Synopsis: In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet--or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy...until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles. Also residing in the manor is Elizabeth's ne'er-do-well brother, Roger Collins, (Jonny Lee Miller); her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Chloe Moretz); and Roger's precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath). The mystery extends beyond the family, to caretaker Willie Loomis, played by Jackie Earle Haley, and David's new nanny, Victoria Winters, played by Bella Heathcote.

After a long time releasing stills at a snail's pace, Warner Bros. is really putting the word out there on Dark Shadows all the sudden.  The week before last the studio finally dropped a theatrical trailer, then last week we saw a slew of poppy character posters highlighting the ensemble cast, and now we've got a TV spot.  Said TV spot includes a surprising amount of footage not included in the trailer, most of it naturally focused on Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins.

As promised earlier this week, the first theatrical trailer for Dark Shadows premiered somewhat inexplicably today on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, showing up online just a few hours later.  Aside from a tiny three second snippet, this our first real look at director Tim Burton's cinematic update of the cult soap opera created by Dan Curtis in 1966.  Like you'd expect, it includes plenty of Johnny Depp, with the big ensemble cast almost exclusively reacting to his vampiric Barnabas Collins.

After months releasing naught but images from the film at a steady trickle, Warner Bros. is properly kicking off the hype machine for Dark Shadows.  With the May release date rapidly approaching, the studio will release the first theatrical trailer tomorrow, Thursday March 15th.  In advance of that, though, our very first look at footage has emerged online, along with a new banner image from the official site of Tim Burton's take on the creaky 1960s soap opera.

Three new images from Tim Burton's Dark Shadows have appeared online, two of which showcase the typically Burton-y production design of Collinwood Manor, where most of the soap opera update takes place.  Since we're talking about Dark Shadows, Johnny Depp is of course present as the vampire Barnabas Collins, along with Michelle Pfeiffer as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, and Jackie Earle Haley as the mooching Willie Loomis.  One whole image, though, is just of an impressively huge staircase.

Hey, it's a one-two punch of news relating to summer projects from Tim Burton and Seth Grahame-Smith.  First we had the teaser trailer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the 3D action-epic produced by directed by Timur Bekmambetov, produced by Burton, and based on the mashup novel by Grahame-Smith.  Now we have a new image from Dark Shadows, the cinematic update of creator Dan Curtis's creaky but nonetheless beloved gothic soap opera that ran from 1966-1970.

So The Artist emerged as the odds-on favorite to win this year's big awards at the Oscars, what with the critical adulation and consistent wins in all manner of prize-giving ceremonies.  But Hugo racked up more Academy Award nominations than any other film, be it a silent film homage or a Hawaii-set familial drama.  So Paramount isn't about to let The Weinsteins Company snag all those potentially profitable awards, and the studio is pushing Hugo in a big way. 

A new behind the scenes featurette, for example, plays up nearly every aspect of the film in six convenient minutes, playing up Martin Scorsese's masterful work, the movie's love of cinema, and the technical merits of the film.  You'll find plenty of footage from the film, as well as talking head interviews with the likes of producer Graham King, screenwriter John Logan, Art Directors Guild Award winner Dante Ferretti, and stars Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen.  Of course, there's also the master himself.

Crime movies are a captivating genre because they are the perfect holdall; a crime thriller can be altogether suspenseful and grotesque and profound, a reflection of our dual humanity. It is in this spirit that Ami Canaan Mann (Morning, Friday Night Lights) helmed Texas Killing Fields, which is available on Blu-ray and DVD beginning January 31st, and is the director's follow-up feature film after more than a decade of writing and directing for TV.

The seedling for the script is found in Texas City, the outskirts of which harbor a massive, haunting field with a macabre history. Over sixty murders were dumped within this region, known by locals as the Killing Fields and it was from this that director/producer Michael Mann (Thief, Heat) was inspired to commission a script. Like a lot of movies in Hollywood, it took years for all the right particles to come together and greenlight a story into creation but when it finally did, the story succeeded in its director’s aim to do three important things: do right by the families of the real victims, put a face to the victims of sexual assault murders, and to evoke the horror of the story in a sophisticated, non-procedural manner.

To achieve all that, Texas Killing Fields makes use of the genre’s elasticity. On the one hand, you have the high-stakes plot: the story focuses on two detectives, committed to finding the culprit of a murder that had been dumped in the field, who end up having to race the clock in order to save the life of another potential Killing Field victim, played by Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass). Sam Worthington (Avatar) plays Detective Mike Souder, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen) plays his partner, Brian Heigh, and Jessica Chastain (The Help) plays the former-Mrs.-Souder, Detective Pam Stall.

Right now, Hugo is still playing in nearly 1,000 theaters nationwide, and Martin Scorsese's first foray into shooting 3D is worth the extra few bucks it takes to get that three dimensional ticket.  Still, it'd be a magical movie whether it's being watched in two or three dimensions, and that's good for the impending Blu-ray and DVD release, which Paramount Home Entertainment has just announced will hit shelves on February 28th.

Exactly one week ago, you might have seen an image of Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer in Dark Shadows, Tim Burton's theatrical revival of the 1966-1977 gothic soap opera created by Dan Curtis.  That still constituted our best look at Depp as Barnabas Collins, a vampire who has been kicking around for a couple of decades, but today you can take a peek at a solo image of Depp at his most Barnabased-out.