by SARAH ROWLAND

Can Joaquin Phoenix pull off the Man in Black? Can Naomi Watts belt out a blood-curdling scream that comes close to Fay Wray's? And does any of this really matter if more and more people are opting to stay at home and rent TV show box sets rather than shelling out for a movie ticket? It does if you're a studio exec desperate to keep your job. So let's see what those silly bastards came up with this season to try and pry you away from another 24 viewing marathon.

First off, as incentive or perhaps peace offering, they've spared us another Tom Cruise promotional spectacle until 2006, when Mission Impossible III is scheduled to be released. Speaking of "Tomcat," isn't it funny how Hollywood makes such a big deal about straight men acting gay in films (eg. Dallas Roberts and Colin Farrell in A Home at the End of the World?) when gay men have been playing it straight on the big screen for decades?

Having said that, watching Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal go at it in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (Dec. 5) is, as Paris would say, "hot." The epic love story follows two rugged cowboys who are madly in love but deathly afraid of coming out. And then there's Cillian Murphy (sexual orientation unknown), who will be serving up Breakfast on Pluto (Dec. 16) in Neil Jordon's latest. Here the Red Eye monster plays Kitten, an orphaned tranny who leaves Ireland in search of his birth mother. Also from the land of Ire we have Omagh (tba), a powerful BBC drama about the 1988 Northern Ireland bombing that left 29 dead.

Broadway and biopics

It looks like Broadway adaptations are the new comic book adaptations, so say goodbye to spandex and capes and say hello to chorus lines and tap numbers. Matthew Broderick will reprise his role in The Producers (Dec. 21), a 1968 Mel Brooks movie, turned Tony-award-winning musical, turned 2005 musical movie. While The Producers cast several actors who didn't appear in the stage production, including Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell, Rent (Nov. 23) is staying true to its original line-up when it makes its big screen debut. In fact, Rosario Dawson will be one of only two actors who didn't appear in the Broadway version.

In the biopics arena, Joaquin Phoenix, who really hasn't had a decent role since he played Nicole Kidman's teenage love slave in Gus Van Sant's To Die For, will Walk the Line with Reese Witherspoon. Together they play outlaw country legends/soul mates Johnny Cash and June Carter.

And in the race for a Truman Capote bio, Bennett Miller's Capote (Sept. 30), starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, will cross the finish line first. (Douglas McGrath's ode to the In Cold Blood writer, Have You Heard?, won't be out until early next year.) Keira Knightley stars in Domino (Oct. 14), a dark action thriller loosely based on actor Laurence Domino's daughter, who was a Ford model by day and a bounty hunter by night. And in the not-much-of-an-acting-stretch category, 50 Cent will basically play himself in Get Rich or Die Tryin' (Nov. 9).

Raking it in with Rowling

By the time you finish reading the following sentence, J.K. Rowling will probably have made another million dollars. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is scheduled to open Nov. 18. And if that doesn't satisfy the kid in you, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is set to hit the big screen Dec. 9. Coming sooner is Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist, opening on Sept 30.

Peter Jackson will put his own twist on the 1933 classic King Kong (Dec. 14), with Naomi Watts as the sacrificial blonde. Meanwhile, the LOTR director's former colleague Elijah Wood is starring in a low-budget adaptation of the bestseller Everything is Illuminated. Directed by Broadway star Liev Schreiber, Wood plays a Jewish American who journeys through contemporary Ukraine in an attempt to better understand his grandfather's Holocaust experience. Chicago director Rob Marshall has also taken on the risky business of adapting a beloved novel; his interpretation of Memoirs of a Geisha, starring Chinese beauty Ziyi Zhang, opens Dec 9. And your best bets for romcoms are Shopgirl - a love triangle starring Steve Martin, Claire Danes and Jason Schwartzman - and Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, starring Orlando Bloom and the always-adorable Kirsten Dunst.

Festival fever

On the local front, the 34th Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Oct 13-23) has plenty to boast about, even though it hasn't released its full program yet. Some of the highlights already announced include L'Enfant, the Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne feature that won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes, and Dear Wendy, the latest from Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg. Starring Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot), this cinematic oddity is about a group of gun-obsessed adolescent geeks who feel empowered by their pet weapons. Also screening at FNC is FreeZone, a Gaza Strip road trip starring Natalie Portman (for more info on the FNC, visit www.nouveaucinema.ca).

In other festival news, the eighth edition of the Montreal International Documentary Film Festival (Nov. 10-20) will screen over 100 real reels from all over the world (for more info, visit www.ridm.qc.ca). Image + Nation, Montreal's gay and lesbian film festival, will take place (Nov. 3-13 ) at Eaton Cinemas (for more info visit www.

image-nation.org). The film portion of the Pop Montreal (Sept. 28-Oct. 2) kicks off on Sept. 30 with Made in Secret, a B.C.-made indie about an East Van porn collective (for more info, visit www.popmontreal.com).

The Cinémathèque québécoise gets back into full swing with a retrospective of Agnès Varda (from now until Oct. 29). The Belgian filmmaker, known as the "Grand Dame of French New Wave," will present some of her films (Sept. 15-16, for more info, visit www.cinematheque.qc.ca

qc.ca). And finally, the 11th edition of Cinemania, a the festival of French films with English subtitles, runs Nov. 3-13 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (for more info, www.cinemaniafilmfestival.com).

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