Barnabas Collins has risen from the grave once more via the Blu-Ray and DVD release of Tim Burton's film adaptation of Dark Shadows, and so has spirited argument over who created the tortured vampire back in the 1960s. Johnny Depp's interpretation of the fanged fan favorite originated by Jonathan Frid may have been D.O.A. at the box office, but, 45 years after Collins debuted on the gothic ABC soap opera and became a cult icon, the squabbling over his invention just won't die. more »
The Memorial Day frame wasn't one quite worth remembering for Will Smith, who walked away with the holiday's biggest opening almost by default as The Avengers waned — not a lot, but enough — in its fourth weekend. Meanwhile, the week's other wide release suffered a catastrophic B.O. meltdown en route to sixth place overall. Your special holiday-edition Weekend Receipts are here.
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Another Monday morning, and thus another look at what carnage The Avengers has wrought at the weekend box office. And while things aren't as bad as they may look at first for Battleship and the rest of the competition, they're not what you'd call pretty. Your Weekend Receipts are here.
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Johnny Depp wanted his and Tim Burton's gothic vampire comedy Dark Shadows to be anything but Twilight. Mission accomplished, I suppose: The film fizzled into a very distant second place behind another jaw-dropping performance by The Avengers, which continued to rewrite the blockbuster history books in its second weekend. Your Weekend Receipts are here.
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This weekend sees the release of Dark Shadows, marking the eighth time director Tim Burton has teamed with Johnny Depp, his second-favorite performer on screen. (He no doubt frequently has to tell Helena Bonham Carter as much.) So natural is their pairing that we have come to expect a certain level of quality and/or box-office performance from their combined efforts, and an announcement of a new Burton title has generally come to carry the promise of a Depp appearance. Although Hollywood has long brought us such fruitful and lucrative actor/director relationships — from both Cary Grant and James Stewart's collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock to Robert De Niro's legendary work with Martin Scorsese — consider nine other long-term pairings packing a little (or a lot) less luster.
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Given the kind of vampire that’s dominated pop culture in recent years – hunky, as down in Bon Temps, or sparkly, like the eternal teens of Twilight — it’s no surprise that some folks may long for the bloodsucker of olde. Well, count Johnny Depp among the ranks of the traditionalists. His latest collaboration with director Tim Burton, an adaptation of the 1970s supernatural soap Dark Shadows, sees Depp in ghostly make-up and fangs as undead hero Barnabas Collins in what he describes as a counterpoint to movies about “vampires that look like underwear models.”
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Johnny Depp likely has a lock on the weekend's new releases with Tim Burton's Dark Shadows. The movie is set for 3,700 screens. No other new release comes close, but there are nevertheless plenty of other limited roll-outs that may make their way in a theater near you. Check a few of them out in this weekend's new-release roundup.
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There are enough terrific, elegant old-style Tim Burton touches in Dark Shadows that, now and then, you might be fooled into thinking the once-mad genius had finally come back to his senses: A young girl gazes dreamily through the window of a train slipping through the New England countryside, the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” serving as an aural curtain for her reverie; a wispy ghost woman floats toward the waiting arms of a giant chandelier, her hair and tattered skirt winding around its crystals like jellyfish tendrils; a secret button reveals a passageway whose opening is framed by mechanical ocean waves and a cadre of cast-iron wolves raising their snouts to the moon in a hearty salute. Parts of Dark Shadows look lovely. So what happened to the story?
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Between Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, and the reliably bizarro fashion statements of Helena Bonham Carter, the Dark Shadows premiere promised a veritable feast of eccentricities. But guess what? The best and weirdest photo ops from last night's to-do came not from the aforementioned mavens of macabre (granted, HBC was M.I.A.), but from the bizarre antics of an unlikely duo whose red carpet shenanigans made Burton and his cast of lovable weirdos look downright... mundane.
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Johnny Depp and Tim Burton have crossed the celluloid path on eight films over a little more than two decades. But apparently that long collaboration is not without a little pain. And apparently this time it was all about the... nails?
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We may have one Johnny Depp adaptation fast approaching (The Rum Diary opens in theaters October 28), but that doesn't mean we've forgotten about the other Johnny Depp adaptation down the line. Dark Shadows, the actor's next and eighth collaboration with Tim Burton will bring the forgotten '60s goth soap opera of the same name to life. Although it isn't due out until May 2012, Empire does have a sneak peak of the behind-the-scenes action. Do you have your captioning pens handy?
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In Disney's high school dramedy Prom, newcomer Thomas McDonell plays an archetypal bad boy straight out of a John Hughes flick -- sensitive, rebellious, and enticingly misunderstood. In real life, the 24-year-old former art student seems such the antithesis of the typical teen idol that you could call him the Judd Nelson of the Tiger Beat set. (His follow-up to Prom: Playing the young Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows.) Surely, McDonell's the only Disney star in history that can make legions of tween girls scream with one brooding glance and say he's performed Ionesco on stage in Scotland. So how did McDonell shoot into the spotlight so quickly -- and what's Jackie Chan got to do with it?
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