It'll be reacquaintance season for some classic characters in Robert Zemeckis' retelling of the Norse legend "Beowulf"; "Fred Claus," a North Pole comedy about Santa (Paul Giamatti) and his black-sheep brother (Vince Vaughn); and "I Am Legend," with Will Smith in a new take on the sci-fi thriller "The Omega Man."

There's even the return of a venerable genre, the Western, which has fallen on hard times in modern Hollywood. Crowe and Christian Bale star in the remake "3:10 to Yuma," about a poor rancher helping to escort a captured gang leader, while a second Old West tale comes close on its heels with "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford."

Brad Pitt, starring as James, said his own celebrity helped him sympathize with the outlaw, whose notoriety as a heroic Robin Hood figure was heavily fabricated.

"I liked the themes of fame, the obsession with fame. The idea of the Jesse James character being trapped behind a facade and not knowing how to get out," said Pitt, who plays James in the last year of his life as he lapses into paranoia over potential betrayal by accomplices and intimates, including young idolizer Ford (Casey Affleck).

"We operate under the assumption everyone is pretty much up on the Jesse James myth, so we start dissecting the myth," Pitt said.

Here's a closer look at some fall and holiday releases:

Reclaiming her throne

Nine years after "Elizabeth," Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and director Shekhar Kapur reteam for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," resuming the story of Britain's Queen Elizabeth I.

The new film has the spinster monarch juggling romantic temptation for Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), opposition from Mary Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton) and the threat of conquest by Spain and its armada.

"The first film was about denial, what one has to do to sort of extricate oneself from oneself in order to rule. At the beginning of this film, she's still in a place of denial, but this film is more about acceptance in a way," Blanchett said.

Inheriting the Earth

"I Am Legend," adapted from the same novel as "The Omega Man," takes place after a plague that wipes out most of humanity and transforms others into bloodthirsty nocturnal creatures.

Will Smith stars as a survivor - and possibly the last human on Earth.

Smith said he spends much of the movie in silence, with just a dog for company. To help capture the character's desperate loneliness, Smith met with prisoners of war and inmates who lived in solitary confinement, including one man left alone so long he claimed he had trained cockroaches to gather food for him.

"It's fun to have a moment by yourself alone, a little peace and quiet, but peace and quiet turns into your worst nightmare very, very quickly," Smith said.