoirse Ronan) watching over her family from heaven.

The cast includes Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci.

Jackson said he cried when he read the novel.

"If the things that I was imagining that made me cry could be put on screen, I thought this would be really amazing," Jackson said. "Because I think the book is an incredible book, but it's very personal. And I think what you get out of that book depends a lot on what experience you've had in your life and what experience of death that you've had, and losing loved ones."

-- AP