The holiday-time movie releases are starting to pile up with their usual feverish frequency. Some have Christmas themes, like the widely reviled Vince Vaughn vehicle Fred Claus that’s already roadkill on the lost highway of cinema history; others, like Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, are timed to make an impression as close to Academy Award-voting season as possible. Here are some of the biggest gorillas set to dominate New York’s screens in the next six weeks.

The Mist is one of the standout short stories in Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew collection; the elegantly suspenseful novella tells the tale of terrified Maine townspeople seeking refuge in the local supermarket from a sudden, all devouring fog. According to this Times profile, director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) changed the ending from open-ended to Apocalyptic, a bold choice that could either bomb or blow our inner adolescent away. (Today)

The artsy Todd Haynes Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There opens at Film Forum and elsewhere; good luck getting tickets but check out the superb soundtrack, which boasts two discs of Dylan covers by a cast of thousands including Stephen Malkmus, Yo La Tengo, Willie Nelson and Cat Power. (Today)

Skipping ahead to December finds New Line Cinema attempting to relive their Lord of the Rings glory days with The Golden Compass, part one in a potential fantasy trilogy (if this one doesn't tank). Adapted from the first of three books in Philip Pullman’s extraordinary His Dark Materials series, the $205 million production stars Nicole Kidman (pictured above) as an avaricious scientist bent on recovering the titular device, which grants oracular powers to the story’s 12-year-old heroine. Pullman, an English agnostic, intended the book to serve in part as a corrective to C.S. Lewis’s Christian allegory The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe; the Catholic League has called for a boycott of the film, right on cue. (December 7th)