Holiday highlights: Bond, Nixon, Madagascar

Despite the harsh economy, Hollywood has been on a box-office roll the last month, and studios head into the year's homestretch with a solid lineup of returns, reunions and promising newcomers that could uphold the old saw about movies as a recession-proof business.

Lighthearted fare such as "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" and "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" provided a brisk prelude to the holiday season, of which the first big offering is the animated sequel "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa."

The movie reunites a voice cast led by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith and David Schwimmer as the foursome of zoo buddies, now stuck on a wildlife preserve in Africa after their ramshackle plane crashes.

Stiller enjoyed making the sequel more, partly because he wasn't so lonely in the recording booth doing the vocals. Actors generally work alone on animated flicks, but one pivotal scene between Stiller's Alex the lion and Rock's Marty the zebra was recorded with both actors in the room.

"I really wanted to have that experience to see what came out of it. It was a lot of fun improvising back and forth, doing a scene with somebody else like a regular movie," Stiller said. "Just getting Chris in the room and riffing with it was inspiring."

Among other big films: Daniel Craig returns as Bond in "Quantum of Solace"; "Titanic" stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are together again in the domestic drama "Revolutionary Road"; Nicole Kidman reteams with "Moulin Rouge" director Baz Luhrmann for the World War II-era epic "Australia"; Kidman's ex, Tom Cruise, stars in his own World War II tale "Valkyrie"; Frank Langella reprises his stage role as Richard Nixon in Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon"; "Babel" co-stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett reunite for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Keanu Reeves stars in an update of the sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; and a best-seller comes to the screen with "Twilight," about a teen's romance with a studly vampire.