<table> </table> It&#8217;s never too soon for a Hollywood studio to start claiming prime opening dates for its films.</p><p>In fact, the 2009 calendar already is a done deal.</p><p>Undoubtedly films will drop out and move around, but the heavy hitters are in place and gearing up marketing campaigns designed to separate you from your entertainment dollar.</p><p>Over the next couple of weeks we&#8217;ll see the arrival of Oscar contenders that opened last month in New York and L.A. &#8212; &#8220;The Reader&#8221; (opening here Friday), &#8220;Gran Torino&#8221; (Jan. 9) and &#8220;Revolutionary Road,&#8221; &#8220;The Wrestler&#8221; and &#8220;Defiance&#8221; (all on Jan. 16).</p><p>Then the official 2009 entries start pouring in. More than a dozen of these films will be shown in digital 3-D (most of the Dickinson chain&#8217;s local theaters should be all-digital by the end of February), including James Cameron&#8217;s long-awaited space saga, &#8220;Avatar,&#8221; next December.</p><p>But between now and then there&#8217;s a bit of everything. Here&#8217;s a selection:</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Tentpoles</span></strong></p><p>These are the year&#8217;s big franchise pictures, the guaranteed (or so Hollywood hopes) titles that already have strong buzz and salivating legions of fans eager for every shred of information, photo, trailer and film clip.</p><p><strong>&#8226;&#8220;Watchmen&#8221; </strong>(March 6): Alan Moore&#8217;s monumental graphic novel &#8212; <em>Time</em> declared it one of the great books of the 20th century &#8212; is a knotty yarn about a group of superheroes who from the &#8217;40s to the &#8217;80s battle bad guys and each other. Fans of the book are eagerly awaiting this film from Zack Snyder (&#8220;Dawn of the Dead,&#8221; &#8220;300&#8221;), but it&#8217;s virgin territory for most audiences, who won&#8217;t find familiar characters and may not glom on to its decade-jumping narrative.</p><p>No big stars, but lots of good actors: Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino, Jackie Earle Haley.</p><p><strong>&#8226;&#8220;X-Men Origins: Wolverine&#8221; </strong>(May 1): Hugh Jackman&#8217;s surly Logan (aka Wolverine) has always been the best thing about the &#8220;X-Men&#8221; series, so we&#8217;re looking forward to this prequel about how he came to be. Director Gavin Hood may bring a bit of his art-house sensibility (&#8220;Rendition,&#8221; the Oscar-winning &#8220;Tsotsi&#8221;) to the megaplex (a good thing) and has assembled a solid supporting cast: Liev Schreiber, Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Monaghan, Danny Huston.</p><p><strong>&#8226;&#8220;Star Trek&#8221; </strong>(May 8): The venerable space opera returns to the big screen and &#8230; and does anybody care? The franchise hasn&#8217;t had a current TV show for several years, and young moviegoers don&#8217;t have a history with Kirk &amp; Co. Are there enough hard-core Trekkers to keep this one afloat?</p><p>J.J. Abrams (&#8220;Lost,&#8221; &#8220;Alias,&#8221; &#8220;Cloverfield&#8221;) produces and directs this yarn set during the early careers of Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Scotty (Simon Pegg), &#8220;Bones&#8221; McCoy (Karl Urban) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana). Also on hand: Eric Bana, Winona Ryder and Bruce Greenwood.</p><p><strong>&#8226;&#8220;Angels &amp; Demons&#8221; </strong>(May 15): This prequel to the hugely lucrative and critically drubbed &#8220;The Da Vinci Code&#8221; once again stars Tom Hanks as antiquarian Robert Langdon, this time without the bad &#8217;do. He&#8217;s on the trail of the Illuminati, a centuries-old super-secret conspiracy to destroy the Roman Catholic Church. Ron Howard is once again at the helm; also in the cast are Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsg&#229;rd and Israeli beauty Ayelet Zurer.