The 2009 Review Of The Year: Part Two

2009 is almost over.

And not to sound like grumbling old blokes, but can you believe how quickly it’s gone by?

There have been some huge stories and even huger-er films released, so we thought we’d look back at some of the biggest stories, movies and features that showed up on the site.

The bell is ringing, the second act of the year is about to be chronicled. Take your seats, ladies and germs...

Next: August

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August

The month set sail with a rumour (since confirmed by the man himself) that Rob Marshall would take over the helm of Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, while Steven Spielberg waded into the remake debate with plans to direct a new Harvey.

Zack Snyder recruited one of his Watchmen women, Carla Gugino, for Sucker Punch and we scored a nifty exclusive set of images from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's new World War Two TV drama The Pacific .

Trailer-wise, we were watching the first promo for Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones and the beautiful footage for Where The Wild Things Are helped cheer us up after news that John Hughes had died.

We paid tribute to the man with a feature, but also tackled Creepy Kids , The Coolest Movies Being Made , the Sexiest - And Silliest Movie Costumes , and 15 Greatest Movie Shorts On You Tube .

We were also busy watching the mad GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra , the scary/silly Orphan , the awful Imagine That and the affectiing, emotional Sin Nombre .

Life moved on, and so did the month, bringing word that The Green Hornet finally had a Kato in place and that someone actually wanted to make a LEGO film.

Bryan Singer was a hot topic as he threw his hat back into the Galactica ring with plans for a BSG movie (nothing to do with the TV show, sadly) and pondered remaking Excalibur . How not to win friends and influence people, we fear...

The idea of the Wolverine sequel got a boost when Chris McQuarrie was announced as writing the script, Bourne 4 struggled on through development with yet another writer and Simon Pegg joined forces with John Landis for the superb-sounding Burke %26 Hare .

Even though he was still shooting the thing, Chris Nolan slackened our jaws with an early Inception trailer and we giggled through the promo for Zombieland . Plus we got new trailers for little known movies like, er, Avatar and New Moon .

Our horror gurus took themselves to Fright Fest 2009 and spent a few days reviewing the horror delights on offer. In even scarier news (for different reasons), Rob Zombie decided to remake The Blob .

As Avatar approached, we brought you our exhaustive A-Z all about it, and looked at the Story Behind The Hurt Locker.

Our features month rounded up with us getting exclusive sit-downs with Terry Gilliam and Leonardo DiCaprio .

In the cinema, we were delighted by Inglourious Basterds , less-than-terrified by The Final Destination, amused by Funny People and knocked out of our seats by The Hurt Locker .

As August drew to a close we learned that Bad Boys III was in development and, in the now traditional bombshell, Disney bought Marvel .

Hello, September...

Next: September

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September

Next: October

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October

Next: November

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November

November was a stormy month, but the winds brought lots of trailers. We kicked off with Prince Of Persia and Jake Gyllenhaal leaping like a mad man.
Sherlock Holmes was another action-filled promo, while Salt showed Angelina Jolie can still kick ass. And, talking of kick ass, there was… Kick-Ass .

DreamWorks decided that the future will be full of technological terror, spearheading the 79th project about the robopocalypse so far this year.

Still, they won't get a robot to present the Oscars, at least not yet. As we were suggesting 21 Stars Who Could Host The Oscars , the producers picked Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin .

Our Megan Fox obsession showed no signs of abating as we poked fun at the 20 Most-Viewed Megan Fox YouTube Moments , and corralled 12 Ads That Should Be Movies . There was also time, in between defusing a bomb at 00:03 and falling down while escaping from a masked killer, to pinpoint The 47 Greatest Movie Cliches .

Films? We saw some. It was a bit of a three star month, to be honest, thanks to Jennifer's Body , The Men Who Stare At Goats , Harry Brown , 2012 and Taking Woodstock , but Bright Star shined.

New Moon got two stars. We await the avalanche of Twi-Hard hate.

The trend for board games as movies continued with Sony nabbing Risk and the terrible idea that Yogi Bear should be a live-action/CG hybrid got voices in the shape of Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake (as Boo Boo. No, really).

Jake Gyllenhaal (him again) went sci-fi for Duncan Jones' actual next film, Source Code , while JJ abrams was uncovered developing a largely secret project called 500 Rads .

Guillermo del Toro revealed he'd be cameoing in The Hobbit and Pete Docter let slip that his next film might not be Monsters, Inc 2 but an original Pixar production. Plus Harvey Keitel decided that what he really wanted to do was join the Fockers franchise. The Wolf would not approve!

We got some exclusive face time with Avatar stars Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington and were saddened to learn that Edward Woodward died.

There was space for Bruno to pick his Movie Top 10, an exclusive interview with Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow chatting Iron Man.

We spoke to James Cameron about his own movies and the cast of Fight Club about their movie , which inspired us to start our own Fight Club.

Next, we came up with 12 possible plots for Alien 5 , gazed in wonder at 99 jaw-dropping movie moments , and convinced the director of Paranormal Activity to tell us how to make a horror movie .

After picking 1 5 directors who should save up and buy the Terminator franchise , we turned our brilliant brains to casting and picked 18 actresses to play Black Cat in Spider-Man 4 .

We asked you to use your brilliant brains to choose your favourite movies of the decade we asked Sasha Grey to tell us the movies that defined her and we asked ourselves what 49 films would definite 2010 .

But we're not done yet!

Next: December

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December

December's only just begun, but we've still mananged to fit plenty in.

Sadly, we discovered that Paul Greengrass won't be doing Bourne 4 , it'll be a while until we see Kill Bill 3 , and it'll be ages until we're done with the Twilight franchise. Boos all round.

Still, it's not all doom and gloom. Hurt Locker's awesome Jeremy Renner looks set to be playing Hawkeye in Thor and The Avengers and two directors we like have left two remakes we didn't like.

After waiting for most of our adult lives to see it, we loved Where The Wild Things Are so much we gave it five stars .

While we were in a giving mood, we warned you away from 20 movie gifts you definitely shouldn't get for Christmas and 20 sequels you probably shouldn't bother seeing .

We were a bit more postive about Twitter, naming t he best movie stars who use it . But we also picked the worst, because we're grumpy types.

We placed Jessica Biel and John Malkovich under the microscope and examined their evolutions.

Finally, we looked back at the first half of the year, linking to all the best movie stories and features we've published in 2009 . Imagine what that would look like!

That's it for now. But December isn't over yet, so keep checking totalfilm.com for more awesome list features, weird labours of love and amazing movie scoops.

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James White is a freelance journalist who has been covering film and TV for over two decades. In that time, James has written for a wide variety of publications including Total Film and SFX. He has also worked for BAFTA and on ODEON's in-cinema magazine.