Burton and Depp keep on Burtoning and Depping in...Dark Shadows!

First official photo, Helena Bonham Carter is in it, lather rinse repeat blah blah blah

Grayson Hall is turning over in her grave. Or is she?

I saw that one behind the scenes photo where Depp looks like Chevy Chase's character from Memoirs of an Invisible Man when he wears goggles and slathers all the make-up on so he can be seen.

http://io9.com/5893731/the-dark-shadows-trailer-this-might-be-tim-burtons-most-ridiculous-movie-yet

Check out the first ever trailer for Tim Burton's swinging 70s vampire epic Dark Shadows. And it looks like Burton is taking it to the max — not a single bit of 70s shtick is left untouched by Johnny Depp's fluttery dance steps (someone literally tries to kill him with a giant disco ball).

Meh

...

uh oh, cheesy people living in an undead's house? sounds like a good cause for a michael keaton cameo!

Will prob never see another Burton movie, but maybe we at least get a good Elfman score out of this.

And here I was thinking that Mirror, Mirror looked like the worst and most unnecessary movie of the year. Congratulations, Tim Burton. Congratulations.

Oh I dunno. Mirror Mirror looks worse than this.

i think it actually looks decent compared to his last 6-7 cinematic war crimes. at least depp's only schtick is a british accent.

c'mon, Sweeney Todd was his best in eons

yeah Sweeney Todd was great

ah yeah, i didnt see that. he'd annihilated any good will i had for him by that point, so i gave it a wide berth. maybe i'll peep it

this basically looks like the addams family and i think i could dig on that

This looks awesome

t. rex in the trailer; Depp kinda biting this look

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQUgcFq9w6U

i got some of the o.g. dark shadows from netflix a few months ago. it's really draggy and repetitive in spots (it's a serialized soap opera), but where it succeeds is the sense of dread that comes from the low-budget sparseness. in that way it's very english for an american series -- it's "spooky" rather than "scary." i don't know if tim burton knows how to push those buttons. i don't want a fucking whimsical barnabas collins; i want him to be quiet, shy, polite, and sad.

It's a total Brady bunch the movie thing I guess

Or an Addams Family movie thing.

okay, i just watched the trailer... oy vey.

^^^^^^^ cosigned

Yeah, I don't feel sorry for any of you who actually pay money to see this. I'll at least refrain from saying I told you so.

at least he's trying something vaguely new right?

the last few burton films, they could have just assembled a "tim burton filmmaking committee" to replace the actual tim burton and the movies would have come to about the same thing.

im getting a bit of an ed wood vibe tbh, an exaggerated more 'comedy' one but that's what depp's reminding me of here and i kinda am ok with that

yeah i was getting a bit of that feel too. i thought some of the gags were pretty funny too

It had a very "Jump in the line, rock your body in time" vibe to me. So I'd argue that, no, he doesn't seem to really be stretching out so much as reaching further back into his filmography for tropes to recycle.

its probably gonna be more like mars attacks! but i'll still take that over alice in wonderland

beetlejuice is his best film though so i guess if he has to recycle himself...

all the '70s jokes are so plaaaaaaaaayed tho

get bent otm about the low-budget spookiness of the original property being its strongest point

sad to see something killed that could have stayed undead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSbCqp_a3iE

c'mon i hate burton as much as anybody but when did you guys start hating fun so much, jeez! i will watch the hell out of anything that allows depp to be as campily ridiculous as he can be

trailer reminds me of edward scissorhands, too

This looks awesome

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Friday, March 16, 2012 4:06 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was about 9 when "Dark Shadows" was huge and never gave a shit about it. Boring. So again, what is the allure of reworking something that has no cultural currency with the "target demo"?

why dont they just form a singularity in their pants

horror + soap opera, what could be worse?

http://open.spotify.com/user/lathamgreen/playlist/6oAn3jbCEuSOLGopVcuSMN

dark entries !! dark entries!!! Barnabus!! Peter!!

horror+ soap opera + reality show

I don't know how much cultural currency the original show has now, but people who never even saw it might see this b/c of Depp, Burton, vampires, they like the trailer, or for whatever reason they go to other movies. There are people who probably don't even know this is based on an tv show.
I actually love Dark Shadows but have no need to see it get the "Burton/Depp treatment" Sweeney Todd was okay but most of the recent ones have been terrible (or looked terrible.) If anything they are probably worse for people who have any fondness for or knowledge of the source material.

i think there's an older This American Life episode about a dude who goes to a Dark Shadows convention

there could be non-cynical reasons for reviving it, like burton & co just dig it

I want to say "wtf people Sweeney Todd sucked" but I think my distaste for Sondheim had a lot to do with that opinion.

The best thing I can say about the last 15 years of Tim Burton's career(having not seen Sweeney Todd) is that Charlie & The Chocolate Factory wasn't awful.

I'm not a huge fan of Batman, but pretty much everything he did >15 years ago ranges from solid to wonderful.

Are you kidding? That was the worst one of that entire period!

(xpost)

I remember Sweeney Todd being not as bad as the others, but I like Stephen Sondheim. Though, they left out The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd and didn't employ good singers. I don't actually remember much else about it.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/5941081/tim-burtons-secret-formula

sure this has appeared on multiple tim burton threads but def applies to this trailer

that said, aside from Ed Wood, I've seen little reason to think Tim Burton should leave his wheelhouse

ed wood is pretty firmly in his wheelhouse

i think we both know how the point-counterpoint on that goes

shall we?

You never her.

I barnabused right after I left that stupid barnabusing movie

the thing about burton's recent (hell, at this point most of his) movies is that while they retain all these signifiers of "weirdness" and "originality" (those tend to me the words that come up on press junkets) they seem so terribly devoid of anything surprising or inventive.

which is why his films are def. tending toward the discount rack at hot topic.

stuff w/ HBC character was uncomfortably misogynistic no? HBC gives JD unexpected BJ --> HBC stealing JD's essence --> JD kills HBC in horrible fashion, and we're supposed to cheer.

spoilers or whatevs, not that anybody cares.

I walked in expecting it to be terrible and ended up rather enjoying it. I mean, it's a mess. But it was pretty and funny enough. I guess Burton's twee goth stuff holds some kind of inherent appeal for me. Surprised by how raunchy it was however. Tone-wise, weird juxtaposition between goofy childishness and blow-jobs...

yeah it was weirdly raunchy.

BTW i had no fucking idea that dark shadows was a failing soap that decided to add a vampire after a year! that's wild.

(i knew it was a soap, i just figured it was about vampires from the beginning. maybe the sudden revelation that chloe moretz is a werewolf was an homage to the way the original show just tossed in a new element when things were getting stale.)

The last Tim Burton film I thought was of any value was The Corpse Bride, and before that Big Fish. Dark Shadows looked appealing from the trailer, but it's taking a beating here. I'll probably wait for video.

amateurist, you're dumping spoilers all over this piece like a leaky garbage bag.

trust me, it won't matter to anyone.

BTW i had no fucking idea that dark shadows was a failing soap that decided to add a vampire after a year! that's wild.

That's interesting trivia! I had no idea. Just think what could've been had Passions really taken off.

HBC stealing JD's essence --> JD kills HBC in horrible fashion, and we're supposed to cheer.

um, rather than cheer, i felt we were supposed to see that barnabus' treatment of julia replicated/inverted angela's treatment of barnabus, and i never for a moment thought that spoiler spoiler spoiler.

spoilers spoilers here be spoilers i guess

hmmm, i wonder how that scene was intended to play. i think we were supposed to be amused by it, maybe a little horrified, but ultimately sympathetic to barnabas who after all is the protagonist. if we were supposed to wonder about our identification with barnabas maybe burton could have made that clearer?

The last Tim Burton film I thought was of any value was The Corpse Bride, and before that Big Fish. Dark Shadows looked appealing from the trailer, but it's taking a beating here. I'll probably wait for video.

jeez, the corpse bride has its moments but is such a sad, pale shadow of the nightmare before christmas. and big fish is too mawkish by half (at least). i kind of like sweeney todd, but the last burton feature i can endorse without reservation is sleepy hollow, going back some 8 films and 13 years.

pfft to you and your mawkish, I <3 Big Fish

unreservedly love Sweeney Todd

PFFT PFFT PFFT

except sweeney todd is pretty okay

pffffffffffffffffffffft

I like fish out of water stuff. It's hackey and has been done a million times, but honestly, what hasn't?

Haven't seen this yet tho.

wd put perm stake thru movie vampires, kidz.

but HBC will surely be back for the sequel!

the nihilism in Alice was about the only thing that movie had going for it

I still wish they'd gone whole hog and had a hero/villain inversion where it was revealed that the White Queen was actually treacling Wonderland to death and the Red Queen's tyranny was the only thing keeping the realm alive, making the story more about balancing the forces than eradicating the evil. Maybe then they wouldn't have felt the need to shoehorn in the fucking fudderwacken.

(Basically I wanted that movie to end with Alice committing a violent pogrom against the White Queen's forces while sobbing her eyes out, eventually waking up back in the real world shaken, upset, and wholly mistrustful of authority and power. So yeah, the nihilism it had didn't bother me so much.)

The trailer for Frankenweenie actually makes it look halfway decent.

There was a nice DS moment in Pfeiffer's interview of the governess, where she's trying to ferret out if she's a lefty freak, asking "What do you think of the war?" "I don't watch TV." Seems left over from an earlier, smarter script.

The trailer for Frankenweenie actually makes it look halfway decent.

― heated debate over derpy hooves (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 9:30 AM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know! but won't be fooled again etc.

and we never barnabus him

This is still cracking me up.

I pushed to go see this based on the trailer and a got a friend sort of excited about seeing it, but now I really don't want to go see it and she still does and I'm probably going to wind up seeing it.

How can I prepare myself to Barnabus this?

get drunk

and take heart that Alice Cooper appears halfway through to break the monotony

it's not intolerable or anything, it's mildly amusing. in other words, barnabusing it is strictly optional.

it's better than Big Fish.

The trailer for Frankenweenie actually makes it look halfway decent.

"I swear I won't pull it away this time, Charlie Brown. Honest."

exactly.

although i kind of initially read that as "i swear i'll pull out this time"

So Lucy was a tranny.

worst reboot ever.

Pee-Nuts

As we speak...a new generation of fangirls is applying Rule 34 to Peanuts, and probably every other cartoon with which you grew up.

lol from tumblr:

Tim Burton should just make a movie called ‘Johnny Depp’.

plot twist: Johnny Depp is played by Helena Bonham Carter.

wd watch

if it was done sleuth style with hbc playing both characters it could work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHchmWsrfUo

^ ultimate fish out of water film

Wound up getting out of seeing it by getting showtime wrong and giving up.

I'm watching this now. Not bad, a few dumb montages aside. It is hard to buy Eva Green as an evil witch though.

If the thought of Johnny Depp playing a vampire for under 2 hours appeals to you, you will enjoy this.

beg to differ

i *thought* that idea appealed to me until I saw Dark Shadows

It's incredibly stupid and watered down. But that doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable. It just means they had like 6 producers and you end up with a safe Hollywood movie that lets Tim Burton goth out in a big-budget way.

As a soap Passions just got worse and worse

It is stupid and watered down. It isn't particularly enjoyable. Werewolf reveal was the biggest deus ex whogivesafuck ever. So why do I sometimes feel like defending this one? Must have something to do with Eva Green.

It's been a long time since I felt moved to walk out of a theater. Dark Shadows is as close as I've come. Not walk out in disgust as much as, I'd rather go sit in the parking lot.

Alice Cooper was cool tho

They should have made Alice Cooper the werewolf.