Fox Searchlight has released the first trailer for director Alexander Payne's adaptation of The Descendants, Payne's first feature-length directorial effort since 2004's Sideways.

Based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants stars George Clooney as a father who tries to reconnect with his daughters (Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller) after his wife suffers a boating accident and he discovers she has been having an affair.

The story seems perfect for Payne, who has successfully mixed humor and pathos into past projects like Sideways, About Schmidt and Election. Payne wrote the script along with Nat Faxon (Beerfest). The Descendants co-stars Judy Greer, Beau Bridges, and Matthew Lillard.

One of the best-reviewed movies to debut at the currently-ongoing Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is the comedy-drama The Descendants, co-writer (with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash) and director Alexander Payne's long-awaited follow-up to Sideways (2004). Based on the book of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings, the movie stars George Clooney as a wealthy land baron living in Hawaii who tries to reconnect with his daughters after his wife slips into a coma following a boating accident. The talk coming out of TIFF is that The Descendants is "a major Oscar contender," with one reviewer describing it as "a sweet tender movie that never lunges for the heart-strings" and trumpeting Clooney's performance as "one of the best" of his career.

Even if you weren't able to make the trip to Toronto, you can still get a sneak peek at what everyone is talking about by reading the informative TIFF "Programmer's Note" on The Descendants and watching the two new preview clips that have just been made available online.

A new theatrical poster and trailer have been released online for one of the best-reviewed movies to debut at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, director Alexander Payne's long-awaited follow-up to Sideways, The Descendants. Based on the book of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants stars George Clooney as Matt King, a wealthy Hawaiian land baron who is forced to re-examine his life and his relationship with his daughters (Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller) after his wife (Patricia Hastie) slips into a coma following a tragic boating accident off of Waikiki and he learns that she had been having an affair with a young real estate broker (Matthew Lillard).

The Oscars are still months away, but that doesn't mean we don't already have a surprisingly good idea what voters will be picking. A few of these pictures have already been released, but as usual most of the real front-runners have been kept for the final weeks of the year. The assumption is that voters usually choose whatever happened to be the last flick they saw in theaters (which, sadly, seems to be true in quite a few cases). The expanded Academy Awards Best Picture category once again means that up to 10 movies may be nominated.

We've made our predictions about which 10 movies will get Best Picture nominations, and ordered the list by likelihood of winning. We also pick five more that we think won't quite make the cut.

see our Best Picture Oscar predictions >>

Actor Matthew Lillard first sprang to national attention with his performance in the 1996 horror movie Scream, but is now more well-known as Shaggy to children who seen him play the character in the 2002 live-action adaptation Scooby-Doo and its 2004 sequel or heard him provide the voice of Shaggy in several direct-to-DVD cartoon movies.

Lillard's latest role is in the upcoming comedy-drama The Descendants, which stars George Clooney as a father of two girls living in Hawaii who has to re-examine his life after he discovers his comatose wife has been having an affair with a local real estate agent (Lillard). In an interview with Black Book, Lillard revealed that the part did not come by easily. "It was an audition," Lillard admitted. "Nobody ever comes to me. Nobody in the history of filmmaking has ever gone, ‘You know who we need for this? Matt Lillard.'"