Oh, 2008 … where has the time all gone to? It seems like just yesterday that we were cringing at the faux Golden Globes, learning about Sweding, and seriously debating Juno’s chance at winning Best Picture. What fools we were! Perhaps we ought to head into the last year of The Aughts with a better game plan.

With that in mind, I’ve devised a list of films that I’m excited to see (for the first time or not) and talk about in the coming 12 months. Later in the week, we’ll take a look at some movies we saw at festivals in 2008 which now have a release date in 2009, and also films which have no release date, but which we expect to see show up on the festival circuit in the coming months. But we’re going to get the macro out of the way first: after the jump, you’ll find three Big, Stupid Hollywood Movies which I’m assuming will be awful, but possibly in an interesting way. Do share the titles you have your own eyes on in the comments.

The Taking of Pelham 123 — The IMDb boards are full of debate over the ethical specifics of this Tony Scott-directed, Denzel Washington-starring remake of the 70s classic. A sample: “Pulp Fiction (edit: I mean Resevoir Dogs) had the “Color names” (mr brown, mr blue etc.), a direct reference to the original Pelham. What if the new Pelham also has the color names?” worries  FelixVanNorten. “I bet people are going to be all mad over it saying it is lame that they stole it from Resevoir Dogs.” Yes, probably! File this one under Probable Trainwrecks We Won’t Be Able to Ignore.

Julie and Julia — Julie Powell’s blog-to-book account of a year spent cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 is notable amongst first-person food memoirs, in that it avoids the easy crutches of eating-as-pathway to spirituality and/or metaphor for sex. What it makes no effort to avoid, are the cliches of The New Chick Lit/Flick. Julie is a smart-mouthed working New Yorker who drowns most frustrations in girl talk and cocktails –– and on that score, it’s (almost refreshingly) square, in that at the end of the day, Julie is essentially a harried but not unhappy, completely realistic contemporary housewife. All of which is taking the long road to say that the book doesn’t exactly cry out for cinematic adaptation. There’s just no real drama; when it looks like Julie’s not going to be able to cook all the recipes … she just cooks faster. When she gets into fights with her husband … they make up. What fresh contrivances will director Nora Ephron cook up to tug at the heartstrings of the lonely lady audience? I must find out!

The Box — I didn’t hate Southland Tales –– which, it seems, has become an increasingly controversial position. The Box is Richard Kelly’s tail-between-the-legs, “I swear, I can make a film that doesn’t bleed money and taint the reputations of all involved!” follow-up. In the Causes For Alarm column: it’s been bumped down the release schedule at least twice, and it stars Cameron Diaz, who has somehow become the go-to star for PG-13 Movies That Make A Lot Of Money That No Adult Will Admit To Having Paid To See. In the But Maybe It’s Not So Bad column: I didn’t hate Southland Tales!