What is Casting Couch? It’s the casting column that’s basically been subsisting on news coming out of Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City sequel in recent days. Today he adds two more actors to his ensemble. The big news is that Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, after having already shot some of its scenes, has finally found an actress to play the character of Ava Lord, who serves as the film’s titular dame. Dimension Films announced [via ComingSoon] that the powers that be have decided to go with Eva Green. The Ava Lord character is described by Frank Miller as being “every man’s most glorious dreams come true, she’s also every man’s darkest nightmares,” and both Miller and Rodriguez agree that Green is the actress who can best, “embody the multifaceted characteristics of this femme fatale.” That’s either a big compliment, or they might have just called her a bitch.

And you thought we were done with James Bond articles for a while, didn’t you? Not so. With Skyfall continuing to tear up the box office in both North America and overseas, and with it officially becoming the highest-grossing Bond film in the domestic market, it’s not going away. Add to this the fact that MGM is giving the film a push for award consideration (a long shot, sure, but that theme song by Adele certainly has a chance to win something), and you’ve still got Bond on the brain a month after the film opened. It’s time to look back to one of Bond’s beginnings. Not the books, and not the start of the film franchise in the 1960s. Instead, let’s crack open the DVD of Casino Royale, which rebooted the franchise from the rocky path it was on behind frontman Pierce Brosnan. For the Collector’s Edition of the Casino Royale DVD and Blu-ray, which came out in 2008, director Martin Campbell explains in the then-new how the series was given a new start. He is joined by the film’s producer. There will, of course, be spoilers for Casino Royale below, but you might also want to make sure you see Skyfall before reading this in its entirety, considering there are one or two interesting connections between the films. And on to the commentary…

What is Casting Couch? It’s a round-up of Hollywood casting news, not one of those porn videos where a 19-year-old gets exploited in a grimy-looking office. Move along, perv. Now that we’ve got all of those live action Snow White movies out of the way, it makes sense that we would move down the fairy tale lineup and start seeing a rash of new Cinderella projects popping up. And, if Disney has their way, their Mark Romanek-directed Cinderella script from The Devil Wears Prada scribe Aline Brosh McKenna will be the hit that starts the trend. They’re trying to get casting for the film off on the right foot with the acquisition of a big name, as Deadline reports that the House of Mouse is in serious negotiations with Cate Blanchett to come on board to play a character called Lady Tremaine, known in some circles as the wicked stepmother. Given her experience playing a creepy elf in the Lord of the Rings movies, this seems like something of a perfect fit.

What is Casting Couch? It’s a casting news column that has a theory casting agents are kind of just coasting going into the Thanksgiving holiday. Bryan Cranston. For a long time he was viewed as being an under appreciated character actor, or even “the dad from Malcolm in the Middle,” but these days he’s basically the most universally beloved actor in the business. It’s amazing what cooking meth in your tighty-whities can do for your career. What a coup for the upcoming crime drama, Eye of Winter, then, that it’s landed Cranston as its lead. He’ll be playing a blind criminal who takes a struggling motel owner (Alive Eve) and her daughter hostage so that they can be his eyes while he attempts to retrieve a package from a crooked cop (Logan Marshall Green). Tze Chun (Children of Invention) will direct and has co-written alongside Osgood Perkins and Nick Simon. [Variety]

Dark Shadows, the old ABC gothic soap opera, is such natural material for Tim Burton and Johnny Depp that you almost wonder why they bothered. Of all the movies and TV shows to remake, it’s perhaps the most logical choice for the men who brought us Beetlejuice and Captain Jack Sparrow, respectively, not to mention Edward Scissorhands and other offbeat luminaries in their partnership. Lighthearted macabre quirk is the tandem’s specialty and the primary operating mode of their new movie, a visually-pleasing haunted house/vampire comedy. But even if Dark Shadows is a case of safe, smooth sailing for its makers, it’s still far more spirited and thoughtfully made than most summer movie counterparts.

Dark Shadows and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter don’t fit the bill of your average summer blockbuster. An adaptation of a slightly obscure soap opera about a vampire? We don’t see those often enough in the summer season. A hard-R actioner featuring one of our greatest presidents shredding vampires to bits? That’s another unheard of type summer tentpole. Although Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s names alone can create money out of thin air, Dark Shadows is not the sort of film we often see as a May release, and the same goes for June’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The man partly responsible for these two going-against-the-norm pictures is author/screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith. Grahame-Smith had to tackle some difficult tasks when it came to making these two projects – like making an accessible Dark Shadows film and adapting his own epic and tonally tricky novel, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Here’s what Seth Grahame-Smith had to say about writing for the screen, the soap-operatic tone of Dark Shadows, and the straight-faced badassery of Abraham Lincoln slaying vampires:

Two kids, a boy and a girl, play along a cold-looking stretch of beach on the English coast. The pre-teens grow close, but before they can reach the cusp of an awakening sexuality Rebecca and her family move overseas leaving Tommy with little more than memories and a dead snail in a matchbox. Rebecca (Eva Green) returns to the small seaside town two decades later and reunites with Tommy (Matt Smith), but he soon dies in an accident. Lost in grief and living in a world that has perfected the art of cloning, she takes the next obvious step. She has herself impregnated with his cloned embryo (?) and carries it to term. Unsurprisingly, things get complicated after she gives birth and raises him as her son. He passes through the childhood years as a mirror image of the boy she once crushed on, and he grows into a young man who looks identical to the man she loved intimately. Awkward…

It’s a mystery why Tim Burton gets stuck in the black and white world from time to time because he’s one of the few filmmakers who can make primary colors creepy. Apparently the marketing department for Dark Shadows is pretty good at it too. With Johnny Depp, Eva Green, Michelle Pfeiffer, Chloe Moretz and more popping boldly into the foreground, these posters are a reminder of the idiosyncrasy inherent in some of Burton’s filmmaking: vibrant grays and disturbing, bright colors. Check them out for yourself:

Alice in Wonderland tested my love for Tim Burton, a fandom I am fully aware is unpopular to have online nowadays. His Disney remake was garish, soulless, and calculative, all adjectives Burton’s greatest critics have said of him before. Alice in Wonderland felt like Burton at his most bored and expected, with zero sense of passion on-screen. Yet, with the release of the first trailer of Dark Shadows finally online, it seems as if Burton is having actual fun. Check out the trailer below to see Burton’s take on the material, including Johnny Depp turning down sex with Eva Green. Burton and company have had a tough time expressing the tone of the picture, but this trailer does it nicely: dark, tongue-in-cheek, and silly. Nothing about this screams “box-office smash!”, but that same sentiment could be applied to most of Burton’s hits.

Perfect Sense is a bad, misleading, and laughable title. With the premise and that eye-rolling title, you’d expect it to be a shoddy romantic comedy, one about people coming to love each other when all else goes to hell. “When everyone’s losing their senses, we’re doing something that makes…Perfect Sense! Get it?” Yes, all around cringe-worthy, but, thankfully, the actual film is not. Set in the magical and wet land of Glasgow, director David Mackenzie‘s chronicles both the multiple destructions and reconstructions of the world and a relationship. Michael (Ewan McGregor) is a charming and scruffy cook who’s lucky enough to have someone who looks like Susan, played by Eva Green, live right next door to his workplace. Both being the two good-looking people that they are, the obvious consequences come about: they fall in love, just as an epidemic begins to eat away at the world.

Both last month and this month are shaping up to prove that this time of the year doesn’t only serve as a dumping ground for Mark Wahlberg action movies and another indistinguishable Katherine Heigl horror movie. So far we’re off to a great start for 2012, and I sure hope it continues that way. With another Heigl rom-com nowhere in sight, I believe we’re all clear for now. Honorable Mentions: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (got terrible buzz out of Butt-numb-a-thon, but it’s still got Ciarán Hinds, one of the best actors around, playing the devil) and Chronicle (apparently it’s better than it looks).

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly collection of things you’ll want to read, even if they didn’t originate on this website. We know, we know, all the good stuff can only come from Film School Rejects. But every once in a while (at least 8 times per day), other websites strike gold. And we’re here to celebrate their modest victories. We begin tonight with an image from Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, one of a number released today by Magnolia Pictures. It features Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim as… well, I have no idea what’s going on in this picture. But apparently people find this funny. Having watched numerous episodes of their show, I’m not convinced that they’ve ever been funny. But who am I to argue with the masses? Oh right, I do argue with the masses. Seriously, guys, this stuff isn’t funny. At all.

Dark Shadows is the next chance for Tim Burton to succeed, and he’s playing in a very familiar sandbox. A too-familiar sandbox for some, but there’s still hope that in retuning to Gothic roots in a passion project for Johnny Depp, the director can recapture some magic. The one mystery about the movie is what kind of tone it will take. The television show is well known enough, but the movie could take it seriously, keep the camp, or shoot for something entirely different. Fortunately, there’s a plot synopsis  lurking about (thanks to a Warner Bros. press release announcing the start of filming). Unfortunately, it won’t tell us anything about the tone. Read the synopsis for yourself and try to figure out if Burton and company are going more Scissorhands or more Ed Wood here:

Hot on the heels of the news that Jackie Earle Haley and Bella Heathcoate would be joining Tim Burton’s new mystical romp as a manservant and a mistress of an estate comes word that former Bond girl with a sexy French accent Eva Green will also be joining the cast. She will be playing Angelique, a witch who has a complicated but heated relationship with Johnny Depp’s vampire protagonist Barnabas Collins.

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

As Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern film steams toward production, lists are being made for who will star alongside Ryan Reynolds. First up: who will play Hal Jordan’s girlfriend?

Variety is reporting this evening that Mickey Rourke, that resurgent star who was nominated for an Oscar for The Wrestler and has landed himself in the sure-hit Iron Man 2, has also signed on to a new project entitled Mona Lisa.

As you’ve come to expect, our radar for films has a rather far and wide reach, so it’s hard to say that a film ever really comes out of nowhere. So while Franklyn didn’t come out of nowhere, it is certainly a nice surprise.

The beauty of James Bond is that the women in his universe are more gorgeous than most of the girls we’ll meet in the real world. We take a look at the creme of that particular crop.

Rather than saying, “I wonder if the Magisterium is supposed to represent the modern Catholic church?,” sit on the edge of your seat and say “Wow! Two polar bears beating the shale out of each other. Cool!”