Behind-the-scenes look at the season's most anticipated films

Online Bonus: More movie tidbits for 2007 openings

Sleuth (Oct. 26) While adapting this Tony-winning play about a jealous millionaire (Michael Caine) with refined taste and his wife's lover, director Kenneth Branagh discovered that his star has a passion for more than just performing. "I did lunch with Michael. He's a great [food critic]," Branagh says. "During downtime in rehearsals, I would listen to Michael's opinions on restaurants." According to Caine, the quickest way to size up a dining spot is by tasting its bread and coffee. "You have to get those right."

Slipstream (Oct. 26) Anthony Hopkins started developing this surreal comedy about a screenwriter who loses his mind as "a little experiment." He wrote it over three weeks in a stream of consciousness. "What's it about?" he says. "It's my view of the world." One scene, portraying a deadly shooting on the freeway, was inspired by a crime Hopkins witnessed firsthand in 1973, on his first day in L.A. According to the Oscar winner, he was walking past a mini-mall on Sunset Boulevard when people started shouting about a man with a gun who was going to kill a woman. A policeman at the scene turned to him and said, "Welcome to L.A."

Mr. Untouchable (Oct. 26) This gritty documentary tells the story of Leroy "Nicky" Barnes, one of the biggest heroin dealers in the 1970s. Director Marc Levin says Barnes repeatedly refused to do interviews for the film, but later he changed his mind after reading the screenplay for "American Gangster," Ridley Scott's film about rival Frank Lucas. Apparently, Barnes found it "full of B.S." and insisted that his story was worthy of "a Steven Spielberg film!"

Dan in Real Life (Oct. 26) Actress Juliette Binoche tells this story about working on the grown-up family comedy: "I wanted to surprise my actor-friends with the best pancake recipe for a scene in the film. During the shoot, I was staying at a hotel in Newport, R.I., so I asked the hotel's cook if we could invent a pancake recipe together. He agreed, and every Sunday we would rehearse and make those pancakes for the producers, the director and their children, but no actors -- they had to wait for the special day. But word spread: Everybody was waiting for the most gorgeous, delicious pancakes. The day finally arrived, everything was ready, everyone was excited. Suddenly, we realized that one of the kids in the cast had allergies, so we had to change the recipe and eliminate all wheat and yeast. And so all day, take after take, the actors had to eat these unspeakably heavy, tasteless pancakes. They were so sick afterward, none of them would talk about it."

Redacted (Nov. 16) As has become the custom in military films, the actors who were to play the soldiers in this Iraq war feature were put through two weeks of boot camp with real Army personnel to get them use to the hardships of soldiering. "We had built them a barracks in an abandoned factory in Amman, Jordan, that was extremely cold and, well, grotesque," says director Brian DePalma. "The very first night, while the rest of us were in our very comfortable hotel, we got a plaintive phone call asking, 'Aren't we coming back to the hotel?' Well, they worked so hard that, later, we let them. But not that first night."

Margot at the Wedding (Nov. 16) This family drama about two sisters takes place in their childhood home. "And it had to have a tree," director Noah Baumbach says, "because at a certain moment in the movie, the tree falls down." The crew members found the perfect house, but it didn't have a tree. So they found a dead tree nearby, brought it to the house on a barge and planted it. Baumbach was anxious on the day he was to film the tree falling because dropping the tree was a complex process, and he was only going to get one chance. "When it fell, the tree lurched about 10 feet and then dropped, like in slow motion. It was the most pathetic thing I'd ever seen." Fortunately, the tree fell so slowly that it didn't break, and the crew was able to drop it again the next day.

August Rush (Nov. 21) Director Kirsten Sheridan shared a special bond with lead Jonathan Rhys Meyers; they're both from Ireland and enjoy the native practice of slagging, or trading good-natured insults. "Jonny plays a rock musician, and I remember one scene where he performs before 500 people at a club in Manhattan. I spoke to him [before he went onstage], and he took his place at the microphone, and in front of everyone said, 'Kirsten Sheridan, did you just tell me to go up here and have an out-of-body experience? Are you joking? Is that your direction?' Jonny kept everything fun. He reminded me of home."

Enchanted (Nov. 21) For his final scene in this story of a fairy-tale prince brought shockingly to life in Manhattan, James Marsden had to get run over by a group of cyclists in Central Park. "They were all stuntmen, of course," Marsden says. "Stuntmen, as a rule, treat actors with great delicacy, and this was no exception. They were just gingerly bumping into me with the bikes. But since this was my last day, I said, 'Bring it on! Let me know how Peyton Manning feels after Ray Lewis hits him. It'll be funnier that way.' So they hit me, and my voice squealed like a little girl's. It was funnier."

Revolver (Dec. 7) In this film about a gambler who insults a mobster, there's a brief four-line scene in which Jason Statham comes to a certain realization while in an elevator. As filming went on, director Guy Ritchie became increasingly convinced that this elevator scene was the pivotal moment of the film. As a result, he filmed it again and again. The crew even took the elevator along when they switched locations, in case Ritchie wanted to shoot it again, which he did. And which take did he use? "The first one," Ritchie cheerfully admits.

Atonement (Dec. 7) During the making of this epic WWII tale in which Keira Knightley plays a woman torn away from the man she loves, director Joe Wright decided to film an elaborate war sequence that included the three principal actors, 1,000 extras and a crew of 300 in a single shot. A cease-fire was called after just four attempts, when the cameraman nearly collapsed. They eventually got the shot, which lasts five and a half minutes onscreen. No casualties were reported.

The Golden Compass (Dec. 7) This fantasy is filled with action and special effects, but among the scenes that most delighted stunt coordinator Paul Jennings were the flying scenes involving actress Eva Green. "Eva plays a witch," he says. "Not a nasty, gnarly witch, but a graceful, elegant witch who can float and fly. We thought we would have to use a stunt double for her scenes, but Eva was game to try, so we attached her to a hip harness, and she was great. Her role calls for her to run through battles and land and take off on ships, and her ability to do the moves elegantly and beautifully and within her character makes those scenes just fantastic."

The Walker (Dec. 7) Paul Schrader's film, a murder mystery centered on a gay man who accompanies Washington socialites to fancy dress balls, in some ways calls to mind the director's earlier film, "American Gigolo." "When Woody Harrelson agreed to play the lead, I decided he would have to wear a wig," Schrader says. "This gave me an idea. The most famous scene in "American Gigolo" is where Richard Gere is dressing. I thought, 'Let's include a scene here where Woody is undressing, and the last thing he takes off is his wig.' Woody was skeptical, but I told him, 'Listen, it's hard to shock an audience anymore. Extreme sex, extreme violence -- they've seen it all. But if you take off your hair ...' He went for it."

Alvin and the Chipmunks (Dec. 14) In this remake of the classic TV cartoon, the filmmakers included a number of small grace notes that connect the movie to the history of the characters. Jason Lee plays the actual piano on which David Seville composed "Witch Doctor" and "The Chipmunk Song," and his house number is 1958, the year the characters were created.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets (Dec. 21) Although an experienced actress and a veteran of the first film in this series, Diane Kruger confessed to feeling a little awestruck when Helen Mirren arrived to film her part. That feeling passed soon enough. "First, she couldn't have been nicer," Kruger says, "but the mood really broke when she had to film her first scene, in which her character, a scholar, had a long monologue full of difficult technical terminology. Helen wrote down the most difficult words on index cards and hid them around the set and then perfectly timed her movements to be near the cards at the correct moment in the speech. That took a lot of the pressure off."

Walk Hard (Dec. 21) In telling the life story of the fictional musical giant Dewey Cox, this parody of musical biopics like Ray and "Walk the Line" leaves no stone unturned. To capture Dewey's legendary libidinousness, the actors and extras had to spend quite a bit of time on the set au naturel. "It was incredibly weird for the first half-hour," director Jake Kasdan says, "and after that it was incredibly un-weird. Which, when you think about it, is even weirder."

The Great Debaters (Dec. 25) "The pace of change in the South is slower," says David Bomba, the production designer on this film set in the 1930s about a debate team from a small black college that faced Harvard for the national championship. "So if you get the word out that you need a desktop radio or a period-authentic musical instrument, you'll usually hear about one that's in an antique shop or attic." One thing Bomba didn't expect to find was an authentic and intact sharecropper's shack. The 9-foot-by-16-foot one-room wooden structure, last used by a family cook in the 1960s, was used in the film as a student's home. "I was thrilled," Bomba says. "We set that up on the shores of Caddo Lake on the Texas-Louisiana border, and I was transported back in time."

Persepolis (Dec. 25) Co-writer and co-director Marjane Satrapi enjoys getting praise but is amused by how some people go overboard. At the Toronto Film Festival, a journalist lavishly praised the film, which is based on Satrapi's graphic novel, and asked, "Is your grandmother still alive?" Satrapi was surprised because "the death of my grandmother is one of the [important] events of the film." Satrapi shared this story with actress Chiara Mastroianni, who voiced the character based on Marjane. "That's nothing," Chiara replied. "Several people have asked me what my father thinks of me doing this film." Chiara's father, the great actor Marcello Mastroianni, died in 1996.

The Water Horse (Dec. 25) "When you look at the story on paper," says director Jay Russell, "you see a story about a boy and monster and a loch, and you think 'What fun!' Later, when you're filming on a lake in New Zealand, and the temperature is freezing, and the machines are pouring on rain in torrents, and the water is turning into ice almost as soon as it hits the ground, fun is the furthest thing from your mind." Emily Watson, the actress who plays the boy's mother, says this experience will change the way she reads scripts. "I used to just look for my lines," she says. "Now, when I read, 'She runs through the rain,' I'll ask exactly what that means.'"

There Will Be Blood (Dec. 26) For this film version of the classic Upton Sinclair novel about the origins of the oil industry, filmmakers had to build a 60-foot derrick in barren Marfa, Texas, and then set fire to it. "There was a lot of anxiety about that on the set," says director Paul Thomas Anderson. "Our special-effects expert told us, 'I can start the fire, but I can't guarantee we can put it out.' " The filming went fine, but the experience made a big impression on Anderson. "I got a whole new appreciation for what firefighters go through."

The Orphanage (Dec. 28) For this Spanish thriller about a mother (Belen Rueda) who believes ghosts are living in an old orphanage, sound technician Xavi Mas walked around the house to pick up background noise for the movie. Mas ended up recording several odd sounds that he couldn't identify, even though the house was supposedly abandoned. Some of the noises -- eerily creaky floors and white noise -- appear in the final film.

Honeydripper (Dec. 28) Real musicians were cast to play band members in this John Sayles film centered in a Southern blues bar in the 1950s. One night, one of the musicians challenged another to a "blowdown" -- a harmonica-playing contest -- to be held in the lobby of the Hampton Inn where they were staying. "Word got out," producer Maggie Renzi says, "and the cast began to gather in the lobby. One cast member, a local actor, brought a full drum kit, guitar and keyboards. Another delivered a case of beer." The blowdown turned into an all-out jam session and gave birth to a new group, Honeydripper All-Star Band, which recently played the Monterey Jazz Festival.

-- With contributing writer Adam Dorsky

Photos: "Fred Claus": Jaap Buitendijk. "American Gangster": David Lee, Universal Studios. "Lions For Lambs": Davi James. "Love in the Time of Cholera: Daniel Daza, New Line Cinema. "I'm Not There": Jonathan Wenk, TWC.