Historically, Labor Day tends to be a snoozefest in terms of new releases, but not this year, since Robert Rodriguez's long-awaited Planet Terror spin-off is finally set for release, in the wake of The Expendables' success, no less ... Danny Trejo's knife-wielding character was generating his own folklore, as it appeared the project was just another one of Rodriguez's great genre ideas, but everything came together in mid-2009 as cameras rolled that July in Austin. We're psyched for the Lindsay Lohanness, but really we're primed for more Cherry Darling and Jessica Alba playing opposing twin sisters. We hope the franchise talk -- both Rodriguez and Trejo have a trilogy in mind -- comes to fruition. Can we start to dream about Sin City 2 again?

Renown music-video director Anton Corbijn created an art-scene frenzy with his Joy Division biography, Control, back in 2007/08. Without any intended irony, we love that this production is so non-American (Hollywood) in its casting. All of the players surrounding Clooney should vie for the spotlight here, especially Thekla Reuten (if you've seen In Bruges, you'll know who she is) and the sensation-causing Violante Placido. Meanwhile, screenwriter Rowan Joffe has our attention, but more so for another 2010 film, Brighton Rock, his adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, which also finds him making his debut as director.

Amir Bar-Lev (director of My Kid Could Paint That, producer of Trouble the Water) quickly is becoming a premiere documentarian -- though he's looking to make the jump to features with a Jerry Garcia biopic as his potential next project. We'll see what next step he takes after Tillman wins the Best Documentary Oscar. We're predicting the victory now! It'll battle it out with Restrepo.

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long's on/off/on romance is like a real-life Paper Heart. Maybe that's what attracted documentarian Nanette Burstein (American Teen, The Kid Stays in the Picture) to make the jump to feature filmmaking.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct was the highest grossing specialty release in its debut frame, and distributor Music Box Films keeps us interested by releasing part two a mere week later.

Unfortunately, renown director Yimou Zhang's remake of Blood Simple. initially has been received as well as Joel and Ethan Coen's version of The Ladykillers. We'll still see it, but our eyes are on the filmmaker's next project, The Love of the Hawthorn Tree.

Writer-director James C. Strouse's unexpected follow-up to Grace Is Gone is an alumnus of Sundance's Class of '99, when Moon was the Sam Rockwell movie to see and co-star Rooney Mara probably had yet to hear of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I imagine the young actresses here benefitted from a Rockwell clinic; he is, after all, the Lebron James of acting (minus the unappealing ego).

I'm somewhat surprised this road movie didn't travel more of the festival circuit in the U.S., it radiates the term "crowd-pleaser".

Lixin Fan was one of the producers of the excellent documentary Up the Yangtze and here he makes his directorial debut, another look at China as an emerging superpower. Read Slant Magazine's review.