Here we have a brief, Technicolor interregnum between the popcorn sagas of summer and the more lordly ghosts of Oscar future, as conjured at Christmastime.

Below are forthcoming theatrical bonbons, proffered with a reminder that contents will shift long before getting passed to Aunt Grizelda. By the way, George Clooney appears to have left his fingerprints on an unusual number of goodies.

October 2
Picture, if you will, a world without fibbing. Then imagine The Invention of Lying, and how that might pertain to Ricky Gervais as a self-serving writer. This relates somehow to Michael Moore’s latest shock doc, Capitalism: A Love Story. Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson make unlikely buddies attempting to survive the future-campy Zombieland, while Drew Barrymore, Ellen Page, and Kristen Wiig are roller-derby vixens in Whip It.

October 9
Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, and Kristen Bell are among the youngish marrieds fighting temptation, and each other, at their Couples Retreat. Aussie sailors have a final night out before shipping off to war in Three Blind Mice. Patricia Clarkson learns to walk like an Egyptian in Cairo Time, from Canada’s talented Ruba Nadda. And Chris Rock examines Good Hair, a term that holds complicated meaning for African-Americans.

October 16
The Coen brothers return to 1967 to bring us A Serious Man, about a Midwestern college professor whose small world falls apart. Gerard Butler is a Law Abiding Citizen looking for the killers of his family (and the hyphen in his compound adjective) and Jamie Foxx is the top cop who cuts him some slack. Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron struggle to survive a post-apocalyptic nightmare in The Road, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel. Theron keeps up the battle in The Burning Plain, this time against her own mother, played by Kim Basinger. Dylan Walsh has the title role in The Stepfather, a remake of the semi-classic creeper from 1987. Childhood is haunted in a different way as Spike Jonze adapts Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. And Audrey Tautou stars in Coco Before Chanel, an expensive French biopic.

October 23
In Mira Nair’s Amelia, Hilary Swank plays the famously air-hearted aviatrix. Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay for An Education, with Peter Sarsgaard as an “older” London lad who upsets the life of a teenage girl. Prom Night in Mississippi is a straightforward record of the first integrated school dance at one southern high school—in 2008! The Taqwacores is based on the Islamic-punk novel by Michael Muhammad Knight. Nicolas Cage and Kristen Bell are among the voices bringing Japan’s venerable manga figure Astroboy to life. Because you can never have enough bloodsuckers, John C. Reilly is a fanged magician in Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant. If you saw the first five already, you’ll want to see Saw VI, too. And then you should probably see somebody about that.

October 28
The quickly assembled Michael Jackson’s This Is It! was taken from footage of rehearsals for the gloved one’s intended comeback tour.

October 30
Nice guy Michael Cera is a Youth in Revolt once he meets sexy smart girl Portia Doubleday. Think “Shotgun!” when you spy the title Passenger Side, about two brothers cruising L.A. for weirdness. Elsewhere in the U.S., the elegant Hiam Abbass hosts her Palestinian sister’s move to Amreeka. Sam Rockwell and kiwi Jemaine Clement are among the Gentlemen Broncos at a fantasy writers’ convention, as imagined by Napoleon Dynamite’s Jared Hess. Real-life basketball trials are documented in More Than a Game, while English football is ribbed in The Damned United, with Michael Sheen as a short-lived coach of Leeds United.

November 6
Robert Zemeckis lets Jim Carrey wail the Dickens out of Disney’s A Christmas Carol, with the rubber-faced Canuck in almost every role in this early release. When Cameron Diaz and James Marsden open The Box, it brings riches to them and terror to others, and The Fourth Kind is a sci-fi thriller starring Milla Jovovich abducted by aliens in Alaska. (Insert Sarah Palin jokes here.) George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, and Ewan McGregor are among The Men Who Stare at Goats in this much-anticipated comedy about the oxymorons of U.S. military intelligence. Jimmy Page, Jack White, and the Edge investigate the role of the electric guitar in It Might Get Loud.

November 13
Emily Blunt is an excellent choice to play The Young Victoria; Vincent Gallo is a long-lost writer in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro; Pirate Radio is retitled from The Boat That Rocked; and Robin Wright Penn stars in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Roland Emmerich envisions 2012 to be an apocalyptic home to John Cusack, Thandie Newton, and Woody Harrelson, trapped in the near future. Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach have animated Roald Dahl in Fantastic Mr. Fox, featuring the voices of Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and (who else?) George Clooney.

November 20
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson sink their teeth into New Moon, of the Twilight trilogy, while Sandra Bullock remains blond in The Blind Side, the fact-based tale of a teenaged football sensation adopted by a caring couple (singer Tim McGraw is Bullock’s other, hat-wearing half). Dwayne Johnson discovers little green thingies on the animated Planet 51, with more voices provided by Jessica Biel, Justin Long, and John Cleese. With a title like Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, who needs one-liners?

November 25
John Travolta and Robin Williams are Old Dogs raising new kids. Nine is a musical sequel, of sorts, to 8 ½, and Korean pop singer Rain stars as a Ninja Assassin.

December 4
Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire are Brothers in this remake of the same-named Danish film, while Armored refers to the truck at the centre of an ambitious heist. Robert De Niro stars in Everybody’s Fine, taken from the Italian flick of the same name.

December 11
Oprah Winfrey (who produced Precious) and John Goodman offer their pipes to the animated The Princess and the Frog; Peter Jackson directs The Lovely Bones, based on Alice Sebold’s haunted novel; and Invictus is Clint Eastwood’s documentary look at Nelson Mandela after apartheid.

Also Scheduled for Fall: Clooney again, Up in the Air for Jason Reitman’s comedy about frequent fliers. The doc H2Oil looks at water in this country as the next scarce commodity. Joel Schumacher goes all Shining on us in Blood Creek, while Michael Douglas anchors the generic-titled Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, a 1956 noir remake. The New Daughter is a bad-seed drama with Kevin Costner, and the disease-ridden Carriers is where Piper Perabo ended up. Jason Jones and Samantha Bee top-line Cooper’s Camera. Cartoonist Bill Plympton offers Idiots and Angels, as Edward Norton goes to seed in Leaves of Grass. A Canadian geologist falls for the wrong Irish lass in John N. Smith’s Love & Savagery. A famously corrupt prime minister is profiled in Italy’s Il Divo. The Danish resistance is remembered in Flame & Citron. A modern Dane drifts through Thailand in Soi Cowboy. Today’s Sweden is dissected in Involuntary. The Debt is an Israeli spy thriller, and Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg recalls the career of Gertrude Berg, who practically invented the TV sitcom. Finally, Nowhere Boy is a fictional look at John Lennon’s childhood.