Thanks to me for typing this up ;) It's a bit spolerish, so be warned.. Abandon Starring Katie Holmes, Benjamin Bratt, Charlie Hunnam, Zooey Deschanel, Melanie Lynskey. Written and Directed by: Stephan Gaghan The Pitch: "It's a love story fit into a psychological thriller." - Holmes Remember your most stressful college moment? That panicky flash when you just knew you'd screwed up your whole life? Well, that's nothing compared with what Catherine Burke (Holmes) goes through in Abandon, the directorial debut from Oscar winning Traffic director Gaghan. A student at an unnamed Ivy League-ish university, Catherine is suffering Twin traumas: the rigors of academia and the lingering effects of the disappearance of her boyfriend (Hunnam) years earlier. When he mysteriously reappears, she's dragged back into her past while growing increasingly entangled with the investigating detective (Bratt). "It's what we're feeling in those situations heightened to a very large degree," says Holmes. Gaghan, too, knows about stress. "I was rewriting the script until the day I started shooting," he says. "It left so little time for preparation that many things were improvised. We were rushing to get it going before the [proposed writers'] strike." Then came the hard part-taking over when original director Edward Zwick dropped out. "It was terrifying," says Gaghan. "You show up on set never having looked through a camera, and these actors are standing there saying, 'What do we do?'' The Lowdown Great screenwriters don't always make first-rate directors (remember Robert Towne's Personal Best?), but Gaghan could have the goods. (Oct. 18) Phone Booth Starring: Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Katie Holmes, Forest Whitaker, Radha Mitchell Written by: Larry Cohen Directed by: Joel Schumacher The Pitch:: "It begins like a joke and ends up a nightmare: 'A guy walks into a phone booth in New York...' " The "Guy" is Farrell, recently of Minority Report, playing a slimy entertainment publicist who sneaks away to call his would-be mistress (Holmes). When the pay phone rings, he picks it up, and is told that if he hangs up, he will be shot. Written by B-movie vet Cohen (It's Alive), Phone Booth initially attracted interest from Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay and actors Will Smith and Jim Carrey. but it was Schumacher who committed, bringing aboard his 2000 Tigerland discovery Farrell. Taking the cheap route, Schumacher made the real-time thriller in L.A. instead of Manhattan. Taking a risk, he shot the film in just 10 days, working from dawn till dusk in a clip of 12 pages a day. "It went better than I thought, because when we began, I didn't think we could do it," quips the director, who hoped the frenetic pace would set the appropriate tone. However, upon wrapping, Schumacher went back into production after opting to recast the sniper: Ron Ellard (formerly of ER) played the villain during principal photography, but Sutherland (Fox's 24) replaced him for the final cut. (Schumacher declined to comment on the switch). Phone Booth was slated for release last December, but Schumacher says Fox decided to wait and let Farrell's post-Tigerland projects turn him into a household name. But when American Outlaws and Hart's War both shot blanks at the box office, Fox held off until after Minority Report. "This guy's for real," says Schumacher. "This is the film that proves it." The Lowdown: He better be right, Phone Booth is largely a one-man show (Nov 15)

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