What's Unavoidable, Unmissable and Uncovered This Fall

By RICHARD CORLISS, Richard Schickel

After the burly ho-hummery of summer blockbusters, the autumn arts season is supposed to offer innovation, cerebration, the thrill of threat. Not so much this year. From heroes (James Bond) to villains (the murderous Dr. Crippen), everything new is old again. The first single from the fall CD by Beyonce says it all: Deja Vu. Seen this, heard that. And, if it's any good, happy to feel it again.

Any changes are baby steps. Best-selling sportsman Michael Lewis (Moneyball) shifts from baseball to college football. In The Departed, Martin Scorsese moves from the gangs of New York to the Boston mob. Care for a series based on the backstage agita at a sketch-comedy show? NBC has two of them. And, yes, there's a new Bond--craggy Daniel Craig--but Casino Royale follows the recent formula of using a prequel to extend a franchise.

We've broken the coming season down in three ways: events you won't be able to avoid, smaller treats you won't want to miss and the new faces of the season. Those are people who, by the time winter cracks its knuckles, we expect to be full-fledged members of the pop-culture A team. Some, like Craig, you may already vaguely know, and others, like America Ferrera on the ABC soap-com Ugly Betty, are brand-new and promising faces. Maybe fall is going to get hot after all.

MOVIES

A Soft Comedy With a Hard Core UNMISSABLE

Here's a nice relationship comedy to warm the cooler months. Half a dozen young folks meet in a salon to watch the cabaret, talk out their troubles and, as the mood strikes them, have sex--hard core and up close. Shortbus could be called the first middle-class porno movie, but that description wouldn't be fair to this engaging study of love and lust from John Cameron Mitchell, star and author of the off-Broadway hit Hedwig and the Angry Inch. At the film's center is Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), a sex therapist who gets no kick from sex. She and her friends illustrate, amusingly and quite graphically, the way the artist class of post-9/11 urbanites gropes toward intimacy. Not weird enough for you? O.K., it's also a musical.

Investing in Bond Futures UNCOVERED

They are the three most powerful numbers in show business, capable of transforming mortal men into movie gods. So when Daniel Craig was offered the role of 007 in Casino Royale, the 21st James Bond film, he was torn. Should he decline and keep building a steady career of small parts in big films (such as Angelina Jolie's lover-rival in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, a Mossad agent in Munich) and big parts in small films (Layer Cake's nice-guy coke dealer, Ted Hughes in Sylvia)? Or should he accept and become forever the man who was Bond? He turned to Pierce Brosnan, four-time veteran of Her Majesty's Secret Service, for advice. "Go for it," Brosnan told him. "It's a blast."

With blond hair, ice-blue eyes and the profile of a professional boxer, Craig, 38, although a Brit, isn't an obvious choice to play the superspy--which is the point. Based on Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale goes back to the beginning, when Bond was just as likely to tear up a bar as pull up to one for a shaken martini. Sent to bring down a terrorist group by beating its banker in a high-stakes poker game, Craig's Bond isn't Sean Connery charming or Roger Moore smooth. "He's rough around the edges, less refined than he becomes later in life," Craig says. Film audiences like their heroes conflicted. "He falls in love with a woman who's his equal, not just some dumb broad he beds."

Craig plays Bond pre-license to kill, giving him more freedom to make the spy his own. But fans can rest easy: "He's still Bond. I'm not screwing around with this iconographic figure." That means fast cars, shoot-outs and three new Bond girls. ("Hell on earth," Craig says, smiling.) Seems Brosnan was right: Bonds do have more fun.

The Stations of The Double Cross UNAVOIDABLE

Since he's done the gangs of New York more than once--not to mention their outpost in Las Vegas--you would think Martin Scorsese might be running out of underworld turf and wiseguy populations to explore. But we often measure a great filmmaker's merit by the power of his obsessions, by the helpless thrall in which they hold him.

So here he is, back on the vengeful streets again. The venue this time is new to him--Boston--and his story comes from even farther afield. It is an adaptation of the highly acclaimed Hong Kong action film Infernal Affairs (which a TIME critic named one of the year's 10 Best Movies in 2004). But even twice-told, the tale is wonderful--a desperate frenzy of bitter, brutal irony. The local mob boss (Jack Nicholson) has planted an informer (Matt Damon) in the elite police unit, the sole purpose of which is to break up his operation. The cops, in turn, have introduced a snitch (Leonardo DiCaprio) into his mob. Both sides are frantic to trap the intruding rats, with the possibilities of bloody betrayal rising exponentially as the movie unfolds.

From Scorsese's previous work we know the movie will have other strengths: fabulous performances, a sanguinary body count, dialogue that has the cunning and knockdown ferocity of a below-the-belt punch. Could The Departed finally bring Scorsese his long-deserved, long-denied Oscar? Probably not: genteel Hollywood admires his craft but not his New York address. The Departed is, nonetheless, one of the few fall films that knifes into the pulpy heart of American darkness and stirs the soul of those who still treasure the power of movies to wound our endless (and fatuous) good cheer.

TELEVISION

The Drama Of Comedy UNAVOIDABLE

"It's not going to be a very good show tonight. And I think you should change the channel." That does not sound like an auspicious beginning for a TV series, but it's part of the opening scene of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a drama that aims to give late-night comedy the West Wing treatment. After Wes Mendell (Judd Hirsch), the producer of a sketch show (also called Studio 60), is forced to kill a controversial skit, he lets loose a live on-camera rant. "We're all being lobotomized," he says, "by this country's most influential medium." He is fired and replaced by two former Studio 60 writers (Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford) with a history of painkiller and cocaine problems. Can they turn the show around while keeping their noses, so to speak, clean?

You would not expect a network to showcase a series whose premise is that broadcast TV needs to be saved. You would not expect that network to be NBC, which still airs Saturday Night Live. And finally you would not expect that network to debut a second show about a sketch-comedy series. (Tina Fey's comedy within a comedy, 30 Rock, debuts in October.) But when you're in fourth place, you'll try anything--twice--and NBC and producers insist that Studio 60 is about not SNL but a fictional lame sketch show. Studio 60 is from West Wing producers Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme, and the show's style is West Coast Wing: the same banter, high-pressure setting and speechiness. But Hollywood-insider stories are a notoriously tough sell to big TV audiences, which may have a hard time granting censors and ratings wars the same earnest dramatic weight as terrorists and shooting wars. What may interest viewers more are the show's real-life parallels. Perry had a Vicodin problem while starring in Friends, and Sorkin has had well-publicized drug issues and network run-ins. (He left Wing in 2003 after problems with production delays.) Now they're doing a show that says talent can redeem a checkered past. Let's see if their lives can imitate their art.

Rockin' Robbery: It's a Gas, Gas, Gas UNMISSABLE

This sitcom about a band of down-and-outers planning to burglarize the Rolling Stones' front man used to be called, with Snakes on a Plane directness, Let's Rob Mick Jagger. The folks at ABC changed the title to Let's Rob ..., then to the head-scratching The Knights of Prosperity. At some point, one suspects, they will redub it Please Don't Watch This Sitcom, but don't listen to them. This blue-collar heist comedy is a riot by any name.

Eugene Gurkin (Donal Logue) is a janitor with a big ambition. All right, a medium-size one: to open a bar whose signature drink would be the gin Eugene, "a pint glass of nice, cheap room-temperature gin." Lacking the start-up scratch for his business, he hatches a plan when he sees Jagger, who will do cameos throughout the series, on an E! celebrity-home show. He recruits a motley band of burglars--including a lawyer turned cabbie, a security guard and a bombshell waitress with a shady past--and christens them the Knights of the title. "Issue one," says one of his recruits. "That name sucks."

A fair point. But the overblown moniker also perfectly captures Eugene, a Homer Simpson with dreams of Homeric glory. To him, his plan is not just brilliant but also noble. Logue plays him like Jackie Gleason doing Don Quixote, with such cocky, naive brio that you can't hold the guy's larcenous vision against him. "So what if we're not conventionally handsome--or educated--or sober?", he asks his crew. "We have dreams too, don't we?" It remains to be seen if the bumbling Knights will get, as their quarry once sang, what they want. But this show promises to give fans of picaresque comedy what they need.

Her Ugliness Is Only Skin Deep UNCOVERED

She's the fresh face of the 2006 TV season. And what a face it is. Eyes barricaded by giant glasses, teeth encased in metal, hair tortured into an ungainly do, Betty Suarez does not look as if she should be an assistant at a high-fashion magazine. And that is why she's been hired--so that her boss, a tomcat publishing scion, won't sleep with her. To cast the lead of ABC's satirical soap Ugly Betty, producers turned to--this being Hollywood--a lovely young actress. America Ferrera, 22, may dirty up nicely, but she also gives Betty a bright-eyed, infectious buoyancy. "Betty knows she is smart," she says--revealing her own perfect teeth--"but she knows her faults." Executive producer Salma Hayek (who has a recurring bit part in Betty) praises Ferrera's effervescence. "This girl is a superstar because she shines," says Hayek, who first saw Ferrera playing a Rubenesque teen in Real Women Have Curves. In Ugly Betty, Ferrera aims to prove that they also have braces.

BOOKS

King of the Mountain UNAVOIDABLE

In literature, nothing succeeds like failure. Maybe that's why Charles Frazier's 1997 novel Cold Mountain, about a Confederate deserter's miserable journey home, surprised almost everybody by selling 4 million copies and winning the National Book Award. Frazier's publisher is betting it wasn't a fluke: Random House spent $8 million to buy his new novel Thirteen Moons, which comes out in October.

This is not Return to Cold Mountain. Our hero is Will Cooper, an orphan who takes charge of a remote trading post on the edge of Cherokee territory in the early 19th century. Will forms bonds with two Cherokee father figures: a wise, stoic named Bear and a violent but fascinating nut job, Featherstone. He also forms a less filial bond with an elusive half-Indian damsel named Claire. Frazier works on an epic scale, but his genius is in the details--he has a scholar's command of the physical realities of early America and a novelist's gift for bringing them to life. Thirteen might just turn out to be his lucky number.

The Greenspan Of the Gridiron UNMISSABLE

Michael Lewis writes about sports with the dry, quantitative eye of a former bond salesman with a master's degree from the London School of Economics--which he was, and has. "An NFL football field is a tightly strung economy," he writes. "Everything on it comes at a price." You would think that angle would suck all the fun out of his storytelling, but it only enriches it.

This fall Lewis gives football the Moneyball treatment in The Blind Side (October), which tells the story of a fatherless, dirt-poor little boy named Michael Oher who gets adopted by an evangelical couple, grows up to be not so little and goes on to become a top NFL prospect (he's currently playing for Ole Miss). In and around Oher's story Lewis analyzes the ways the entire game of football has changed since the rise of the booming, punishing quarterback sack: those who leave their blind sides unprotected pay a very heavy price indeed.

The Doctor Is Out of His Mind UNCOVERED

If Hawley Crippen were a fictional character, his name would have been Dr. Jekyll. Unfortunately for his wife he was real. Born in Michigan in 1862, Crippen was a doctor, and by all accounts mild mannered to a fault. True, his actress wife was a world-class shrew. And, yes, he had a younger mistress. But when you read Erik Larson's Thunderstruck (October), you'll still be shocked at the lengths to which Crippen went in concealing his wife's body in his basement--doctors, they know from dismemberment. When the cops came sniffing, Crippen fled the country aboard a cruise ship, making headlines around the world. Fortunately Dr. Crippen didn't count on a most unlikely nemesis, obsessive electronics genius Guglielmo Marconi, whose newly invented radio played a key role in Crippen's downfall. That curious matchup is perfect for Larson, whose The Devil in the White City also combined true crime and a history lesson to bloodcurdling, best-selling effect.

MUSIC

A Comeback and a Takeover UNAVOIDABLE

When Jay-Z threw himself a retirement party at Madison Square Garden in 2003, few people believed the genre's best storyteller would stay away long. To begin with, Jay-Z loves rap like Kanye West loves Kanye West. And how does one retire from rap? Do you stop speaking--or just stop speaking in rhyme? For a while Jay-Z did the former, at least publicly, and seemed content running Def Jam records. Then he made token concert appearances with Linkin Park and Phish. There is no greater symptom of ennui than attending a Phish concert, and sure enough an as-yet-untitled Jay-Z record is set to arrive Nov. 21. Nine songs are already complete, and a tour to coincide with the release is in the works. No one at Def Jam will confirm any of that, which is standard operating procedure. The man likes his secrets.

Speaking of which, if there's one person guaranteed to be Jay-Z's rival in musical ubiquity this fall it's Beyonce Knowles--who has absolutely not been dating the rapper for the past four years. Knowles' 2003 solo debut yielded one indelible classic, Crazy in Love, featuring a cameo from her Not Boyfriend. Jay-Z and Beyonce are back together for Deja Vu, the first single from B'Day, which comes out Sept. 5, the day after her 25th birthday. Beyonce has said the album came to her in a dream, a dream produced by the Neptunes and Swizz Beatz, among others. B'Day sticks to Beyonce's multiplatinum formula--driving hip-pop with a whiff of glamour--and should you somehow miss her on the radio, she'll hunt you down at the multiplex when Dreamgirls is released in December. Unlike some people, she's not the retiring type.

The King of Rock, Soul and Restraint UNMISSABLE In 2001 Solomon Burke was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Mary J. Blige. Imagine Al Pacino receiving an Oscar from Juliette Lewis, and you have some idea of the moment's hoo-ah! scenery-chewing potential. Burke, known to the soul-music cult as the King of Rock and Soul, once held every note as if it were his last, and on his mid-career albums you might have believed it to be yours too. At 65, he has lost a little breath but gained restraint, and Nashville, Burke's album of country covers (out Sept. 26) finds him undersinging and inhabiting songs (Tom T. Hall's That's How I Got to Memphis, Patty Griffin's Up the Mountain) in ways he never did at his vocal peak. The aging musician doing his best work is a modern cliche, as is a collaboration with contemporary artists as a form of tribute. But Nashville is a great way to discover a legendary voice, and Burke's guests--Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris--know their job is to pay tribute to the songs, not the man.

Don't Snooze on Sleepy Brown UNCOVERED

Patrick (Sleepy) Brown has been making other people famous for more than a decade. He has co-written dozens of hits (including Waterfalls for TLC) and spiced up a handful of others (that's him singing the chorus of OutKast's The Way You Move) with his super-smooth vocals. On Mr. Brown, out Sept. 26, Sleepy finally gets his chance to shine with an R&B album that has more than just bedroom eyes and the requisite guest spots (Big Boi, Pharrell). It also has lots of humor and a refreshingly non-exploitative view of women.

With reporting by Jumana Farouky/London, James Poniewozik, Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles, Lev Grossman, Josh Tyrangiel