Oh yes, we're getting more Cats & Dogs, and this time around, the film will be led by the nipply Robin (Chris O'Donnell) and the largest smile of innocence -- 30 Rock's Jack McBrayer. The Hollywood Reporter posts that both actors have picked up leads in the next installment -- Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Get the pun? It's so Bondish. I wonder if the feline will be accompanied by abrocats.

Anyhow, in this installment, the felines and canines continue to battle for control of Earth, but that's all we're getting. The IMDb says the two actors will play "Shane" and "Chuck," but that's it. That being said, it's not too hard to imagine McBrayer's role in this, if he continues with the soft, goofy innocence.

Still, I just can't get behind this premise. I mean, between Bengals that act like dogs and could lay the smackdown, and laser cats, those dogs would be TOAST. Easily. Well, maybe that super-scary dog would level the playing field...

I grew up reading Charlotte's Web and watching Mister Ed and the Francis (the Talking Mule, with Donald O'Connor) movies on TV, so I have a very warm spot in my heart for talking animals. They can inspire wondrous flights of fantasy, lift the spirits with good-natured humor, and lead to a deep and abiding respect for nature and the environment.

Of course, watching the Yogi Bear cartoons once made me think I could take on a black bear foraging for food at our family's camping site in Yellowstone National Park -- I was six years old and had to be physically restrained -- so I can see the down side as well. Still, dozens of animated films have made it abundantly clear that it's possible to lend human voices to the animal kingdom without dumbing the material down to idiocy and, when done right (Babe, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, Joe's Apartment), live-action talking animals also deserve to be a treasured part of our cinematic heritage.

But not these. Here are seven (mostly) live-action movies featuring talking animals that attack our sense of what makes a movie good.

7. Underdog (2007)

When Hollywood screws around with my cherished childhood memories, I strain to give them the benefit of the doubt. There's no excuse, though, for this abomination of a movie. I realize that Wally Cox's dweeby voice would be impossible for someone else to replicate, but Jason Lee? Really?! A huge chunk of the original cartoon's charm was the very simple (cheap) animation, which relied upon the writers to come up with witty things for the actors to say. None of that was transplanted to the live-action movie and I can't imagine any children looking back fondly upon this version of Underdog in the future.

To: Scott Weinberg, managing editor, Cinematical
From: Eric D. Snider, blogger/reviewer
Subject: Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Hey Scott --

When you assigned me to review Beverly Hills Chihuahua, I assumed it was because we both expected it to be terrible, and you knew I would enjoy writing a review ripping it apart. The film's trailers certainly don't do it any favors, and the basic premise alone -- a spoiled lapdog gets lost in Mexico and has to find her way home -- almost makes me reconsider my career path.

So I'm afraid I have to disappoint you by reporting that, as it turns out, Beverly Hills Chihuahua isn't awful. It's not even really annoying. It's actually kind of ... almost ... sort of ... OK.

I know! I was as surprised as you are skeptical. And I know what you're going to say. You're going to point out that I also kind of liked Yours, Mine & Ours, which -- heaven help me -- was made by the same director, Raja Gosnell. In my defense, let me remind you that I hated Big Momma's House and the Scooby-Doo movies, which he also directed. I am by no means a Raja Gosnell apologist. If such a thing as a Raja Gosnell apologist exists, I am not it.

But Beverly Hills Chihuahua -- or BHC, as the kids are calling it -- isn't the braying, garish nightmare that the trailers make it out to be, or that we've come to expect from Disney's live-action-excrement factory. In fact, once it gets the dumb "Talk to the paw!" jokes out of its system, it's actually a reasonably charming, mostly benign kids' movie that adults can watch without their heads exploding. I even laughed a few times. Honest-to-goodness laughter!

Sometimes I oooh over talk of re-energizing an old franchise; sometimes I cringe and sometimes, like today, my brow is so damned furrowed that I probably have about 20 new wrinkles. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Warner Bros. is going back to Yogi Bear and YellowJellystone Park.

Oh yes, the Hanna-Barbera classic is getting developed into a big-screen feature by the pens of Joshua Sternin and Jeffrey Ventimilia, with Ash Brannon attached to direct. That means a mixture of That 70's Show exec producers and the co-writer and director of Surf's Up. It will be live-action with a CG Yogi and Boo Boo.

Now sure, the chipmunks made a comeback, but at least they have an uber popular Christmas song that keeps them in the memory banks. Something like Speed Racer had the effects going for it. Will kids go wild for a character from the '50s that gets into good-natured fun at a park? And who would voice them? Better yet, simply: WHY? Maybe I'm in the minority, but this doesn't seem like the best idea.

What do you think? Weigh in below ...

Click image above to enlarge

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Disney's Bolt, which boasts a voice cast that includes John Travolta and some girl named Miley Cyrus (maybe you've heard of her; looks a little like that other girl Hannah Montana ...). The flick, which will be presented in fully awesome Disney Digital 3D, tells of a heroic dog (Travolta) on a hit TV show who really believes he has superpowers. A nice reality check comes when he's accidentally shipped from Hollywood to New York City (aka the real world) and has to somehow make his way back home with help from an old cat and an overweight hamster.

Written by Dan Fogelman (Cars, Fred Claus), Bolt looks to continue Disney's successful run in the Digital 3D business, joining other films like Meet the Robinsons and the Hannah Montana Concert Tour. It's fun, charming ... and who doesn't love a few solid one-liners from an overweight hamster?

Bolt zooms into theaters on November 21.

You escaped summer and spent the month of September watching "eh" films do "blah" business at the box office, while tons of press folk shouted praise for (insert festival film here). Release dates keep switching, movies are on the, well, move, and you still don't know exactly what you should be looking forward to over the next couple months. Here are five to get you started:

5. Yes Man

When: In theaters December 18th.
What's It About: Jim Carrey stars as a dude who says 'no' to everything until some guru hits him in the forehead, and then -- whaddya know -- he begins to say 'yes' to everything instead.
Who Should Watch: People who loved Liar, Liar and have been desperately waiting for Jim Carrey to return to comedic form. Guys who like to get lost in Zooey Deschanel's eyes (raises hand). Folks who say 'no' more than they say 'yes'.
If You Dig This, Check These Trailers Out: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (October 3), Zack and Miri Make a Porno (October 31), Four Christmases (November 26)



Four more after the jump ...

It looks like another quiet week in the land of the geek -- particularly since all my friends are off at Fantastic Fest. If you're one of the lucky people attending, eat a Wild at Artichoke Hearts pizza for me at the Alamo Drafthouse. I lie awake at night thinking about it, and wishing for the skill to replicate it.

• The biggest news of the weekend was a story that hit Variety late Friday night: Stephen Chow has landed the role of Kato in The Green Hornet and the director's chair. Rumors and Seth Rogen's wishes have attached him for some time, but now it's official, and definitely shows that the project is going to be heavy on the comedy. (Incidentally, I never realized before now what huge Green Hornet fans my geek parents were -- let's just say Rogen's ears must be burning.) The movie is scheduled to be released June 25th, 2010.
  

• Tintin has run into some major financial problems. According to the LA Times, Universal has passed on the film, leaving Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson to scramble for a new studio to financially back them. It's as embarrassing as you can imagine -- not only because its two of the biggest names in the business, but because Spielberg may have to make nice with Paramount (who's financing half the film) just as he and David Geffen are trying to extricate themselves from it. It also leaves Spielberg without a project to direct, as Tintin was supposed to be next in line, and it delays the whole thing even longer. But hey, at least struggling directors the world over can now do something they never thought possible -- feel just like Spielberg!
  

Arriving at my place of lodging shortly before 3:00 a.m. very late on Saturday night (or early this Sunday morning), it felt like a short night at Fantastic Fest. That's not to say that everybody parties until dawn, but with three (sometimes four) screens pumping out a steady stream of genre flicks all day long -- some of which don't start until well past midnight -- Fantastic Fest attendees might be forgiven for losing track of "normal" hours.

That's what happened to me on Friday night, which stretched well into Saturday morning. But before that craziness ensued, there were the films, and I got to see a typically odd combination, beginning with Ole Bornedal's Just Another Love Story. One of two productions that the Danish director made last year, Just Another Love Story plays like While You Were Sleeping on acid, which is basically how Alamo Drafthouse / Fantastic Fest programmer Zack Carlson described it in his introduction. A family man is mistaken for the boyfriend of an accident victim in a coma. When she wakes up, the deception ensues.

Rather than romantic comedy hijinks, Just Another Love Story pushes quickly into dark dramatics and the fantasy of a mid-life crisis before circling back around to the territory inhabited by Jonathan Demme's Something Wild. I followed that up with The Substitute, also directed by Bornedal, which was a big box office success in Denmark. It's easy to see why. The terrific Paprika Steen lets her hair down, so to speak, as a farmer's wife who is possessed by an alien life form.

Kids are fascinated with monsters and scary stuff, so why aren't there more good kid-friendly horror movies? With the exception of TV, I only found a handful, including such gems as Ernest Scared Stupid (1991), Hocus Pocus (1993) and The Haunted Mansion (2003). On the plus side, there's The Watcher in the Woods (1980), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) and The Witches (1990). The problem is pretty obvious: these movies are either too scary or too stupid, and the middle ground is a very thin line. So if nothing else, writer Chris McKenna and director Anthony Leondis, both making their big-screen debut with Igor, have conjured an uneasy way to pull it off, even if the experience will be radically different for both parents and kids.

Igor is set in a perpetually cloudy kingdom where mad scientists compete in the annual "evil science fair." The winner's diabolical creation will be used to blackmail the rest of the world so that the kingdom can continue to support itself. John Cusack voices the hunchbacked title hero, an assistant who dreams of inventing his own creations. When his master (voiced by John Cleese) meets with an accident, he gets his chance. The first thing off his workbench is a giant monster called Eva (voiced by Molly Shannon), who accidentally turns out to be good. There's a whole subplot about another evil scientist Dr. Schadenfreude (voiced by Eddie Izzard) who wants to steal Eva so that he can win the competition and overthrow the king (voiced by, of all people, Jay Leno!).

Keira Knightley has to be getting fed up with those cumbersome period costumes. I mean, it helps that she's a waif and doesn't really need to worry about corset issues, but the wardrobe is still not all that pleasant to climb into. After being a Duchess, and heading into Lear-land, Variety reports that Keira Knightley is going to star in a new film called Last Night. (No, this isn't a re-do of Don McKellar's film.) Starring Eva Mendes, Sam Worthington, and Guillaume Canet, the film focuses on a married couple with cheating temptations -- he spends time with a colleague he's attracted to, while she comes across her past love. (Sounds just like a moment out of My So-Called LIfe. You know.. Angela's mom hunting down her ex while her dad lusts for that Lowenthal woman.) The production will begin next month in New York. Can Knightley handle modern fare these days? Weigh in below!

Now, this next news isn't Pirates related, but still Disney-riffic. Variety reports that Dwayne Johnson -- aka The Rock -- is going to help turn another Disney ride into another big film. Forget Mr. Toad's Wild Ride; Johnson is taking on Tomorrowland. Disney is creating a space-centric starring vehicle for the actor, and they swear it's not based on Tomorrowland, but Variety seems to be sure. I say: If they do that, I want my Figment!

Finally, Carrie Fisher is getting herself some interesting work. While Princess Leia is being pretty mellow these days, The Hollywood Reporter posts that she is in negotiations to star in Sorority Row with Jamie Chung and Audrina Patridge. Yes, this is a remake of the ol' '80s flick The House on Sorority Row. Not surprisingly, Fisher would be the house's sorority mother if she signs on the dotted line. Will we ever get a moment to see her in a nice role again, and not a goofy cameo? Han Solo needs to come and save her from mediocre work.