Some movies have change their release dates since this story was published: "The Road" is now scheduled to open Nov. 25 and "Nine" has moved to Dec. 18.</</span>p>

Fall is shaping up as a wild and woolly season at the movies.

Vampires, werewolves and zombies ... oh my. The end of the world as we know it, close encounters of the fourth kind, men who stare at goats and a little boy named Max who sails to a place where the wild things roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth.

Oscar voters will be looking for titles to fill those 10 Best Picture slots, while Pittsburghers can survey "Sorority Row," filmed here in fall 2008, and accompany Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee in their search for any morsel of their vanished world in "The Road."

Bellevue, especially, will hope that "Fame" moviegoers remember the name of onetime resident Paul McGill, while Rob Marshall will add a musical called "Nine" to his collection of lucky numbers that includes 13 Academy Award nominations for "Chicago" and one Best Picture statuette.

As always, dates are subject to change and some titles likely will move up or back or quietly disappear. Here are the movies scheduled to open by Thanksgiving. We'll look at the December releases, such as "Avatar," "The Lovely Bones" and "Sherlock Holmes," later in the year.

"All About Steve": Bumping this from March looks smart given the summer Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper are having. She is an eccentric crossword puzzle constructor who, after one short blind date, falls for a cable news cameraman and follows him across the country.

"Extract": Mike Judge comedy starring Jason Bateman as the owner of a flavor-extract factory who is about to retire when a freak workplace accident sets a series of disasters into motion.

"Gamer": Futuristic action thriller set at a time when gaming and entertainment have evolved into a horrifying hybrid. Humans control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online games as people play people for keeps. Gerard Butler stars.

"Carriers": Chris Pine, Lou Taylor Pucci, Piper Perabo and Emily Vancamp star in this perhaps too timely thriller about a viral pandemic that threatens to wipe out the human race but may be no match for the darkness inside them.

"Soul Power": Documentary about Zaire '74, the legendary music festival with James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz and others who anchored a three-day concert in Zaire around the "Rumble in the Jungle" fight.

"Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg": The story of Gertrude Berg, who turned a popular radio show about a Jewish family in New York into a pioneering TV show.

"Unmistaken Child": Documentary shot in the remote villages and monasteries of Nepal about the four-year search for the reincarnation of Lama Konchog, a world-renowned Tibetan master who passed away in 2001 at age 84.

"Alien": In space, no one can hear you scream but on Earth, you can mark the 30th anniversary of the Ridley Scott horror sci-fi film by screaming, sobbing or sitting silently at the Regent Square Theater through Sept. 9.

"9": If ever a movie were made for an opening date (9/09/09) it's this feature-length expansion of director Shane Acker's Oscar-nominated short, which played here in March 2006. It's set in the near-future when machines have turned on mankind and small "stitchpunk" creations may be the planet's only hope.

"Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself": When Madea catches a 16-year-old girl and her younger brothers looting her home, she delivers the delinquents to their only relative, a heavy-drinking nightclub singer played by Taraji P. Henson.

"Whiteout": Kate Beckinsale is the lone U.S. marshal assigned to Antarctica and investigating the continent's first murder in this adaptation of the graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber. Cast includes Gabriel Macht and Alex O'Loughlin.

"Sorority Row": Morality tale about young sorority sisters who make bad choices that come back to haunt them. Shot in Pittsburgh in fall 2008, the horror thriller counts Carrie Fisher and Rumer Willis among its cast.

"My One and Only": Renee Zellweger, Kevin Bacon and Logan Lerman star in this movie inspired by incidents in the life of actor George Hamilton.

"In the Loop": Political satire, from the creators of the BBC's "The Thick of It," about the art of spin in a 24-hour news cycle. During an interview, a bumbling British minister inadvertently backs a U.S. war in the Mideast, setting off a series of complications. Cast includes Tom Hollander, James Gandolfini, Mimi Kennedy, Chris Addison and Anna Chlumsky.

"American Casino": This has nothing to do with penny slots but, rather, explains how and why more than "$12 trillion of our money vanished into the American Casino" that is Wall Street.

"The Informant!": Matt Damon plays the highest ranking corporate whistleblower in American history in this Steven Soderbergh movie based on a book about a real-life rising star at Archer Daniels Midland.

"Love Happens": Romantic drama starring Jennifer Aniston as a florist who has sworn off men and Aaron Eckhart as a self-help author who comes to Seattle to teach a sold-out seminar.

"Jennifer's Body": Diablo Cody, who became a screenwriting sensation with "Juno," uses horror laced with comedy to mine the dangerous territory of adolescence. Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried lead the cast.

"Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs": Animated comedy, based on the Judi and Ron Barrett book, about a town where food falls from the sky. Bill Hader speaks for a young inventor, and Anna Faris, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell and Mr. T also lend their voices.

"Throw Down Your Heart": Documentary following American banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck on his journey to explore the little-known African roots of the banjo and to record an album.

"Fame": Former Bellevue resident Paul McGill, son of Paul and Shari McGill, has a plum role in this reinvention of the 1980 film about dancers, singers, actors and artists at New York's performing arts high school.

"Surrogates": Action thriller set in a world where people conduct their lives remotely from the safety of their homes thanks to robotic surrogates. When the first murder in years jolts this utopia, an FBI agent (Bruce Willis) must abandon his own surrogate to probe a conspiracy.

"Pandorum": Two crew members stranded on a spacecraft, much to their horror, realize they are not alone after awakening in a hyper-sleep chamber. Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet lead the cast.

"Liverpool": Story of a middle-aged sailor who returns home after years at sea, to the coldest province of Tierra del Fuego. A reticent and resigned man, he sets off through snow-capped mountains to find his dying mother, who doesn't recognize him, and then his daughter.

"Lorna's Silence": When a young Albanian woman living in Belgium wants citizenship, she becomes an accomplice in a diabolical plan devised by a mobster. From the writing-directing team of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

"The Invention of Lying": Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson wrote and directed this romantic comedy set in an alternate reality where lying (even the concept of a lie) does not exist. Gervais leads a cast that includes Jennifer Garner.

"A Serious Man": Joel and Ethan Coen explore questions of faith, family responsibility, delinquent behavior, dental phenomena, academia, mortality and Judaism in their new film set in 1967 and starring Michael Stuhlbarg as a beleaguered physics professor.

"Zombieland": A horror comedy, set in a world overrun by zombies, with Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson as survivors with opposite approaches to fear.

"The Boys Are Back": Oscar nominee Scott Hicks ("Shine") directs this movie based on the 2001 memoir by Simon Carr about his funny, freewheeling and heart-wrenching experiences as a widower raising two boys, one from each of his marriages. Clive Owen is terrific as a dad juggling grief, parenting, work and (not so much) housework.

"Whip It": Directorial debut of Drew Barrymore, with Ellen Page as a rebellious Texas teen who trades her small-town beauty pageant crown for the world of roller derby. Marcia Gay Harden is her mother, while Barrymore, Kristen Wiig and Juliette Lewis are derby stars.

"Capitalism: A Love Story": Michael Moore is back to his old and very amusing tricks, returning to the issues of corporate dominance and out-of-control profit motives and how they affect Americans and others around the world.

"Bright Star": Jane Campion directs this portrait of love and loss between English poet John Keats and the girl and muse next door, Fanny Brawne, an outspoken student of fashion. Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish star.

"It Might Get Loud": Three generations of electric guitar virtuosos -- The Edge (U2), Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) and Jack White (The White Stripes) -- recount the development of their style and sound in this rock doc.

"Toy Story & Toy Story 2": In Disney Digital 3D, building to the June 18 release of the new "Toy Story 3."

"Couples Retreat": Comedy about Midwesterners who head for a tropical island resort so one pair can work on their marriage and the others vacation but they learn participation in couples therapy is not optional.

"The Road": Esquire magazine called it "the most important movie of the year," and Western Pennsylvania residents are certainly looking forward to it. Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, it features Viggo Mortensen and young Kodi Smit-McPhee as father and son wandering a post-apocalyptic landscape.

"Where the Wild Things Are": Director Spike Jonze turns the beloved book by Maurice Sendak into a movie with young Max Records as the boy who escapes to where the Wild Things are, with James Gandolfini lending his distinctive voice to the fantasy.

"Law Abiding Citizen": Thriller about a brilliant sociopath (Gerard Butler) who orchestrates, from his jail cell, a series of high-profile murders that grip Philadelphia. Jamie Foxx is the prosecutor assigned to his case.

"The Stepfather": Remake of 1987 Terry O'Quinn film about a mom's new man who might (might?) be hiding a sinister side. With Penn Badgley, Dylan Walsh, Sela Ward and Amber Heard.

"Amelia": Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank tackles aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart while Cherry Jones is Eleanor Roosevelt and Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor the men in her life.

"Astro Boy": The little robot that first appeared in 1951 as a character in Osamu Tezuka's manga or Japanese comic book gets the big-screen treatment with the famous voices of Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Samuel L. Jackson and many others.

"Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant": Fantasy-adventure, based on Darren Shan books, about a teen who unknowingly breaks a 200-year truce between warring vampires and is pulled into a world of misunderstood sideshow freaks and grotesque creatures of the night.

"Saw VI": Jigsaw's grand scheme is finally understood once the FBI draws closer to Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), the unchallenged successor to Jigsaw's legacy.

"Michael Jackson: This Is It": Longtime Jackson collaborator Kenny Ortega directs a documentary drawn from rehearsal and behind-the-scenes footage of the singer preparing for his concert series in London before his June 25 death. Select sequences in 3-D.

"Gentlemen Broncos": From the director of "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Nacho Libre" comes this story about a home-schooled loner who writes a story stolen by a legendary fantasy novelist.

"New York, I Love You": Julie Christie, Shia LaBeouf, Andy Garcia and Orlando Bloom are among the famous faces in this "collective feature film" modeled after "Paris, je t'aime." It's the second in a series of "Cities of Love" movies conceived by Emmanuel Benbihy.

"Disney's A Christmas Carol": A 3-D animated version of the Dickens classic, with Jim Carrey playing eight characters and Gary Oldman as his overworked and underpaid clerk and Colin Firth his cheery nephew.

"The Box": The short story "Button, Button" by Richard Matheson inspired this movie that asks: What if someone gave you a box containing a button that, if pushed, would bring you a million dollars but spell the death of a stranger? Cameron Diaz and James Marsden star.

"Men Who Stare at Goats": Quirky dark comedy inspired by a real-life story about a top-secret wing of the U.S. military with "Warrior Monks" who can read enemy thoughts, pass through walls and kill a goat by staring at it. George Clooney leads the cast.

"The Fourth Kind": As in close encounters of the fourth kind, a measurement explored in this thriller set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, where a disproportionate number of people go missing each year. Milla Jovovich, Will Patton and Elias Koteas star.

Three Rivers Film Festival: It's the 28th year for this popular Pittsburgh Filmmakers event that will run through Nov. 21 and close with a new print of 1929's "Man With a Movie Camera" and live accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra at the Regent Square Theater.

"2012": It's the end of the world as we know it with Los Angeles destroyed in an earthquake and Yellowstone Park extinguished in an explosion of lava. That's just for starters in this action picture inspired by the Mayans and starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton and, as the American president, Danny Glover.

"Fantastic Mr. Fox": Wes Anderson uses classic stop-motion animation to tell the Roald Dahl story about farmers named Boggis, Bunce and Bean (one fat, one short, one lean) who try to outsmart the fantastic Mr. Fox. George Clooney and Meryl Streep lead the voice cast.

"Pirate Radio": In 1966, the BBC played only two hours of rock 'n' roll every week but pirate radio blasted rock and pop from the high seas 24 hours a day in this ensemble comedy starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and -- as a killjoy -- Kenneth Branagh.

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon": Either your heart pounds at the mention of this series or you have no clue or interest. This is the second of the Stephenie Meyer adaptations about a vampire, a besotted and broken-hearted human teen and the werewolves who complicate their lives. Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner lead the cast.

"The Blind Side": When a 6-foot-5, 330-pound African-American teen moves in with a conservative, white, wealthy Memphis family, there are blessings all around. Based on the story of football player Michael Oher and starring Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw and Quinton Aaron.

"Planet 51": Animated comedy about an American astronaut who lands on Planet 51 and finds little green people cheerily living in a world reminiscent of 1950s America and fearing alien invaders ... like him.

"Nine": Former Squirrel Hill resident Rob Marshall directs this musical, adapted from the original 1982 Tony Award-winning musical, with a star-studded cast that includes Daniel Day-Lewis, Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson and Judi Dench.

"Old Dogs": Robin Williams is an unlucky-in-love divorced man and John Travolta a fun-loving bachelor whose lives are turned upside down when they are unexpectedly charged with the care of 6-year-old twins.

"Ninja Assassin": The single-name Asian star Rain stars as Raizo, one of the deadliest assassins in the world who was taken from the streets as a child and transformed by a secret society. Directed by James McTeigue ("V for Vendetta").

"More Than a Game": Crowd-pleasing documentary about an Akron high school basketball team that includes future superstar LeBron James (October).

"No Impact Man": When a newly self-proclaimed environmentalist vows no more automated transportation, electricity or material consumption for a year, he runs into complications in the form of his wife and their 2-year-old daughter (October).

"Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire": Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry are among the executive producers of this adaptation, set in 1987 Harlem. It tells the redemptive story of a 16-year-old girl struggling to overcome tremendous obstacles and discover her own voice (November).

"The Young Victoria": Emily Blunt graduates to leading lady as Queen Victoria in the turbulent first year of her reign. Rupert Friend ("Cheri," "Pride & Prejudice") is suitor Prince Albert (November).

"The Messenger": In his first starring role, Ben Foster is a U.S. Army officer fresh from Iraq and assigned to the Army's Casualty Notification service. Woody Harrelson is his partner in this grim task and Samantha Morton a woman on the receiving end of sad news (November).

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