Los Angeles  - No sooner have the pumpkins of Halloween disappeared than the mighty marketing machines of the United States are turning their attention to the holiday season.

Christmas lights may not yet be up on most people's houses but Disney doesn't need any prompting to appeal to the seasonal spirit. On Friday, it launches A Christmas Carol, an animated version of the classic Charles Dickens novel about the trials and tribulations of Ebenezer Scrooge.

The movie stars Jim Carrey as the notorious Grinch and the three ghosts that haunt him. But according to the Canadian comic, it is uniquely suited not only to the Christmas spirit but also to the spirit of the times. "Every construct we've built in American life is falling apart. Why? Because of personal greed and ambition," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Capitalism without regulation can't protect us against personal greed."

Another animated film that's also likely to make a splash this season is Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox, a stop motion animated story based on the Roald Dahl children's book about a resourceful fox who challenges three evil farmers.

The Princess and the Frog, meanwhile, is a classical, hand-drawn Disney cartoon featuring songs by Randy Newman and set in the bayous of Louisiana.

The season of good cheer features plenty of other fuzzy feelgood films. From Planet 51, an animated comedy about life on a distant planet eerily similar to Earth of 1951, to Old Dogs, starring Robin Williams and John Travolta as two middle-aged men who find themselves babysitting 6-year-old twins, Christmas comedies run the gamut from slapstick to subtle.

Other laugh-fests include The Slammin' Salmon, about the shenanigans at a struggling seafood restaurant in Miami, and Did You Hear About The Morgans? starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker as a pair of miserable New Yorkers whose life changes when they are shipped out of town in a witness protection programme.

The laughs are likely to reach their crescendo on Christmas Day, which sees the release of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a Terry Gilliam fantasy that marked Heath Ledger's last role and also stars Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, and the romantic comedy It's Complicated, in which Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin compete for the affections of Meryl Streep.

But despite all the fun, Hollywood also provides a decent helping of gloom and doom.

Look out for the ultimate disaster movie, 2012, which hits screens mid-November with a tale about the end of the Earth from Independence Day director Roland Emmerich.

Doom also is the theme of The Road, a putative Oscar contender in which Viggo Mortensen shepherds his son through a wasteland full of cannibals. Charlize Theron also stars in this adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy tale.

One of the most eagerly awaited movies of the season also strikes an apocalyptic tone. Avatar comes from Titanic director James Cameron, who spent a reported 14 years and 300 million dollars on a tale of a human being who sides with an alien species when sent to colonize their planet.

Whether the film becomes the biggest hit of the year will depend largely on the performance of The Twilight Saga: New Moon - a sequel to last year's teenage vampire romance Twilight that made almost 200 million dollars at the US box office alone.

Avatar may or may not dominate the Oscars as Titanic did. But it certainly will have plenty of competition in that department over the holiday period as studios release their tear-jerking dramas just prior to the voting season. An Education stars Carey Mulligan as a bright teenager in 1960s London whose world is shaken up by a sophisticated man twice her age.

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire won the audience award at the 2009 Sundance festival with its tale of a 16-year-old abused, overweight girl who's determined to improve her life, while director Peter Jackson debuts his first film since Lord of the Rings. The Lovely Bones is an adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestseller about a murdered girl and her family's struggle to cope with the loss.

Clint Eastwood is also in the running with Invictus, in which Morgan Freeman plays newly elected president Nelson Mandela who attempts to heal the wounds of South Africa by supporting its rugby team.

Celebrity designer Tom Ford makes his film debut with A Single Man, which stars Colin Firth as a gay professor struggling to deal with the death of his life partner, while Guy Ritchie, Madonna's ex- husband, will woo audiences with Sherlock Holmes. This action-packed tale stars Robert Downey Jr as the legendary detective and Jude Law as his sidekick Dr Watson. (dpa)