2010 HOLIDAY MOVIE PREVIEW: There was a break in the action — the cast and crew of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” were milling about waiting for the next set-up on a summer day here in 2009 — and Daniel Radcliffe sat back in his seat and admired the life of a fugitive. “Everybody is after us,” the actor said of his on-screen persona, Harry Potter, and his partners in magic. “We're to the point in the story where it's a lot of action and we're on the run. And that's brilliant.”

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2010 HOLIDAY MOVIE PREVIEW: It's tough enough for a director to get a film's performers to connect on set, to bring an instant trust and intimacy to the story while still hitting their marks. But once the clothes come off, things really get tricky.

In “Love & Other Drugs,” the Nov. 24 romantic comedy about a charming pharmaceutical sales rep who falls for an artist afflicted by early-onset Parkinson's disease, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway spend much of the film half-naked (or more). Accordingly, director Edward Zwick decided early in the rehearsal process that he'd have to get the stars comfortable with each other while they wore little-to-nothing.

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2010 Holiday Movie Preview: Look for more features on holiday movies on Brand X all week.

Daniel Simon was in his native Germany and happily working in big-time car-design circles when an e-mail arrived in spring 2008 that would change his life. “It was an offer to work as a vehicle designer on ‘Tron: Legacy,' and I felt like I had a heart condition when I read it,” Simon said of the invitation from the filmmakers behind the Disney sci-fi film that opens Dec. 17.

For Simon and his team's vehicle designers, the watchword was simplicity of line and sleekness of design. “We tried to write a new chapter of beauty and use the art of leaving things out when possible,” Simon said. “And with the vehicles, it was about doing things with movement as well.” We asked him to talk about some of the key creations.

The Light-Cycles: The cycles are hybrids of person and machine. That's the challenge. Light-Cycle is a character itself. It's a personal weapon of the people living on the grid. It has a face, the front of the bike, and the lights are shaped to show that. The good-guy and neutral bikes have vertical lights and the evil bikes have V-shaped lights to represent eyes and expression.

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