Story By: by David Edelstein

Eva Green plays Angelique Bouchard, Barnabas’ spurned lover — and witch — who makes it her mission to take revenge on him and his family.

The jealous Angelique compels Barnabas’ true love, Josette, to fling herself from a high cliff, curses Barnabas with vampirism, and arranges for him to be sealed in his coffin for eternity. Dug up two centuries later by a construction crew, the vampire discovers that the class-envious Angelique not only lives, but has taken over the fishing village of Collinsport and driven the aristocratic Collins family into near bankruptcy.

In between ripping out throats and swooning over Collins governess Victoria Winters, a dead ringer for Josette played by Bella Heathcote, Barnabas vows to restore the family fishing business — and so Dark Shadows becomes a business farce in which Depp’s taloned, whey-faced bloodsucker constantly fends off the sultry Green’s advances.

At least Eva Green is a loose-limbed, glittering-eyed seductress-cum-terminator — and too much woman, if you ask me, for Depp’s lightweight ghoul. It’s great that he didn’t go the dreamy movie-star route to compete with Twilight, but his Barnabas is at the other extreme — a freaky little boy in a Halloween costume.

The other actors look amusing in Colleen Atwood’s eye-popping clothes against Rick Heinrich’s hyperbolic Gothic sets, but they’re playing one-joke characters. In the old Joan Bennett matriarch role, Michelle Pfeiffer does a starched great-lady turn with spasms of mugging, while Helena Bonham Carter in a flame-red wig plays Dr. Julia Hoffman as a conniving dipsomaniac. Chloe Grace Moretz has bright moments as the teenage Carolyn, but everyone else — including Hammer veteran Christopher Lee and a handful of original Dark Shadows actors — are trotted out to no good end.

Tim Burton exults in things offbeat, droopy, morbid. But the ghoulishly amusing images notwithstanding, Dark Shadows is dead on the screen.

“This is the best birthday I have ever had on the shores of Mexico,” said Myriam. 

Myriam had intended to celebrate her birthday in Miami, Florida, but changed her mind after spending a couple of days in Miami and headed off to Cancun, Mexico on May 2, which was her birthday. 

According to the Internet website MBC.net, Myriam announced to her fans on Twitter on April 29 that she would celebrate her birthday abroad. 

Last year Myriam celebrated her birthday in Rome. 

The actress-turned-director stepped behind the camera last year for In the Land of Blood and Honey, a story about a romance between a Serbian soldier and a Bosnian woman.

Her efforts were praised by government officials at the Assembly of Sarajevo Canton Parliament for drawing attention to the area, and they decided to award her with a special citizenship prize, reports contactmusic.com.

A ceremony was held last week, where a pre-recorded video message from Jolie was played.

In the clip, she said: "I am deeply grateful to the citizens of Sarajevo and the Sarajevo Canton assembly for bestowing upon me this incredible honour of citizenship. I am so proud to now be a part of such an extraordinary part of the world and fellow citizen to the people I deeply love and admire."

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Story By: by Tom Huizenga

After 11 days and more than 500 submissions, we proudly unveil a winner (and several honorable mentions) in our very first classical cartoon caption contest. Congratulations to Gregory Curnow from central Massachusetts, who remembered that hippos not only excel at the violin, but also have a habit of snorting.

“I just tried to put myself in the shoes of a judge in one of those blind symphony orchestra auditions,” Curnow said when asked how he came up with his winning caption. We’ll send him a new NPR Music tote bag and coffee mug for his efforts.

The captions for Pablo Helguera’s cartoon tended to fall into a few general categories. There were the Stradivarius jokes, like Gene Geist’s “Hmmmm… It’s hard to tell, but I think that the warm, subtle tones suggest that the first one was the Stradivarius.” Then there were many odiferous submissions, such as Joe Rod’s “While I can’t name that tune, I think I might be able to place that smell.” Quite a few were weight-oriented, like Bonner Armbruster’s “Nice tone, but a little heavy on the bottom end.” And folks couldn’t resist throwing in a few viola jokes.

Below is our “Honorable Mentions” list. Thanks to all who played along in our contest. Don’t forget, we have a classical cartoon each Friday at noon on this blog. You never know when we’ll ask for your captioning help again.

“I’ve changed my mind, I’ll take the firing squad.” (Tollak Ollestad)

“I just can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the room.” (William Mankin)

“Can I hear the Elephant again?” (Tom Lawery)

“Well, it sounds like ‘The Orange Blossom Special,’ but the foot-tapping was so loud I can’t be absolutely sure.” (Billy Waldo)

Editor’s note: Brandon Griggs is the senior producer for CNN Digital’s Tech section, a former entertainment critic and an avid movie fan…clearly.

I went because it was the only place left in Atlanta where “War Horse” was playing. And “War Horse” was the last of the nine Best Picture Oscar nominees I hadn’t seen.

It’s kind of a tradition for me. I saw all 10 nominated films last year, and all 10 the year before that. I keep lists of such things — geek alert! — and I’ve figured out that of the 139 movies nominated for best picture over the past 25 years, I’ve seen all but two — not in some Netflix retrospective binge years later, but when they first hit theaters.

So for almost as long as I can remember, I’ve sat down to watch the Academy Awards having seen all the year’s top contenders. And this makes me kind of a freak.

That’s because most people just don’t care that much about the Oscars anymore. Sure, they might watch the show to make catty comments about the stars’ dresses or catch wacko unscripted moments like Jack Palance doing one-armed pushups. But they’re not all that invested in the movies themselves, many of which tend to be somber and struggle to find audiences. “Winter’s Bone,” anybody?

This year, there’s an even bigger disconnect between the usual media hype over the Oscars and the public’s interest in the top movies. Of the nine best picture nominees, only one, “The Help,” has reached the $100-million mark at the box office. Compare that to 2009 and 2010, which each produced five $100-million earners among the Best Picture contenders, including such blockbusters as “Avatar,” “Inception” and “Toy Story 3.”

iReporters share their views on the Oscars

This year’s favorite for best picture, “The Artist,” has earned just $28 million and is on track to be the second-least-popular best picture winner, behind only “The Hurt Locker.” Days before the Oscars, most of the nominees have long since disappeared from theaters, and audiences have moved on to “Safe House” and “The Vow.”

I can’t blame them. You have to be in the right mood to travel to a theater and sit through a silent, black-and-white movie about a fading film star or an emotionally taxing epic about a horse drafted into World War I or a quiet, meditative and largely plotless look at the origins and meaning of life on Earth. (At least, I think that’s what “The Tree of Life” was about.)

And I’m not sure anyone is ever in the mood for “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” about a heartbroken boy after the death of his father on 9/11. It was even tough for me, Mr. Oscar Obsessive, to drag myself to that one.

The Oscars still reign supreme as the grand dame of awards shows. But their relevance is fading. Years ago, people followed Oscar nods as endorsements for which movies to see. Now, thanks to the Internet, everyone’s a critic. Who cares that “Hugo” is nominated for 11 Oscars — your friends on Facebook say it’s boring!

January and February are so saturated with movie awards now that by the time the Oscars finally roll around they feel like an afterthought. No wonder ratings for the show are down. By late February we feel like we’ve seen it already, and thanks to the glut of Oscar prognosticators we pretty much know who’s going to win. Hmm, I wonder what George Clooney will say in his “Descendants” acceptance speech this time?

Plus many times the Oscars just plain get it wrong. The Academy has a long, notorious history of honoring safe or “serious” movies over comedies, edgier films and mass-appeal entertainments: “My Fair Lady” over “Dr. Strangelove,” “Forrest Gump” over “Pulp Fiction” or “The Reader” (nominated, didn’t win) over “The Dark Knight” (not nominated) just for starters. There may not have been a better time at the movies in 2011 than “Bridesmaids,” but food-poisoning jokes aren’t Best Picture material, apparently.

So yes, I know the Oscars aren’t perfect. I know the stodgy ol’ Academy would rather honor Morgan Freeman for driving Miss Daisy than Spike Lee for throwing a trash can through his white boss’s storefront window. I know the Oscars telecast is usually a bloated mess.

Yet there I was the other night at “War Horse,” checking the last box on my Oscar list. The Oscars may have lost a little luster — witness the Academy’s desperate tinkering with the show to boost interest — but they still provide a valuable service. Right or wrong, they offer a starting point for talking about the year’s best movies. And they still inspire people in timid, profit-obsessed Hollywood to make artful, important films.

So on Sunday night I’ll be planted in front of our TV, duking it out with my wife in our annual Oscar pool and actually caring (a little) who wins best art direction. The Oscar show, bless its narcissistic heart, is like an annual family reunion with charming, photogenic and long-winded relatives. You know it’ll go on too long, you know you’ll get bored and you know somebody will cry. But you look forward to it anyway.

At least I do.

Story By: by Felix Contreras

La Santa Cecilia

Gustavo Arellano writes the weekly syndicated column “Ask A Mexican!”

We here at Alt.Latino are big into the idea of obliterating borders while maintaining cultural pride, and our Cinco de Mayo collection is no exception.

Take Radio Jarocho’s track “Café, Café” as an example. It’s part of a larger turn to jarocho (music from the Mexican port city of Veracruz) by bands trying to stretch the sonic boundaries of that music. Radio Jarocho does it very much by the numbers but infuses this track with an edgy attitude.

Songwriter and vocalist Alejandro Escovedo comes from a musical family with roots in Afro-Caribbean music, but he’s blazed a trail all his own through Austin’s alt-country scene with echoes of Mexican music. He dusts off his Spanish this week with a classic bolero that has Jasmine ordering a shot of tequila to wash down the melancholy.

And a 1960′s tortured love song redone by an ’80s techno band, then reinterpreted by a group of Mexican-American musicians dedicated to folk? That’s “Tainted Love” by La Santa Cecilia, an Alt.Latino favorite from Los Angeles.

Genres are just starting points for Alt.Latino. And to bring it full circle, so is Cinco de Mayo. It’s become a time of year when activists lobby for rights of all kinds within the immigrant communities and second and third and fourth generation Mexican Americans connect to their culture, if for only one day a year. It’s also a chance to market Cinco de Drinko parties.

What you make of the holiday depends on your own beliefs. While you contemplate them, turn up the sound on our show to give you some music to think or drink or celebrate by.

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English / Spanish

Esta Semana En Alt.Latino: La Verdad Acerca Del Cinco De Mayo

(Y Escuchamos Nueva Música Mexicana)

Esta semana estamos observando Cinco de Mayo, un feriado sumamente bicultural. Pero tal como hablamos en el programa, existe la pregunta constante de si en realidad se trata de una oportunidad para que los comerciantes hagan campañas publicitarias y los bares vendan más tragos.

El Cinco De Mayo se siente muy distinto aquí en la costa este de los Estados Unidos que en California. Creo que existe una desconexión del orgullo cultural que implica esta fecha- más bien parecería ser una excusa para tomar margaritas.

Pero ni modo. Es un feriado que es existe para que uno haga con el lo que quiera: ocupar un parque, bailar, comer y escuchar música.

Orale, dale gas vato.

Iniciar una clase de ballet folclórico en el colegio de tus hijos…. eso suena aún mejor.

O escuchar buena música hecha por artistas mexicanos y mexicano-americanos. Ahí es donde entramos nosotros.

Aquí en Alt.Latino nos encanta la idea de borrar las fronteras pero mantener el orgullo cultural de cada pueblo, y nuestro programa especial para Cinco de Mayo no es ninguna exepción.

Por ejemplo la canción “Café, Café” del grupo Radio Jarocho. Hay un resurgimiento de la música jarocho (música de Veracruz, México), liderado por bandas que buscan ampliar sus horizontes musicales.

Por otro lado el cantautor Alejandro Escovedo viene de una familia de músicos fuertemente arraigados en la música afro-caribeña, pero ha sido un pionero en mezclar la música alternativa, country y tradicional mexicana. Esta semana estrenamos su interpretación de un bolero clásico… que tiene a Jas practicamente tomando tequilas para apaciguar su melancolía.

Además tenemos una reinterpretación de una drámatica canción de los años 60, popularizada en la década del 80 por una banda de synth pop.

La canción “Tainted Love” suena muy distinta, pero bellísima en manos de La Santa Cecilia, una de nuestras agrupaciones favorites de Los Angeles.

Los géneros musicales son tan solo puntos de partida en nuestro programa, y podríamos decir lo mismo acerca de Cinco De Mayo. Se ha convertido en una fecha que les permite a los activistas una plataforma para sus causas, y también una oportunidad para que las personas de herencia mexicana se conecten con sus raíces, aunque tan solo sea por un día. Y es cierto, también se usa para hacerle marketing a las ventas y el consumo de alcohol.

Lo que cada uno hace con sus feriados tiene que ver con sus creencias personales. Mientras lo piensas, subelé el volumen al show: tenemos mucha música y conversación para estimularte.

It is not often that a novel can narrate actual history so powerfully and accurately, making it as real and useful as any history book. Such is the work of Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin which relies on a fictional Palestinian family, the Abulheja family, to tell the story of six decades of Palestinian suffering and expulsion, of Israeli brutality and indiscrimination, and of a tragic conflict in which the once vicitimised Jews had turned into victimisers of the Palestinian people.

The Abulhejas (and countless other Palestinian families) are forced out of their village in 1948 and into a refugee camp where they are met with a series of life challenges and forced to accept that everything that belonged to them is now gone for good.

Abulhawa relies on real events to support her heartfelt story, beginning with Jewish migration to Palestine and the 1948 conflict all the way to the Israeli massacre in Jenin in 2002. Through a Palestinian family of farmers from Eid Hod village, the reader forms an instant connection with the Palestinian father, mother, children, and eventually, grandchildren. The reader also gets a valuable lesson in historical events which rocked their world — a lot of them in the most tragic way.

Abulhawa is at her best when she describes events immediately after the 1948 war and Palestinian hopes and expectations during the early years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; back then it was accepted wisdom that Arab armies were going to liberate Palestine and return to Palestinians what is theirs.

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The attendance list is being kept secret, but actors, studio executives and film moguls will be among the 150 guests.

Tickets sold for $40,000 each, raising $6 million, and an online raffle offered regular voters a chance of a seat at the table on May 10.

A series of teasing e-mails with subject lines such as "An evening with Clooney" invited Democrats to make donations for the chance of winning a ticket, raising a further $6 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Clooney has been a strong supporter of Obama since 2006, and within weeks of the President’s inauguration in 2009, the actor was invited to the Oval Office where he urged the new administration to take a stronger stance on Darfur, the war-torn region of southern Sudan.

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The well-reviewed film, which follows seven British retirees on a trip to India, debuted in 27 US theatres this weekend and collected $750,301 (Dh2.75 million), according to an estimate from distributor Fox Searchlight. That means the film notched a strong per-theatre average of $27,789.

Marigold Hotel was already a hit overseas with its international gross of $70 million. Playing in 17 foreign countries this weekend, the movie grossed an additional $1.3 million, raising its tally abroad to $72.4 million. The picture has performed best in the UK, where many of its stars hail from.

The film succeeded in the US this weekend due to interest from baby boomers, Searchlight said.

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Hugh Grant’s daughter is christened Jingxi and the actor says it is a Chinese name which means "happy surprise".

He says his little girl’s Chinese name reflects her unexpected arrival.

"I can’t pretend it wasn’t a little bit of a surprise but it’s a very nice surprise. In fact, the baby’s name in Chinese — because the mother is Chinese — means Happy Surprise," contactmusic.com quoted Grant as saying.

The actor became a father for the first time last year after a fleeting affair with Chinese model Tinglan Hong. Although the two are not a couple, Grant is determined to be part of his daughter’s life. The six-month-old is also named Tabitha.

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